Tuesday 5 December 2017

Month Three in the Life of an Intern - November 2017

Read Month One
Read Month Two

Another month, another blog post (sorry this one is a few days late)!
A big part of November was spent getting ready for the CMM choir productions of Stargazers. I began by printing out 200 inserts, folding them all and putting them inside the audience leaflets – it seemed to take forever! At the final few rehearsals, I was playing oboe and flute as this is what I’d be doing during the performances. Although oboe is my weapon of choice, some of the music for Stargazers requires a 3-octave range – enter my flute. As well as this, the softer tone of the flute is better suited to some of the gentler songs in the musical, and therefore I decided I would play both (although not at the same time). After a mid-week joint rehearsal with both choirs, with almost the full band present, the first performance was held on the following Sunday. It was great fun to be a part of it, and lovely to see how all the rehearsing had come together to produce a fantastic performance.
This month I also experienced my first Worship Works event in a place near Barnsley with the wonderful name of Jump. As well as playing oboe for the worship songs, I was also in charge of operating the static video camera which recorded the sessions of the day. I later spent time in the office editing these recordings down to remove the copyrighted material which means that the resulting videos can be used as an example of Roger’s teaching.
I attended a memorial service for Bishop Michael Whinney at Birmingham Cathedral as CMM were leading some of the music. Although I never met Bishop Michael, it was interesting to hear memories of him, particularly about how he took the time to befriend people and encourage them in their faith. This is something which I am blessed to have been on the receiving end of from some of my own friends, and an important legacy which I think we all should strive to continue.
Office jobs this month have included a lot of reorganising – I sorted out the boxes on the vocal score shelf, refilling them as required, creating new labels for them and arranging them in alphabetical order. I also did a similar job with the storeroom, bringing overflow boxes for the collections and books upstairs, and moving all the musicals downstairs (which are now also in alphabetical order). I created new labels for the bookstall to replace the handwritten ones that had gone before – I am very proud of these as they look neat and uniform, are nicely laminated, and there are even some blanks which can be written on with a whiteboard pen just in case there happens to be an item for sale that I haven’t prepared a label for.
My bookstall labels had their first outing to Ilkley where the church in Ben Rhydding were performing Simeon. This was great fun to take part in as the church had put in a lot of effort, organising not just the choir, but soloists and musicians, as well as dance and drama. As there was no written oboe part for Simeon, I played a mixture of the descant recorder and trumpet parts on my oboe, the latter of the two testing my brain with a bit of on-the-spot transposition! On the Sunday morning I, along with the other team members, joined with the worship group for the morning service. The big achievement for me during this was the fact that, although I didn’t play all the time, when I did play, I didn’t play any melody. This is perhaps one more step along the road towards me being able to improvise, and is definitely a testament to the time given and the patience displayed by Amy who came to the office during the preceding week to teach me some tricks of improvisation and give me a chance to practise – thanks Amy!
All in all, it’s been another varied month which has presented me with lots of different challenges and opportunities – it certainly keeps me out of mischief!
Editing the videos from the Worship Works day


Birthday meal for Lindsay!

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