Obliter-8

View set list
View our comments

• Star Sisters
• Boy in a Room
• Song of the Women
• Three Fans
• Fellowship Going South
• O Little Town of Where Did You Say?
• (Very) Heavy Ship
• Encore: SuperCometFragmentImpactExtraLargeExplosions

nMC's Debut at Obliter-8 (Milton Keynes in Feb '96) by Valerie
(Not Many Dead...)

When I first mooted the idea of a programme item devoted to multipart harmony arrangements of filksongs with the Obliter-8 committee, their reaction was to ask that I allow people at the con, who had not, for whatever reason, been able to come to rehearsals but who were interested, to join in. So after an extra rehearsal at Obliter-8, we went on stage early on Saturday afternoon with two extra singers our midst. American filker Mary Bertke proved invaluable in balancing the sound in Song of the Women, a three-part arrangement for female voices; and if you include Dave Holladay on guitar, we even had a "circle of seven"!

Highlights of the set included the first ever live performance in front of an audience of Rhodri James' arrangement of Three Fans for three voices and recorders, and two songs reflecting the convention's theme - the destruction of Milton Keynes by a rogue asteroid - one of which, (Very) Heavy Ship, can be blamed on a Nyrond. Not any Nyrond, but on one Zander of that ilk, who suggested that Falling Down on Milton Keynes could be sung to Lightship (a three-part harmony arrangement by Catherine Cook Macdonald) with only a small amount of tweaking. So we tweaked it. The audience made their approval known in the time-honoured fashion, but we did an encore anyway and left the stage covered with pages of music. However the con committee made us clear it up again!

All in all, an auspicious debut.