h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

So last night was the Museum Night and we did our little recital - once at 8 pm and once at 9 pm.

The programme was:
"All you need is love"
"Moon River"
"What the World needs now is love sweet love"
"Can you feel the Love tonight"
"Bergwerk" (at least, that's what we call it. It's in Austrian dialect and is the most moving song on the list. By an Austrian singer-songwriter called Reinhard Fendrich. Not usually my cup of tea, but this one is breathtakingly touching)
"Groovy Kind of Love"

The church was almost full for both recitals. The applause wasn't as rousing as we usually get, but that may be because the songs were not quite so rousing in themselves. We didn't make any mistakes, except right at the end, the second time round, and managed to make a reasonably homogenous sound, with the intention that we may get a few orders for singing at wedding ceremonies.

Afterwards hubbie and I went over the market square to the old cinema (long disused, but occasionally used for small concerts, poetry slams and the like) where they were serving pea soup. Someone had just bought the last bowl of soup, but when I said I'd been singing myself hungry and looking forward to it all night, he let me have it instead! As it was the bottom of the urn, it was quite thick and not really warm, but I had to eat it all after someone had sacrificed it like that! The soup was fine, but the sausage and the roll that were served with it were pretty tasteless and rubbery respectively.

Then we went over to the music school which is in the old ramparts, as I have described in previous years. There was a special, free "Walk Don't Walk" through the catacombs which were originally designed as munitions stores. Four short concerts in opposite corners of the passageways.

1. A group of girls singing Gregorian chant, which they had combined with a Loreena McKenneth song. Something for everyone there.

2. A group playing blues music, the singer and guitarist was our middle son's guitar teacher some 20 years ago now - he hasn't changed in all that time! Now that was my idea of a fun evening.

3. A saxophone quartet playing works adapted from Satie and Pizaiola (I can never remember how to spell that name)

4. An oboe soloist. She stood in front of the loos, to get the best acoustics, and had to wait for a few people to go before she could start. She played Telemann.

Between 2 and 3, we had to go out into the open and it had started to rain. Most oddly for November, it felt like a light, big-dropped, cheerful, warm summer rain. Quite a strange feeling, being in that sort of rain, but kicking the autumn leaves underfoot at the same time. Climate change is here to stay.

Brava! The extravert emotional release of performance!

Loreena McKennitt?

Sounds like a lot of fun!

Speaking of saxophone quartets....

A couple years ago I was walking through Riga, when I heard a street musician with a saxophone playing the theme song for "The Flintstones" . Just as long as it wasn't a tuba player trying to do "Flight of the Bumblebee."

[I love to mix up tunes in different styles and from different eras]