A Day In The Life Of The Fabulous Singing Waiters ...Professional Surprise Singers For Hire

On Tuesday 3rd May 2011, The Fabulous Singing Waiters trio performed at a Drinks Reception hosted by Coventry Building Society at The ICC in Birmingham. Soprano singer, Sara Hartley, talks us through the flow of their day in her a day in the life blog.

Ah, a lovely 2 hour drive up the M1. Thankfully traffic has now returned to normal after last month’s drama with closures on this motorway. I find myself again making my way to the motorway.

Often parking is reserved for us at the venue, but this time there’s no space in the inn, so I’ve found a car park not too far away.

As it’s an afternoon event, it’s a lovely walk for a miniscule bit of sightseeing on a beautiful sunny day in central Birmingham.

It’s lovely to be back in the same building that shares its walls with the Birmingham Symphony Hall – one of the most fabulous acoustics I’ve ever experienced (when I had the honour of performing as soprano soloist for the Verdi Requiem, conducted by Robert Pepper with the BYO and City of Birmingham Choir in October). Today, however, admittedly the space we are performing in for a Drinks Reception hosted by Coventry Building Society isn’t as grand as the Symphony Hall, but it’s great to have the chance to sing to various audiences.

Today we are a singing waiters trio with Russell, Dominic and me. This is the one event this week that I did manage to get a respectable amount of photos at. For this event we were asked to give three 10 minute performance sets. This is a bit of a unique request, as usually it’s one 15-20 minute set, one 30 minute set, or two 20 minute sets. I know what you must be thinking…that’s not a very long performance, but trust me, what we do is quite a lot like sublimely rich chocolate dessert. It is mouth watering and takes your breath away, but it’s best to savour in small bites. It will give you something to talk about for hours, and be an experience you won’t forget.

Both Russ and Dominic arrive by train today, which is an easier walk from the train station than from the car park. They give me a bell to meet up when they arrive.

As the performance is due to be amplified by The ICC’s in-house technical team, we don’t need to worry about bringing our sound engineer. Most of the equipment is here already but I put my wireless microphones, a few spare cables, CD player and a few bits in the boot just in case. Bringing extra technical kit is a bit of a security blanket just in case things don’t go to plan, so we never get caught out. Happily, everything goes to plan today so I didn’t need to jog back to the car park to get any spares.

We sound check without a hitch with Matt at the venue. He’d forgotten that we needed a CD player set up, but he ran to get that with no problem and we had plenty of extra time to prepare as we’d arrived early, as usual.

We started out, as is usual for a singing waiters’ performance, dressed disguised to blend with the venue’s waiting on staff.

We wore our own shirts and trousers and we’d arranged for the venue to kindly lend us some of their branded aprons and ties for the event. (I also brought along some of my own aprons, ties, chef’s jacket and costume pieces…again, as a security blanket. With my little bag of tricks and extras, we’ve never been caught out).

In usual form, we made our entrance scene, and Russell (as only Russ does!) proclaimed his love to one of the guests.

We have a number of skits that we pull out of the hat as our intro depending on the event, which is great fun and keeps everyone on their toes.

Our meal was arranged for us in our break room between sets. Lovely hosts! They even provided some rather exquisite desserts for us.

Were we supposed to eat the main course first? Well, Russ will eat enough lasagna for the two of us. Lovely food!

It is so nice when we are well taken care of. With the long drives, set up, and disguising, even a short performance becomes a long day, and it’s so much easier to give a sparkling performance when we’re nourished and comfortable!

or our second and third sets we dressed in formal wear, more fitting of classical performers now that the surprise has been made… but this doesn’t change the fun and spirit of the performance.

One more break before our finale performance.

Then back out for the last set. We finish all three sets with a standing ovation!

Okay, it’s a standing Drinks Reception, so that’s cheating a bit, but hey!

The event was only 2 hours long, so from a timings perspective much more straight forward than most. In this case, we spread our sets throughout the event and finished a few minutes before they did in order to lead into closing speeches.

The exit from the venue, down the corridor to change into our travelling home clothes was a bit of a blur, as usual.

It’s still daylight as we exit the venue, now there’s a rare treat!

Ah, then back on down the M1.

I’ve learned a great trick for keeping awake and alert on a long drive, and it is that eating apples is much more effective than drinking coffee. I know it sounds like an old wives tale, but apparently apples have one chemical or another, and I can tell you from much experience that it is entirely true!

Alas, didn’t quite make it home in daylight, but nice to be on the home stretch regardless.

It all went well, and job done. I find it hard to capture the final moments from relieved clients about how well it went, as I don’t want to make them feel awkward or spoil the moment, so sadly I don’t have any photos of this. Only the kind words offered afterwards by Sharon, who booked us for the event.

“The Fabulous Singing Waiters were amazing and everybody thoroughly enjoyed their very well thought out performance. It hit just the spot. One guest commented on how the event was much better than last year's, and this is due to The Fabulous Singing Waiters. Thank you so much".

For more information on the Fabulous Singing Waiters and our other performers in this category visit our Alive Network Singing Waiters Page