Those duplets and triplets'll get them every time...

Busy few weeks, hence the very long gap between posts - sorry about that. I unexpectedly got three weeks of full-time work (back at RNID, covering for someone who was off sick) which happened to coincide with a busy time for the choir AND several of my part-time things all happening at once. The money is very helpful, and will allow me to pay a bit towards some bills that have been overdue for months, but it's been a very exhausting three weeks. Last night, with it finally over, I slept for seventeen hours nonstop, and now I feel great! Time to get back to all my other stuff. (Things have gradually started to improve lately - I'll explain at some point what I'm actually doing, but not now because this post will be long enough as it is!)

My to-do list for tonight includes a new a cappella arrangement of a Christmas song that I've had in my head all week, but I wanted to do a blog post first, if only because I realised I had more than fifty links to share with you! I'll get to them in a minute. But first, what's been happening with the choir? Well, I know I said I was looking forward to the new Matthews piece, but this positive attitude didn't last very long - it's really quite dreary so far. But we've only got the first part of it, so maybe it will get a bit more exciting in the bit we haven't seen yet.

We've also done a very small amount of Messiah, but mainly the last few weeks has been ladies only, rehearsing Debussy's Nocturnes, which we performed on Thursday night. I haven't seen any reviews yet, but I will post any that appear. (I was a bit outraged to find that the orchestra was repeating the Nocturnes in Nottingham last night, without us, until I noticed that they were only playing the first two movements, which we're not in. Pity though - I would have gone to Nottingham!)

I've done this piece a few times before, and it's always exciting because we are part of the orchestra (rather than being a separate entity) and actually sit on stage next to the instruments. In the past we've sat scattered around the stage, in pairs. I think I sat next to the clarinets last time. This time, there were too many of us for that to work, so we sat in two rows at the back of the stage. We did still sing seated, though, so it felt more as if we were orchestral players rather than a choir that stood up when it was about to sing. I sat behind the clarinets and bassoons, and enjoyed following their parts in the bits before we sang - we used to be able to do that in the Free Trade Hall, when I was usually behind the trumpets or trombones, but in the Bridgewater Hall choir seats we're much further away from the orchestra.

The always-few-in-number 2nd alto section did itself proud. Not that we don't always, but we felt very good about ourselves during this project! There were only eight of us, compared to the twenty-six 1st altos (although only twenty of them were there at the concert), but we kept drowning out the 1sts :-) And there was a bit where we had to sing stupidly high notes, while the 1st sopranos had two bars' rest, and plan B was for us to drop out and let the sops do it. But Plan A was the one that was used in the concert.

Our movement is called "Sirens", and there was much discussion of sirens during the rehearsals. (The Starbucks logo, often seen as a mermaid, is actually a siren - here's an article about how it's changed.) David (the guest choral director) had invented a very convincing (and useful) story about what the Sirens were actually doing in each phrase of the movement. It seems that the consensus is that sirens don't do what you might expect with the sailors once they've lured them - they actually eat them! However, the Wikipedia article suggests a few alternative versions of the legend.

Oh, and I almost forgot - Gianandrea Noseda was at the concert! We were very excited to see him with our principal conductor at the interval. I'm not sure I've EVER seen them in the same place at the same time before - it's great to see that they're friends, and even greater that he was at our concert when he wasn't even conducting it!

Debussy is over now (although I think I'll have that harp-and-muted-trumpet bit from the 2nd movement in my head for a while yet) and next week is Messiah and carols. Also I'm rehearsing Christmas stuff with my band on Thursday. Which reminds me - latest news on the Henry Watson Music Library is that Manchester City Council has changed its plans, and the library is currently NOT going to close in December. The closure has been put back to some unconfirmed date in 2010, probably June. So the library COULD have had their Christmas music day after all, but the librarians told me that the plans have changed so many times that it's still possible that anything might happen! They did also mention that when the new library reopens, in four years' time, it's likely that the music library will be on the ground floor. You heard it here first.

Anyway, are you ready for about a million links? (Well, fifty, anyway...)

First, a great 20-minute video from Itay Talgam about how conductors do what they do. My favourite bit is right at the end, when he shows Leonard Bernstein conducting with just his face, but it's all good stuff. (In fact, if you've never seen any other TED talks, I recommend you explore the site a bit - there's loads of good talks on there.)

One of the most useful sites I've found recently - Chordbook. It's mainly useful for guitarists, but I'm not a guitarist and I've found it invaluable, mainly when I've been working WITH a guitarist and I wanted him to play a chord he didn't know. This site tells you the guitar fingering for every chord you can think of, with or without capo.

Another site that some of you may find useful - mp3 accompanist. I offer mp3 accompaniments as a service myself, so I found this while I was researching the competition. Looks like a very handy site. (They have lots of mp3s ready to sell, whereas I currently only have a few, and I only do them as a sideline, because they take quite a long time to create. So I'm happy to promote this site.)

Here's a story about two churches whose congregations sing too loudly!

And I'm sure you saw the story about the shop assistant who was told she couldn't sing while working unless she had a licence.

From Tom Service, a heartwarming story about Cape Town Opera.

From Intermezzo, news that stagehands at Carnegie Hall get paid more than performers.

A Cappella News tells us that the Vienna Boys' Choir is to admit girls. (EDIT: Allen H Simon, the webmaster of ChoralNet, says this is not true. I must admit I thought it was odd that A Cappella News didn't include a link to their source...)

BBC Music Magazine points people towards downloadable resources for the Sing Hallelujah project.

I've never heard of the Gold Badge awards before, have you? They're for music professionals other than performers.

ChoralNet tells us about a singing teacher who gives lessons using Skype. A great idea - I must try it sometime.

I'm intrigued by the ramifications of this Electronic Rock Guitar T Shirt from ThinkGeek. They also have a Personal Soundtrack T Shirt and a Drum Kit T Shirt. I can see the latter being a bit painful if your friends get carried away!

Talking of geeky things (as you know I love to), someone's found a way to play Guitar Hero without any guitars (plastic or otherwise!)

Also from ChoralNet, news that Leonard Bernstein's annotated scores are to released online.

Thought-provoking article about youth orchestras from the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra blog.

Tom Service writes about Classic FM's recent list of the top 10 classical works loved by children, and a rival (and much more interesting) list from Radio 3. The Radio 3 blog has more about this.

4 Bars Rest is one of the best sites for brass band news, and they often have bits of non-brass musical news I haven't seen anywhere else. Recently they had two stories about anti-brass snobbishness in the musical world.

Haven't seen this anywhere else, but apparently Leonard Slatkin recently had a heart attack while conducting.

From ChoralNet, news of a Philharmonia Orchestra project that lets people experience being part of an orchestra from the inside. As part of the choir, we get to do this all the time (although not often quite so thoroughly as we did on Thursday), and I often grin to myself when I think of how privileged we are.

Here's a guy who tells us about how singing has helped his cystic fibrosis.

Remember that thing about the ENO Messiah project? The Radio 3 blog brings us an update, with a link to the backstage blog, which has stories from the participants.

An interesting article from The Chorister about whether or not choirs should have auditions.

Equally thought-provoking, From the Front of the Choir discusses the use of the word "choir".

The Guardian wonders whether or not Christmas songs can ever be cool.

Those of you not on Twitter yet may not be aware that not only is the world's best orchestra on Twitter, they also tell us useful bits of news there, such as the fact that the Mahler series is to be recorded and broadcast on Radio 3.

The Guardian has some suggestions about how to write a family-friendly opera.

The Spectator has a great article about Murray Perahia.

Here's a great article about artistic masterpieces in English cathedrals.

Manchester Confidential, one of my favourite sites, tells us about the ice rink in Spinningfields, and several other attractions in Manchester city centre this Christmas. They also have some interesting thoughts about the decline of King Street, which was once Manchester's top shopping street.

The Guardian has some thoughts about Manchester's literary renaissance.

BBC news has an amusing story about the difference between the sexes when it comes to gadget-related problems. I'm most amused by the news that "64% of male callers and 24% of female callers had not read the instruction manual before ringing up for technical support". RTFM, people!

The Man in Seat 61 tells us, again, why travelling to European destinations can be better by train than by air. (And members of my choir may be interested to see his explanation of how to get to Prague by train. There has been mention of a possible choir trip to Prague next year, and if it goes ahead I'll almost certainly be doing it this way!)

I haven't tried this yet, but it looks useful - a site that lets you do online optical character recognition i.e. you upload a photo that has text on it, and the site converts the text to a document which you could then edit.

In astronomical news, I'm quite intrigued to hear that there is water on the Moon! And also that NASA's Martian polar lander has survived. Now if only they'd find Beagle 2!

(And, since people often ask me about this: the extremely bright "star" that's currently visible low in the south west sky until about 10pm is Jupiter, and the pinkish (but not quite as bright) one that's visible low in the north-east at 10pm (and increasingly higher in the sky throughout the rest of the night, until it's due south at 6am) is Mars. You can also see Saturn low in the south-east from 3am to sunrise, but it's nowhere near as bright as Jupiter or Mars so it doesn't stand out so much. The brightest of all is Venus, visible low in the south-east just before sunrise.)

Finally, three fabulous recent photo collections from the ever-excellent Big Picture. The one depicting Kazakhstan's nuclear legacy is sobering and rather depressing, but the Berlin Wall collection is great, and the Martian landscape pictures are amazing. But still no Beagle 2!