Competition done

And....it's done. I mean, the competitive portion of the festival is over. Our conductor is at a dinner tonight, where they will announce the winners, so we will know sometime around midnight if we placed in the top 3. Tonight was...so amazing. All the hard work payed off. There was a moment, between the two sets, when we all looked at each other and realized that something special was happening. We spent most of the week being able to hear each other very well in these amazing cathedrals, so, even when we were in a dry room, we knew what we were supposed to sound like. It had become muscle memory. When we got onstage, we gave the music over to the technical side, letting our bodies handle that on their own, while we concentrated on the emotion and heart of the pieces. Of course, technique and emotion are both needed at high levels. It's not that we didn't pay attention to technique. We simply didn't make that our primary focus. It was secondary. We sang with such heart tonight. My tenors and I got offstage and immediately hugged. We felt like we had just won the Super Bowl. It was a huge accomplishment to have sung the way we did tonight. All the countless hours of hard work paid off in an amazing 40 minutes of music making. We know, win or lose, we have done our absolute best, and the judges will decide. As Ethan said tonight, if we are bested by another choir, then we can all agree the world is a better place for having more choirs that can make such amazing music. There are no losers here. 

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Now, our journey here is coming to a close. Tonight is a national holiday here in Spain, so the plaza outside our hotel will probably have music until about 4am. Tomorrow, we have an awards ceremony at 11, followed by lunch with all the choirs. There's a winners concert if we placed, then one more concert in a nearby city. We return to our hotel, then leave at 2am to catch a bus to Barajas airport in Madrid. Then, our flight to the states leaves at 10:30am. Thus begins the journey home. I'm excited to see you all!  I barely have wifi, so I won't post any pictures or video until I get home, but I promise to debrief with you on Tuesday. Keep checking the blog for text updates! I'll let you know later tonight how we did in the competition!