Season 2 coming soon!

 

This post is the first for my second season as Musical Director of Madrid International Choir.

 

Six public performances in three venues collaborating with two groups from Madrid and Valencia with a total audience of about seven hundred. 

The composer of our earliest piece of music was born in 1505 and of our most recent in the 1970’s.

Our attendance at rehearsals settled at around forty between February and June and our instrumental ensemble has grown to eleven players. 

Facts and figures!

There are those who say that music is all about numbers and then there are those of us who say that music is about sound and emotions. 

For me, choir is above all about persons. 

Every person in the choir has seen their life move on while joining weekly rehearsals: for some this has meant the joy of finding a job or celebrating a family member’s success, while others have suffered loss or a major health setback. Who would expect to go on holiday and fly home with a broken leg? Yes, all this and more has been going on, in the background as a choir, but very much in the foreground for the individual concerned.

It’s in the nature of an international choir that members will leave: some are here as students and return home to complete their courses while some experienced professionals are given postings in other countries by their employers. We will miss our departing singers and instrumentalists very much and we wish them well in their new/old destinations.

At the same time, expressions of interest are constantly arriving and we’re open to welcome new singers and classically trained instrumental players.

Change, flux, uncertainty and transience are part of life and singing in a choir can be an anchor and a point of reference to keep ourselves emotionally safe. One singer made this clear: after traveling half way across the world to start a new phase of life in a country with an unfamiliar language and customs, she found her way to our rehearsal and as soon as she said soprano and sat in with the other singers and opened the music we gave her, she felt totally comfortable and secure. In a choir we sit in a certain way and use music scores in a certain way and we follow a routine of welcome, vocal warm-up and repertoire. 

Whatever else is going on in our lives, minds and hearts, our choir rehearsal can help us feel at home and at peace.

Madrid International Choir Season 2 starts on Thursday 7 September 2023. You can check out last season’s concerts on the Facebook page, hear us on SoundCloud and contact to arrange to join us!