Concert

Very busy day yesterday. Had Beatrice's friend here for sleepover after concert rehearsal on Friday and the girls had a whole Saturday for playing together before the concert in the evening. We had to go there early for another rehearsal, so the night was long as well. Had a glass of wine with two other mums while we waited for it to start - kind of like a girls night out! Then finally finally they were on! As the first act of the show, must have been quite daunting. The girls already had butterflyes in taxi! They did remarkably well though, considering that some half of the choir were new kids and they had only had their once weekly rehearsals since the last 6 weeks. Some were wriggling a bit but that was quite sweet really. Just a few last high notes came out unintendedly multitonal!
The rest of the concert that we had to sit through was a big mix. Didn't start very promising - a ladies choir that wasn't much betterthan Dover Court's but lacked our sympathy factor. Rather painful really. And more of the like. Japanese ladies choir in the second half was even worse and probably due to the Japanese associations big donation they were allowed to do 4 long pieces! But there were also a few quite nice things - the absolute highlite the Japanese ladies drum performance - the Daiko. Very powerful and in a way masculine. I had always thought that it's menm who do the drumming in Japan unlike KOrean lady-drummers. But these were women that you would coke across shopping at Isetan and Takashimaya and never even emagine that they could do anything like that. Big drums, big sounds, big coreography. That alone made it well worth suffering through the rest of the concert. But of course it was for a good cause - the hospice care - so everybody appreciated the efforts. The kids joined the rest of performers at the grand finale after having waited for 2 hours. They were so hungry and exhausted when it finished at 10.40. But nevertheless Beatrice up at 7 am as usual and our Sunday is full on ...