Last week, rehearsals began for the upcoming production of Kristina från Duvemåla in Sundsvall. Almost everyone involved both on-stage and off met for the first time last Monday. The production team introduced themselves and all of us were showed examples of the stage, costume, light and video design.
For my part, the week started off at the costume department. As a member of the choir, I have no spoken lines or soloistic parts (that I know of yet, anyway…) but I play various minor parts during the story. According to the costume designers, I have the most costume changes out of the entire choir, something that presented its own difficulties for them to make it all work out practically.
It was exciting to get to try out the various combinations picked out for me and hear the designers discuss what worked and what needed more tweaking. Listening to them made me aware once again of how every profession has its own more or less inscrutable lingo.
I have had similar experiences with electricians, carpenters, plumbers and other workers of various professions. I’m sure that if the costume designers had heard me talking about the vocal arrangements with, say, another singer they’d have felt the same way.
The better part of last Monday was spent doing a table-read (or perhaps more fittingly, in this case, described as a “sing-through”?) of the entire musical with most people involved in the production, both on-stage and off, present.
Us choristers had already learned our material and rehearsed a few times throughout the spring and summer, so we knew most of it by heart. The soloist ensemble and production team gave us beaming looks of approval for almost every new choral number, which felt very rewarding after months of work on our own. Our work is of course far from over, though, and the other singers are catching up at an impressive speed.
Based on how our director Melker Sörensen presented his vision at the table-read, and on his background as a dancer and choreographer, I have a feeling he will make use of the choir on stage not only when we sing, but also at other times as silent bodies on stage.
After the first week of rehearsals, I feel fairly confident about the singing bit, but a bit nervous about taking direction as it has been such a long time since I took part in a staged performance like this. I know I’m not the only one with limited acting experience, though, and both Melker and our brilliant conductor Jonas have stressed on multiple occasions that they want to foster a focussed and hard-working but also forgiving and kind atmosphere. So far, in my experience, they have succeeded greatly.
I have to mention our conductor Jonas Nydesjö as well – what a warm and funny but also sharp and musically intelligent rehearsal leader he has been so far. Based on the first week, I genuinely look forward to getting to work with him in the coming months.
Back in January when I accepted this job, I planned on not taking on any other projects simultaneously. The first four-five weeks do allow for doing a few other things, though, and I must admit that it felt nice to sit down yesterday and prepare scores for an upcoming streamed concert in Berwaldhallen a couple of weeks from now, with Brahms’ first piano concerto (featuring pianist Francesco Piemontesi) and Mahler’s fifth symphony conducted by Maxim Emelyanychev.
Berwaldhallen’s first streamed concert of the season is already this Friday, but as I am stuck in Sundsvall rehearsing, I won’t be working on that production. I do plan on watching it from home though as the programme looks quite interesting, featuring the first performance of a large new work co-written by Swedish musicians and composers Anna von Hausswolff and Mikael Karlsson.
Coming home on Friday after this week’s last rehearsal, I look forward to settling down over the weekend and getting some concentrated work done on the piece I am writing for Trio Nastela. I have not had any opportunities to sit down with it for the past couple of weeks now and I am itching to get back into it again. It’s been marinating in the back of my head and I have a few fresh ideas that I look forward to trying out.
I am envious of composers who can sit down for an hour or two, or perhaps even less, when they happen to have an empty slot in their schedule. I would like to be able to get proper composing work done like that, but I have always needed to concentrate, really get stuck in, in order to get any proper composing done.
Saturday can’t come fast enough.