Hello again everyone,

Wendy ¡V many congrats on the safe arrival of the latest addition to your family ¡V may Prudence give you all much joy!. I¡¦ll raise a G&T in celebration later this evening. ƒº

Rap ¡V I read your post about medical tests in SLC ¡V my older sister has just returned to SLC (well, Provo anyway) and is lecturing at the university there for a couple of months. When she was living there a few years ago, I visited twice, once for a holiday, the second for her husband¡¦s funeral. That must have been 5 years ago as of about now. I remember we had high daily temperatures of minus 10!. It¡¦s the only time I¡¦ve been to a funeral wearing walking boots in a vain attempt to keep my feet warm.

Ron and Jerry asked for more information about my choral singing group. I live in a small market town in Lincolnshire called Gainsborough. It has a population of about 18,000 and is situated in a very rural part of the East Midlands of England. The nearest large towns or cities are Lincoln (24 miles), Doncaster (20 miles), with Sheffield and Nottingham about an hour¡¦s drive away. The Choral Society is a very traditional English style society. It was formed in 1860 and has given performances since then with, I believe, only two short breaks during the world wars. It is therefore one of the oldest surviving societies in the UK. We are a mixed voice (SATB) group, with about one hundred members of ages ranging from mid twenties to eighty plus. We don¡¦t have voice trials, all we ask for is commitment and enthusiasm. Sight-reading isn¡¦t essential but does help as we rehearse weekly and perform a major work in about 11 weeks. The season runs from September to March and we do 3 concerts per season, one in November, a carol concert in December and another concert in March. The November and March concerts are of major choral works such as Handel¡¦s Messiah, The Creation, Mozart¡¦s Requiem (and Faure¡¦s and Rutter¡¦s), Carmina Burrana, Bernstein¡¦s Chichester Psalms etc.

We sometimes get asked to attend and perform at local community events but we don¡¦t do them as the organisers fail to realise that we don¡¦t have a repertoire of short pieces that we can trot out on demand. Plus we generally perform with a full orchestral accompaniment so our turnout would be in the region of 140 people which would totally overwhelm the event!. Ron, I¡¦m interested that your group splits for performances rather than everyone being involved in all events as we do. Our take is that the Society performs in full or not at all. Up until about 15 years ago, we did a fourth concert in May but this was scrapped when attendance fell below 60%. It generally resulted in an imbalance between the 4 voices ¡V or maybe I should say ¡§even more of an imbalance¡¨ !.

I don¡¦t know what your split is, Ron, but out of 100 members we generally field 35 Sopranos, 35 Altos, 21 Basses and 9 Tenors. Most English Societies struggle to find Tenors and I have been known to go on the local radio asking for men!. In fact the situation got so bad 3 seasons ago that a couple of us women joined the Tenors and I¡¦ve stayed!. I much prefer singing Tenor, at the correct pitch, to singing Alto although my sight-reading in Bass clef is a bit slow / suspect!. Even worse is the tendency of publishers to print the Tenor part jumping from Bass to Treble clef and back again in a work, AND putting the jump on a page turn!. In my case, I don¡¦t do voice warm ups, rather warm downs!.

The Society is a registered educational charity and we committee members are its Trustees. I¡¦ve been Secretary for nearly 20 years now which is a position I generally enjoy. Our last Musical Director (Conductor) was with us for 34 years before he retired in March. He had also been our rehearsal accompanist for about the last 10 years and had the ability to play all 4 parts simultaneously on the piano, conduct and bring in each part AND THEN tell you where you¡¦d gone wrong! He also took little in the way of remuneration and was canny when it came to picking works that we could undertake that would be enjoyable, sufficiently difficult and wouldn¡¦t break the bank!. He was always going to be a hard act to follow.

Our new MD is gradually settling in and, after Thursday evening¡¦s committee meeting, I¡¦m hopeful that he will find a way to make his mark without losing singing members, audience members or bankrupting us in the process. Back in November, I wouldn¡¦t have been so hopeful. Even so, we are going to have our work cut out to keep things going next season as we will likely have to raise our membership subscriptions by about 33% just to cover the increased costs of the MD and his accompanist¡¦s fees. My fear is that that in itself will lose us members, which means that those of us left will have to pay even more to keep it going.

In one of Ron¡¦s posts, he said that he was contemplating the unthinkable ¡V that he would leave his choral group. I can fully understand that, having felt the same way myself last November and I never, ever thought I¡¦d feel that way. Commonsense prevailed though when I remembered that we (the committee) effectively employ this chap do to the job and so, if we¡¦re not happy with his work, then we can employ someone else. Hopefully this won¡¦t now be necessary.

Ron, Jerry, if there is anything else you want to know about my group, just let me know ¡V I think I¡¦ve waffled on far too much here!.

Deirdre