All 2 entries tagged Gospel

Switch!

I can’t believe it’s already been two weeks since WiM! I must say I am missing it, even though getting back to Warwick Rev was good. Very good.
But – I hear some of you asking me – what is WiM? And what a strange capitalisation! Well, the weirdness does not stop there: WiM stands for Week in March. But if you can count, you’ll notice it was in April…
Right, now that you’re confused, I’ll try and be clearer about what WiM is. The idea is that all the choirs from the Revelation network join for one week somewhere in the UK. This year, it was Keele, last year Newmarket, there’s been Bangor (yes, in Wales!) Coventry and many others. But one week for what? Have a guess… We’re a choir; therefore we … sing! A lot. In view of a concert at the end of the week.
It is pure madness; since all, or most of us, do not know the songs beforehand; and therefore have an awful lot to do during what they call “rehearsals” (more than four hours a day!) – but YES it DID work and we had enough songs for the concert, and it was purely awesome! Ask the people who were at the concert :) In order for it to work, we had to split the choirs into the Solar half and the Lunar half, with 6 specific songs each, plus 4 joint songs.
But – aims and values the ENVIRONMENT is really important! So we didn’t just sing during the week; it was also the opportunity to meet people from different choirs, and create really nice friendships. So on top of the Solar/Lunar division, we had Bond Groups, designed for that purpose (they had all weird TV-related names – ours was Doctor WiM) with special activities every day: photo-caption challenges, formal dress creation (out of binbags) games with other bond groups etc. On top of that, we had Splinter Groups, which did more than singing for the concert (advertising, dance & drama, band, decoration, and I’m sure I’m forgetting some…).
And, one of the nicest ideas – that of the guardian angels. During that week, you secretly have to look after someone else; and someone looks after you – which translates in nice gifts, and lots of great stuff and fun.
Inconvenients of the week? Well, you might think that, sleeping in a church, you don’t have showers. And it’s true, it is an inconvenient – but services stations have very nice showers so the issue was more to find the time to get there! The other inconvenient, one might say, is that it is very tiring. I had been told, before that week “oh, you don’t want to go to WiM tired”, and had stupidly thought “meh – I can take it”. Big. Mistake. Oh, I could take WiM all right and be in some roughly acceptable shape on the saturday (concert day) BUT it took me over a week to recover after that. Thinking about it, I’m not sure I fully recovered!
The price? 48 quid for the week, and that included food! Hats off to the cooking team (Elliot, Aleks, Rowan) and lots of thanks for their help during WiM!

Of this week I’ll remember – well everyone – but more particularly Ty’s cowcar, Jo’s good mood, Karen Gibson’s TWANG, Simon’s Bible & poker, the peg, Elliot’s lateral thinking, Sam’s funny hat, the cold, ENVIRONMENT (thanks tp and Hannah by the way), tp’s dangerous driving, Tom’s frog, the Ceilidh (might have to write more about that), Joyce’s chilling out. And other things. And everyone, even though you may not be on the list.

Love & Burpees to everyone :-)

Pierre Schramm : 27 Apr 2007 15:21 |  Tags: Gospel Revelation Wim |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Warwick Revelation rock–gospel choir

Aaah, but this whole set of new entries could not be complete if I didn’t mention Revelation! This is the best thing that has happened to me this term. I have said before RAG was the best society ever, and I hold on to that insofar as RAG has allowed me to do more stuff than I could ever have done on my own (aaah the raids). However, Revelation is ex aequo with RAG for different reasons – mostly because it is welcoming, energising, focused and friendly. It is a personal, interior development that it nurtures, rather than “doing stuff” (like RAG)
How did I end up in a gospel choir? Surprising as this may sound for the people who know me, the story is – for once – simple. Before Christmas, my good friend Casper told me “he was going to sing tonight” and asked if I was going to see him. End of term, a monday, not much to do – might as well! And the concert was, by all standards, awesome! One could feel the Revvers enjoyed singing. So yeah, after the concert, I was waiting for my bus with Casper – and that’s how the idea of joining came to mind. On the first tuesday of term, I was in the Chapaincy – Jason, the then president, welcomed me very kindly and off we went for a rehearsal. Other tenor/bases, especially Thor & Rich, helped me out, since I didn’t know any of the songs – and tell you what, that’s what’s so great about Rev. The way you feel during rehearsals.
You feel that you belong, even if you’re a total newbie. You feel that the others enjoy singing, and end up enjoying it a whole lot more than you thought was possible yourself. And the social side is awesome.
The whole term built up to the concert in Coventry, which was the evening I had most fun in thus far. Before the concert, we went on RaW, the student radio, we also did some busking on the Piaza:

And after the concert, I went to DM Severance at the Student Cinema, so that was quite a busy night!
The next tuesday, we had a special rehearsal – Cabaret night, with acts from various people from Rev, followed by a night in Westwood Church. Awesome. Really. And now, tomorrow saturday, I am going to Newcastle(-under-Lyme) for one entire week of Revness, with Rev choirs from all around the UK. This is going to be fantastic! The concert, the culminating point of the week, will be next saturday. I can hardly wait – to give you an idea of how excited I am, this week will make me miss two Doctor Who episodes – and I don’t mind!!!!
This entry is also to thank from the bottom of my heart all the people in Rev, for being so great. I believe and hope I am going to keep in touch with most of you.

Pierre Schramm : 06 Apr 2007 19:15 |  Tags: Gospel Revelation |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem