Welcome to the Blog!

Helen with a "big spoon" in the 2004 Christmas Revels
Helen with a "big spoon" in the 2004 Christmas Revels. Photo by Sheppard Ferguson

At last, the blog is launched. Welcome, dear readers! I hope you’ll read along with me through the Christmas Revels in December.

If you want to catch up, you can read my introduction. (Short version: I’m a veteran chorus member.) I’ve already blogged about trying on my costume, a truly amazing pumpkin, and singing a song with the word “nimrod” in it.

Enjoy!

Want more information on the show or to buy tickets? Click here!

A Visit from Trio Sefardi

Trio Sefardi
Trio Sefardi (Howard Bass, Susan Gaeta and Tina Chancey). Photo by Jeff Malet, MaletPhoto.

Here’s an instruction I haven’t gotten before: “I need you to channel your inner Fiddler on the Roof.”

Tonight was our first time practicing with all three of the members of Trio Sefardi – Susan Gaeta, Howard Bass, and Tina Chancey. They’re a local group that plays Sephardic music.

When Tina instructed us to find our inner Tevye, we were singing “Quando El Rey Nimrod,” one of the Sephardic songs in this year’s Christmas Revels. In the song, Nimrod, a king in the Bible, goes out to the fields, looks at the sky, and foretells the birth of Abraham.

Nimrod seems like a funny name for a king. But of course the king came first; it was only recently that his name came to mean “stupid person.”

I thought maybe dictionaries could tell me how that happened. The first one I tried only gave two definitions: the great-grandson of Noah, noted as a great hunter; a person expert in or devoted to hunting. The next dictionary was the same. The third, a dictionary of word origins, skips the issue entirely, going straight from “nimbose” to “nincompoop.”

A brief internet search tells me this question comes up a lot. One possibility is that it was because Bugs Bunny used “Nimrod” sarcastically to describe Elmer Fudd. Because he’s not a great hunter – get it? (The Online Etymology Dictionary refers to this hypothesis as “amateur.”)

Anyway, the song we were working on is about King Nimrod. It’s lovely, with flowing, melodic choruses and a bouncy refrain. Tina, Howard, and Susan sat facing the chorus, playing instruments and, in Susan’s case, singing. Tina leapt out of her chair to demonstrate how the song’s refrain should move and dance. And we all got even more excited about the music we’re singing for this year’s Christmas Revels.

Want more information on the show or to buy tickets? Click here!