Did you miss me?

Sorry to have been AWOL for a while. I've been struggling to fit sufficient work and sleep into my life, and this wasn't helped by being in Wales last weekend for Rachel's wedding (of which more in a moment). I've been playing catch-up ever since, but tonight was thankfully free, so I thought I'd write a bit before falling asleep.

Not much directly choir-related stuff to write, actually. No Jamieisms, because there's been no Jamie - he's in Mexico with his chamber choir, so we've had David Lawrence for the past two weeks. He's done a good job, of which the highlight was undoubtedly on Wednesday when he kept saying the altos were the best. Clearly a very wise man :-) We did actually sing the whole of both the Kodaly and the Beethoven on Wednesday night, the latter entirely from memory. Well, when I say "entirely"... there was a significant minority who refused to even try it, including quite a few people who have been in the choir for many years and certainly sung the work before. I've heard several of these, over the past few months, complaining that they are much too busy to learn things from memory, and anyway they find it really difficult. Well... I have to admit that I don't find it that hard to learn things, but it DOES take me time, and I'm not not busy, IYSWIM. I have a strong suspicion that if some of these people actually tried to do it the way I do, they would find it much easier and quicker - I think some of them have developed a mental block and convinced themselves they will never be able to do it.

My method? Well, it has two main aspects. Both are based on the theory that the only way to learn to sing something from memory IS TO SING IT FROM MEMORY. (I said this to Graham Worden on Wednesday, and he thought it sounded like a Zen koan!) So, what you do is to take EVERY POSSIBLE OPPORTUNITY to try singing the work (all or part of it) from memory. That means you sing along to it in the car on every journey you make, until you know it. But if you know you're not confident enough of the notes to stick to the part with no other singers round you, rely more heavily on the second part of the method, which is to SING FROM MEMORY IN REHEARSALS. Do this even before you know the work well. Just try a line at a time. You'll have the support of people round you, and you can glance down at your score after the line to check what you got right and what you didn't. You'll find that you already know more than you think you do. But I can't imagine how people can ever learn anything without trying this way, yet there were loads of very experienced choir members on Wednesday still looking at their scores throughout. Amazing.

Anyway, Rachel's wedding! This was absolutely fantastic. The picture at the top of this post has Rachel and Laurie just after they'd become Mr & Mrs Cooper, outside Llandudno Town Hall, where the wedding took place last Saturday. Rachel's holding Riley, who's now 13 months old and insisted on being held by his mum all day (her arms were really aching by the evening!) The ceremony started with Riley being held by Laurie's mum, but he made a fuss as soon as he realised he couldn't see his mum, so Laurie's mum moved till he could... still not enough, so in the end Rachel had to take him and hold him through the whole ceremony (she got a big round of applause for doing so!)

The day was gloriously sunny (well, it did rain later, but only when the reception was well under way) and the ceremony was lovely. There was an 11-piece choir consisting of the usual suspects, and we sang Sincerely as Rachel came in (that's an old 50s song that's Rachel's favourite - we sing it in Pleiades, and the version at the wedding was an a cappella version of it). At the end we sang an a cappella version of Love Is All Around as a surprise for Laurie, who loves Wet Wet Wet. I wasn't sure at the time that he'd noticed what we were singing, but Rachel said afterwards that he recognised it from the intro :-)

After the ceremony, we all went up to the top of the Great Orme, where the reception was being held in the ski lodge there. It was necessarily informal, because as part of the invitation there were tickets to use the ski lodge facilities - skiing lessons, tobogganing and sno-tubing. I didn't try skiing, because I tried once before and was REALLY bad at it. But I did the sno-tubing and tobogganing. I was a little disappointed that neither was on actual snow (as usual, I was too hot all day) but both were great fun. Meg and Tom and Bruce and Geoff and I spent half an hour on the sno-tube slope - I suspect we would have stayed longer if every descent hadn't been followed with dragging the tube back to the top of the hill. It was incredibly funny though - not sure why, but I can't remember the last time I laughed that much :-)

We queued up for the toboggan later in the afternoon - huuuuuuuuuge queue (an hour, I think we stood there, but we did have a good chat) and the eventual toboggan run didn't really live up to expectation - it was fun (and you do get to go round twice) but not quite worth an hour's queue! Oh well. In between the sno-tubing and tobogganing, there was a barbecue, and there'd been a huge array of nibbles when we first arrived, and later there was fondue (all three sorts). And cake, of course! So everyone was quite stuffed by the end of the day.

I'd done 5 CDs of background music, at Rachel's request, to be played during the day (the wedding was at noon, so it was a long time till the evening!) but the people behind the bar somehow managed to play one of them three times and some of the others not at all. Never mind. In the evening there were DJs, but I think my music was better :p (plus, as with most DJs, they played their music far too loudly and we couldn't understand a word of whatever they said in between!)

Can't think of much else to say about the wedding, other than that it was fabulous. But Rachel is hoping to come back to choir soon, so she can tell you about it herself :-)

Before I finish, though, a few more pictures!

This is the only one I managed to get with Rachel actually looking at the camera...


This is the Alpine Lodge on top of the Great Orme, where the reception took place.


This was the view from the lodge. After dark this was even prettier, with twinkly lights all round the bay. Lovely. (Note toboggan track in foreground.)


Laurie and Rachel cutting the cake - bit fiddly, because the wedding cake consisted of a huge array of yummy fairy cakes, but they managed!


And, on a non-wedding note, here are some links I've accumulated since I last posted....

Our English Landscapes CD is out at last.

A thing about people who clap too soon.

An ingenious attempt by the Hallé marketing department (presumably) to imply that next week's gig was arranged only after the Beethoven 9 prom was cancelled last month.

I just discovered there's another Beetham Tower! Looks like ours will be finished first though.

An article about the greatness of non-London orchestras. Mentions both Mark and Gianandrea.

Russell Watson has just had brain surgery, and it looks as if he's not out of the woods yet.

The website of next week's tenor soloist, Stefan Margita, wasn't working last time I looked, but it is now. Oddly enough it has no mention of our gig, unless I'm missing something... He's still listed on the Hallé website as taking part, but there's still plenty of time for Mark's curse to kick in!

Gianandrea got a promotion! And there was, eventually, a review of the Ravel gig, although needless to say it doesn't mention the choir. Oh, and talking of reviews, I was a bit disappointed in the MEN review of the Hallé's recent Mahler 5, which was dedicated to John MacMurray. I wasn't at the concert, but Naomi was telling me about it at the weekend and I'm really sorry I missed it. It sounds as if it might have been the best concert the Hallé have ever played. Did any of the rest of you go?

And finally, the two oddest blog searches recently: how do you pronounce the german in Brahms German Requiem, and full-bladder concert. The mind boggles!