Something never in short supply in our group is empathy, so that when a member told us of the challenge she's facing to sing improvised dialogue in a community production of a spoof opera, we thrust ourselves into having a go, just to understand what it would feel like.
Beginning with a completely spontaneous, sung, remark from me, the dialogue was continued round the group, each person in turn responding to the one before with a new phrase. To our utter surprise, not only was the singing good, but the improvised 'script' was hilarious and not one person failed to sing when their turn came along.
I think the exercise was a fine encouragement for our opera star member and it was a revelation, too, how some who regularly have difficulty with holding a melody line, were able to sing out loud and clear, improvising words and music on the spot. Wonderful what we can do when we just 'let go' and allow our deeper selves to direct us.
Perhaps this is something worth exploring further.
We will have to making a booking for the ENJOY MUSIC! crowd for that show when it's staged.
After that, we sang ALWAYS THE SINGING with harmony in the chorus and HOW CAN I KEEP FROM SINGING?
Finally, getting off the 'singing' topic, we revised the harmonies for ROW ON and managed to sing it rather well, with a lovely, full sound which left just enough time for us to do some scales on the instruments, adding rhythm and percussion, at the end of the morning.
