Choirs and Capes

Today was the annual Cantilon Winter Concert, Salvator Mundi. A tremendous performance, as always, and although Fenya had no solos this time around, she was one of 13 girls selected to sing the Irish carol, "The Holly and The Ivy Girl". This is a highly coveted song, not so much because of the content, but because the singers are entitled to wear elegant capes over their choir uniforms, and had become an established tradition over the years.

One problem is that this year, they were looking to be a cape short, and because it had been almost six years since this song has been performed, there was a significant amount of concern regarding exactly who would be allowed to 'cape up'.

One of the more senior girls explained that since the older choristers had been given precedence last time, and this had left her out, this meant a) she was going to wear a cape, b) the other high school girls should be wearing them as well, and c) one of the junior high girls should do the right thing, and volunteer to go capeless, since there weren't enough to go around, and they would be likely to get another chance anyways.

Sure enough, one of the younger singers said, "okay, I'll do it", and was widely lauded by the others for her selflessness.

However, this did not prevent her from breaking into tears later, presumably once she realized that it might be another six years before the capes came back into rotation, if they did at all!

Thankfully, a piece of similar material was found, and no one in the audience was cognizant of the fact that a dozen girls wore capes, while the thirteenth was wrapped in a shawl. The video is below, but here is the link in case the embedding is problematic: http://youtu.be/Wbwzy8RlHgs

The iPad takes pretty crappy video in low light, and I doubt you will be able to distinguish Fenya (she is front row, second from the right), but the song itself comes through nice and clearly, and that is the most important bit, capes or no capes.

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