It is our duty to sparkle a little

Singing has been very helpful this week - a welcome distraction from a few very bad days (that included a broken-down boiler AND a repossession letter). Tonight was a frantic (but, as always, fun) rehearsal with my band, which has two gigs this Saturday afternoon and therefore thirty songs to rehearse. Needless to say, there wasn't time to rehearse any of them as thoroughly as we would have liked, but none of the songs are new, so I'm sure we'll be fine. Current favourites: the Carols for Choirs 4 a cappella version of Deck the Hall, and my own a cappella arrangement of 2000 Miles. But we also had fun doing This Little Babe (one to a part, plus guitar) and the old favourites such as Lonely This Christmas and Merry Xmas Everybody. You can hear all of these (and more) at the Henry Watson Music Library on Saturday from 4pm. (The event starts at 2pm, and you can also see City of Manchester Opera and the Cavendish Singers.)

Choir on Wednesday night was almost as frantic, because of course there were many Christmas carols (plus a bit of the Christmas Oratorio) to learn in time for next week's concerts. There was also an extra presentation to Pat for her fifty years in the choir - she got quite a few surprises, and when she said "what a pity you couldn't give me Willard White", it turned out that they'd managed to get a signed photo from him, dedicated to her! Very impressive. Also there were some excellent cupcakes!

The most amusing bit of the rehearsal was definitely the Jingle Bells argument - there's a bit in verse 2 where the ladies are supposed to sing a couple of lines, but in the past the men have done it while we whoop and shout "yee-ha!" etc. After much discussion, that's the way it will happen this year :-) I was also very amused, however, by Ding Dong Merrily - when this was announced, there was a sigh of relief, because the choir knows that one VERY well... but it turned out to be a version we'd never done before, and everyone had to rapidly go into sight-reading mode. I'm not sure quite why this was so funny, but it amused me for hours.

Anyway, a few links. I mentioned Glee a while ago (that new American TV series about a high school choir). Well, the pilot episode is on E4 on Tuesday, so you can see what all the fuss is about, with the rest of the series in the new year. I've seen twelve episodes of it, and I've found it quite silly but occasionally fun (especially the one where they use a Beyonce song to help the football team...)

Most of you will have seen by now that there was a review for our Messiah - pity it has a few errors, but it's a good review despite them.

But this cracked me up - a condensed version of Messiah. Sample: Lift up your heads, O ye gates / And be ye lifted up, ye doors / Unless you are the sort / That are on hinges / In which case / You can open / Normally. Hee!

This story from Intermezzo about Nathan Gunn introduced me to the concept of barihunks. (There's even a blog devoted to them!) Intriguing.

Tom Service has a great review of the decade in classical music which mentions our orchestra. He also tells us that Simon Rattle and the Berlin Phil are coming to London in 2011.

Talking of the Berlin Phil, Intermezzo drew my attention to an article in The Scotsman that mentions how much it costs to book them. See if you can guess before you look!

Great article on the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra Blog about the standard of Scottish compositions compared to Czech ones.

From ChoralBlog, news of the choral nominees for the 2010 Grammy Awards. I think we've already beaten at least one of them to a major award :-)

A nice thing in the BBC Music Magazine about how church choirs are not just for Christmas.

And, the plans for a Royal Opera House in the North are moving again. (More about this here.)

There will be a load of swimmers that even I've heard of (e.g. Michael Phelps and Rebecca Adlington) in Manchester next weekend, for something called Duel in the Pool. We'll all be singing carols at the time, but it's on TV if you want to watch.

I've seen all sorts of stories about this: a weird spiral in the sky over Norway. Seems to be genuine - I wonder which theory is correct?

There's going to be a festival in Manchester in 2012 to celebrate Alan Turing. About time.

I'm amused by this use of a waxwork of Robert Downey Jr on the London Underground. And, while we're on the subject of London, Londonist has a quiz to see how well you know London.

And finally, apparently redheads can get free travel in Wigan!