"I disagree! I'm talking about the shape of the horn, not the position."

Well, I seem to have not blogged for ages! I think I was distracted by the FA Cup Final - the buildup, then the weekend itself, then the not-being-in-the-mood-to-do-anything-cos-we-lost. I enjoyed the New Wembley experience, though - it's an impressive place, despite the less than impressive result. (The hand-driers, in particular, are amazing! This may seem a bit of an incongruous thing to say, but if you'd experienced their power you'd understand... I suspect they were specially souped up in order to balance the extreme puniness of the WHGS hand-driers...)

Anyway, here are my Wembley pictures. At least I did get to spend the weekend with a couple of friends I haven't seen in far too long, so the weekend wasn't entirely a disappointment!

Choir-related note: On the tube back into central London (which was so full that no-one could move - we were all packed in like sardines), I ended up in a carriage that was 90% full of Chelsea fans, and unsurprisingly they were in very high spirits. I had my Ronaldo shirt on, and they kept shouting "Ronaldo, Ronaldo, give us a song!" And I chickened out - I felt uncomfortable being on my own, totally hemmed in by these men... plus, one of them had an air horn which he kept blasting right by my ear, and I was actually worried that my eardrums might burst. As it was, I developed a massive headache as a result of the noise. But I kept thinking that in some way I was letting down the choir because I was asked to sing and I couldn't. How stupid is that?!

On a more cheerful musical note, I had a rehearsal last night with my band, which was (as ever) great fun. It was even better last night because our flautist, who moved to the USA a couple of years ago, was back for a visit, and all the songs sound much better with flute. The only sad bit was that Rachel was ill and couldn't make it, and that meant that she didn't get to sing California Dreaming (her favourite song) with the actual flute solo in it! Last night did show the extreme power of muscle memory, though - Anne (the flautist) hadn't played her flute since leaving the UK, and lots of the solos are much harder than the California Dreaming one (we make her play all the twiddly bits in the Abba songs - not for beginners!), yet she played everything practically perfectly! She was more surprised about this than anyone, and said that it must be because she worked so hard to learn those solos years ago when she first had to play them.

Anyway, no doubt some of you are wondering what the choir's been up to. Well, we are still learning The Kingdom. There's an awful lot of it! The concert is a week on Sunday; Wednesday this week was the first time we got almost all the way through it (we finished 10 minutes late and still didn't QUITE get to the end), and I think everyone was aware that ideally we would have liked to spend longer on several bits. Some bits are a lot more familiar than others - the tenors' big tune on page 78 ("he who walketh upon the wings of the wind") is the bit I've had on the brain for weeks, although the ladies' bit just after that ("the Lord put forth his hand and touched their mouth") isn't far behind. (Jamie said last week that that bit "shouldn't sound like Flanders and Swann... but it does!")

There are still an awful lot of wrong notes, which I hope people are going to look at before next week. From the alto point of view, lots of people are still getting "what meaneth this?" wrong on pages 85 and 95, and almost all of them are singing an F instead of a G for the first note of page 23. The most amusing alto mistake, though, wasn't either of these - it's from last week's warmup, and I'm still giggling every time I remember. Maggie was doing that exercise with the runny "nooey nooey nooey nooey nee" where we step and clap at the same time. She indicated which way to move first, and most people managed this, but most of the first altos on the front row were going consistently the wrong way, which very much amused those of us behind them. But even funnier was a minute later when we did the contrary motion scale - sops going up, altos going down - and Maggie said "bend your knees when you get to the top note... that means, of course, that you won't all bend at the same time..." Well, the movementally-challenged front row first altos couldn't cope with this at all, and they all bent their knees on the bottom note.

I realise that this may not sound like the most entertaining thing in the world, but you had to be there :p

(By the way, Maggie had told us, just before this, that the alto section solo in the Poulenc was the highlight of the concert for her and had moved her to tears. 'Exquisite' was the other word she used. Nice to be singled out for a change!)

I think many of the altos were probably cursing me this week. Firstly, at the request of another member of the choir, I asked them all to wait behind at the start of the break (even though Jamie had gone on 10 minutes longer than he'd said he would) so that she could come and speak to them about a concert she wanted some singers for - but she then went to have two conversations while they all sat there waiting for her (quite a few, unsurprisingly, refused to wait and went to have their tea anyway). I presume she'd just forgotten she'd asked the altos to wait! But then, Jamie found me and asked me if Judith and I would have a word with the altos and ask the ones who wouldn't stop chattering to please shut up. Great, I thought, they're already cursing me! (It actually wasn't as bad as it sometimes is - there were only three or four people that were talking as far as I could see - but they did indeed talk practically nonstop throughout the first half, and it was certainly distracting me, so I can imagine it must have driven Jamie up the wall.) But the talking was nonexistent in the second half, so it seems to have worked, and hopefully Jamie was happier. (Quite a few people came up to speak to me about this afterwards. A couple of them said "I don't think that was necessary - I certainly wasn't talking, and I couldn't hear anyone else either"... but the majority said "thank goodness something was said, the chatterers are driving me mad!")

Which leads me, somewhat indirectly, onto Jamieisms! The one in the title is my favourite, but it's the whole exchange that amused me. He was explaining to the sops how they should sing a particular note, and ended up saying "sing it from your rhino horn". Pat said, very seriously, "surely you mean a unicorn horn?", and Jamie, equally seriously, said "I disagree! I'm talking about the shape of the horn, not the position." There then followed an explanation of positions and shapes of rhino and unicorn horns and their respective relevance to singing. It was enlightening :-)

Also last week was a bizarre request to "sing as if you're singing to an alien who's just arrived on Earth and you're trying to explain the difference between men and women". It's bizarre because the passage in question (on page 106) bears no relation to any of this! This week's best one was a request to the sops and tenors to sing as if they were Gonzo the Muppet hypnotizing a chicken.... but I also liked "I've always wondered why 'monosyllable' has so many of them."

"Where are we breathing?" "You know what? I was actually hoping 'never'."

Today's choir rehearsal was almost six hours long (note to self: TAKE MORE THAN ONE BOTTLE OF WATER NEXT TIME IT'S THAT LONG) and I went to bed far too late last night due to World of Warcraft, so I'm now so tired I'm about to go to sleep. But I thought I'd do a quick post first, mainly because I did a quick search to try to find more info on the Eddie Izzard sketch Jamie acted out, and was delighted to find a video of the very thing. It's from this DVD and describes Eddie's experience of learning the clarinet, amongst other things. (This came up because Jamie noticed that the 2nd alto part in several bits of The Kingdom is rather like 'musical polyfilla', much like Eddie Izzard's 3rd clarinet parts...)

Other Jamieisms (plus the one in the title):

"Have you thought about that part of your body today? Why not? ... Because it's WEIRD."

"Ladies, what lovely chests you have!" (to protect Jamie, I should clarify that this referred to our chest register voices...)

"Altos, this is where your chests come into their own." (ditto!)

"Sing the end of the phrase loud, but piano."

"Surprise your voice!" (This was to the sops on page 129... it was a bit visual, you had to be there!)

"1st altos and 2nd sops, try singing that phrase as if you have a mini Hulme Bridge inside your mouth and you're singing over the top of it." (this was on page 153 and referred to this bridge)

"When you've got two notes together which are the same pitch, the first of which is correct and the second of which is not... I'm not sure what I can do to help you."

Sleep now. Need to be up tomorrow to get a few more job applications sorted out before I go to see United collect the Premiership trophy :-)

"In cricket, they have a thing called the TFC award.."

"... It's for players who don't score any runs or make any catches or bowl anyone out - who don't, in fact, do anything at all. It means 'Thanks For Coming'. And, tenors, you are tonight's recipients!"

I'm paraphrasing Wednesday night's only Jamieism, because I didn't write down anything other than "TFC award" at the time. But that's more or less what he said. It was a little harsh, I felt, because it's not as if they did nothing... but they did make us shake our heads in disbelief when Jamie was trying to get them to sing one of their lines slowly (in an attempt to get the notes right) and they went hurtling off at almost double the speed he was beating!

We did the middle section of The Kingdom fairly thoroughly, and it sounded much better by the end. Tomorrow we get to spend most of the day on the piece - maybe we'll manage a full runthrough! Should be possible, since we've done enough note-bashing. We'll see.

Lots of people have written to point out that we got a 5-star review in the Guardian for the Poulenc gig! The Manchester Evening News only gave us 4 stars, but at least they MENTIONED the choir, which they don't always! I haven't seen any other reviews. There have been quite a few more for the Cello Festival (The Times; Daily Telegraph; Independent), but none mentioned our contribution. For that matter, neither of the Poulenc reviews mentioned the Satie encore! I suspect some of these reviewers don't actually attend thw concerts :p

And finally, I'm shocked to discover that there are plans afoot to move part of Chet's! It's only Pal, not the old bit, and it's true that it's falling apart... but that's my teenage years they're demolishing!

"Did you get to the pelvis yet?"

This is from the warm-up at Sunday night's Poulenc gig... Jamie went off briefly to speak to the youth choir, and left us in the middle of our stretches. On his return he said "How far did you get? Did you get to the pelvis yet?"

There was also: "Can we have more sound on the fff bar?... Tenors, that doesn't really mean you..."

and, my favourite, "Can you write 'adrenaline' and then cross it out?"

(While I was looking through my score, I noticed a Markism from the other day that I'd missed: "The 1st basses are up anyway, if you'll pardon the phrase!")

The concert went well, although I don't think it was the best we've done it. I was a little frustrated that some people (mainly, but not entirely, a few of the Youth Choir) seemed to have trouble singing ppp and/or watching Mark (I didn't think we were together in lots of places)... but, as I kept telling myself, singing very quietly is one of the hardest things to do, and singing exactly on the beat defeats many choirs. I think it was good enough that most of the audience wont have thought anything was amiss - I'm just being fussy. In fact, I did get a couple of lovely emails from members of other choirs who were in the audience, and I'd love to tell you what they said, but I asked the first emailer for permission to quote him and he said no, so I'd probably better not quote the second one either (that email arrived later, so I didn't ask them both at the same time). But rest assured it would delight you if you could hear what they said :-)

It sounded pretty good on the radio (well, I say radio - radio reception where I live is practically zero, so I listen via Sky) - if you missed it, remember Listen Again....


Oh, and the Radio 3 announcer helpfully told us that Pascal Rogé's encore was indeed by Erik Satie (which Sue Oates recognised immediately - she knows her piano music!) and that it was the fifth of his Gnossiennes. And here's an mp3 of it (sadly a different pianist, but you can't have everything!)

Couple of things to finish. The Manchester Evening News reviews the Cello Festival, but doesn't mention us. And I only just found out that the Hallé are only doing four Proms this year, because theyre playing in the Manchester International Festival - The Ground Beneath Her Feet with Mark, and The Cunning Little Vixen with Kent Nagano! (and the lovely Ed Gardner)

I discovered this while I was looking up Carl Davis's sport-themed concert, because someone's written a Fantasia on Football Songs which is to be performed at it, and he emailed me to ask if I know the origin of the tune "Wem-ber-lee, Wem-ber-lee"... which I don't. Do any of you?

"Sopranos, it's not rocket science...."

"...it's the SAME NOTE YOU JUST SANG. You were totally seduced by Mr Jones on the piano!"

(tonight's best Jamieism, referring to a note near the end of the Poulenc. It was followed by:

"Altos, I have to admit that I was so gobsmacked by what I was hearing on the other side of the choir that I have no idea what you sang.")



Busy night for the choir last night. Orchestral rehearsal for the Poulenc, which went pretty well (seems like ages since we've been in the Bridgewater Hall!) (I'm pleased to report, by the way, that not only are all the 1st altos now singing a G in that place where they used to sing an F sharp, but that the basses are now correctly singing a confident B flat in that place where they used to sing an A flat. I have no idea whether or not the sopranos got their rocket-science C, though - I can't hear them at that point.) Then there was a 2-hour break, during which we all moved to the RNCM, and met again at 10 p.m. to rehearse for our late-night Cello Festival gig. (Am I the only one who's disappointed that there appears to be NO publicity for this in town? There's not even a banner outside the college, unless I've missed it. I know they don't NEED the publicity, since most of it sold out ages ago, but it's a major international event - Mancunians should know about it!)

We were due to go onstage at 10.30 p.m., but I had a feeling it would be much later, and I was right - it was gone 11 p.m. before we went on. We did have a brief rehearsal - without the cellist! - which included the instruction "Maybe don't even breathe. It's too human." After that there was quite a bit of sitting around waiting, but everyone was in a very good humour so it was fine.



I have to say that the highlight of the sitting around was Gladys - we rehearsed in the Opera Theatre, and then sat in the audience seats there while waiting. Anyone who came in to join us (after they'd been back to the changing room, say) had to enter stage right and walk forward across the stage. Gladys was the first to do this, and did an excellent bit of ballet for our entertainment! Sadly I was too slow to get a picture, sorry. But after that, everyone who appeared was greeted with rapturous applause and whooping. Some reacted to this more amusingly than others :p

We did eventually get to perform, and the audience applauded us the whole time we were walking on, which is a first, I think. (I suspect if they'd known how many of us there were, though, they might have stopped sooner!) Svyati was great - it relies so heavily on the men, and they were perfect. (Although, I'm pretty sure one of the basses started his first note on "yo" rather than "oh".... maybe he was thinking about pirates?) Jamie didn't introduce it - I presume he thought the audience would be sufficiently musical that they'd know not to applaud till he lowered his arms, and this turned out to be the case. Hard to tell how much they liked it, but I think they did!

Anyway, Poulenc again tomorrow. Couple of things first, though: firstly, did you know that today is the Hallé's actual 150th birthday? Or that Russell Watson is due to sing the National Anthem at the FA Cup Final? (You'd be forgiven for thinking it's Jon Christos, unless you read that article carefully, but it's not - although he claims he was asked first...) And finally, I think we should get William Eddins as a guest conductor :p

"Gloria - it's a better name than Chardonnay!"

So, tonight there were Markisms rather than Jamieisms, because it was the piano rehearsal for the Poulenc. It went pretty well - in fact we finished really early, so it must've been good! Mark arrived while we were warming up, and as usual a huge grin appeared on his face when we did our tractors - that always amuses him. In fact, he suggested that sometime we should do one of our warmups for the public - he reckons they'd be amazed...

I didn't feel quite as unimportant tonight as I did on Tuesday. I forgot to say at the time, but Tuesday was one of those rehearsals that's really frustrating, because Jamie kept telling *all* the altos off for not doing things that I, and the people round me, were actually doing. This happened so many times that Clare and I started to wonder whether he could actually hear us singing at all! I suppose we *were* heavily outnumbered - in the second half of the rehearsal on Tuesday there were 17 1st altos and only 5 2nds. A few people had left at the break because they weren't doing the Tavener gig, but not many. It's definitely quality rather than quantity in the 2nd alto section these days, but all the quality in the world is no use if Jamie (and therefore presumably everyone else) can't actually hear us!

Anyway, as I said, it was better tonight. Although, we always love Mark's rehearsals anyway! His Chardonnay quote related to a radio play he'd heard in which there was a woman who called her children Wayne and Chardonnay. I'm not entirely sure what made him think of this when trying to explain that he wanted the word "gloria" to sound a bit different, but there you go. Oh, and I was amused that he asked "Why do you sing that quieter?" about the very same bar that caused Jamie to say "It's almost as if the composer wrote 'piano, slightly slower, please'..." :-)

(Mark told us, by the way, that Poulenc's idea of the Gloria is that the words are being sung by "angels poking their tongues out and Benedictine monks playing football" - i.e. slightly irreverent.)

The Markism that got the biggest laugh of the night was actually "It's like first aid, isn't it?" (which referred to Jamie teaching the tenors their notes in the 2nd movement). But I was more amused by "It's a question of finding the music in the coo" ('coo' being the first syllable of 'qui') :-)

I've finally decided what it is that the "Domine fili unigenite" movement reminds me of - it's a song from Oklahoma! called "I cain't say no". I'm not entirely sure why, though - it's not THAT similar...

Now, you'll notice I haven't mentioned my trip to Milan! You may well think that this is because United got hammered, but in fact it's because it occurred to me that I quite often don't get round to mentioning choir stuff till I've written for ages about other stuff, and maybe it puts people off.

Plus, United got hammered :-(

However, apart from the result, it was a great day. I visited the Cathedral and La Scala opera house, both of which were fabulous. But I'd known beforehand that they were there, and had planned to see them. What I didn't know was that the Cow Parade was there! I'm sure most of you will remember it visiting Manchester (in the summer of 2004 - seems much longer ago!), so you will understand how thrilled I was to find it again (not the same cows, of course - they're always specially designed by local artists). Anyway, for those who are interested, I've put my photos online (and they're not ALL of cows!) - go have a look. Hint: if you go for the slideshow option you can see the photos without having to keep clicking, but you'll miss the accompanying text.

I got home at 6.30 on Thursday morning, having got off the plane at 3.30 a.m. (That may seem a slightly long gap, but that's because I got home by public transport, which is not as frequent as I might have liked - but it was much cheaper than getting a cab!) I was quite startled to be met by a row of photographers and reporters when I emerged in the arrivals hall - several of them took photos of me (no idea what papers they were for, though), and I was interviewed by someone from Key 103. This is not because of any special competence on my part - I suspect it's because everyone else put their coats on when they got off the plane, but as usual I was too hot, so I was the only one who was visibly wearing a United shirt :-)

"Put the consonants in... but don't."

Well, I have to be at the airport at 6 a.m. and it's now past midnight, but I'm waiting for one of my cats to come in, so I thought I'd do a quick blog post. If he's not appeared by the time I've finished, he'll be outside till 5.30 a.m. :p

We had a long rehearsal tonight, but it didn't seem that long, because it was in three distinct sections - we started with Poulenc, then John Summers and Geoff Owen came to tell us about plans for next season, then we rehearsed Svyati with Ivan Monighetti. I can't tell you any details of what John and Geoff said, because it's still under an embargo, but I wrote it all down, so I'll post it in a few days when I'm allowed to!

We'd remembered Svyati pretty well, although I still can't do the breathing. Ivan played the last note as a G natural, which is what's printed in our copies AND what's played on the recording I've got. When we did it with Jane, she did a G sharp, and Jamie said that was correct because it was a misprint. I'd love to know who's right! I liked it better with the G natural at first, but now I've got used to the G sharp I think I prefer that...

David Evans told me about a Jamieism from the men's sectional last Thursday. "Gentlemen, present it like you're saying 'There you are. Cottage pie. With broccoli. Don't leave it there, or the pigeons will come and eat it.'" ... I'd love to say that I could tell by the way they sang tonight which bit that referred to, but I couldn't. Maybe it was one of the movements we didn't do tonight :p

(The cat just came in, but I may as well finish now!) David also persuaded me to be a temporary alto rep, standing in for Dr Liz, who's taken a leave of absence till September. I did send a note round the section to see if anyone else wanted to have a go, but no-one did. So I get to not only whinge but also to pass on other people's whinges :-)

All my Jamieisms tonight are from the Poulenc. The consonant one in the title was my favourite, but we also had: "In heaven there are no trains to catch." Oh, and "Mind, body, soul... and goo." But now I must sleep!