“I have been so busy,” so I told my husband, “that on this month of November alone I was able to achieve so much!”
Aside from my full time work at the country’s premiere cultural institution, I was able to still fulfill churchwork, prepare my children’s choir for a choral festival, attend an alumni homecoming, sing for a masterclass of one of today’s outstanding sopranos, join a recipe contest of a health store, and judge a bank institution’s choral competition, not to mention singing with one of the foremost Filipino baritones who I love!
Churchwork: I am coordinator of the music ministry, which involves attending meetings and scheduling the choirs for masses. We might be dwindling in numbers but still able to adjust ourselves to sing for all masses. And must fix that soon since Christmastime is near, Simbang Gabi is such a busy time for all. Our individual groups have their own “harangs,” or outside events as we musicians call it. Even my children’s choir have their own harang!
Keep on Singing! I take pride in my kids. They have participated in the yearly Madz et al Choral Festival since 2008. The group led us to so many windows and doors of opportunities. We have prepared for the et al since September, if I remember right, with sporadic rehearsals of the repertoire interspersed with rehearsal of new church songs and mass services. The costumes were made in one month, I arranged all the songs, and except for one which most kids have sung before and was notated, the other two were learned purely by verbal instructions! The tutti song was rehearsed through a study recording, they rehearsed the guitar part with my husband playing during soundcheck, one kid didn’t show up and didn’t tell me why. I had so much fun after I was able to rehearse all the songs in one go minutes before the show started, and we’re group number two! All praise the Lord, indeed!
(Photo below belongs to one of my members)
Alumni Homecoming: I wasn’t able to dedicate much time in convincing my friends to attend, so in our batch, only four attended. We had fun, nevertheless. And I was with my sister and mom who were both alumnae of the school as well! I was asked to sing the national anthem, an intermission number, and the school hymn, in which I even did the minus one in Musescore!
Claire Primrose Masterclass: It was another opportunity for me to sing opera! And I was so lucky to have gotten a slot. I was down with the flu so I almost wanted to back out, and I even came from choir rehearsals in the morning, so imagine my horrible voice then! But the more important thing was I learned a lot from Ms. Primrose. Will do a separate post about it soon.
(Photo below belongs to a friend)
Singing Cooking Mama: Our family buys so much stuff from Healthy Options! So when I found out about Bob’s Red Mill cookoff, I joined. My entry: no less than the lactation oven toaster cookies of course! Check their Facebook page and look for my entry! This is my submitted entry.
Judge Dredd, or Judge Late?! Blame the Thursday/payday/bonus day/day before long weekend sloooow traffic! And my poor judgment. I came late for the judging of a bank’s choral competition. But if there was any consolation, I got the rare privilege to sing with internationally-acclaimed Filipino baritone, Andrew Fernando! He invited me to sing O Holy Night with him, cos people asked him for a second intermission song. Impromptu! Good voice and super nice person he is!
Wow. Was I actually working full-time with all of the other extra items I did above?
And yes, November still has one day left, so tomorrow, I’ll be listening and criticquing a choir from our church who will join a big choral competition next week. I hope I could be helpful, so I must sleep!
Enjoy the long weekend! I’ll be working unfortunately, and I have to make up for my daughter who’s been crying “fun in the air, let’s do it together.” You prolly know what that means!
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~Touringkitty
