|
|
I am, for my sins, the pianist for a small and not too
perfectly formed group of singers who
call themselves The Showtimers. This group was a ‘spin off’ from a much larger
group; the ‘Fifty Upstagers’, who earned their name by virtue of the fact that
people had to be over fifty years old to join the group. Hence by the time I
joined (allowed in because they were desperate for a pianist not because I was
over fifty I hasten to add) they were rapidly approaching their ‘best by’ date,
some of them from the wrong direction. I originally offered to help out only
when they were desperate and their existing pianist couldn’t do any particular
shows but it seemed that they were nearly always desperate and I therefore
tended to find myself with a whole bundle of scores to learn at short notice and
then playing for them without so much as a rehearsal. Hence I joined them
permanently when I found myself out of work in the Summer of 1995 and I said I
would play for them for the love of it! For the love of …….. what had I let
myself in for?
As I said before, the Showtimers are all over fifty, most are
in fact over sixty and some are over seventy so their voices have been honed to
imperfection over many years.So this is us then – ten singers and two pianists,
using the terms loosely. We entertain for a small fee, our usual audiences being
Residential or Day Care Centres where the inmates are almost captive, or Church
groups and others who find themselves with nothing better to do. For all our
failings our audiences really do seem to like us – well they keep asking us back
anyway. There are more of them about than you’d think…….and they’re not all
locked up either!
|
|
