Going on tour is exciting! So here are some key phrases you’ll need to succeed:
Tour schedule – A detailed document produced by management, containing all key information for the tour.
Tour rage – The feelings of management when no one reads the tour schedule and instead emails them every 30 seconds with questions.
To sheep/ sheeping – Following your tour leaders around in a large group, having no idea of where you are or where you going (having not read the tour schedule).
Please identify yourself as one of the following groups:
a) Ich spreche gut deutsch – considered to be fluent by everyone in the below categories, you have at least A level German. You will find yourself doing 90% of interactions for other people on the tour.
b) Ein bisschen Deutsch – GCSE/O level German. You can understand every 4th word if it’s said slowly, but struggle to form a sentence (what way round do the words go again?!).
c) Look of panic/ wild gesticulations – You did French at school.
Airpodding – a new multi-player game searching for lost wireless headphones. Best played on moving transport. Points won for how many people you can involve. Style points for planking while searching.
Stadtzentrum – where the orchestra’s hotel is located.
Stadtbahn – the train used by the choir to travel the distance from their hotel to the Stadtzentrum.
TMT (Tippett Mean Time) +/- 1 – the potential time zone difference between the orchestra, choir and soloists.
Tubus interruptus – when your rehearsal is paused because the tuba player has lost their music.
Stairburn – the feeling in your thighs having walked from the basement dressing room to the top of the stage in Dortmund’s Concert Hall (or if you’re Lucy G, the roof).
Elphie Selfie – selfies taken during the main activity of the residence at Hamburg’s Elphilharmonie – waiting for or travelling in the lifts.
Conductor obscura – when you have no line of sight to the conductor.
Arrhythmia – what happens when you’re suffering from conductor obscura.
Eurosop – A soprano currently able to drop everything and fly from the UK to another EU country on the same day in order to perform.
Post-Brexit sop – an unemployed soprano.
Virtue patching – when you agree to re-do a section of the performance for the recording, but make it clear that it wasn’t you who made the mistake.
Happiness is singing in a choir 