The 12 Blogs of New Year 2020: Day 7, Swanning It...

We hope you're enjoying our series of blogs marking the start of not just 2020, but our 10th Anniversary Year.  At the same time, we're taking the opportunity to talk about life in a male voice choir, and ours in particular!  It's a duty we are taking very seriously, so we are seeking commissions to turn the entire series of The Twelve Blogs of New Year 2020 into a box set for global streaming...

...so you can't say we're not setting our sights high enough!!!  And setting sights high is a reminder that life in a male voice choir is a bit of a balancing act.  It's a great chance though to let everyone know what we do to manage it, so that's our theme for today...   ...just like a swan swimming across a peaceful and calm pond, we hope that you'll agree that our concert performances are graceful, flowing and majestic (well, as near as, anyway???).   But, below the waterline, where the rehearsals, practice and gaining confidence in the pieces we are singing reside behind the scenes...   ...we can't deny it, the metaphorical webbed feet are thrashing away at a rate of knots...

Yes, for Day 7, we are talking about Swanning It...!    Remember to join in singing our happy refrain, but don't worry Men, it's not an audition by the back door - we definitely don't audition for choir membership or concert participation at all - ever...!  So, sing up everyone - Here we go then, 1, 2, 3...

"In the 7th Blog of New Year, 'The Phoenix' gave to me: Serene Swans a-Swimming, See Geezers Playing - Five Sing-ing Live - For Auld Lang Syne, Three Hearty Cheers, To All Men an Invite and A Calendar with Dates we can see!"

We talked on Day 5 of our Choir being made up of local men with all different reasons for wanting to sing with us and it is an important part of what we do that we also attract new men as choristers by inviting non-members to our Open Rehearsals.  We get then that our Open Rehearsal Guests and our newest Members may not at all be used to singing in a choir, or to how a male voice choir creates its sound by using 4-part harmony, or indeed to the prospect of singing in public which is guaranteed by us as a membership benefit.

So we know what it's like for our Guests and Newcomers to meet up with a pretty confident group of men who have been with us for perhaps some time, or maybe since we started Phoenix in 2010, or in some cases were members of other Male Voice Choirs such as our predecessors in the Norfolk Millennium MVC, colleague choristers of Bure Valley MVC and, in Welsh Mike's notable case (Noswaith dda, Mike!), Kenfig Hill & District MVC in South Wales.  But we'll have no-one to become our longer-standing members if we don't support our newcomers properly, so in our membership, we promise you...

1. A Singing Buddy will be available to you in your voice part (Upper [T1] or Lower [T2] Tenor - higher voice, or Upper [B1] or Lower [B2] Bass - lower voice) to support you in what we do and how we do it, and to help make you feel 'at home';
2. At/Near the beginning of each Singing Season or Programme (we generally have 3 per year), we issue an Advance Rehearsal Schedule showing all our Rehearsal Dates, Concert Dates, Runthough (a sort of 'dress rehearsal' without dressing up...) Dates, and anything else of importance, so you can set your diaries for that season [it'll also be on our website];
3. The Advance Rehearsal Schedule will also highlight what songs will be rehearsed at each Rehearsal, so you can track the Choir's (and your own) progress;
4. Our Rehearsals feature much repetition of individual music parts, song words, and singing with the other voice parts of the scheduled songs to encourage familiarity with each song and how each song comes together;
5. At/Near the beginning of each Singing Season or Programme, prepared .mp3 tracks of each voice part for all our programmed songs, together with an .mp3 impression of the combined choir sound, will be available at a nominal cost for private practice away from choir rehearsals;
6. Whilst we issue Members with original copies of song music for copyright reasons, you don't have to be able to read music beforehand because we teach you our songs by rehearsing them, and we also give you an informal hand with what the music score markings mean as an additional skill; and,
   
7. You don't privately have to 'catch up' with songs we have already done in the past, which our members might think we already know, or which we sing relatively frequently.  We need to 're-rehearse' most songs anyway after not performing them for a while and, even where we 'think' we 'know' them, we can always improve, so we always practise even our most familiar songs in a rehearsal season anyway, so you can pick them up when they are actually scheduled!
   

So, then, Seven 'Day 7' Reasons for Serenity when 'a-swimming above the waterline' from even our newest choristers, even if our more established choristers are just better, in reality, at looking like they are just swanning it!!!