Choir tour to Poland

On the 3rd of September I joined the ranks of the Schola Cantorum of Oxford for a three day intensive rehearsal session to prepare for the Wratislavia Cantans Festival.

We began rehearsal in the luxurious acoustic of St. Peter's Chapel in Oxford. It was a cold three days in preparations, but we managed to stay warm with several hundred cups of coffee! We blitzed through everything from Gibbons standards to Polish Korpian songs. After much coaching, we were able to make a pretty good phonetic rendition of the Polish dialect, and making me wish I had spent more time learning the International Phonetic Alphabet!We set out on this grand adventure at 4:00am by coach from Broad St. Oxford to Stansted airport. A little blurry eyed, but we made it to our hotel in Wrocław safely. Suddenly we were experiencing summer-like heat and humidity, as most of us donned winter coats and scarves. As it was such a beautiful day, despite sleep deprivation most of the group walked into the center of town to find a location for a relaxed lunch. I for one was a bit shocked at the lack of any other language other than Polish, which seems ridiculous I know, but coming from a province that permanently boasts two languages I expected to see some words that were not 95% consonants.Saturday, our first day passed swiftly. After dinner a few scattered groups of our choir marched the lengthy distance to the Cathedral to watch the open air concert with fireworks. I had a particular interest in attending the concert owing to the fact that my teacher was the soloist.