... as you work yourselves into a pirate frenzy...

Guess what! More mp3s :-)

Daphnis and Chloé choir bits:

Page 1-11 (8.6 MB)
Page 11-12 (1.9 MB)
Page 13-18 (3.5 MB)
Page 19-20 (1.2 MB)
Page 21 (1.7 MB)
Page 22-23 (4.0 MB)
Page 24-30 (2.0 MB)

This seemed more use than posting the whole thing.

Note that some of the openings (in particular on the first track) are extremely quiet, so don't decide too soon that it's not working :p Also, I've included a bit more than the printed cue in most cases, but each excerpt starts not long before the choir sing.

Brief summary of the story on Wikipedia and a much longer one here. Turns out it's all about incest! They didn't mention that when they told us about the pirates :p

We didn't have Jamie tonight due to his Oxford Blues thing, so Rory Macdonald, the Hallé's assistant conductor, came to introduce us to the Ravel. He was pretty good. I couldn't hear him at first, although to be fair this was mainly because someone near me talked THE WHOLE TIME he was speaking. So rude! But later on, she shut up and he spoke louder, so all was well :-)

We got through the whole thing, and I was pleased to discover that I remembered most of it from the last time we did it. I've been trying to work out when that was, and I've just remembered that it was so long ago that it was before my friend Andrew Nicholson became the Hallé principal flautist, because this piece features a lot of flute solos, and I'm pretty sure it was Andrew's trial piece - he got the permanent job as a result of his performance in this. (I could be wrong about this, of course. But I do remember him playing it, and very lovely it was too.)

I do hate using French vocal scores, though. Does anyone know why it is that they never have any cues - or at least very inadequate ones? Rory said "the anoraks amongst you can go out and invest in a full score"... I don't own an anorak, but you all know that otherwise that's me :p Rest assured that when I do get a full score, I will post helpful cues for you all to write in.

(Oh, while Rory was trying to explain to the tenors how to get one of their more difficult notes with no cue, he suggested using a tuning fork, and then produced a pitch pipe he's been using at Covent Garden when conducting the offstage shepherd boy in Tosca this week. He told us about the diva-like small boys he's working with. And then realised that his pitch pipe was in C#, which defeated the object of him getting it out!)

Nothing else to say, actually. But to finish, even more mp3s:

Jamie talking about his Oxford Blues Service (9.7 MB) on In Tune yesterday (thanks Graham)

The Time of our Lives - the official FIFA World Cup 2006 anthem, by Il Divo with Toni Braxton (3.9 MB). I include this because despite avidly following everything World Cup-related, I didn't know this existed till yesterday, when I found out about it while searching for something else. I hasten to add that I'm not a fan of Il Divo...

And finally, for the altos (although I'm sure the rest of the choir will get to hear about this eventually), some Goodies!

Funky Gibbon (3.1 MB)
Wild Thing (4.5 MB) (note: I heard this, when I was young, before I heard the original version. So to me this is the original. It's much more fun than the Troggs!)