Ho Ho Ho

It's suddenly got very busy on the musical side of things. Being in two choirs doesn't help, especially as one of them is church based! Last night was my Christmas concert with CAOS, Tuesday night is carol singing, again with CAOS (no rehearsals now, so we're off to the Christmas markets in town for mulled wine & pancakes), and on Thursday I'm singing with the choir at the Holy Name. I think it's the feast of the Immaculate Conception, which seems disturbingly close to Christmas to me...
On a tangent; if one of the Catholic readers of this august blog could let me know why Mary gets referred to as "Star of the Sea" in no less than three of the pieces we practiced this week, I'd appreciate it. It's an odd nickname for anyone & I can't recall anything of Mary's nautical adventures from the New Testament.

Back to the Christmas concert: the choir side of things was going very well. No worries about that. I was mostly concerned with the orchestra half. Since I don't play an instrument, but have been in the choir for much longer than is healthy (being a student society, 4 years of membership qualifies you for "furniture" status) Al asked if I wanted to do percussion. This resulted in me playing the cymbals in Verdi's Nabucco Overture and Tchaikovsky's Slavic March, the tambourine and the triangle in Carmen.
In the end it went really well. A couple of people said afterwards that I looked like I was really enjoying playing the cymbals (banging two big bits of metal together is quite fun!), and the tambourine part (which I was most worried about, since it's exposed & a little tricky with timing) was just right. I didn't go out of tune once!
It was good fun too. Al, Dan and Ping were the other percussionists, all long time CAOS people, and a good laugh. Think I might volunteer for the Easter concert too. Thanks are due to Emma for not complaining (much) about me spending most of the week listening to the orchestra pieces on CD whilst banging a biscuit tin.

Aftershow was fun: got to bed at about five, and got up today (just) in time for a rehearsal at the Holy Name.

Hmm. Random CAOS photos.