Yeah, Bach and I Hang Out

Wednesday March 12, 2008

 Lately I’ve been missing singing and choir in general, so I decided to try and find a choir to sing with there in Spain. I’m here for two more months, why not? I talked to one of the Spanish directors of our program and she set Josh (a guy in my class who also wants to sing) and myself up with a choir from the University. The choir is small, around 25 people, and is consisted of all students that are studying to be music teachers. Today I went for the first time to practice with the choir. The director, Alberto, was really welcoming and within the first 10 minutes we were sitting within the choir and singing along. One of the students in the choir went and copied his music for us and he was really helpful about the whole thing. The choir rehearsal structure was a little different, but it was great to be singing within a choir again. Plus, what a great way of combining two things that I love: music and Spanish. We rehearsed in a medium sized classroom at the university, which I had to take a bus (and get lost) to get to, and we were without a piano. The director used his tuning fork for every note and it was just all around a different structure for choir rehearsal than what I am used to. Afterwards the director told us about the concert set that they are practicing for. He invited us to join the choir and to sing at the concerts but the first catch with that is…the concerts are in Málaga and Ronda. These two cities are somewhat close to Sevilla and are in the southern part of Spain as well. The second catch is that the concert weekend is April 26-27. We leave for May Term on the 28^th; therefore those are the last two days that I would be in Sevilla. AH, what a dilemma. I’m thinking about trying to go for the first day and catching a bus/train back on the next day. I’m still trying to think about weighing the positives and negatives of each decision. Travel as an international student to perform with a Spanish choir or stay in Sevilla and soak up the rest of the city and spend time with my host family before I go? Hum. Nonetheless, after rehearsal some of the choir members went out to a bar for tapas (kind of like appetizers) and drinks. They invited Josh and I to come along and we gladly accepted the invitation. We sat around and talked for a while, I kind of explained why we were here, they asked questions about music/choir in the states and they insisted again that we come on the choir trip with them. They even went as far as taking down my e-mail so they could send me the audio clips of the music that we are working on. I don’t know how possible it’s going to be for me to learn a Bach piece within a month on top of all of my other school work…so we’ll see how all of that works out. After we left the bar, we hopped on the wrong bus, got lost, I found our way home, and I finally got home at about 11:30pm. I was hungry from missing dinner and exhausted from the 2-hour choir rehearsal and possibly from getting lost. (Whatever.) I ate and then