I see you shiver with antici.............................pation

I listened to Mahler 8 all the way through yesterday, while on a six-bus journey. I was pleased to find how much of it I know from memory - always useful. Needless to say I got annoyed all over again about choir 1 getting all the good bits, but mainly I was very excited about the whole thing - I'd totally forgotten some of the amazing orchestral bits (e.g. what the brass are doing in the "hostem repellas" section - that's all about driving away the enemy, but I can't decide whether the brass are the enemy and we're trying to drive them away, or the enemy is elsewhere and the brass are helping us! No doubt it will become clear...)

I had an idea last night involving Mahler 8 Bingo. This idea amused me a lot, and I may have to put it into action, if only because I love the thought of someone trying to concentrate in a rehearsal while itching to jump up and shout "HOUSE!" Leave it with me :-)

Other than this, I haven't done anything music-related since my last post. We didn't rehearse this week, although we have two rehearsals next week to make up for this. I've spent most of the time distracting myself from being broke - I'm very good at that! (Just as well - it's been worse than usual recently due to the DWP not paying me, because they're currently my only source of income. So food has been a major issue. They've paid me now, but it's not been the most pleasant of weeks.)

Anyway, I have a load of links, so I thought I'd post them even though there was nothing else to say.

Via Intermezzo, a fascinating interview with Sir Colin Davis.

You probably heard about last week's disruption of a string quartet concert at the Wigmore Hall. The Jerusalem Quartet (whose concert it was) have something to say on the matter, as does Norman Lebrecht, with a lovely Telegraph article about how the concert hall is a sanctuary.

Talking of concert halls, have you seen the one they're building in Hamburg? It has OCEAN WAVES on its roof!

Tom Service writes sympathetically about Leonard Slatkin's recent much-publicised withdrawal from La Traviata at the New York Met.

Again, you'll have seen this, but since it's not often that a choir-related story makes the front page of the BBC News website, I figured it was worth repeating: the guy who's sung with the same choir for SEVENTY YEARS.

Our own orchestra is giving free tickets to people in deprived areas of Manchester - although, as one of the commenters points out, not the MOST deprived areas... I wonder why?

I hadn't realised there was a danger of this year's Whit Friday brass band contests not going ahead until 4 Bars Rest told me that Oldham Council has saved the day. (The contests this year are on 28th May - put it in your diary and keep the evening free, if you've never been before!)

Also from 4 Bars Rest, news that the Fairey Brass Band (one of the best in the world) will be performing after the Mahler 7 concert on 24th April. So if you're going to that concert, don't leave without hearing them.

This is fun: a music video set in an empty school, in which the composer (a 17-year-old boy) plays everything himself, using various things as instruments (e.g. piano, marimba, locker door).

Chris Rowbury writes about the process of learning songs by ear. Of course we can't usually do this in our choir due to the short time we have in which to learn complex stuff, but most of the points he makes are still valid for a choir that DOES use sheet music. (I'd love to be able to tell him he's wrong when he says that singers who have the music in front of them never look at the conductor, but sadly he's not ENTIRELY wrong! I think our choir probably has more counter-examples than most, though.)

I mentioned recently that I wasn't particularly impressed with The Sixteen, so I was only SLIGHTLY surprised to find that the Guardian only awarded them one star for a recent concert of theirs. The Telegraph hated it too.

This is very clever: via Jason Heath's Double Bass Blog, Wii-controlled percussion.

This year's Proms lineup is announced on 22nd April. Tom Service describes what he hopes will be in it, while Intermezzo has a lot more info, including quite a few rumours. Looks as if the opening concert might be Mahler 8 - but sadly not our version!

On An Overgrown Path has an intriguing post about why Latvia produces more than its fair share of outstanding musicians.

If you know anyone who attended the Oscars for Orchestra concert in Manchester a couple of weeks ago, see if their photo is on the Red Carpet page.

Tom Service brings news that Radio 3 is introducing classical chart hits to its programming. Rupert Christiansen, in the Telegraph, writes about why this is a very bad idea.

Here's a nice story from A Cappella News: a choir that was formed to help unemployed people in Leipzig. It mentions one guy who was on his way to jump under a train (literally) and changed his mind as a result of seeing a choir recruitment poster. *boggle*

Seth Godin's blog often has potentially life-changing insights, but I particularly like this one: how to be one in a million.

I absolutely hate politics and ignore it wherever possible (it bores me rigid), so it's entirely possible that everyone apart from me already knew this, but just in case it's news to you too: from BBC News, who actually runs the country while all the MPs are off campaigning? I hadn't realised that they actually stopped being MPs shortly after an election is called - I assumed they continued until the day of the election, and then either continued or left afterwards. The actual process, now that I know what it is, makes a lot more sense when I think about it!

Anyone who uses Twitter, however much they hate politics, will probably have seen all the stuff about the Digital Economy Bill. Until this hit the news, I didn't know there was a Minister for Digital Britain. Now that I *do* know that, I'm unimpressed to find that he doesn't even know the meaning of basic terms such as "IP address". (Even my Silver Surfers, who have only been using computers for a few weeks, know that it stands for "Internet Protocol".)

Manchester Confidential raves about the new Legoland Discovery Centre at the Trafford Centre. Sounds like fun!

From the category of "random trivia that will blow your mind", here's a fascinating fact about pie :-)