Alex Quinn's Japan Journal

11/23/2004, Performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony with the Taishi Community Chorus

For the last few months, I've been practicing with the Taishi Community Chorus for this performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony.  The chorus consists of roughly 100 members including about 30 men.  We practiced every Saturday for 3 hours, usually with no break.  There was a director and a few section directors.  All were very good.  The main director had absolutely flawless German pronunciation and sang it beautifully.  I learned a lot from the rehearsals.

On the concert day, we met at 9:30 and had some long rehearsals before the 3:00 performance.  It was crazy.  They wanted us to sing for 4+ hours the day of the concert.  As expected, my voice gave out.  So, for the concert, I sang the bass part during the really high sections.  It was the best I could do.  That said, everything came off quite well.  We hired a fantastic orchestra and 4 outstanding soloists.  And, we practiced the stage logistics a fair amount so that everything was quite smooth.

The most memorable part of it was that Akemi came to the performance.  It was nice that she could be there and be a part of the project.  Moreover, it was quite a nice thing to do, given that it took a lot of time and money to get there.  After the performance, they made me sit though an hour's worth of boring congratulatory speeches from everybody and their brother and their brother's sister-in-law.  Sheesh.  Finally, when they let me go, Akemi and I went out for a nice dinner at my favorite Japanese restaurant (Edo-ya izakaya) in Aioi, and then we had ice cream.

Sorry, no pictures.

<Previous     -     Index     -     Next>