I posted this one in the Musicians Chat thread, but what the hell, I haven't posted a pic of me in this thread for a while.
Yesterday was Mother's Day of course, so our choir director gave the ladies (who are all moms) the day off, and she, being a mom herself, also took the day off. So it was just the men singing, some of whom were out of town, leaving just four of us to sing the anthem. We wore hats.
Originally, we were gonna completely ham it up, with the hats, ties (I'm wearing a bow tie, but you can't see it because it's black against my dark green shirt - a poor fashion choice on my part), and hand motions or even rudimentary dance steps. The song was a children's song ("Mary Told the Good News") which I had memorized after the second run-through, and the idea was to just memorize the song so we'd have our hands free to do silly stuff. We had two weeks to prepare.
Incredibly -- as in, I literally could not believe it -- the others did not manage to learn the song, and thus we couldn't do anything other than sing the song. I snapped my fingers, and I think Michael (to my left) did the same.
This picture looks like every single picture taken of our choir. Bob is singing and making eye contact with the
audience congregation, and everyone else has their faces buried in the music. It's a kid's song! Half the song is literally the same two lines repeated over and over, and the other half is broken up into solos (we each took one). So all any of us had to learn was the chorus and their one solo line. Incredible. We got there, and the others had not learned the song; they didn't feel comfortable going out there without holding the music in their hands. I stood there with the music open and the never looked at it. I didn't even turn the pages. I'm honestly not trying to show up the others, but I'm not gonna bury my face in the music, either. Yeah, it's a church choir (kinda), but it's not that different from any other musical performance. At least try to look like you're enjoying it, and make some eye contact.