Viva Acappella at the Sage in Newcastle…winning SILVER in the small chorus category!!!
What a fantabulous and awesometastic weekend! As a newbie to Viva Acappella I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect at our retreat education weekend, but I did know that there would be lots of hard work and hard playing involved and I certainly wasn’t disappointed!
Having just chartered to Sweet Adeline’s Region 31, the main focus of the weekend was to add finesse to our two competition songs for our debut on the Sweet Adelines competition stage in May. 
We’re all so excited about competing, and with a mix of very experienced barbershoppers and those completely new to the craft, a key part of the weekend was ensuring everyone understood what to expect at a competition, and what it takes to really perform a song!
As well as working hard on the vocal performance and practicing our target vowels and diphthongs (amazing how hard it is to get everyone to say CAAOOOOW), we were put through our paces by Helen on matching our physical and emotional performance to what we were doing vocally.
I certainly had a shock to the system when I thought I was exaggerating when performing and then saw the video of myself looking wooden and partly dead… It really did show us that every individual counts and how much you have to abandon your self-consciousness and give it your all to communicate to an audience.
It’s also surprising how white and ghostly we looked standing on the risers, a very good reason to have our “making up is hard to do” lesson by Chris. Linda was volunteered for this and she looked so glam with fluttery false eyelashes, as well as showing us how much makeup really needs applying to make you look human under stage lights!
Another key part of the weekend was team building and working together as an effective group.
It really makes you realise why you choose to sing barbershop when the tag of a ballad makes your arm hairs stand on end and you can feel the collective emotion building in the group. There’s nothing quite like it when you put together a very talented director and the vocals, performance and commitment of each individual singer as we did towards the end of the weekend! I for one am very proud to be a member of Viva Acappella and can’t wait for Newcastle!
Em C
(off to practice dipthongs, and expressive eyebrows)
x
In all the years I’ve been singing barbershop (and that’s lots!) I’ve never experienced a day like I had at Cambridge on Saturday – being lectured by Gillyane and Jeremy.
Now, did you know that when you make the sound ‘ng’ – although it feels like your soft pallet is shut – it is actually open?!
And when you sing like you have a hot potato in your mouth, although you feel like your soft pallet is open – it is actually shut! No, I didn’t know that either – but I do now!
And now that I understand this, I expect to become one of the best ladies barbershop singers that this country has ever produced
3, 2, 1 – and I’m back in the room!
Helen M
What a night! We had our first ever sing out tonight and what a way to begin! We performed for ‘Gravesham Has Talent’ and we’ve got our fingers crossed that we’ll make the final which will be held at the end of May. Watch this space.
We performed two songs – Lean On Me and Goodnight Sweetheart – both of which went down really well with the judging panel. We also did a photo shoot so hopefully we’ll be in the local paper in the coming weeks.
It’s out first time on stage together as a group and to celebrate afterwards we headed down the local where Rachel works and celebrated some more, we even got up and did a bit of karaoke.
Another fab rehearsal – made even better because we’ve chosen our name. By democratic vote we are so proud to be called VIVA ACAPPELLA! We think it’s a great choice because it sounds young and fun which is exactly the kind of group we’re all about.
We also did a bit more work on a few of our core songs, interpretation, timing etc which is now making them really come together. We’re so excited about this Sunday as well, our first sing out!
