Me and Ludwig van

We had our first of two concerts tonight: Beethoven's Mass in C, which is one of my all-time favorite pieces to sing (I first performed it in my second-ever concert with this group, almost exactly 14 years ago). The first dress, on Tuesday, went okay, but it was pretty iffy in a few places. Then on Thursday, the conductor reconfigured the orchestra so that he could stand a lot closer to us, making it about a thousand times easier to follow his lead, and that change brought it all together. We really clicked in that final dress, and it carried through into tonight. No major flubs, and we had excellent energy throughout.

The new quarter starts in April, but the piece is the Berlioz Requiem, which we did several years back and I really didn't care for. Mainly, the problem is that there's no Alto part, which means that we end up drifting between Second Soprano and Tenor, and I'm not comfortable singing in either of those ranges, especially not Soprano. So I'm thinking that I'll take the quarter off. It's one thing to take a chance on repertoire I know nothing about and ending up not liking it much; it's another to commit every Monday night for two months to a piece of music that I *know* I don't like.

Second show is tomorrow. I'll miss singing the Beethoven when it's over. It will be nice to get my life back, though.