With music, as in sport, match fitness is important.
If you don't perform for a while, you lose a bit of confidence, and when you do get up on stage again, it takes a while to get used to it and regain your "presence".
So in the lead-up to my show, I search for some opportunities to perform.
I nominate to perform at an open-mic night. The venue is in a slightly gritty part of town, but the owner does a good job of providing opportunities for performers. He calls for singers, who will each perform three songs to backing tracks. I trawl the Internet to find suitable tracks, and spend several hours working out how I will arrange each song, as some of the instrumental sections are long, and you can't just stand there waiting for your invisible orchestra to finish.
The show certainly lives up to its description, "Variety Night". There are a few pretty sleazy numbers, and the last act is a singer/guitarist who brazenly exceeds his quota of three songs and appears to have settled in for the night, until the host finally brings his set to a close.
By now our group is very hungry, and we end up in an pizza bar across the road, where the pasta, surprisingly, turns out to be magnificent.
I also notice that a friend is running a crowd-funding campaign to finance a going-away concert. She is moving to the UK to find work in the entertainment industry. She invites people to buy tickets in advance, and she is also offering a range of "rewards" for purchase. One of these is the opportunity to sing one song with her in the show. The purchaser can choose the song and must be available to rehearse with her in the two weeks before the show. I whip out my credit card and quickly snap up the spot.
This purchase provides me with hours of fun and vocal practice. We meet for coffee to discuss song choice. She has some suggestions, but ultimately the decision is mine. I select "Cabaret" from the movie of the same name. It is meaningful, as we met at Cabaret Summer School, and because she is "seizing the day". It's also a good choice because I've performed the song once before - at my 50th birthday party, before I even discovered cabaret. I'm already familiar with it, and won't have to spend hours learning new lyrics.
We rehearse a couple of times at her home. We divide up the song; it has a wide range. She takes the high parts and I take the low ones. We decide on some simple harmonies. It's a good song to do as a duet with a friend; it becomes like a conversation. We also have a rehearsal with the pianist and one at the theatre on the day of the event.
On the night, I make sure I'm sitting on the end of a row so I easily get out of my seat. When it's my turn, I step up on stage and take a microphone, and I'm still unravelling the cord when the music starts, but I manage to nail my entry. We action our plan, apart from a dramatic pause where I suddenly wonder "What's my line?" But as the song reaches its climax, people are clapping and whooping.
The final lines of the song provide a fitting metaphor for her adventure and for mine:
Start by admitting, from cradle to tomb, it isn't that long a stay. Life is a cabaret, old chum, it's only a cabaret, old chum, and I love a cabaret!
If you don't perform for a while, you lose a bit of confidence, and when you do get up on stage again, it takes a while to get used to it and regain your "presence".
So in the lead-up to my show, I search for some opportunities to perform.
I nominate to perform at an open-mic night. The venue is in a slightly gritty part of town, but the owner does a good job of providing opportunities for performers. He calls for singers, who will each perform three songs to backing tracks. I trawl the Internet to find suitable tracks, and spend several hours working out how I will arrange each song, as some of the instrumental sections are long, and you can't just stand there waiting for your invisible orchestra to finish.
The show certainly lives up to its description, "Variety Night". There are a few pretty sleazy numbers, and the last act is a singer/guitarist who brazenly exceeds his quota of three songs and appears to have settled in for the night, until the host finally brings his set to a close.
By now our group is very hungry, and we end up in an pizza bar across the road, where the pasta, surprisingly, turns out to be magnificent.
I also notice that a friend is running a crowd-funding campaign to finance a going-away concert. She is moving to the UK to find work in the entertainment industry. She invites people to buy tickets in advance, and she is also offering a range of "rewards" for purchase. One of these is the opportunity to sing one song with her in the show. The purchaser can choose the song and must be available to rehearse with her in the two weeks before the show. I whip out my credit card and quickly snap up the spot.
This purchase provides me with hours of fun and vocal practice. We meet for coffee to discuss song choice. She has some suggestions, but ultimately the decision is mine. I select "Cabaret" from the movie of the same name. It is meaningful, as we met at Cabaret Summer School, and because she is "seizing the day". It's also a good choice because I've performed the song once before - at my 50th birthday party, before I even discovered cabaret. I'm already familiar with it, and won't have to spend hours learning new lyrics.
We rehearse a couple of times at her home. We divide up the song; it has a wide range. She takes the high parts and I take the low ones. We decide on some simple harmonies. It's a good song to do as a duet with a friend; it becomes like a conversation. We also have a rehearsal with the pianist and one at the theatre on the day of the event.
On the night, I make sure I'm sitting on the end of a row so I easily get out of my seat. When it's my turn, I step up on stage and take a microphone, and I'm still unravelling the cord when the music starts, but I manage to nail my entry. We action our plan, apart from a dramatic pause where I suddenly wonder "What's my line?" But as the song reaches its climax, people are clapping and whooping.
The final lines of the song provide a fitting metaphor for her adventure and for mine:
Start by admitting, from cradle to tomb, it isn't that long a stay. Life is a cabaret, old chum, it's only a cabaret, old chum, and I love a cabaret!
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