Tuesday 6 October 2015

Fabulous vocal glory in Germany!

Brilliant time in Germany... not only lovely gigs and audiences, but more opportunities to meet others singers/groups & enjoy their excellence!

These last few days we have met/shared stages with a wonderful array of talent.

Firstly as part of SangesLust - a four day vocal Festival in Bayreuth (October 1st - 4th)...
Thanks to Manuel and Nadia of the Bayreuth marketing team... good to see you again.

We sang in the street with the other groups in the afternoon - Bayreuth was alive with singing for 4 days (perhaps it always is - singing of one kind or another!)...
Then in the evening, we and Jazzation (from Hungary), Ringmasters (from Sweden), Sebastian Fuchs (German beatboxer) & Singers (from Denmark) went to five different restaurants doing 20 minutes in each... so the audience heard all five acts in one night... quite tiring, but excellent!
It is certainly interesting that performing the same 20 minutes 5 times is much more exhausting than doing 100 minutes in one place!
Audiences were fabulously receptive, and clearly enjoyed the different styles of the five acts...
Sadly the continuing gig in the last bar/restaurant was curtailed by our feeling the need to sleep having been up since 5AM... The Ringmasters were still pinging away at 3.30AM, we were told, before going to a club - ah, youth! They have recently been Barbershop World Champions and sound utterly terrific - however much sleep they get!
We only heard one song from these people, as we were always in different restaurants, but in the introductory serenade from ein balkon in the city, we heard:

Sebastian Fuchs' excellent beatboxing:

Jazzation's beautiful rendition of Fly Me to the Moon:
Singers' wonderful version of Stevie Wonder's As:
...and Ringmasters' spell-binding performance of Tonight from West Side Story - it just went up and up and up...
We performed Penny Lane... and here is most of us, watching Sebastian do his thing!
A long but very rewarding evening...

The next day was the first in our Mitsing concerts... our mitsing debut.
This is a very big thing in Germany; along the lines of Messiah from scratch concerts and singalong Sound of Music showings in the UK... Germany has gone mitsing-mad... in all manner of styles, classical, folk, schlager & pop.
...and loads of keen singers turned out at then Bayreuth Stadhalle to join with us!
We sang lots of new things too.... including Rolling in the Deep (Adele), When You Say Nothing at All (Ronan Keating), Another Day in Paradise (Phil Collins), California Dreamin' (The Mamas & the Papas) & Happy (Pharrell Williams... but a cappella!) to name but a few...
But they sang anything with us... Killing Me Softly, Beatles, Abba and even Ich war noch niemals in New York...
It was a really great experience for us all; gliding along on a sea of huge singing from the audience... (when we remembered to change the screen with the words on!   Thanks to Chris this was pretty slick! He has a younger brain than the rest of us)...
Sarah-Ann was especially excellent at getting the crowd to a fever-pitch of participation and we had a thoroughly delightful evening... (even including torch waving) ... do seek out film of this on facebook and/or twitter! 
S-A's flute solo in California Dreamin' a particular highlight...

After the delights of Bayreuth, we went to Blieskastel, where we have been many times before... for an a cappella nacht... sharing the stage once more and seeing old friends. 
We re-met Delta Q, who we invited to Romania two years ago... another brilliant quartet; and met the splendid OnAir for the first time... who are as much sound sculpture as vocal group...
The audience seemed to agree; another evening of varied vocal styles, but great entertainment...
Good to hear the other groups in such good form.
Here we all are.... once we had finished (14 happy singers...)!

Thanks, Peter Martin Jacob, Hamed, Bettina, Nicole and all the Magenta team for making these last few days happen.
Brilliant!