Monthly Archives: July 2007

This afternoon I board Virgin Airlines, fly to Heathrow, transfer to British Airways to Oslo, then arrive in Norway tomorrow evening! This is my first trip to my “ancestral homeland” and I’m excited! The reason for going is to celebrate the first anniversary of a fellow Halloween fan from Norway who found my website awhile ago, and we’ve become online friends. She got married last year and they’re having the reception in Sweden August 11th, so what a great reason for me to finally visit! My ancestors are over 100 years back, so all I know really is that my dad’s family is from Visby, Gotland, so I’m going there, and my grandmother thinks her mother is from near Lillehammer. I’m just going to see as much as I can see!

I might be checking two bags on the way there, which is a first! So much cider, jam, beef jerky & another gift is making my suitcase about 10lbs over, and I’ve tried limiting what else I’m bringing…we’ll see what they say, since I do have my duffle bag packed, so if they make me, I can repack some clothes & shoes at checkin.

I should have internet just about everywhere I’m staying, so I hope to blog with photos during the trip. Wish me luck!

Britta’s Scandinavian Itinerary

This morning at breakfast I said hi to a couple of the Santa Rosa choir guys I danced with at the party, but the other choirs weren’t around, so I still didn’t get the chance to give away my alto necklace. I do have a Finnish email to send photos, and I heard we got contact info for the Ugandans to make more necklaces to send to them. Best of all, the Basque choir is doing a concert on Friday night in South San Francisco at the Basque Cultural Center, so we’re trying to get as many of us together as possible to go see them! 😀 It also sounds like there will be a bunch of Vocal Arts members driving up from SLO to hear our concerts! They specifically told us that and asked when our next concerts are! I happened to have a Choral Project magnet in my folder so I gave it to them to be sure they had our URL to check for next season’s events. Yes, I’m a good little choir marketing girl whenever I can! 😉

We had a fairly uneventful and quick bus ride home, but before we got on the freeway, they decided some of our $500 first place award could go to paying for Starbucks for the entire bus…which was only $100.05 exactly so we still have some prize money left! Back home & back to reality, but since the rest of today is still official vacation time for me, I’m not checking work email unless they CALL me…tomorrow reality will set in like a ton of bricks, but I can enjoy the rest of today at least!

Hope everyone had as fabulous a weekend as we did! 😀

…Onward to the Choir’s Choice round, where we thought we had the most varied rep. Pin & needles again! Third place – the San Francisco Filipino choir…we were at least second! Second place – Imusica Cappella! OH MY GOSH! I was two seats away from Dan and he looked extremely shocked and said “We won first?!? We actually got first?!?” Of course we stood & cheered for Imusica Cappella as they filed over to sing, and many of them were telling us congratulations on their walk forward to sing. Then there it was – first place The Choral Project! Since we were going to sing War Song we had to move the awards table out of the way as we heard the emcee egg us on by reiterating our mission is to heal the world through song…haha! Dan explained again that it’s a song of intimidation instead of violence then we did it again…twice onstage in one day is quite a workout & a lot of adrenaline rush!

Backstage at intermission was a flurry of congratulating each other and lots of photos of smiling faces & new friends. We went back on in sections – a chant of “Altos! Altos!” was heard! – and blew off the roof singing the two compulsory pieces with almost 300 voices combined. Then we sang This is My Song to the tune of Finlandia with the pipe organ AND the whole packed house of audience joining on the final verse. The words were praying for peace among all nations, so quite a moment. Our host Gary Lamprecht of the Vocal Arts choir, whose dream it has been to host this festival, got up, thanked everyone and said “That is how the world SHOULD be!” to rousing applause from everyone. Then he also said “I think we should all take on the Choral Project’s mission to heal the world through music!” to more cheers. Yay! Onward to the after party at the Madonna Inn!

The Madonna Inn is famous for its theme rooms, like a laser-triggered waterfall urinal in the men’s bathroom, a stone grotto for the telephone, and I didn’t even see any of the actual bedrooms. When we got there it was already packed, so we went to the upstairs bar instead. To save myself the line time later I got a double amaretto sour…yummy! Back downstairs where it was a packed dance floor with a DJ, which was fun, but if I knew it would be that kind of party I probably would have done more chatting with other choirs at the BBQ in the afternoon, since it was too loud with all the dance music. However, it was a lot of fun to dance! Great way to blow off the steam & energy of the competition, since we were ALL DONE – woohoo! We were kicked out at midnight, so back to the dorms, but most of us were too awake still to go to bed. Again it was chats in various dorm rooms, until I packed it in at 2:30am to get to sleep. We had to check out by 9am you know!

…They announced the Basque choir as third place so they sang. It was better to hear them live than on the video feed, but still odd to hear them from behind. They announced second place…conducted by Daniel Hughes…us! We performed the Rotala (Vidu!) which felt very odd being sideways to the audience but got great response anyway. That left Imusica Cappella from the Philippines, who rehearse something like everyday all year subsidized by their government, and win competitons worldwide, so coming in second to them is no shame!

On to the folk results, where we were surprised we placed at all. As Dan joked, “We know we didn’t place for our ‘folk’ outfits” of red white & blue jeans! There it was…third place conducted by Daniel Hughes…still nice to place! We sang Wade in de Water, then sat down to hear the Basque choir get second, leaving Imusica Cappella first again…onto the final round judging!

(to be continued)

…Erin & I hiked the long way back to the dorms to change since we had to be back on stage at 6pm for our one chance to rehearse all the choirs together. That was a lot of fun! Needless to say our altos started a refrain of We Are the Altos to the tune of We Are the Champions and ALL the altos joined in! Alto pride is contagious! Hahahaha…the basses tried to sing something back but it kind of fell flat…heehee…

We had time before the final concert started, so since we knew we were singing once for each round, we tried to figure out how to squeeze on the smaller risers for the awards. We crammed ourselves into a mixed position the then Basque choir wanted to hear our Biebl, so we sang the short version…many of them were crying by the end and boy did they cheer! We stayed while they got on the same risers and they sang a very pretty piece with a soprano soloist who was worried how she’d sing since she was recovering from crying from our Biebl. They did a beautiful job, and everyone hugged the soloist on the way backstage, where we spent (too much) time rearranging our standing position yet again while waiting to go onstage.

Finally we went onstage to sit and wait while they announced the winners. The host and emcee traded back & forth, keeping us all on pins & needles. I felt a little badly for the choirs who knew they didn’t place but were still sitting on stage, and tried to keep a good attitude that at least we got third place in all three rounds!

(to be continued)