How Fast?

Week 2 and the new members keep rolling in. For some reason this season there seems to be a lot more interest than last year, and there is still one more week to go for potential newbies. I am always interested in finding out how people find out about the Pink Singers, and also why they join us rather than one of the other gay and lesbian choirs in London. It turns out the majority hear about us through Google (no duh!) and our website. Remarkably few have ever heard of us through any other route, and even fewer have come to our concerts. I guess that means lots of room for improvement in terms of self-promotion. As to why people would rather join us than the LGMC or Diversity, or any of the other fledgling choirs for that matter, well, the new members I’ve spoken to seem to think that we seem really friendly and fun (and we are!) and have a good mix of voices and repertoire (which we do!). I’m glad that comes across. At the same time London is large enough to sustain three major LGBT choirs with very different social approaches, management and vocal styles, so really, there is something for everyone.

At the pub yesterday after rehearsal I was speaking to one of the new members, and he was saying that he was amazed at how fast we go through the music. This is in comparison to his old choir which seemed to slog through the pieces. In contrast, I actually find our progress slow going. For a brief period in college I was in the Gilbert and Sullivan society, and you were expected to just pick up the sheet music and start singing – our musical director was horrible in that he’d pick you out if you hit a bum note. It really was needlessly stressful. Thankfully Mladen is a much calmer influence, and is a good combination of firm and fair. In addition to last week’s songs, this week we started learning Hymne a l’amour (refer to video of Edith Piaf at her finest above), You’ll Never Walk Alone (another of Michael’s outstanding arrangements) and Lacrimosa from Jenkins’ Requiem, for a total of six songs in a fortnight. Balancing the needs of different people in the choir, from those who can sight-read music to those who have never seen musical notation before, is a real problem, but I do believe that people who sing have a natural affinity for a melody so pick things up quickly, and the Pinkies do it at a pace which caters to the greatest number of members.

The other news is that Johnathon, whose birthday it was on Friday, has convinced me to join him on a run around the South Bank with the Front Runners. This is after a conversation with another one of the new members who also runs with that group. I used to run competitively, but it has been a while since I did anything of the sort, and I am woefully out of shape. This does sound rather appealing though, and jogging along the South Bank in the cold winter evenings has a certain Rocky Balboa-esque attraction for me. Once it starts raining, of course, all bets are off.