Adventures in Alamo Land: The Angry Brit

So everything in San Antonio wasn’t all just fun and games. There was work to be done! I definitely had day-long rehearsals that made me want to severely hurt myself. Our conductor was the Brit, Simon Carrington (www.simoncarrington.com). Simon was a former “King’s Singer” and is currently a professor of music at Yale University. Big stuff right? Well let’s just say, I didn’t like Simon too much… Before we even started rehearsing, he informed us of his extreme aversion to coughing and told us that we were to never cough in rehearsal. Yes, to never cough is to try and keep your body from properly functioning, but never-the-less he wanted us to do that. At first that rule seemed a bit much, but then when you start hearing some of the hacking coughs that people start putting out to get attention (and there were a LOT of attention-wanters there) it can get pretty annoying. So ya, I left San Antonio having a hatred for all coughers around the world. Watch out.

Also during rehearsal Simon had no limit on how many or what type of questions people could ask. This of course led to a bunch of choir losers who wanted Simon to think they were just the smartest people ever to ask HOURS AND HOURS worth of questions. Not even kidding, we would spend 2 hours answering questions on just one song. We had such intelligent questions as, “Sir, it is OBVIOUS that the altos have a forte marking on measure 47, whereas the tenors have a fortissimo marking on the same measure and I’m just not sure that we’re making the difference obvious enough.”

OK well, FIRST OF ALL, that is NOT even a question! That is an obvious statement that did not need to be said! And SECOND of all, NO ONE LIKES YOU! You aren’t cool just because you ask annoying questions!

Anyway, thank GOODNESS the people I was sitting by didn’t ask stupid and annoying questions because I would have either killed them or myself by the end of it and that would not have been pretty.* To get through the question sessions I would usually take the writing end of my pencil and stab my forehead with it to both distract myself away from the questions and to stay awake.

But anyway, back to Simon. Him, in all his Britishness would use words that I assume are British, but I couldn’t help but wonder if he made up some of them so he looked cool. He often told us to work on our music “During lunch or tea.” COME ON, he knows we don’t do tea here! Desperate to let us know you’re British much?! Oh and he also told us to let him know if he was “flagging.” This was a term that Simon used to mean “rambling or running off course.” His most favorite words though by far had to be “diminuendo” (decrescendo or get softer) and “warbling” (vibrato or crazy shaky voice). In any given minute he would usually use all of those words several hundred times each.

By far though, the most funny/sad story of the week was when the altos and the men were rehearsing a staggered entrance. The girls would come in first, followed by the guys moments later. We sang the part once, only to be stopped by Simon because one of the girls didn’t make the right entrance. We tried again, and eventually 3 more times. Each time we stopped, Simon pointed at the girl and told her not to miss her entrance again. Finally on the 5th time to sing that section, Simon stops, the whole room is quiet, he points at the girl and suddenly his face looks shocked. “OH MY GOSH,” he says, “You’re a GUY with long hair!” Whaaaaaat??? The entire choir is like, WHAT JUST HAPPENED and finally we all realize that all this time, he has been mistaking one of the guys for a girl because he had long hair. Needless to say, the boy turned bright red and Simon was completely embarrassed. Oh, he also never called on that kid again…

Oh the fun you’ll have when you put an angry British man with 250 choir nerds! There should be a reality show about that! I’m gonna get to work…

DISCLAIMER
*I would not have REALLY killed anyone (including myself), that line was used purely for effect and so you could have the full impact of the situation.
END OF DISCLAIMER