I have been absent for a while because last week I was in London with one of my choirs for the London International A Cappella Choir Competition. And I am happy to give you an account of it.
It was the first edition of this competition, organized (badly) by Peter Phillips, director of the Tallis Scholars. For those who do not know who the Tallis Scholars are, this is their Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tallis_Scholars
For those content with my summary, the Tallis Scholars are the vocal/choral ensemble that symbolizes English early music a cappella. Very famous, super-in-tune, deadly flat but absolutely legendary.
The competition was initially open to 16 international choirs. But since it was embarrassingly expensive, only 12 signed up. And one choir cancelled the week before, probably because they couldn't find the funds... long story short, we arrived as 11, ready for battle. The competition was divided into 3 semifinals and a final. Against all expectations, we won our semifinal, which included among its ranks the "announced" winners, this little group from Bristol made up of 10 boys who were inhumanly in tune, but who were scolded because they were very flat in their interpretation (The Erebus).
In the second semifinal, an impressive Estonian choir passes through, 24 super-in-tune people who sing loudly from start to finish and make the hall shake. In the third semifinal, according to our predictions, the Irish choir should have passed, who sings everything from memory, well, in tune, and fun. But, for no apparent reason, a semi-professional Spanish choir passes through, made up of FORTY-FIVE PEOPLE, frankly not very in tune and disorganized... a mystery...
In the final, there is also a wildcard choir, those I defined as the announced winners, namely the choir defeated by us. Long story short, they come in second, winning a prize, and the Spaniards, who sang terribly in the final BUT found two effective pieces (I dare say, there were 45 of them) win.... and all of us are left shocked and quite disgusted...
I thought the Estonians would win, and I would have been happy if the English had won (who were very good anyway, average age 20). But the Spaniards became likable and played to their strengths, namely their numbers and the ability to perform pieces with that many people that others would have done worse (and which even they didn't do particularly well)...
I think I will upload some of the pieces that surprised me most to other sections of the forum. My choir does not specialize in a cappella repertoire, but the others at the competition do, so they brought out some little gems whose existence I was completely unaware of.
My final considerations, which may be useful to anyone wanting to enter a competition, are that very often personality wins, not flexibility. The competition was focused almost exclusively on Renaissance singing, but the choirs that were most successful were those that followed their own characteristics. We passed the semifinal because we sang a piece by Byrd in a non-English way (that is, with sound, appoggiaturas, correct tempos) and thanks to a very difficult contemporary Turkish piece that was outside the typical contemporary style of a cappella choirs (generally a cappella choirs sing minimalism and new simplicity; ours was an almost pointillist piece). In the final, we tried to adapt and we got screwed. The others continued to follow their own style; we tried to do what the jury had asked us, i.e., singing pieces pianissimo and in a more tender way. Result: we brought a MARVELOUS spiritual madrigal by Lasso that none of the jurors understood, because they were expecting something folkloric, something typically Italian...
The fact remains that our interpretation of Tavener's "The Lamb" was one of the best in the whole competition.
