Musique allemande avec une chorale francophone
So I was accepted into the choir here. I’ve been feeling lazy so this will make once more per week that I’ll be required to leave my house and socialize with people I don’t already know, which is a perk, in addition to the singing. However, I found out that their next concert is scheduled for April 30th, meaning that the advance pass I had bought for the Open Ears festival was going to be of much less use to me. Fortunately, I’ve already arranged to sell it to a friend in K-W who had forgotten to buy one, and will just buy individual tickets to whatever shows I can make, I guess. Oh well.
The choir seems good, for amateurs; they have about 16 members fairly evenly distributed amongst the parts. They perform entirely a capella, and are currently working on a nice selection of folk songs: German Volkslieder by Brahms, a few more by Schönberg, some African-American songs arranged by Stephen Foster, and a cute canon by the Argentinian composer Alberto Ginastera (which I suspect is intended as an encore). Everyone seems friendly, and I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I was able to understand enough of the conductor’s French to make it through the rehearsal meaningfully. (I think they were pleasantly surprised that an anglophone would decide to join, so we’re even.)
I’ve also started round three of my French course, and my confidence in my ability to speak well in class grows daily — now this just has to carry over to confidence when speaking anywhere else. Anyways, the teacher for this session seems very good; she’s my age but has been a volunteer French as a foreign language teacher for over ten years, impressively. She’s also a speech therapist by profession and thus very observant of pronunciation. All in all, it bodes well.