F is for phone, for those who spell phonetically

Well, we're now halfway through the run of Manchester Lines, and it's great fun. (It does feel a bit as if I've spent more time at Number One First Street this month than my best friend, who works there, but I know that's not really the case!)

If you haven't seen the show yet, do get a ticket if you can, because it ends on 7th July and you'll never be able to see it anywhere else - and it's fabulous. I just want everyone to see how good it is! It's magical and happy and sad and thought-provoking and beautiful. There are loads of reviews (not sure why there are so many more than there ever are for any of our concerts, but that's definitely the case!) Most of them are good, but there are a couple of awful ones, which baffled me when I read them. (Especially the one in the Oldham Chronicle, where the reviewer complained that his seat was uncomfortable - you get to choose your own seat! So it serves him right for picking an uncomfortable one! Mine was fine when I saw the show, and it wasn't even one of the cushioned ones!)

Hardly any of the reviews mention the choir at all, but luckily we're used to that, aren't we? If you do come to watch, though, try to make it a Monday or Thursday - those are the days you're most likely to see choir members that you know :-)

Before you read the reviews, watch the trailer on the official website - that'll give you an idea. Then, in order of publication:

The Guardian
What's On Stage
The Arts Desk
Oldham Chronicle
British Theatre Guide
The Public Reviews
The Good Review
Jildy Sauce
Creative Tourist
The Stage
Remote Goat
Manchester Evening News/City Life
Alison's Adventures in Theatreland
Cheshire Today
Reviews Gate
The Observer

Other news: let's see… Not much going on with my main choir - we don't have a concert until the end of July and we haven't started rehearsing for it yet (which is alarming quite a few people who haven't sung some of the pieces before!) We did a bit of an Apostles recap last night, but mainly we've been sight-reading a few new things. I really enjoyed having a go at the Holst Hymns from the Rig Veda last week - I'd done some of them before, but not all, and they're all lovely. (Paul Brennan said that the last one sounded like a camel wearing Lycra!)

My school choir has a concert a week on Saturday, which I'm looking forward to. This week we tried adding movement to our last song, and it looks really good - the kids picked it up instantly and then improved it! The only worry is that our songs this time involve quite a few soloists, and we've had to make several changes to these for one reason or another. Let's see who turns up on the day!

One bit of great news that's related to both my choirs is that I persuaded my star singer from the school choir - a year 10 bass - to audition for the HYC, and he's got in \o/ I'm so proud!

You know I always go on about Whit Friday? Well, this week there was a lovely article in the Daily Telegraph about the whole thing.

Gareth Malone's next project is called Sing While You Work, in which he'll train choirs at four different workplaces and then they'll compete against each other. Which is fine, I suppose, but why does it always have to be a competition? His previous projects have been great without setting people against each other - seems unnecessary to me.

A bit of Manchester news: Having been to First Street so many times recently, I'm very well aware that the hoarding in front of the Central Library says it's reopening in 2013. But, according to the MEN, it's actually not opening till 2014… and, what's more, the City Library will close in September 2013 and there'll be a temporary library in the Town Hall until the main library reopens! Does this make any sense to anyone?

I'm sure lots of you are enjoying the football (at least until England lose…) so you'll be well aware of the significance of this advert!

And finally… this made me cry with laughter. Most of you will have sung O Fortuna from "Carmina Burana" (it's the opening item of our next concert, in fact)… but I suspect that after you've watched this video you will never hear it the same way again :-)

Let me entertain you

Did you watch the Jubilee concert on Monday? I watched all the Jubilee coverage over the four days, but I didn't attempt to see any of it live - the commentators on such things always annoy me far too much, so I usually record them and watch them on fast forward. But I watched more of the concert than I did any of the other events (because there was less commentary!) and really enjoyed most of it.

My very favourite bit was right at the start, though: Robbie Williams with the Scots Guards (pictured above). (Things where the best bit is at the start are always a bit disappointing overall, I think - I call this the "Haydn's Creation Syndrome" - but at least in the case of the Jubilee concert I didn't know that would be the best bit!) I loved the idea of the band marching onto the stage and opening the concert anyway, but when they segued into "Let Me Entertain You" (which has a very distinctive intro) and Robbie appeared, I squealed in excitement. And then when the trumpeters all stayed there and played bits I thought it was fabulous! Especially the way they all moved their trumpets together. If you didn't see it, here's the whole song:



(or via this link if the embedding doesn't work for you)

There were lots of other good bits, even if none was quite as amazing as the start. I loved Annie Lennox's dress, and the fact that all the musicians wore wings for her song. And Tom Jones was great, especially "Delilah" (with an extra Spanish flavour). I liked Kylie, especially the a cappella intro to "Step Back In Time" (and she had the best dancers, too). And Paul McCartney, unsurprisingly, had the best actual songs… and the best firework display and light show. Actually, there were loads of great lighting effects - I loved the way they used the front of the Palace for that.

Actually, I almost forgot the other bit that really moved me: Gary Barlow and the Commonwealth Band with "Sing". The performance was good, but what made it really special was having just seen the documentary in which Gary went round the world collecting musicians for it. It's on iPlayer till Sunday if you missed it, and I thoroughly recommend it. It's much more fun than programmes like that usually are, and it meant that when I watched the concert I was delighted to see that they'd managed to get so many of the performers to London; it was much more meaningful having seen where they'd come from.

Oh, and here's Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber talking to the Telegraph about the process of creating the song. Turns out that at one point they hoped to have Lovely Daniel Radcliffe as lead vocalist, until they realised he was anti-royalist! (That article also includes a link via which you can get a free copy of the sheet music for "Sing". You have to sign up for a Really Useful Group newsletter to get it, but there's nothing to stop you unsubscribing straight after!)

There were a few sour notes among the jubilee celebrations, including the fact that the thirteen specially-commissioned new musical works were totally ignored by the BBC. Such a pity - I was looking forward to those! Would have been much more interesting than a bedraggled RCM chamber choir singing "Land of Hope and Glory" repeatedly. But it's par for the course these days, sadly. (Did you see that the LSO has been told to mime at the Olympic opening ceremony? I can't imagine how ridiculous that will look! And I just don't believe the spokesman who said "the performers have no issue with it".)

Better news is that Petroc is home, and back on the radio! He wrote a thank-you note on the Radio 3 blog.

Speaking of Radio 3, did you hear the live concert on Tuesday from Bath Abbey, featuring I Fagiolini? (It's on iPlayer till next Tuesday if not.) It included Spem in Alium (Tallis's 40-part motet), but the main programme item was Striggio's Mass in 40 parts, which is believed to have been Tallis's inspiration. Striggio doesn't stop at 40, either - there are 60 parts in the finale! Both the Mass and Spem are performed with instruments, but the voices aren't overwhelmed, don't worry. (Do listen to Robert Hollingworth's interviews during the concert, too, in which he explains all sorts of interesting things.) Oh, and the concert ends with a reconstructed Gabrieli Magnificat, which they'll be repeating at the Proms on 22nd August.

Slightly less successful for Radio 3 has been Choral Evensong, recently at least: they've been having a few technical hitches!

I hope lots of you experienced Whit Friday last week. (If not, put a ring round 24th May in next year's diary.) For those who are interested, the results from both Saddleworth and Tameside are online, and here are a few videos: Wardle High School marching at Friezland and playing their contest march at Denton, and both Brighouse & Rastrick and Black Dyke playing at Delph. These two bands were probably the best ones who were playing on the night, but Black Dyke was more successful overall, winning more than £8000 prize money.

This week is all Manchester Lines. Do try to come and see the show if you're not singing in it - it'll be great fun! We had the first runthrough with the actors last night, and I enjoyed it a lot, although it was hard work. I'd been a bit worried about the memorising, actually, but only because I'd switched parts a few days ago - I sang alto in all the previous rehearsals, and had no trouble memorising the alto part (we only sing one song, and it's only about four minutes long)… but then they realised they were really short of tenors and asked me to switch. I'd offered to sing tenor in the first place for exactly that reason, but they said they'd be fine… then changed their mind after I'd already learned the alto part! So I wasn't sure which one would emerge, but it was fine - and, in any case, we did it so many times last night that there's no danger of me forgetting it any time soon!

Do any of you do Pilates? I only found out last week about the possible conflict between Pilates and singing. I've been trying to find out more information, but all I've found are lots of contradictions - it seems that not all Pilates experts agree with each other, and neither do all singing teachers! In a nutshell, the issue is that Pilates apparently teaches you to breathe while keeping your abdomen rigid at all times (not just while doing Pilates but in everyday life too), which is obviously at odds with the way most of us are taught to breathe as singers. Fascinating - I don't plan to try Pilates any time soon, but I'd be interested to hear from any singers who have tried it. (Well, apart from the one who alerted me to the problem.)

This is both sad and funny: it seems that in certain parts of New York City they have a plague of a cappella groups! "I don’t need to hear ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ 14 times," said one resident. Hee!

This is interesting: you've probably noticed that pop songs have got longer (on average) over the past few decades - the days of the three-minute pop song are long gone - but did you also spot that they're also slower and sadder? "According to the research, this has meant fewer hit songs in major chords (the number of minor chord hits has doubled over the decades), more epic warbling and more heartbroken lyrics: a slow Adele-ification of the charts."

There's been all sorts of discussion recently about the photo in this Guardian article, which shows an astonishing line of people climbing Mount Everest. Here's a bit of what people are saying.

I saw this on the BBC News site today and realised it had never occurred to me to wonder before: why do some country names have 'the'? (as in 'Poland and the Ukraine')

I love this: 25 handy words that simply don't exist in English. I was about to name my favourite, but I can't decide - they're all great!

You've probably seen Seth Godin's blog, which is always interesting (it's been in my sidebar for ages), so he will need no introduction before you watch him ranting about things being broken. (Scroll down the page for the video.) He is SO RIGHT.