The Christmas Gigs

There was a  moment in time at one of our Christmas Gigs last weekend. Christine looked up at the audience during Down in Yon Forest, and saw some of those there were visibly moved by the song. There were tears in their eyes, and it occurred to her that it is no coincidence that the songs which moved them are the songs we need to be "in the zone" to perform. Are we "in the zone" to perform all of the songs? Well in a way, but it's different for each and every song and part of the process of preparing for a performance is finding what we think the feel of each one is. And by doing three gigs in a row we found we both, independently and together, relaxed into the feel for each song and became more and more immersed. 

We take care when creating set lists to vary the feel pace and textures. And so in our Christmas Gig the singing of The Holly and the Ivy to two different tunes at the same time gives us all a giggle or two, in fact sometimes literally! We spend a lot of time working to listen intently to each other and make the music the best we can. Having given ourselves the task of singing this carol to two tunes simultaneously, one in 3/4 and one in 6/8 time, at first we found the only way to manage it was to sing back to back so we couldn't see each other and could just listen to how the two tunes fitted together. Happily we don't need to perform them back to back. Always a sense of triumph at the end for both us and the audience! One more Christmas Gig to go until next year.