Hakuna matata

Oops, it seems to be over four months since I last posted here! Sorry about that! It feels a little as if my life started all over again in March, though, and it's taken a while to get used to things. It's all good, though - things are much better than they were before March!

Needless to say I have lots of links to share with you (and I'm hoping that after this batch I'll be able to update much more often, so there won't be so many - as it is, I've deleted over a hundred links that I saved but are now outdated!) but they can wait another few minutes. Let's have a quick state-of-the-nation bit first :-)

My house was due to be repossessed at the end of February, but I managed to sell it (albeit for a very low price) just before that; the sale didn't actually go through until almost a month later, but the mortgage lender agreed to put the repossession on hold because it was definitely happening. (This seems quite nice of them, but since they hadn't been nice at any other stage I'm pretty sure it was just because they knew they'd get more money out of me overall if I sold the house myself!) I'm now living in a rented 1-bedroom flat, not far from where I lived before, and I have now paid back everyone I owe, and currently have no debts. It's a very nice feeling! It's still weird not being in the house, though - I lived there for over fifteen years, which is longer than I've lived anywhere else in my life, including the house I grew up in.

I don't have a full-time job at the moment, but I do have quite a few things that I'm doing here and there, many of which I'm being paid for! So things are looking up, finally, and I'm very much enjoying the variety of things I'm doing, as well as the fact that I still have lots of free hours in the week. The main good thing that's happened is that Wardle High School (where, some of you will recall, I used to work - it was my first job - and I've done various other things there even when I was working at other schools) asked me to run their school choir from September. As it turned out, I actually started in June, because the guy who's leaving had to leave early. They're a great group of kids, and I've been having a great time working with them. And quite a few other things have also come up at Wardle recently (e.g. playing the piano for exams), and there's a good chance there'll be more.

I also currently have four private pupils: two singers (one of whom also wants to learn music theory properly), a pianist (who again wants to learn music theory as well), and a lady who wants to learn how to use the computer her sons bought her. This last one was indirectly as a result of the Silver Surfers classes I deliver at the local library (the 12th group starts this Monday), but they actually found me by Googling me (which is how they knew I did Silver Surfers!) and I'm still getting commissions (and passive sales) of musical arrangements via my website.

I did have a 'proper job' for a while, actually - in April and May I worked as a Census Collector, and had a great time! I was one of the people who went round knocking on doors to say "according to our records you haven't returned your census form, is there a reason for that?" It was incredibly exhausting - I've never had a job before that involves walking all day! - but very interesting. The vast majority of the people I met were lovely, and I discovered lots of unfamiliar bits of the area near me.

The other thing that's taking up a lot of my time at the moment, though, is unpaid: I've been doing lots of volunteer work for Manchester Pride; mainly faffing with spreadsheets, which I love! The festival is at the end of this month, so the volunteering will end then (until next year). Which reminds me: if you've never seen the Manchester Pride Parade, put it in your diary and come and watch - it's a real spectacle! It's on Saturday 27th August, starting at 1pm outside the Science Museum, then going along Deansgate and right through the city centre to the Gay Village.

It feels like ages since I've done any singing! Let's see... We did the Spring Symphony on 14th May, which I enjoyed much more than I'd expected to. And the reviews were good: the Guardian one didn't mention the choir at all, but a couple of commenters put that right. There was also the MEN and the Telegraph. Oh, and this isn't a review, but it's very interesting: a Guardian article about Sumer is icumen in, which is always a highlight of the Spring Symphony.

The following week saw us doing Mahler 8 in York Minster. I've only seen one review of this, but the occasion was definitely fun, even if it was very different from our last Mahler 8! And then we ended our season in June with a Choral Classics concert, for which again I've only seen one review. I'm still not convinced that Henry V is a choral classic, but it was good to sing it again anyway, along with everything else!

And then there were vocal assessments, which I presume everyone's done by now - I did mine right at the start to get it out of the way (and before I forgot the things I had memorised!) Since then, I've hardly sung at all, other than recording myself for YouTube birthday presents (my most recent one was Circle of Life, which I've had on the brain since, hence my title! As usual I did it in a huge hurry and didn't have time to redo the bits where the mic was overloaded, but never mind... the person I did it for liked it.)

Talking of YouTube, did you all see the finished version of the Virtual Choir 2 video? You may recall that I recorded my bit in January, but it took them till April to mix all the contributions together. Needless to say I couldn't see myself in the finished video, but my name is on the credits, so I'm happy!

I haven't been listening to all the Proms on the radio this year - not enough time - but I've seen all the TV ones. I was a bit baffled by the Glagolitic Mass, because it was only seven years ago that we performed it - and we knew it REALLY well at the time - but I didn't remember any of it. I didn't even recognise most of it, with the exception of a couple of phrases in the middle. This is odd, because it was much longer ago that I last did the Spring Symphony, and I didn't even enjoy that last time, yet I remembered almost all of it. So why did the Glagolitic Mass leave my brain so quickly! I liked that!

Last night I watched Alexander Nevsky - which we did in 2008 - and was relieved to find it all came straight back into my head. And I loved the CBSO performance - I'd forgotten what an exciting piece it is! I'd love to do that again. And as I'm writing this I'm watching the Human Planet prom. I like some bits better than others, but I'm particularly taken with the Mongolian band. Some amazing sounds.

I really enjoyed Prom 9, featuring our favourite orchestra, so I was delighted to see that the BBC Music Magazine was bowled over by it too. And I watched the "historically-informed performance" of Mahler 9 with interest. I knew nothing about HIP until I did an OU course that examined it thoroughly, and I'm fascinated by the arguments for and against it. On the whole I think I'm more against it than for it, but I do think it's a subject worthy of consideration. Classical Iconoclast seems similarly torn, but I was intrigued by the David Hurwitz article from Classics Today, which I discovered via the Classical Iconoclast post. But I have to say that when I watched the performance (having just read that article) it didn't seem that bad. Mind you, I don't know Mahler 9, so it may well be that I would have been more horrified if I remembered ever hearing it before!

Not a Prom, but really good anyway: you'll recall Whit Friday, the brass band contest that I go on about every year? (Next year it's on 1st June, if you want to mark it in your diary now!) Well, this year was as much fun as ever, but there was one really moving thing. Last year, a spectator was killed by one of the band coaches, so this year the Brighouse & Rastrick Band played a hymn as a tribute to him. Really lovely.

Here's a few things I liked from Tom Service at the Guardian: an orchestra that doesn't use a conductor (and, also, look what he says is on his iPod); the classical work he finds the most boring (it's Pictures at an Exhibition, if you can't be bothered reading it!); and he wonders whether there's a British equivalent of Ma Vlast.

More from the Guardian: Gerard McBurney loves Wagner despite everyone telling him not to; Orlando Gough considers what problems opera singers might encounter if they try to sing pop; and lots of pop stars describe their worst ever gigs.

A few things from Stephen Hough's Telegraph blog: a tip for pianists who play chamber music; a discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of playing from memory; some tricks to help pianists play trills; some interesting thoughts about the way the arts are funded in different countries, and why some models are better than others; and a brief thing about The Girl from Ipanema.

(I always think of the same thing when I think of The Girl from Ipanema, and it always makes me grin. Years ago, I saw a stand-up comedian who talked about the song. "It says 'When she moves, it's like a samba'. Have you ever seen a samba? If she walked like that, I'm not surprised each person she passes goes 'Ahhhh!'" It was much funnier the way he told it, mind you...)

I've read a few things now about classical music clubbing, but I haven't tried it, and I doubt I ever will... although that's only because I'm not the clubbing type! But it sounds like a great idea. Londonist talks about a few places in London that do it, and the BBC Music Magazine sent someone to try one of them. And Gabriel Prokofiev (grandson of the famous Prokofiev) is heavily involved in all this - here's a Guardian interview with him (and one of his compositions is being played in tonight's Prom).

This intrigued me (which won't surprise anyone who knows me well!) - a discussion of the first chord of A Hard Day's Night. (If you can't remember exactly what it sounds like, let me refresh your memory.) (The Beatles Bible page seems a bit broken at the moment - none of the images work at the time of writing - but just scroll down to the text.)

Peter Phillips writes in the Spectator about the differences between live and recorded concerts.

I was interested to see this list of the top 30 American music colleges, mainly because there are so many there that I'd never even heard of!

From Classical Music magazine, news that Boosey & Hawkes have launched a scheme in which anyone can look at lots of their newly-published scores online. I presumed, when I heard about this, that it would be stuff no-one's ever heard of, but it's not - have a look at the list!

From Bachtrack, a blog post by one of their staff, who's recently started taking singing lessons and has been surprised by several aspects of the process.

If you get on buses or trains as often as I do, you'll probably be just as irritated as me by kids who play tinny 'music' on their phones. (Apparently this is called 'sodcasting'.) But after reading this BBC News article, I started to consider it in a different light. (It still drives me up the wall though!)

On an Overgrown Path has discovered a miracle cure for coughs in concerts. I haven't got a cough at the moment, though, so I can't test it!

I didn't see anything in the Manchester Festival, which I'm a bit ashamed about, but if I had seen anything, it would probably have been the Damon Albarn opera, Dr Dee. So I was fascinated to learn, from that BBC News article, that he lived at Chet's, and that the burn mark on the table in the Audit Room there was supposedly made by Satan when Dee summoned him. I was told when I started school there, at the age of 10, that the mark was made by the Devil, but I never knew the rest of the story till now!

Something else I never knew: Norman Lebrecht writes in the Telegraph about Mahler's connection with Manchester. (He also suggests that Manchester has been 'overtaken by Birmingham in size and by Liverpool in wit, but it ... has the chance to reassert its intellectual swagger, and rebuild a city of the mind.' I think I quite like that idea.)

On a related note, a Guardian article about how Manchester has turned itself into a brand. (It says that our three main attributes are: "Openness. Inclusivity. And a certain amount of swagger.")

This sort of thing doesn't help, although I'm sure it's not just Manchester: apparently the behaviour of drunk women at the recent Take That concerts was much worse than the behaviour of men at football matches... and most of the ones who were taken to hospital were in their 30s and 40s!

Londonist has a list of interesting but untrue facts about London.

Here's a great article that explains why anyone who accepted the statement that 'two billion people watched the royal wedding' needs to think about this a bit more.

This is very reassuring: you've probably heard of CDC (the Centres for Disease Control in the USA, based in Atlanta)? Well, they have very helpfully given some official advice on how to prepare for a zombie apocalypse.

Also related to CDC is this excellent Wired article which describes the discovery and subsequent history of AIDS. Well worth a read.