[fringe] do you want to make beautiful music together?

Tonight we did. Tonight I attended the Singin' A Capella Workshop by The Idea of North. While I admit to serious trepidation about attending beforehand (and anyone who has been unfortunate enough to have heard me sing will know why), I'm glad I did go. I learned lots of useful little tricks into the art of singing, and more importantly, the more esoteric art of harmony singing. We started with lots of fun vocal exercises to warm up (well after a rendition of a couple of acoustic pieces by TIoN). In one of the exercises I discovered how easy the pentatonic scale actually is to perform. Completely by accident. <grin> We then split off into four groups (soprano, alto, tenor, and bass) to learn a gospel song He Is Sweet (which was thought to be easiest to teach and learn), and came back to sing it en mass, in three different versions. I made music! Anyway, I highly recommend this workshop to anyone, especially if they are interested in singing. It was lots of fun and taught a surprising amount (given the size of the crowd attending and the varying skill levels of those involved). Tomorrow I might go see Orsino Nation at the Jade Monkey tomorrow, otherwise it's The Adventures of Stoke Mandeville – Astronaut and Gentleman followed by Dandelion Wine on Friday. Saturday might be Orsino Nation if I don't go Thursday. Or something else.

the green man cometh

The English Ale now has a cool new website. You might even recognise a certain disreputable character on the front page (and I'm not talking about Trevor as King John either).

water under the bridge

Thanks to the infinite patience* and unyielding generosity of easterbilby I am now the proud owner of the the CD Drumboy by Stoyan Yankoulov and Elitsa Todorova. For those that don't remember, they were Bulgaria's entry in the Eurovision song contest about two years ago, singing Water. Thankyou easterbilby. * Have you ever tried ordering fromn a Bulgarian CD store? I have and I gave up after a couple of months. Maybe I'll go back and look at some of the Bulgarian Woman's Choir pieces (probably more familiar to most as the background singing on Xena: Warrior Princess)

[fringe] orsino nation

This was the first Fringe show I've been to where I haven't seen the performers perform before. However I liked their (self-produced) blurb in the Fringe Guide and the music on their MySpace page was interesting, so I decided to take a gamble and see. I thought that they weren't as good live as the samples on their website suggested. I put this down to a number of different reasons. Firstly, the sound mix was painfully bad. Admittedly the Jade Monkey is not the easiest venue to mix (because of it's shape), but still (apparently there is only two decent sound people in the pool of five the Jade Monkey normally uses, which explains a lot). I'd really like to listen to them mixed competently. Secondly, after having been to some very good choir and a capella performances (and workshop, which definitely didn't help) in four of the previous five days, I was used to people able to sing well. Especially when singing together. The lead vocalist was about average for a pub band. I would definitely preferred it if she exhibited a greater vocal range (of course, this facet was probably lost under the bad mixing). Finally, and while it may be a minor point, whilst the lead singer was highly enthusiastic and leaped around madly, the other members of the band didn't look like they were particularly enjoying themselves. This served to warp the energy of the performance inwards, rather than out to the audience. A minor point, but it definitely added to my dissatisfaction. However I did enjoy the themes of several songs. There is a lot of promise there, and I hope with a little cultivation (and more practice at live gigs), it will come to light. Tomorrow is another unknown Fringe group, this time the newly-formed Adelaide University Fringe Club, whose mandate is to put on a Fringe show each year. [I quite like Uni-formed amateur theatre groups (apart from the Theatre Guild, which has about twice the political problems common to amateur theatre groups outside Uni). I have fond memories of The Crescent Company (which actually was formed out of the Adelaide Uni Law Review, if I remember correctly).] This time they are doing a play they bought from the Edinburgh Fringe, The Adventures of Stoke Mandeville, Astronaut and Gentleman. It's the final performance, so if you want to see it, you'll have to join me. Otherwise I highly recommend The Idea of North, and I hear that some sort of minor world music festival is happening (I'm disappointed, but not surprised knowing who is currently on the WomAdelaide board, that it is becoming less of a World Music Festival and more of a Jazz Fusion festival). Oh, and afterwards I'm off to see Dandelion Wine at Live On Light. ETA: My original comments about the band was overlly harsh, purely in comparison to the abilities of the bands I'd seen around them (AUCS, the Idea of North, Brillig, Dandelion Wine).