Hell Week

Hell Week=Concert Week. Rehearsals Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. Last night was rather short as we were able to run through the program fairly quickly without toooo many major errors.

But tonight. Oh, lordy. We will be in the Mission which means technical stuff. Mikes and standing orders and entrances and exits and people TALKING when they should SHUT UP and LISTEN.

And the ever present smelly stuff. I would say perfume or cologne but people seem to think that nothing else that they use smells. Like lavender talc. Or hair spray. Or rose scented soap. Or tangerine shampoo. Or baby powder scented deodorant. All together it is a nightmare for anyone sensitive to odor. And we are standing on risers. Like sardines in a can. Dripping with lavender, rose, tangerine, baby powder and god knows what else.

Please sing now. Are you KIDDING?


Meanwhile, the mike tech is telling someone to speak up and the director is telling everyone to pipe down and it is all reverberating with lovely acoustical sound from the ancient walls of the Mission.

And we all love it. We will gripe and groan and bi**h and moan. And we will sing our hearts out.


And we will do it again on Thursday.


And Saturday we will be there very early and do it again.

Then we will perform. And it happens. Magic.

Oh, we may screw up in our own minds. We may think we missed a note here or there. We may feel like our intonation was not good enough in this song or that. Sometimes (like in the video below, we forget what foot we are one)

But it will be magical. Together we are a family. We make something very, very special.

We make music.