With newspaper duties dispensed with and a delicious homemade pizza slowly digesting, I was back on my laptop just after 7pm last night for musical reasons.
Thanks to Wayne Brown, the genial and supremely deadpan chief of the Waterford city-based Intonations Choir, we were assembling via the Zoom video meeting app for a spot of singing – with some additional company.
After our first online choir rehearsal generated some traction on social media last week, RTE’s Nationwide crew dropped Wayne a line to see if we’d been on for some coverage of our non-corporeal coming together. This news provided an additional boost in the wake of last Wednesday night’s uplifting ‘hello and how are you’ session which, just to confirm, also featured some actual singing!
With many an introductory wave exchanged, we packed the day away and indulged in some singing and chat for Brian and Suzanne Walsh, an edited version of which we’re expecting to see on RTE One this Friday from 7pm.
The 20 or so of us available online took our cues from Wayne, who revelled in his ability to muffle our natter via the mute button: it’s never nearly so straightforward at Kilcohan Park during our regular Wednesday night rehearsals.
We’re a decidedly chatty lot and all the better for it. We laugh as much as we sing but when we need to knuckle down and give both Wayne and each other the attention we all deserve, there’s more than a bit of choral work chalked off too. And it’s wonderful.
It also fulfills my wish to be part of a team at the old home of Waterford United, albeit not in the guise I envisaged on many a damp Sunday afternoon back in the late 80s with my Dad and three brothers, all roaring on the mighty Blues.
For the record, my maiden trip to Kilcohan was the visit of Bordeaux in the European Cup Winners Cup in September 1986 when the visitors, managed by Aimé Jacquet and featuring Jean Tigana and Patrick Battiston, defeated the hosts 2-1, with Noel Sinnott on the mark for Waterford.
I was only seven years of age at the time and I was utterly entranced. Even then, the idea of attending matches on a regular basis felt like something worth pursuing. Sport well and truly cast its reel on me that autumn day and I’ve been hooked ever since.
A decade on from that, I sang in public for the first time in a secondary school production of ‘Godspell’ in Carrick-on-Suir. To my great surprise, I was cast in the lead role and thereafter a whole new world opened up to me. Since then, I’ve sung on a somewhat haphazard basis but I’m pleased to state I've sung a good deal more over the past two years than at any previous time prior to that.
Joining Intonations prior to Christmas has led to new acquaintances while helping to consolidate some older ones. It’s a negativity-free group which rehearses in a wholly positive environment and it’s a pleasure to be among its ranks
Wayne’s suggestion to maintain rehearsals in the face of this godawful coronavirus was an inspired decision. It’s permitted us to stay in touch with each other during the most unsettling period any of us have ever lived through, seeing each other’s faces as well as hearing our voices. Just over a week into this public health emergency, there’s no doubt that our online assembly has helped sustain each of our spirits.
We’re leaning on each other without any physical interaction while firmly fixing an eye on when we will be together again, singing with a sense of hope come the resumption of normalcy, all while remembering our respective parts, Wayne hopes!
According to Marcus Aurelius: “Just as the nature of rational things has given to each person their rational powers, so it also gives us this power – just as nature turns to its own purpose any obstacle or any opposition, sets its place in the destined order, and co-opts it, so every rational person can convert any obstacle into the raw material for their own purpose.”
Wayne Brown got lateral and in so doing maintained the integrity of our choir through our online get-togethers. If anything, he has strengthened our bond and, as an off-shoot, landed us all on television this Friday.
Over the next few lengthy days in our houses and gardens, the excited buzz of such an unlikely media-related development will keep a pep in our collective step. So stay at home, wash your hands - and keep singing. As George Harrison, the greatest Beatle of them all so beautifully put it: “All things must pass.”
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