Weather Permitting

Generally speaking, Canadian choirs of the amateur persuasion try their very best to avoid scheduling concerts in the summer months. In fact, they rarely even get together to rehearse between the start of June and the end of August. The reasoning is that it’s just too blooming hot to be standing under the lights for forty minutes in sweat-soaked penguin suits whilst the venue’s ages-old a/c (or lack thereof) fights a losing battle against intolerable temperatures and energy-sapping humidity. Add to this the suddenly diminished numbers of available singers as most depart for remote cottages or venture out on ocean cruises to far-flung theme parks, and it is clear that summer singing barely features in the typical chorister’s list of priorities.

The remaining nine months of the year are Open Season for rehearsals, sectionals, workshops, retreats, auditions, and the all-important concerts. “Problem solved,” I hear you thinking. (It’s a gift.) “No more oppressive heat, and an ideal range of conditions for all the activities and events that fill a meticulously designed season.” “Quite right,” think I in response, “but … there’s a snag. And it’s called Winter. And it arrives with its own agenda.” It’s capricious, uncaring, unpredictable yet inevitable. In the world of idioms, Winter can produce the wrench that falls into the works, and in the world of immutable laws, it has the power to summon Murphy (or Sod, if you prefer) himself.

It might have come to your attention that we’ve been experiencing an unusually intense spate of what polite society apparently refers to as “Wintry weather”. To the rest of us it’s simply been an almost monotonous succession of major dumpings of snow, accompanied by high winds and plummeting nighttime temperatures. This Winter, much like the last one, the weather forecast is an essential component in weekly planning for rehearsals. Last year, you may recall, the snow arrived on a succession of Thursdays, which came close to scuppering the carefully crafted rehearsal plans of Coastal Voices, a choir on the Eastern shore. This year, it has repeatedly been our turn to cross our fingers that forecasts predicting snow in the hours following our Sunday rehearsals wouldn’t be revised too late to advise our members not to embark on the drive into town. Instead, it’s been the turn of Dalhousie Collegium Cantorum to scramble for alternative arrangements responding to snowstorms arriving ahead of their Monday rehearsals. Fortunately, all is well.

Winter has another trick up its sleeve which might not be quite so obvious for audiences. Concerts held on days experiencing frigid temperatures can have an uncomfortable side effect for performers who inevitably find it too blooming hot to be standing under the lights for forty minutes in sweat-soaked penguin suits whilst fighting a losing battle against the venue’s heating system that has been stuck on maximum for as long as anyone can remember!