Mmm, Clark Kent!

What?!? I'm watching Smallville :-)

So, sorry for the delay in posting after London. I got distracted by non-choir things... (not all of which were World of Warcraft!)

I've just put up my photos from London - mostly not great, but some people may like to see them anyway. [EDIT: I've now added some more photos from Graham, and will add more as they are sent to me.] The Greenwich Pier one may need explaining - in the Sunday afternoon break I went to the National Maritime Museum to see the Nelson and Napoleon exhibition (which was great, btw - you should all go!) If you want a musical reason to go, it includes the autograph scores of both Haydn's Nelson Mass and Beethoven's Eroica Symphony (the one where he scratched out Napoleon's name from the title page - I see now why they said "scratched" instead of "crossed", it made quite a hole!) Anyway, I wanted to get a boat back to Embankment - prettier than the tube, and slightly less scary... or so I thought. As I walked onto the pier, a policeman started unfurling a "police line, do not cross" tape, and asked everyone to step away. A minute later, a police van turned up, sirens screaming and lights flashing. Loads of them jumped out and started asking everyone to move right away. I decided that it was probably a good plan to abandon the boat idea and go back the way I'd come - on the tube.

Anyway, the gig! Some reviews:

Manchester Evening News
Guardian
Times
Telegraph
Independent
London Evening Standard
Music OMH.com

General gist seems to be 4 stars, doesn't it? Although they do all say nice things about the choir. I actually thought Sunday's performance wasn't quite as good as the Manchester one (though only because of tiny things - a couple of places where people weren't watching and didn't notice how much Mark had slowed down, or an early S here and there). It was great though. I must say I felt a little frustrated watching it on TV when I got home, because the impact of the live performance just wasn't there. And was anyone else REALLY irritated by Verity thingummy listing the London choir first every time?

(If anyone hasn't managed to see the TV broadcast and would like to, a friend of mine has it on his hard disk, and we should be able to put it on a DVD sometime in the next week or two. Let me know if you want a copy. Oh, and remember that you can still listen online for the next few days.)

The trip as a whole was a great success, due largely to Naomi's fabulous organisation. I felt sorry for her when I arrived at the Bridgewater Hall on Saturday afternoon to find that the coaches couldn't get near the hall because of a passing Caribbean carnival!