It's the most musical time of the year

I have been to so many musical events recently that I can only describe each very briefly.

The Thursday before last I went to Boston Holiday Pops. I could see why it's not the musicians' favourite concert series: there's a definite feeling of conventionality to the performance. My favourite was their 12 Days of Christmas parody: look for it on Itunes (or Youtube, if you don't have $1.29, or whatever exorbitant price they charge in Australia, to spare). I also enjoyed Drey Dreydeleh, which included impressive fiddle solo work by the concertmistress: possibly different from her usual repertoire.

On Friday I saw MITGSP's HMS Pinafore. Unfortunately, I have such a high standard for the group in my head based on previous shows, that despite this one being totally acceptable it didn't quite do it for me. The singers were consistently too quiet, and the stage seemed cramped (which I guess is reasonable given that the show is set on a ship, but it hindered the chorus scenes). Daud Alzayer as Sir Joseph was a star. Katie O'Reilly as Josephine sang very well, but she spent too long looking at the conductor and that was distracting (I saw the show again the next Friday, and she was much better).

On Saturday afternoon I went to the semester concert of the Cross Products, MIT's Christian a cappella group. Their singing was top notch: it certainly exceeded my expectations. The songs were embedded in an extended skit. I believe most of the a cappella groups perform skits: this one was so long they billed it more as a musical than a concert with a skit in it. Naturally the skit was based around Christian themes, but it didn't really work for me, for two reasons. One was that I didn't get the impression that the performers were speaking from a place of greater knowledge or understanding than me. This is fine in a discussion, but when the teaching is going one way I look for authority. The second was the depiction of a typical journey towards Christ being based in an initial position of hopelessness or struggle, or at least including a dramatic change. That's just not been my experience.

On Saturday evening I joined some friends, mostly grad students from the Tech Catholic Community, to sing Christmas carols and eat cookies. This was much fun. I introduce them to "Christmas in the Scrub" and "Christmas Where the Gum Trees Grow", which everyone appreciated.

On Monday I went to the MIT Chamber Music Society end of semester concert. Two quintets performed a few quintets by Monteverdi, and performed them very well (especially the second group). There was then a string quartet by Grieg, which I didn't really like: I'll blame the composer.

On Tuesday and Wednesday we began auditions for The Forest of Eoren. We've had many women and 2 men audition so far: hopefully we see more men before we finish! I'm getting excited about beginning the show: auditions finish tomorrow and we will start sending out casting offers soon after that.

On Wednesday I went to the Emerson vocal scholars' end of semester concert. It was sad that the performers almost outnumbered the audience (Davie thanked us for being a small audience to avoid nervousness - I pointed out that he should be thanking everyone except us). The standard was very high (I certainly would have liked to see these people at auditions for my show!), Tiffany Wong's Il Bacio being perhaps the highlight (Davie was also exceptional, but I'm not sure I can judge friends objectively).

On Friday I bumped into Davie again, and he invited me to join some of his friends to sing carols in lobby 7. We did so for over an hour, and people occasionally stopped to watch, applaud or compliment us, and in one case join us. We sometimes had trouble finding the harmonies, but the acoustics there are interesting and I think we sounded good.

Yesterday afternoon, I visited Kelsey for a little Christmas party: tree decorating, eating and drinking, and carol singing. She had bought a few copies of a carol book, and we sang all the way through it, selecting only one or two verses of each song we knew.

Yesterday early evening, I went to TCC's "Christmas" Mass: since we're not together for Christmas, we have a vigil Mass for Gaudete Sunday with extra Christmas cheer. Since I choose the hymns, we sang four of my favourite carols. Since there were only two men singing most of the time (there were also three men mostly playing instruments) and I was the higher, I sang tenor (which I secretly enjoy, when it doesn't go above D!). Not only did we sing Silent Night unaccompanied, we stayed in key well enough to transition to an instrumental verse at the end, which impressed me.

After Mass, we had a bit of a Christmas party. There was some caroling, especially with some Spanish speakers (they sang a few Spanish carols, but mostly English for my benefit, or perhaps because they know them better) at the end of the evening.

And on Tuesday, I will rest from music!