I am the Resurrection

Loads of people are coming here looking for stuff about the Manchester Passion, most of them wanting song lists and cast lists - so I'll point you all to this Wikipedia page about it, which has both. I just edited it myself, because it had a couple of things missing - most reports haven't mentioned the inclusion of Hallelujah or Ever Fallen In Love, probably because they were both only played by the orchestra; and I haven't seen anywhere that mentions the lovely Chris Bisson, who ended up being Barabbas. (I'm sure I read that Barabbas was supposed to be Bez, but he only appeared as one of the criminals in the van. At least, I'm pretty sure that was him - can anyone confirm or deny?)

Everyone seems to have either loved or hated the Passion. From the reports I've seen, the vast majority thought it was great (try googling or searching blogs to see LOTS more opinions), but then you could argue that people who hated it would be less inclined to write about it. To answer two common objections, though: Quite a few people complained that it made no sense for Peter to sing "I am the Resurrection", but he only sang the verse (i.e. not actually mentioning the Resurrection at all), and if you look at the lyrics, you'll see that they fit Peter quite well. And as for the inclusion of a Robbie Williams song, the official line on that was "Yes I know Robbie Williams isn’t from Manchester but the argument is that he was in Take That who were managed from a Manchester base. Some might say that’s a bit tenuous but there you are. It’s too late to change it now."

One more thing I forgot to mention about the Passion - the fact that technically it all went amazingly well, except for one notable thing. At the end (after the live transmission) when they were having the singalong, the crowd shouted for Tim Booth to come to the front and sing "Sit Down" (his own song, but it wasn't him that got to sing it in the show). And he did... but could the BBC get his mic to work? Or could anyone even run out and give him a handheld mic? Apparently not :-( Oh well - at least we SAW him sing it, even if we couldn't hear him at all!

Anyway. What else did I want to mention? Loads of stuff that's much more choir-related! To start with, I discovered a choral singer's blog, which appears to have been going for quite a while. (The most recent article made me blink... for a moment I thought Jamie had had a church named after him!) I've not read everything, but there are a couple of particularly relevant articles: The missing chamber choirs of Manchester, and The missing church choirs of Manchester. See what you think.

Another fascinating website I found recently: Musipedia. This is a way to identify tunes in various ways, including singing to your computer! It didn't manage to identify what I was looking for, but maybe you'll have better luck. (And maybe one of you can answer my question: you know the Wembley song? "Wem-ber-lee, Wem-ber-lee..." What is the name of the original tune? I have a few more football-song-related queries, but that's the one I most urgently need to know... and have been totally unable to find the answer to...)

And did you know about Google Latin?

A specifically Hallé Choir thing I've been meaning to say for ages: I'm really disappointed by the low number of people who have said they'll do the Sheffield gig next month. (Only 62% of the ladies.) It's really frustrating, because I absolutely love doing out-of-town concerts, and the vast majority, in the questionnaire, said they wanted to do more of them. But unfortunately if such low numbers sign up, we are unlikely to get to do ANY - the Hallé Concerts Society have a reputation to uphold, and since they do several concerts a year at Sheffield, Leeds, Hanley etc., they don't want to risk their relationship with those venues by putting on sub-standard concerts. And choral concerts with not enough singers to balance the orchestra count as sub-standard. So unless they are confident that the choir will turn out when requested, they won't book concerts that involve us. And THAT means that if we don't get more ladies going to Sheffield than are currently on the list, we are unlikely to get to go anywhere else any time soon. (And of course there is a similar problem with regard to "home" concerts. Everyone said in the questionnaire that they wanted to do more of the really big works - but when we rarely have more than 100 of the choir on the platform, they're just not going to book concerts that need a huge choir! There is of course the option of bringing in another choir - which we all hate, but there isn't much choice in the circumstances - but that costs them a lot of money so they are more likely in the future to just not put on concerts with big choirs...)

Anyway, baseball is on soon (yay!) so I'll stop. Go Braves!

EDIT: One more thing. Just updated our concerts page and noticed that we now have a replacement conductor for the Fauré. Micha Hamel - he's younger than me, and looks quite striking, doesn't he?