Singing Workshop.

Another grey day, with I'm told some rain.

While we ate breakfast the slightly drab view was brightened up by a lifeboat and a coastguard helicopter out at sea. At least 20 miles away. As there were no other boats around and they were there for a long time I'm assuming this was just a training exercise.

I didn't get to see much of the outdoors today as I've been at a singing workshop in the hall in Tal Y Bont. I didn't decide to go until the very last minute. I find that I'm quite reluctant to go out and try new things. Instead I'd be happy working in the garden or staring at the sea. I put this down to all those years living in a secluded valley where I was perfectly happy by myself. Even though I worked in town that only made me appreciate my country life even more. 

Still I went and I'm glad I did. I'm utterly exhausted and might not go again but at least I had the experience. The workshop was run by Una May an amazing singer who runs workshops covering gospel, African and contemporary songs and also works with opera singers. Here is a video of her teaching Shona Malanga in London. That's a favourite of mine but we didn't sing it today. Instead we sang several African songs, one Gospel song and a song she had written for the song commissioning project. It was great to sing with a bigger group, there were over 30 of us, and to be able to really open our voices. The hard part was that not only did we sing each song in four or five parts but that sometimes the parts had different words and were sung in different rhythms. It took such a lot of concentration to sing like that for over four hours. And we were being asked to move and stamp our feet or clap in time too. That's something I really struggle with until I've got the singing sorted. We did stop for a tea break and then a proper lunch break and it was all very relaxed with people sitting down if they needed. (We were arranged in a large circle.) There were people from my choir, others who had sung the carols at Christmas and new people too. It was funny to see people running across the circle to join different sections when they first heard the range of their part and realised it was too high or too low for them to sing comfortably.

Now for a relaxing evening watching tv.