With the sweetest burst of melody I know... it's the piccolo

I haven't done much singing since Manchester Lines finished a couple of weeks ago. There've been normal choir practices, of course - last week's caused me to have "Come Follow the Band" stuck in my head for days. We're doing that at Tatton Park this Saturday, along with several other much more conventional choral classics (although I'm still baffled about who keeps suggesting that Walton's Henry V is appropriate at all for concerts like this, let alone that it makes a good finale!) Actually, I feel that my main contribution towards this concert has been alerting some of my friends to the existence of the Foreskin Chorus, which I was surprised to find they'd never heard of…

We do have our trip to the Proms in a couple of weeks' time. I have to admit that so far I haven't been bowled over by any of the proms I've seen or heard, but there's still time. And this Thursday has Beethoven 5 (and 6, but 5 is the one I love) on BBC4, so I'm looking forward to that, at least. I did listen to My Fair Lady, which was OK, but I think I would have preferred to see it on TV. I was surprised it wasn't, actually - the John Wilson ones usually are - but this BBC blog post reveals that they couldn't get the rights!

The Olympics are just about upon us too, but I'm almost as unexcited about them. (I seem to be grumpy about everything lately!) Actually, the one part of the Olympics I have been looking forward to, ever since I heard about it, is the extreme bell-ringing which is due to take place at 8.12am this Friday morning. It seems that even Big Ben is going to join in. Assuming I wake up in time, I plan to shake my sleighbells :-)

Actually, I will be part of the Olympics in one way, even if I don't join in with the bells. There's a sound installation which will be played along the whole length of the Millennium Bridge, between July and September from 8am to 10pm every day… and at the start of each hour it will play the Virtual Choir 3 performance of Eric Whitacre's "Water Night", which includes me. I must say I'm quite taken by the thought of being part of "an astounding invisible 3,746-voice strong choir from 73 countries"!

I wasn't paid to be part of the Virtual Choir, of course, but there are lots of musicians who should be receiving payment for their part in the Olympics but aren't… or, at least, aren't being paid enough. This Guardian article explains. Outrageous.

This is a totally insane idea, but I love it: there's a bloke who's attempting to create an orchestra made up entirely of people he meets on the Tube. Not only that, in order to qualify they have to be actually carrying their instrument the first time he meets them.

Apparently sopranos live longer than altos! Yet there is no significant difference between the life spans of tenors and basses. Another example of the fact that the universe hates altos, I think!

It seems that there's an Austrian grave robber who is stealing bits of dead composers. He's already got the teeth of both Brahms and Strauss. *boggle*

Here's a nice Telegraph blog post about why musical taste is more revealing than reading habits.

Was it just me that didn't know that it was Sir Thomas Allen who was the real-life inspiration for Billy Elliot?

I'm extremely amused that Spem in Alium has raced to the top of the classical charts due to being mentioned in "Fifty Shades of Grey", which - if you haven't heard of it - is the current bestselling book in the UK (and probably everywhere else). (I haven't read it, and have no plans to do so - I do read lots of fanfiction, but I have friends who have read the original piece of Twilight fanfiction, before the author changed the names so it was publishable, and they tell me that it was unbelievably bad fanfiction. Normally I would prefer to read something myself and make my own mind up, but life's too short to read rubbish, and I've not yet seen a single review that suggests my friends are mistaken.)

This is a nice story: there's a Manchester wrestler who has chosen to have his next fight at the RNCM so that he can enter the ring to the sound of a string quartet playing the New World Symphony. I'm not sure whether he doesn't know that it's 45 minutes long, or the reporter doesn't, but never mind. I imagine it must be the start of the last movement that he's using - I can't imagine most of the rest of it fitting the bill!

The Guardian has a nice obituary of Neville Roberts, who sadly died recently.

If you're a Sudoku fan, you may be interested to try this one: it's supposed to be the hardest one there is.

And finally, there's a flower festival going on in Manchester city centre this week. It's called Dig the City, and the BBC news site has some lovely photos of it.