Bristol Choral Society has in one sense had less of a break than in many years. Very often we’d do nothing after the concert in June until the AGM at the beginning of September, but this year we carried on with remote rehearsals on Zoom in July, some of which were opened up to a wider public as choral workshops.
I realise sadly that I did not sing a concert with the choir at all in the 2019-20 season. I did perform with it because I sang on our CD recording (that’s for another post). It’s not clear when the next concert will be, but after a lot of discussion – including a session where choir members could see the committee inspecting the rehearsal venue – workable ideas about how to meet have emerged.
Those of us who wish to come to rehearsals have been divided into two groups, and I was in the first one to meet. We have a different venue from last year, and are lucky that it is spacious enough for a sensible one-way system, and also to allow us to queue inside before we are let into the rehearsal space. The proceedings are webcast for the benefit of choir members at home.
We are still feeling our way and in particular it isn’t clear yet whether rehearsals will be weekly, or less frequent but longer. Used to being in small groups, I am not bothered by being some distance from other singers, but this week we sang music familiar to me. The real test will come when we learn the new pieces written for our carol competition – again a topic for another post.
I am full of admiration for the way we have managed to work around the difficulties (so far!). They come on top of the difficulties in planning programmes created by the delay in reopening Colston Hall (now the Beacon) – this was running two years behind the original date even before the pandemic.