Tsushima Chorus Festival 09

Today was the second annual Tsushima Chorus Festival. The setup was pretty similar to last year's: chorus groups from all over Tsushima attended, with ensembles ranging from mixed junior high school to older all-women groups.

A couple of weeks ago, posters were put up around town. I stopped to take a picture of one for posterity, when I noticed the photo at the bottom was from last year's concert. Not only was it a group photo of all the singers from last year, but it was the second take--the goof-off picture. I'm glad my best picture was chosen for the public to see.

The plan was for everyone to meet at 9 this morning for a final on-stage rehearsal of our set. The concert didn't start until 1, and I remembered last year's morning being full of lots of sitting around. For that reason, I wasn't in any hurry to get there, and rolled in at about 9:10. By 9:30, we were done, and had nothing to do until 11. Last year, I didn't have a car, so I just spent the downtime being bored with the rest of the group. This year, though, I sped right back home and enjoyed my midmorning.

I went back at 11, in time for the combined group rehearsal. Our finale was a group rendition of Shima Uta. (Watch a video of the song here.) The conductor was Mrs. Hirayama, one of the teachers at Kita Elementary. She's kind but very strict, and doesn't mess around too much with the flowery passive-aggressive formal Japanese speech. I simultaneously enjoyed and loathed her getting everyone lined up correctly. The other women in Chorus D spent the rest of the day bemusedly imitating her frankness.

We'd been preparing for this since Christmas. Sajikibara is the head of the group, but everybody in the chorus handles something administrative: Abiru is the treasurer, Kazumi contacts everyone regarding changes to rehearsal times, Ino photocopies music for everyone, etc. The group doesn't ask me to do anything extra outside of concerts. For the concerts, though, I give the introduction speech for our group. It falls to me as a way to make up for all the other stuff I don't do for the group. This one was no different.

As far as speeches go, it's not a bad deal: each time, they've given me the basic script to learn. Each time, they tell me I don't have to memorize it, but I do anyway. This concert is a pretty big deal for us--I think we're the main organizers of the whole thing--so we try to make the most of the chance to recruit new members. Kazumi gave me a script detailing what we've done over the past year:

こんにちは。　私たちはコーラス・Dと言います。
Good afternoon. We're called Chorus D.
現在女性８名男性５名の１３名で歌っています。
At present there are thirteen of us: eight women and five men.
去年は老人ホームへ慰問に行ったり、釜山で行われた国際コーラスフェスティバルに参加したりしました。
Last year we paid a visit to retirement homes and participated in an international chorus festival held in Busan.
コーラスに参加して楽しく歌ってみたいと思ってくれた方は、ぜひ私たちといっしょに歌いましょ！
For those persons who do us the favor of thinking they want to participate and have fun singing with us in the chorus, by all means, let's sing together!
水曜日交流センターのリハーサル室でお待ちしています。
We're waiting every Wednesday in the Exchange Center rehearsal room.
今日は釜山のコーラスフェスティバルでも歌った「朧月夜」とたけみつ・とうるの曲から「○と△の歌」と「島へ」の３曲歌を歌います。どうぞお聞きください。
Today we'll sing 'Oboro dzuki yo'--which we sang at the Busan chorus festival--and 'Circles and Triangles Song' and 'To the Island'--by Toru Takemitsu--for a total of three songs. Please listen.
アダム・シャーリーでした。　ありがとう。　Thank you.　감사합니다.
This was Adam Shirley. Thank you. (In Japanese) Thank you. Thank you. (In Korean)

I didn't get the script until Saturday night, so suffice it to say I spent all day Sunday chanting the speech to memorize it. When it came time for our set, I had it memorized, but the flow was throwing me off a little. (The line that begins with 'For those persons...' was especially difficult. Relative clauses in Japanese get longer to the left of the noun, which, combined with all the deferential and formal constructions Kazumi threw in, kept confusing me around that part.) In front of the audience, I actually got through that long phrase, but lost my rhythm and had to pause for a beat before finishing the sentence. The audience apparently understood me perfectly, and sympathized with me, because everyone laughed and applauded me when I finished the sentence. I made it through the rest of the speech, getting more than a few laughs at the trilingual 'Thank you' conclusion.

Somewhere between the end of my speech and the start of our first song, I looked around the audience and saw Joe, Rose, and Kim. While this didn't make me any happier about my speech--I'd kind of hoped nobody else there would recognize me--I was thrilled they'd made it.

Our set went well. We basses did fine, which allowed the women to wow the crowd with their harmonies. The finale was a lot of fun: after we sang the first verse, Mrs. Hirayama invited the audience to join in. By the end, the auditorium was filled with a few hundred voices singing in unison.

Afterwards, I mingled in the lobby with my fellow Anglophones. They said we were great, which made me reconsider how well my section did. One of Kim's junior high schools had performed, and she knew all the kids. We talked for a bit, then I broke away to help clean up.