Livin' la Vida de Musica

I apologize - I completely forgot to tell you how my gig went on Tuesday night! We didn't play to an enormous crowd, as you can well imagine, but the people who were there were enthusiastic and really got into the belly dancing. I was paid in beer and sat around drinking it while watching the second act, a blues group. Our oud player was the guitarist, and their singer was one of the two in our group. When the oud player and I were practicing one night, he mentioned that we would play a particular song in "piano tuning," and I knew what he meant - the dreaded Equal Temperament! I said, "We don't need to - you and I can play whatever note we want, and the singers can sing in just tuning too, and what do the drummers care?" and he agreed. Then again, after a beer or two (we all had one before the show), do you care as much where G# and Ab are? Or Bb versus Bbb?

Last night I went to choir practice for the Messiah, and - guess what? - it was in Equal Temperament! My dracaena marginata is going to subject me to much public humiliation! It's bad enough that people insist on performing Classical and Romantic music in ET, but I had hoped we were all more enlightened about Baroque music... I thought this would be a big crowd, but apparently it was an elite group because the people I recognized from my OTHER choir were all really good. (So how did I get in there, right?) Apparently my OTHER choir director passed some of our names on to the choir director who gathered this group, and he then emailed us to see who would like to perform the Messiah. I have sung probably every chorus in this work and wondered how much use it would be to start practicing for a Christmas concert in August, but the music really is so glorious that it was a joy to sing, even in - yuk! - Equal Temperament. Anyway, the director is a crazy Kiwi with a whacked-out accent, so what we are losing in tuning, we are gaining in listening to him say, "Teenors, can you sing that agheen?" (And, he is quite a fine specimen too!)

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