Probe im Festsaal

I spent a good 6 hours today at rehearsal. The first three we rehearsed Saint-Saëns Christmas Oratorio and then next three were for Beethoven's 9th. So long. And there is not nearly enough space in the Großer Festsaal at the Uni for the combined choir for Beethoven 9, so even with people off the risers and standing at various places in the general area we were still squished. It was also the first time with the full orchestra, which takes up half the room - its actually a pretty small "large room"...

Although it was far too long, I enjoyed myself and got to do homework while listening live to the first three movement's of Beethovens 9th. Can't beat that.

ANTM!

My choir director is a fool! Austria's Next Top Model approached my choir to perform on their show and he turned them down!!! I could've been on ANTM. Granted it wouldn't have been Tyra's ANTM, but ANTM nonetheless.

It actually makes a lot of sense, they wanted us to just kind of show up, no music and since something entertaining while they played the background music. We are currently preparing Beethoven's 9th, an Oratorio by Saint Saen and Britten's Ceremony of Carols. Not exactly the ANTM kind of music.

Vorsingen

I auditioned for the Uni Wien Chor today! I went back to campus tonight and found the building where auditions were being held, which was right next to where I bought books earlier; yay getting to know campus! I wandered up to the Festsaal, and found several german-speakers waiting to head in as well. We chatted for a while about what to expect, how they work, etc. before getting called in all together. We each individually sang a few warm-up-esque exercises to determine range, did some sight reading and then he placed it. Not at all difficult, especially compared to the audition I imagined in my head for such a large school in such a musical city. I was auditioning for Symphonic Choir, who has the rep (Beethoven's 9th is on the menu for this semester and Carmina Burana for next) and level that I was looking for, and was the only one in our group to get in, which was weird because there was this British guy who was very talented, but he is only staying a semester.

After the audition I was supposed to meet up with Abe for dinner, but had some time to kill, so I went and got a drink with the British guy and another German guy from auditions. We had such a great conversation about music, since Christian, the Brit, was a music major back in college with a real enthusiasm for it and Martin, the German, had recently fallen in love and is just starting to learn more. Between the two of us, we essentially gave Martin a crash music history course. I completely forgot about Abe until he called and told me he was already at Schottentor, so I quickly paid, exchanged info, made plans to hit up an opera and practically ran to Schottentor.

We took the U2 over to the Rathaus and Abe asked me to pick a number, I replied with 22, of course. Then he told me that we were going to walk and count restaurants and the number I picked corresponded to where we were going to eat, and both of our hungry selves decided that 22 was far too big, so we cut it in half and began walking. Number 11 was a cute Italian place with a non-smoking section (!). I enjoyed a great meal of Umbertto, which I am pretty sure was a creamy white wine sauce served with shrimp over spaghetti.

As we were finishing, Zan called and asked if we wanted to meet up, which we did. So we headed over to Karlsplatz and went to 1516, a pub in the first district, which was playing American football! I was so excited even though it was only a weird highlights show, I still got to watch some football! We were all pretty tired and didn't stay long, especially once we made our plans for the morning... more to come about that!