Hello again friends,
Today was a long day filled with fantastic rewards at the end of the day (which is still going - we've just checked into our hotel after our concert and have dinner in a few minutes (at 10 pm!) with our host choir in a village just outside of the city, so I'll be brief!. We saw much of the beautiful rolling hills, mountains, and villages of Transylvania and the Timisoara area today - our trip from Sighisoara was scheduled to take 5 hours, but took 9 instead - just a little miscalculation by our tour company, possible not taking into account the two lane highways! But the most important thing is we arrived in time for a rehearsal with our host choir, the Corala Memorial - they were a choir of about 35, ranging in age from early 20's to 50's - volunteer community members like us, but only having started in 2003.
They were very happy to see us, and brought in a big crowd for our concert together. The concert hall was a beautiful modern hall at the Academy of Music with a warm accoustic and even warmer audience. I was especially impressed at how responsive our choir was after such a tiring day and lots of challenges to deal with, like bringing their luggage inside the concert hall to change since we didn't arrive in time to check in to our hotel first. In bright mansions above, one of the spirituals from our Fall BCCS concert was especially magical - the choir let me slow down and the sopranos sustained a gorgeous unison together between the closing three repetitions of the words from John: "In my Father's house there are many mansions - if it were not so, I would have told you"
At the end, the audience was standing and clapping in rhythm for us - quite a thrill to be so warmly embraced by an audience in place so far from home. Off to dinner with the host choir! Tomorrow morning they're going to show us around the town! - TL
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