I’ll try posting this again, then…. so, I went to the Uppsala Choir School’s spring concert yesterday. This autumn, it will be 20 years since the school started; I was one of the original 60 pupils, so naturally I have a special relationship to the school, and to the spring concert which I remember as the highlight of the school year. It is something extra, still, to hear the 300+ kids ages 9-19 singing together, in particular as much of the repertoire is the same today as it was in my day. But the concert has changed a lot, too, from the straight-laced affair of the 1980s — no dancing or dressing up for us, heaven forfend! It’s good to see that there has been development, even though I have only good memories from the spring concert, myself.

I met one old class-mate: Linda, whom I don’t think I’ve seen since we finished grade 9 in 1988. I wouldn’t have recognised her if it hadn’t been for her smile — in any event, it was really good to see her. We dared each other to crowd up on stage with the other former pupils for the final encore… it’s been a few years too many since I sang the rather peculiar alto part to Sommarpsalm that the UCS uses — it’s one of the songs every choir in this country has on its repertoire, but the UCS version is the only one I’ve encountered where the alto part is mostly the same as the tenor part! It took us half a verse to get into it again, but it’s not as if anybody could have noticed, not in that huge choir.