Singing uselessly all the night

I really enjoyed the Sea Drift concert, and it went pretty well (there was one point at which it wobbled slightly, I thought, but there was a quick recovery and hopefully not many people noticed). It's on the radio on Tuesday, of course, so see what you think! (I forget exactly where it was I thought it wobbled, but I think it was round about the "lapping everyone close" bit in S/A octaves.)

(Oh, and when you do listen on the radio, note that Lovely Markus Stenz is on In Tune immediately beforehand. What a brilliant bit of programming!)

The only review I've seen for the concert was the Manchester Evening News one, which doesn't go into much detail, but he did seem to like it. As did the audience member who started clapping while the conductor was still lowering his arms. (Tom Service was correct - there should be fines for that sort of thing. There was a very brief grimace on the conductor's face when it happened, but he covered it well.)

EDIT: There's now a Guardian review too.

FURTHER EDIT: Two more, one from Music Web and one from the mighty Manchester Confidential (I don't think they've ever reviewed one of our concerts before - hope they continue!)

Needless to say, I've had bits of Sea Drift on the brain since Thursday, but the rest of the time I can't stop thinking about that poor he-bird! So sad. I looked up the original Walt Whitman poem - it's a part of his Leaves of Grass collection, and the specific part is called by different names in different editions as far as I can see, but it's the section that starts "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking". It has ten sections, and Delius uses sections 2 to 7 inclusive. I actually wanted to know what happened after the end of "Sea Drift", but after reading the poem I'm not entirely sure! I can see why Delius stopped where he did.

Anyway, next up is the Spring Symphony and a Mahler 8 repeat, in quick succession. Also, I'm moving house on Thursday, and everything is going well other than the fact that the automatic packing spell they use in Harry Potter doesn't seem to be working for me! So I'm having to do it manually, and it's VERY tiring. But it'll soon be over. Worse than that is the fact that there isn't currently a phone line in the new flat, and the earliest BT can install one is 8th April. 8th April! Which means more than two weeks with no internet and no Sky. Eek. Luckily there are public internet places these days, and the pub next door does at least show live football, and it's not as if I'll have nothing else to do, so at least the time should pass quickly.

Other news... let's see. Still lots about Japan, obviously. The one I found most interesting was a post I saw just after I posted my last entry and added belatedly, so if you read as soon as I posted you may have missed it: about Japan's functioning in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake. In the same vein, here's another article that advises people NOT to donate money to Japan, and the Disasters Emergency Committee says the same thing. Food for thought.

And more pictures, of course. The BBC News site has a good set of "before and after" pictures. There are also two new sets from The Big Picture: some from last Monday and some from Tuesday.

(On Wednesday, by the way, the Big Picture took a break from Japan and printed some fabulous photos commemorating Discovery's last flight.)

I missed most of Comic Relief on Friday due to being asleep, but I wasn't too upset. However, I would have liked to have seen the mass kazoo performance, so I must watch it online at some point. (It's on Listen Again for five more days.) I do know that they broke the world record, but only just!

You'll have seen the news about the Manchester International Festival lineup, no doubt. I'm a bit sad that there's no chorus in Die Walküre, so we won't be in it directly, but it's still exciting to be peripherally involved! The thing I'd most want to see, though, is the Damon Albarn thing. It looks intriguing, and the Monkey opera was one of the best live shows I've EVER seen. And the fact that Damon's actually in this one is a bonus!

And finally, I wanted to tell you about something I actually saw over a month ago, but forgot to mention here until I was reminded of it the other day while I was in the Molly House watching the BBC News channel with the sound off. It's a clip from See Hear, the BBC's programme for deaf (and Deaf) viewers. I've recorded this ever since I worked at RNID, and some weeks it's more interesting (to me, anyway) than others. But I thought this clip was absolutely fascinating. It's about how they do subtitling for live news reports etc. I think most choral singers will find it as fascinating as I did (may seem odd to say that, but you'll see what I mean!) I had no idea that this is how they do it, and I'm astounded at what's actually involved. Do watch it. The full programme is half an hour, but the bit I want to show you starts at 8:38 and lasts about 10 minutes.