I'm from Chile!

Very busy since I last wrote - the start of the musical Christmas madness coincided with a new temp assignment, so sleep and free time went out of the window for a while. But the temp thing finished on Friday, so today I'm back at home catching up with stuff. I must admit I'm very relieved not to have had to work today, because the weekend was EXHAUSTING - lack of income is the downside as usual, but I will worry about that tomorrow.

Saturday was probably the coldest day of the year so far, so it was probably not the best day on which to spend an hour carol singing in the open air. However, it was great fun and went very well indeed! This was at Gigg Lane before an FC United match. Our arrangement of "The Twelve Days of Cantona" was particularly popular, although sadly Claire couldn't do her spectacular descant in verse 12 because the crowd had joined in by then, and they decided that the last verse should be FASTER than the others, as opposed to starting quite slowly as we'd planned, so there was no way Claire could have done semiquavers. Oh well!

We stayed to watch the game, which FC won 3-0 despite the opponents being top of the league - but it was midnight before I could feel my feet again! I had lots of layers on elsewhere but my feet were the weak link. Still, at least that was the only outdoor gig this Christmas.

Then yesterday was a LOOOOOONG rehearsal for tonight's concert. This turned out somewhat differently to what was planned. For a start, our usual choral director is on leave, so we were warmed up by the new youth choir director, who I thought I'd encountered before but it turns out I was getting him muddled with someone else. He's just as good as the one I was thinking of, though! Then, it was due to be 1 till 6 with a 75 minute break in the middle, when Alison and I had planned to go and get food. When we arrived we were told of a new plan, which involved having a much shorter break but finishing much earlier. This was fine with everyone - we always like finishing early! But as it turned out, even though the break was now only 15 minutes, we didn't finish much earlier than scheduled - 5.40 instead of 6. I suspect most people weren't TOO displeased, because it was obvious that the time was needed - but those of us who hadn't brought food were STARVING by the end!

It was a fun rehearsal though. Interesting to hear the new stuff with orchestra. All the composers were there, which was slightly offputting, but since we weren't introduced to them we didn't know who'd written what. This did make for an interesting game when we tried to guess! Lindsay was convinced that one of them wrote a particular movement, based on his reaction to it - he was visibly moved - but it turned out to have been written by someone else, and the guy we were looking at just really liked it! To be fair, it WAS the most tuneful one :-)

Also, the movement with the Soprano Line of Madness (tm), which has loads of solo bits in the choir parts which we'd assumed we were all doing together (because that's how we'd rehearsed it)... well, now lots of us are doing solos! Very exciting. Although, annoyingly, the bit I've had on the brain since is the aforementioned Soprano Line of Madness. Why?!?

Anyway, I'm looking forward to the concert tonight - hope there's a decent-sized audience. Judy has certainly done her bit to help - she has THIRTY-ONE people coming! As usual, all the people *I've* told have said "that sounds good!" but none have so far actually bought a ticket.

Finally, I have about a million links to share, so let's get started.

You'll all no doubt be aware by now of the sad news that Richard Hickox died last Sunday. Great obituary at Overgrown Path, and another at The Guardian. Also, can anyone remind me what it was I've sung with him? I'm thinking it might be Child of our Time, but I could have imagined that...

The Telegraph writes about a night at the opera with Sting and Elvis (Costello).

David Griggs-Janower writes about preparing Christmas music.

There's a thought-provoking video at Advent Conspiracy.

Police in Massachussetts found a piano in the woods.

Boris Johnson has some thoughts on London's new culture strategy.

Kent Nagano talks at length about Messiaen - fascinating interview.

Very atmospheric video about musical instruments made from ice.

A new way of experiencing Bach is coming to Manchester next year.

Fascinating Spectator article about Elliott Carter's 100th birthday.

By chance, two articles in two days about Britten's War Requiem - one from the Spectator and one at Overgrown Path (which tells us that the DVD is about to be re-released).

You'll have seen the news that In the Bleak Midwinter has been voted the favourite carol of chorus masters - but am I the ONLY one who prefers Holst's version to Darke's? The Darke version was lovely when I first heard it, but it's been done so much since that I'm a bit sick of it - whereas I've always loved the simplicity of the Holst version.

In a similar vein, here are Podium Speak's favourite Advent hymns. (My favourite is definitely the obvious one: O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, or if you prefer the Latin version Veni Emmanuel.)

Another interesting Spectator article about R3's Composer of the Week.

A Guardian article about applauding at the wrong time at classical concerts. (The comments are as interesting as the article itself.)

A report on the recent controversy caused by the Boston Symphony Orchestra upsetting Gennady Rozhdestvensky.

And, there's a new list of the best orchestras in the world - but I think there's at least one orchestra that the people who compiled the list must have not heard! Plainly they should have asked Tom Service. He seems to know what he's talking about!

Now, non-musical stuff! If you're wondering what's happening in the Vendee Globe (as usual it's being ignored by most of the media), at 4pm today Mike Golding was in 8th place of the 25 boats left in the race, 95 miles behind the leader. They've been going 22 days and are all in the Atlantic. The leaders are more or less midway between South America and Africa (they go that far west because of winds and currents) and a bit further south than the Cape of Good Hope. They're all starting to head east now - the hardest bit of the race (the Southern Ocean) is coming up. (Also, Alex Thomson tells us his thoughts on having to retire from the race again.)

I'm annoyed I didn't do a post last week, because I've had the story about the man who tried to pay a bill with a drawing of a spider for a while, and if I'd posted it BEFORE it was featured on "Have I Got News For You", you would all have been more impressed! But it's still worth reading the whole story.

More spider-related news: NASA lost a spider on the Space Station, although they claimed "it's not lost, we just don't know where it is". Riiiiiiiiiight....

An interesting article about the use of technology in general, and how it changes people.

This is curiously fascinating - you can text 118.com and ask them ANYTHING, and they have a live feed of all the incoming questions and the answers they give.

Charlie Brooker writes about exhaustion and incompetence. I'm slightly alarmed to find how much of this I identify with!

Manchester Confidential has a feature on the Briton's Protection.

Bolton Council are giving out bubble-blowers to prevent trouble!

The Royal Society of Chemistry is running a competition to solve the (literal) cliffhanger at the end of The Italian Job. My favourite rule: "The judges will not accept any solutions that involve the employment of a helicopter."

And finally finally, I recommend you all to bookmark Boston.com's The Big Picture. It's only updated once every few days, but the pictures are amazing, and tend to be ones that you don't see anywhere else. Most recently, I have been impressed with their photos of Sichuan, 6 months after the earthquake and even more so by the ones of Mumbai under attack. (Some very grisly ones in that last batch, but they do warn you, so that you have to deliberately click on the more disturbing images if you want to see them after reading the description.)

Off to sing now!