back.

holy cow. i'm in killarney. i've lost my voice. it is lovely here. LOVELY! but wait... i haven't written in forever because they've kept us incredibly busy. so. back in time we go!

the competition town of cork. emma showed up and was welcomed warmly by the choir. she charmed them all. every one. damon. iain. abs. mel. len. and all the rest. good work sister. good work.

we started our festival time performing in a library for a lot of very old people and a lot of very young people. the young people were mostly boys. and they wore grey school uniforms with green crests on. we liked them. they liked us. HOORAY!

then we had a mini performance as diversion-entertainment for one of the school categories of the cork festival. three songs on the city hall stage (where we competed later.. keep reading.) they audience was largely 12 to 15 year old girls. in a variety of school uniforms. they were all pumped on performance adreneline, so they loved us. best audience ever. much screaming. oy! brilliant.

the competition itself. DUM DUM! (that's a dramatic noise. not me saying it was dumb. it wasn't. phew.)

there were fifteen choirs in the international fleischman (???) trophy competition. let's see if i can remember them all...

two from sweden. both with smocks. one highschool. one university.
three from ireland. variety of outfits. often black with accenting accessories.
germany. scarves. later at the party, blue shirts.
finland. all women. intensely patterned dresses.
switzerland. all the women wore matching lipstick. one of the men was bald.
russia. women in flowey purple disney princess dresses. many many of them on that stage. scary...
istonia(?). all women. warrior-milk-maid outfits. and a lot of blonde hair.
university of alabama. dresses similar to ours. (i'll do a drawing highlighting the differences when i have time...)
oh, oh... i'm having a hard time remembering the rest... oh...
oh. another sweden? the other highschool? is that right. oh this isn't going well.
us. u of a... um.
i'm missing two. there might be another germany? and... and???

okay. we'll come back to that later.

emma watched all the groups perform. we didn't get to see them all ourselves, as timelines were tight and they didn't want us running in and out of the theatre willy nilly. emma had a series of questions she had to answer about each choir that we missed. ask her about it maybe.

there were two sessions on the saturday, and we were at the end of the second. second half of the second session. we did rather well, but there were two fairly significant errors. ones the audience wouldn't necessarilly notice, but the joudges would. damn! we say. but it was fun. definitely fun.

sunday, the awards were announced in the evening. all the choirs in the hall, all excited. much screaming and clapping. we were awarded (or len was) the jury award for most innovative and coheisive program. yay len!

and the results?

first place, germany (scarves and blue shirts) with 91.8 percent.
sencond, sweden (sorta mauve smocks... the adult choir) with 91.3 percent
third, one of the irish with 91.2 percent.

yes. that close.

we tied for fifth. with university of alabama. (we think they got confused because we were the only two north amaerican choirs, so we sing in a similar style, are both u of a's, were the only choirs with dr. conductors, and had strickingly similar outfits. cause reall what are the chances of tieing them? slim.) we got 90.92 percent. in fourth place was the other school choir (i think sweden. they wore lots of blue and black.).

phew! it was a crazy pants time. and then the sunday evening was the closing concert, in which all of the choirs performed a few (generally) fun songs, with the pressure off. it was a load of fun.

oh. and both saturday and sunday nights there were these awesome parties. kaelis (?). but that'll have to be another blog.

man. we're so behind... sorry! eee. ireland rules.