Ah, now we begin to catch up with ourselves! Once again it’s Wednesday, August 4th… and I have a rehearsal to get to.
We found Gareth as planned at the main entrance — aaaaaall the way at the other end of the Maes. Wrapped up in my tartan, we found him and exchanged warm and delighted pleasantries before setting off for rehearsal space. He was dignified, purposeful, very friendly and clearly well-experienced with the Eisteddfod. When we found the rehearsal space in question, I was entertained — there were two large structures sitting outside behind the Eisteddfod Office, and they looked a hell of a lot like shipping containers. Each contained an upright piano, a table or two, and chairs. Maybe they were more like the little offices that many construction companies have outside, simple and boxy and easily hitched to some vehicle and moved to the next spot. But they were essentially shipping containers, as far as I was concerned — with one or two little windows in each.
So, you know. Rehearsal containers. To contain rehearsals. ;}
Inside, echoes! Marty parked himself in one corner and Gareth and I proceeded to sing through the first song — the Mansel Thomas.
If you haven’t heard my rehearsal rendition of the Mansel Thomas yet, well, it’s really something. It’s a complex song, and it’s difficult to get right the first hundred times. At my very last rehearsal with M___, it sounded like this:
20100723 Last Pianist Reh Set (mistake, kept moving!) by MeganElizabethMorris
With Gareth’s accompaniment that first run, it was fast — but it went well.
“Well done, you,” he said, a phrase that became dear to me. I would thereafter repeat those words to myself, again and again, as a marker of pride and feeling of accomplishment. So often, in fact, that Marty started doing it too. “So,” Gareth paused curiously, thoughtfully… “Are you a singer?”
“Yep!” I chirruped. “I sing!” I was feeling it, too — like I could do this thing, like I was this thing. And then, of course, I realized what he meant:
“As a profession?”
“Well, not exactly…” So I explained to him a situation he has no doubt heard dozens of times, and he obviously understood. Ran out of money, studying intermittently, so on and so forth… seeking to lift up this project and secure it an ongoing, important part of my life and work, Ideaschema’s permanent place as my (I hate saying this) “day job”… all the bits and pieces, and that someday soon music would be a wonderfully normal part of my “day job”, too. I described to him how Joan had been assisting my Welsh by sending me diction recordings. He nodded sagely, and seemed — to my delight — quietly impressed.
“So I imagine it’s coming off okay, huh?” I ventured, because he hadn’t said anything negative about my diction — and I’d heard his Welsh patter several times that day already, as we met other performers coming and going. He spoke Welsh, and he had likely heard many singers already; he ought to know.
“It’s brilliant,” he said, and sounded like he meant it.
My heart leapt three quarters of an inch, and stayed there.
We sang the Carmen. Fiddled with tempos. I finished the end, that hopping high note, and breathed deep. It was going fairly well, I thought.
“Have you prepared for the Blue Ribbon?” he asked slowly, his tone full of gravity and purpose.
I explained that, no… I hadn’t really. I had only just realized — that day, even, talking to Jon — that it wasn’t entirely acceptable to perform one of the original two competition pieces for the David Ellis competition. The David Ellis competition awards the Rhuban Glas — the Blue Ribbon, or the Blue Riband — and it was the David Ellis in which I would (theoretically) compete if I won the mezzo-soprano mainstage competition.
Could this information have been in the Welsh competition rules? Could it have been somewhere else that I hadn’t seen? Was it just common knowledge, among Eisteddfod-goers? I didn’t know. For sure, it may well have been in that second mailing that I hadn’t known I should have received until I got to the Maes that first day. Freaking Atlantic Ocean.
The solid, knowledgeable look on Gareth’s face (and that little sliver of shocked hope I had at this point accumulated in the back of my throat) made me drag out the tablet and bring up Min y Mor, which I hadn’t looked at in… yes… I’m not kidding… a year. Not a note of it. Not since the North American Festival of Wales in Pittsburgh.
We sang through. I was maybe half memorized… ish. I was torn between the stress of adding another song and the sheer, impossible consideration that I could… theoretically… make it to the David Ellis. And I barely wanted to think about it, much less add more to my plate to prepare for it.
But I couldn’t ignore that look on his face. “You have got to be prepared to win,” he said.
And deep down, of course, I knew he was absolutely right. Deep down, I agreed with him. All it had taken was the opinion of someone who a) knew what he was talking about, and b)… seemed to think I had a seriously decent chance.
I had to at least try.
We sang through the other two pieces again. He played quickly — but there was so much personality in his accompaniment. To my ears it was patter, like his Welsh. Well-versed, familiar. Of course, he was accompanying 8 people, all singing the same 2 out of 3 pieces. He was incredibly good. The Mansel Thomas had become very pleasant to my ears — now that I knew what it was supposed to sound like after many rehearsals with M___, now that I knew it and could sing it. The last note of the Carmen rang out, right on key, right in rhythm.
I promised that I would look at Min y Mor and hoped to high heaven I had enough time to make it good before the David Ellis, should-I-be-so-lucky… but better, I could look at it tonight and tomorrow, and then just leave it alone until after the mezzo-soprano competition. That would be best, and I wouldn’t risk sabotaging my other pieces; I’d already rehearsed them near-to-death, anyway.
When we departed, I thanked him profusely, and he thanked me for coming over for the Eisteddfod — and, he added, for learning the pieces. “It’s no easy task,” he said.
Outside the rehearsal container, Marty and I settled our numerous carry-things about our shoulders, and (in a tiny corner of my brain, vibrating with hope and terror) we went on our way.