Perspective

Gosh, thank you everyone for your kind comments and stars for yesterday's emergency blip creative photo. It's surprising what you can do sometimes with a photo that initially doesn't look very promising.

Today I had lots of potential photo opportunities but few possibilities to take advantage of them. In the morning we went to the market in Place Carnot. Not to shop, but so that I could take part in une flashmob organised by the choir. S was there to take photos, but since it was a sunny day, the market was heaving with people, and it was difficult to take any photos in which we looked as if we were singing and not just having a loud conversation. Still, it worked reasonably well -- you'll just have to wait for the Youtube video :)

After lunch we had a choir rehearsal -- the last before the concerts -- at Carcassonne's spanking new Conservatoire de Musique. "It's the building shaped like a grand piano," Catherine helpfully told us. The trouble is, it's a bit of an architectural conceit, because you can only see the piano shape if you happen to be flying over it with Ryanair. From ground level, it's just a large, very white modern building. There were some interesting perspectives inside, but I had little time to take photos. There was very little difference between the mono and colour versions of this one.

We had a bit of a mixed rehearsal. Most of it was fine, but the Ravel was a complete disaster. Even Martine, the pianist, who is normally very cheerful, started to lose her rag as she had to play the same few notes over and over again for inattentive choristes. Wrong notes, missed entries, going flat -- everything that could go wrong did go wrong. The piece is only about 2 minutes long, and we've spent hours on it. In the end, our director, who has the patience of a saint, decided we'd better leave it to mature overnight and see if its any better in the morning.