Bimm bamm bimm bamm bimm bamm....

No more Mahler 3 for us for the foreseeable future. Good gig in Sheffield last night though. The City Hall has no acoustic at all, so it felt very different to the lovely Bridgewater Hall. But we did get to watch the first movement this time, from front of house, and then went onstage after that. (There were strange notices backstage saying "this concert uses offstage performers - SILENCE IS NOT AN OPTION"... We presumed it meant "silence is mandatory", but it wasn't clear!)

EDIT: I forgot to mention the two extremely small and cute Manchester Boys' Choir boys who presented bouquets to the soloist and Mark. Mark's face was a picture! Wonder why they didn't get them to do it on Thursday?

Poor Gillian had a fall on arrival at the City Hall. I didn't think it was too bad at first - she sat through the rehearsal, although Wendy was doing physio on her back for part of it (this baffled many of us at first, because we couldn't see why Wendy was sitting on the floor!) - but by the start of the concert she was lying flat on her back in the changing room, being examined by a paramedic and about to go to A&E. I hope all is now well - does anyone know?

My main achievement of yesterday - apart from buying an interview suit - was finding my way to and from the correct Sheffield car park without getting lost in the one-way system. I've gone wrong here so many times in the past that I made very sure I had a printout of my planned route before I set out. I have it saved on disk now, so next time we go I'm sorted :-)

Anyway, I haven't forgotten about Take That (how could I?!? Mmmmmmmmmmm, Take That) but they'll have to wait a bit longer as I'm trying to plan two lessons for my two interviews - both on topics I haven't taught for years - and also get all the latest educational terminology to stick in my head. (The latter is easier, because my current headteacher is very on the ball and mentions the latest stuff all the time.) With a LOT of luck, by Wednesday night's rehearsal I'll have a new job - fingers crossed!

(Oh, and for those who are wondering, the monkeys in the picture are Lisa, Liz and Rachel!)

Quick PS

About the coach to Sheffield... it will now be doing a pickup at the Gun in Hollingworth at 3.50 pm tomorrow (and a dropoff there on the way home). If anyone's plans will change as a result of this news, please let Naomi or Rosy know (or me if you like - I'll pass the message on).

Only review of last night that I've seen is the MEN one, which (as Barbara pointed out) merely mentions - AGAIN - that the choir was THERE! Robert Beale seemed to like it, but can anyone suggest what we can do to get him to actually write something proper about us?

Oh, and I was offered three interviews today \o/ Sadly I could only accept two of them, because two were at the same time as each other. But fingers crossed! One is on Tuesday and one on Wednesday.

Es sungen drei Engel... und neun Hörner

OK, I admit that those aren't the Hallé horns. But how often do you see a picture of 9 horn players together... with Swiss mountains in the background? I was reminded of this picture tonight, when it was the first of the Mahler 3 gigs. The horns are definitely my favourite part of the symphony, so it was quite right that they got to take a bow as a section.

The gig went rather well - there was a standing ovation at the end (although, to be fair, it did coincide with people standing up to leave... but I think most of it was genuine) and Mark got more curtain calls than I can remember for years. I'll be interested to see the reviews! I think everyone is looking forward to doing it again in Sheffield on Saturday, but it's never the same as in Manchester!

Not much else to say at the moment - off to bed soon - other than that it seems that loads of people are doing the People's Chorus thing. My music arrived today - I'm a tenor in choir 3. Sounds as if quite a few Hallé people are in choir 3 - I hope they've got some good people in the other choirs to balance us!

Oh, and Graham E kindly sent an mp3 of Mark getting his RPS award.

More tomorrow. Maybe. Including - maybe - the much-delayed Take That report, which Abi reminded me I promised ages ago. In the meantime, to balance the Verbier horn section, here are the Verbier timp players :-)

"Like a glass of lime juice after a chocolate pudding."

I don't think this is a literal translation of "Lustig im Tempo und keck im Ausdruck". (Well, in fact I know it's not, because the score tells us that means "Merry in tempo and bold in expression".) But it's how Mark Elder says the 5th movement of Mahler 3 should be. (He also said "you're here to give simple, direct pleasure", which I kind of liked the sound of but wasn't sure how to do, and that we were to be, above all, cheeky. Cheeky, we agreed, is easier. Although I had to restrain Gill from doing Cheeky Girls impressions for the rest of the rehearsal after this instruction...)

EDIT: I forgot to mention the oboe! In the few bars before the 5th movement when the choir joins in, there is a prominent oboe cue. But he played it in a really weird way - with a strange tone and a glissando from the F to the A. Never heard an oboe do that before - and I'm an oboist! Never heard Mahler 3 played that way before either. Am fascinated as to whether it's a Mark invention or whether Mahler wanted it that way. The direction in the score is 'hinaufziehen', which means 'approaching from below'... which I suppose could be interpreted like this...

EDIT 2: A couple of people asked me to find out which way the coach will be going to Sheffield on Saturday. I have enquired, and unfortunately the coach will be unable to stop en route, so the route is a moot point. Sorry.

I have to admit that the thing that amused me most tonight (which was the piano AND orchestral rehearsal for the Mahler, in case you were wondering) was the repeated mention of the word "Keck!" (which is German for "bold") However, you have to be a World of Warcraft player to understand why this is so funny, and I suspect that the Hallé Choir/WoW intersection is an extremely small group... You'd be surprised how many random visitors come here looking for "orcish translators", though, so I may as well point out that if a Horde player says "LOL" (in Orcish) it appears as "kek" to Alliance players. (If there are any WoW players among the choir, can I direct you to my WoW reference page? And in particular to the LotR-WoW animated gif linked from it, which features the funniest ever use of "kek"...)

That last paragraph was possibly the saddest, geekiest one ever, wasn't it? Sorry about that :p I'd better regain the attention of my non-geeky readers by pointing them to a couple of interesting features from the Guardian and the Observer - one about a tone-deaf woman trying to learn to sing 'Happy Birthday', and a great speech about why we should talk more about the music we listen to. (You may have to register to read those, but it's free and well worth the effort.)

Need to sleep soon - only just got home, because there was a committee meeting after the rehearsal (quite a productive one). Couple of things to point out before I go, though - firstly, after the live baseball on Channel 5 finished in the early hours of this morning (about 4 am), I was flicking through the channels and was very surprised to suddenly find the choir on TV! BBC4 were repeating our Gerontius thing from the Proms. Hadn't noticed that in the listings. (And, before you ask, I'm still being promised DVDs of that... yes, really...) And finally, our gig on Thursday is live on Radio 3. Not sure who I'll be able to persuade to listen when it's also Big Brother launch night :p

"It's not a bass moment, it's a man moment!"

Sorry for the delay in posting, folks, I seem to have spent every spare minute this week (and there haven't been many) filling in job application forms. Number of jobs applied for so far: 9 (with 10 more applications ready to be filled in in the next few days). Number of schools that want to meet me: 0. Days until I have to hand my notice in if I want to be elsewhere in September: 18. Argh! But I will persevere.

The title of this post is a Jamieism from Wednesday night's rehearsal. It was during the Dies Irae of Mozart's Requiem (oddly enough, so are all the other things I wrote down, although we also did the Lacrimosa, Mahler 3 and Zadok the Priest. And the men did Schoenberg. Sam showed me his copy - it's only a couple of pages long! And they appear to be in unison throughout. It doesn't look quite as hard as I'd expected (although it certainly doesn't look easy), but a lot depends on the harmony underneath, and since I was looking at it while Mozart was going on, I couldn't really hear Schoenberg in my head!)

This was Jamie's justification for getting the tenors to join the basses on what I think of as the "cars on the motorway" bit. (If you can't see why, I should probably point out that it's the S/A/T backing vocals that inspired this analogy - which I do not claim to have invented, by the way, it was Stuart Beer, a previous choirmaster of mine - and not the bass part.) There was also much amusement at "It might have been the last note he wrote!" [this was the last quaver of page 15] "He might have lifted his head from his deathbed and said 'The altos need a quaver!' ... They need a lot more than that..."

Oh, and also "Can you vibrate more? ... I don't know why my eyes were drawn to the altos..." and "We've got to stick knives into this audience. Gently!"

What else was I going to say? Oh yes, the People's Chorus has sent out emails to those who've applied. I imagine everyone got accepted, because the website is now saying they have room for more. So if you haven't done anything about it yet, do go and sign up. I'll be joining the tenors on the day, because I thought I'd be helpful and put on the form that I could sing tenor if necessary, and they've said "yes please". (I just had a tiny inkling that they might be short of tenors - and guess what, they are!)

Talking of tenors, apparently it was the lovely Paul Brennan who did the dramatic nose-blowing at last week's rehearsal - he came to confess!

Oh, and I forgot to mention that we have two new 2nd altos. Well, not new to the choir, but new to the part - they were promoted from the 1sts. Some would claim this to be a demotion, but what do they know? :p I don't remember anyone ever moving to 2nd alto before, although loads of people have been moved from 2nd alto. Maybe Jamie finally noticed how depleted our numbers had become... but for whatever reason, it's great to have Kathy and Catharina joining the best part in the choir :-)

Dr Liz is keen for me to write about Take That (mmmmm) and I did plan to, but I'm falling asleep again so they'll have to wait a bit longer. So I will leave you with this blog post I discovered, which may interest the Beatles fans among you. It's a guy listing not his favourite Beatles songs, but his favourite *moments* in Beatles songs :-)

"The Hallé Choir sounded luminous, as confident as it was sensitive."

Independent review of the Fauré.

In unrelated news, this story may be of interest, if only for the allegation "no-one wants to sing in choirs!"

And, I saw Take That tonight. Mmmmmmmm :-) May write about them at some point, but right now I'm going to sleep to dream about them :p

"He wants a devout sit!"

(That's Mark's instruction for the start of the last movement of Mahler 3, as relayed tonight by Jamie. I can't wait to see people's attempts at this...)

A fun rehearsal tonight. With quite a few LOL moments. The biggest was one where you probably had to be there - during Ave Verum, when Jamie said "Basses, you've got the danger note in your part. We're in what key?", and somebody blew their nose, really loudly :-)

Another was Jamie saying "My tongue gets in there much sooner than yours, ladies!" ... and I can't even remember why! But it was definitely during Mahler 3, not long after he said "What d'you call the thing that hits the bell?" and Gill suggested "The donger?"

I must say it was great fun to sing Mahler 3 again. I expect some of the sops are a bit upset not to be singing the top part (the Youth Choir girls are doing that) but if so they kept it to themselves. I gave out (to the 2nd altos) copies of the single sheet copy I did last time we sang it (when we had to learn it from memory - I can learn things quicker if they're on a single sheet). I was horrified when it was pointed out that I'd missed out one of the repeated "bimm bamm" bars... no-one noticed last time! Now I'll have to copy it again! On the plus side, it does show that the current 2nd altos are more observant than the ones who went to Verbier :p

The most fun part of Mahler 3 tonight, actually, was Jamie's jazzy piano accompaniment to figure 6. He only played it to make us stay in time, but it was great. Possibly better than what Mahler wrote!

At the end of the rehearsal, Jamie gave us a quick rundown of what we're doing next season (normally Mark or Geoff Owen would do this, but they were both unavailable and TPTB wanted to inform the choir ASAP). I hesitated about mentioning it here, because in the past we've been asked to keep the info to ourselves until the press release. But no such instruction was given tonight, and in any case Graham tells me that the info about the new season is already in the public domain (although not on the Hallé website yet, I just looked). So here you are:

23rd September: Daphnis and Chloe (Ravel) with BBC Phil & Gianandrea Noseda
14th October: Psalmus Hungaricus (Kodaly) AND Beethoven 9, with Mark Elder, and soloists including the tenor Stefan Margita (his website doesn't work for me; maybe it doesn't like Macs)
27th October: Survivor from Warsaw (Schoenberg) - with BBC Phil & Gianandrea Noseda, men only, in Hebrew!
December: Messiah with Nicholas Kraemer
December: Carol concerts with Jamie
11th February 2007: Mozart's Mass in C minor with Mark
6th May 2007: a French concert with Mark, ending in Poulenc's Gloria
3rd June 2007: The Kingdom (Elgar) as part of a weekend celebrating Elgar's 150th birthday and Mark Elder's 60th (both on 2nd June)

So our languages next season will definitely include French, German, Hebrew, English, Latin, and Hungarian (which Jamie says is easier than Russian, but we'll be starting it in July regardless!) Maybe Jamie will manage to get some more into the carol concerts - Spanish and Russian and Portuguese and - Italian! I've just realised that looks like a season with no Italian! That can't be good for the voice!

And finally, I feel an urge to give you some mp3s. It's been a while :-)

Mahler 3, 5th movement (4.8 MB)

Coconut (Harry Nilsson) (4.5 MB)

Manchester (The Beautiful South) (5.4 MB)

The latter two have been on my brain for weeks. The coconut one is of course because of the Lime Coke advert. The new Beautiful South song is fun, especially as it sounds at first as if it's an anti-Manchester song, but then it becomes quite the opposite \o/

Hands up who has ever felt precise AND mellow - at the same time....?

Well, the MEN review thinks we all were. I suppose there are worse things to be called. We did better than the soprano soloist, who wasn't mentioned at all (at least not in connection with the Fauré)!

A few bits of other news to pass on, so this will be a bit listish:

Mark is conducting the Last Night of the Proms! This is probably something everyone knew except me, but I'm pointing it out in case you missed it. All the details are now online. Oh, and it appears we're not in the Proms in the Park again - it's the BBC Phil. (With the ubiquitous Heather Stott!)

Jamie's Oxford chamber choir is doing something interesting-looking in June. (On a Wednesday night, too, so I guess he won't be conducting us that night...) It's called the Oxford Blues service - "Choral Evensong in the jazz idiom, broadcast live on BBC Radio 3" - and looks like great fun! "The work deliberately allows scope for improvisation from both the singers and conductor...."

Incidentally, I recently discovered that the "Master Tallis's Testament" idea for a concert programme is not new to us - see this post (from the On An Overgrown Path blog over a year ago). I wonder whether or not Jamie knew about that before he concocted ours. Great minds do think alike, though :p

Oh, and the media interest in the Manchester Passion has died down now, but I did see this article on the Guardian blog this week, which mentions it in fairly glowing terms.

For those who've signed up for the People's Chorus, Barbara points out this site to help you learn it. The BBC site says we will know by 12th May whether we're in it or not, and that there will be links to websites with the music on them.

And finally, I've just remembered that I planned to write something about the War of the Worlds live show. The following is an excerpt from the LJ post I did about it, so to anyone who is on my LJ list, apologies for the duplication!

I accidentally saw The War of the Worlds twice last Sunday. First, the Tom Cruise film, which it's possible I might have almost enjoyed (although not a lot) if it hadn't claimed to be "The War of the Worlds". As it was, I didn't.

Then, that night, I saw the live show of the Jeff Wayne version. (Times review here.) It had special effects that were fairly laughable - probably not only less than a millionth of the budget for the Tom Cruise film, but I wouldn't be surprised if the budget was less than 10% of the special effects for *McFly* (which was the last show I saw at the MEN Arena). It also had a film playing on a screen behind the musicians most of the way through, when there were no live soloists onstage. And this film looked as if it had been filmed on someone's phone and edited with free software. Oh, and (I'm sure this is the bit you'll all have read about) it had a disembodied head which was supposed to look like Richard Burton in his heyday, which moved its mouth in sync with the narration (and waggled its eyebrows alarmingly from time to time - and it winked during the curtain call...) And it had Russell Watson playing a small role (Parson Nathaniel), and I really hate Russell Watson.

And yet.

It was FABULOUS. I LOVED it. Even without the comparison with Tom Cruise I would've loved it. And I hadn't expected to love it quite as much as I did, so I wanted to examine the reasons behind this experience, because I was thinking about this during the show.

See, what was great was that they played the whole album, live, so that it sounded more or less exactly like the recording. And of course this is not always the most exciting thing to do in a live performance - I know many people (including myself) who would rate a gig as fairly boring if there were NO changes from versions I'd heard before. But in this case it was vital. The whole audience appeared to be more or less the same age as me (I'd estimate there were at most 10% there who were more than 10 years older or younger than me). And EVERYONE my age owned this album. It came out in 1978 (when I was in the 3rd year at school) and was played to death for years afterwards. I had a freaky experience with it on my first astronomical camping trip in 1980 (long story). In the past 28 years, I've heard it gradually less frequently, but it's never quite left my head, and I think you'd be hard-pushed to find someone in their late 30s/early 40s who doesn't think of this album whenever the phrase "War of the Worlds" is mentioned.

So, actually seeing it live was an unbelievable thrill. The visual aspect wasn't all that thrilling, but seeing the orchestra (who played far less than I'd always thought) and a band including HERBIE FLOWERS on bass (I'd totally forgotten that was him), and then to cap it all JUSTIN HAYWARD singing his original bits (he is 60 this year but didn't sound any different to how he used to with the Moody Blues)... wow.

And I just kept thinking how very familiar it all was. To the extent that, for example, everyone in the audience knew exactly when the interval would be, because we all owned the album on vinyl and knew when side 1 ended. And it occurred to me that today's younger music-listening generation will never have that feeling, as a result of shuffle play and single tracks from iTMS etc. And I'm sure none of them are worried about that at all - well, neither am I really, but it does sadden me slightly to know that shared musical experiences like the one I witnessed that night are a dying breed.

Welcome the altos into the f-ray

This was Jamie's worst pun tonight (and there were some really bad ones... e.g. "You have great looks but no loo-x!" to the sops who weren't using the right vowel on Lux Aeterna...). It referred to the last two chords of the Sanctus. (What do you think Fauré had against altos? Must read his life story sometime to try and find out!)

Not much to say, actually. Just about everything went wrong for me today (including a crisis I only discovered when I got home tonight) so it was good that the concert went well - it was a very welcome oasis of loveliness! I thought we did rather well. The soloists sounded a bit better tonight (but still not spectacular). Well, actually, the baritone was fine, but the sop was still flat. (She sounded pretty good in the weird Debussy song in the first half though. In fact, the whole of the first half was weird! Not unpleasantly so, though.) But the choir was great :-) Particularly the sops, actually. They sounded fantastic. There were several places where I had a huge grin on my face because of the loveliness from the other side of the choir!

Oh, and Jamie used the "keep the tiller in the water" analogy again. I wanted to tell him how little sense this makes, but there was no time, because we rehearsed till about 7.29 pm (well, it felt like it) and then I had to get changed. But I will explain boats to him the next chance I get :p

I'll write more tomorrow (maybe) but am off to sleep now, having spent the time since I got home preparing school stuff for tomorrow. Non-teachers conveniently forget these details when they complain about the length of our holidays!

"I can only see the bottom half of your body!" said the organist to the conductor...

So, this is the Beetham Tower. Hands up who's heard of it? Tallest UK building outside London, etc.? ... OK, now hands up who's noticed that it is RIGHT OPPOSITE THE BRIDGEWATER HALL?

No, me neither, until tonight, and that was only because the sunset was glinting prettily off the side of it (not the side in that picture, sadly). In my defence, I don't often have reason to look up that high in the city centre (the light pollution makes the stars invisible, see) and the bottom of the building isn't that different from all the other new buildings.

Anyway. Orchestral rehearsal for the Fauré tonight. Went OK, although the highlight was definitely finishing over an hour early! No huge disasters from our point of view. We were somewhat disappointed with the soloists - the baritone was OK but nothing spectactular, and the soprano was flat. The fact that there was no applause at the end of the Pie Jesu was very telling, I thought. But maybe they'll both rise to the occasion tomorrow.

We didn't have much time with Jamie, hence no Jamieisms. Although there were an alarming amount of giddy-ups from him during the off-the-voice arpeggio warmup...

Letter H of Libera Me

Yes, you're right, I should be asleep, but (a) I can't sleep, and (b) I'm waiting for one of my cats to come in :-)

I can see I'm going to be wiped out by the end of this week. Back to school yesterday, GCSE coursework to sort out for 2 subjects, any number of other urgent things that have to be done this week... and we have choir tonight (piano rehearsal), tomorrow (orchestral rehearsal) and Thursday (concert)! Argh! At least it's a fabulous piece that I love dearly (Fauré's Requiem, for those who aren't paying attention).

Not much to report, actually, so in a minute I'm going to treat you to my "notable bits of Fauré's Requiem". I know you want to hear that! Not even any Jamieisms (well, except something I forgot to write down at the time, about the altos and tenors keeping an eye on each other's bits... it made Dr Liz giggle!)

We've got a new temporary choral administrator, called Rosie. She was extremely well received by the choir, particularly by the men... being young and pretty probably helped there, mind you :p But the ladies of the choir were equally delighted to meet Micha Hamel, the conductor. He looked even younger in the flesh than in his pictures, but was very lovely... Not the loudest of voices - I had trouble hearing what he said at times, and I wasn't right at the back - but other than that he was very clear about what he wanted, which is a good thing in a conductor.

Dr Liz and I watched at the break, as the person who was picked for the semi-chorus but then asked to reaudition to stay in the choir (I don't think it's a huge secret who this is, but I feel that it's not up to me to name her in such a public forum as this) - confronted Jamie. They had quite a long chat, but I don't think she was entirely satisfied by his answers. One of these was that when choosing the semi-chorus, he was choosing good, reliable sight-readers.

...

(That's a pause while you imagine my reaction to that! I will say no more.)

Oh, and I saw the live show of Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds on Sunday night. Might write about that tomorrow, though, because both the cats are now in :-) So I'll cut to the "notable bits", which I actually wrote down first, but not before reminding you all to sign up for the People's Chorus if you haven't yet done so!

Anyway, here we go... Fauré's Requiem - the Notable Bits!

Well, actually, first of all I'm going to list my favourite bits, because they're ALL notable :-) Wendy and I were pointing them out to each other as we went along. The title of this post - Letter H of Libera Me - is the one I've decided is probably my favourite of the whole piece. It's the alto/bass low bit - actually, though, the whole of the Libera Me is possibly my favourite bit. Well, actually, the whole Requiem :-)

Other good bits:
• 3rd bar of A in Sanctus (first time the orchestral bass note changes)
• 2nd bar of B in Sanctus (bass note descends to F, and we're suddenly, and very unexpectedly, in D minor)
• Letter E of Sanctus (the horn bit!)
• 2 bars later (the men's bit!)
• Letter G of Agnus Dei (horns again...)
• 2nd bar of B in Pie Jesu (nice chord, and also the first time the soloist has orchestral accompaniment; until then, she sings with the organ, and the orchestra play in the gaps)
• 3rd bar of B in In Paradisum (men's chords)

Other general info about the instrumentation:

The violas and the cellos are both split into 2 parts throughout (in the Sanctus, the 2 viola parts play arpeggios in contrary motion most of the way through).

The first thing the violins play is, very unusually, not until bar 5 of the Sanctus, and even then they're muted. They don't play in the Pie Jesu. The first unmuted thing they play is the big Agnus Dei intro. Oh, and the bit right after letter G of the Agnus Dei LOOKS like the beginning, but this time the violins play too. (Then in Libera Me they don't play till the fast bit.)

There are 2 harps, who only play in the Sanctus, Pie Jesu and 2nd half of In Paradisum, and they play the same as each other most of the time.

The altos only sing the last 2 notes of the Sanctus, and not much more in In Paradisum. (All altos know this, but other parts might not have noticed!)

The trumpets don't play again after the Sanctus (no, not even in the loud bit of Libera Me).

The flutes and clarinets only play in the Pie Jesu.

The "Lux aeterna" bit (2 before E) in the Agnus Dei is what I think of as "the Fauré Requiem bit". I think this is because there's a bit in Mozart's Requiem that's very similar, and I knew the Fauré many years before I first heard the Mozart. The fact that the latter predates the former by over 100 years doesn't seem to have registered with that part of my brain :p

---
Anyway, sleep!

I am the Resurrection

Loads of people are coming here looking for stuff about the Manchester Passion, most of them wanting song lists and cast lists - so I'll point you all to this Wikipedia page about it, which has both. I just edited it myself, because it had a couple of things missing - most reports haven't mentioned the inclusion of Hallelujah or Ever Fallen In Love, probably because they were both only played by the orchestra; and I haven't seen anywhere that mentions the lovely Chris Bisson, who ended up being Barabbas. (I'm sure I read that Barabbas was supposed to be Bez, but he only appeared as one of the criminals in the van. At least, I'm pretty sure that was him - can anyone confirm or deny?)

Everyone seems to have either loved or hated the Passion. From the reports I've seen, the vast majority thought it was great (try googling or searching blogs to see LOTS more opinions), but then you could argue that people who hated it would be less inclined to write about it. To answer two common objections, though: Quite a few people complained that it made no sense for Peter to sing "I am the Resurrection", but he only sang the verse (i.e. not actually mentioning the Resurrection at all), and if you look at the lyrics, you'll see that they fit Peter quite well. And as for the inclusion of a Robbie Williams song, the official line on that was "Yes I know Robbie Williams isn’t from Manchester but the argument is that he was in Take That who were managed from a Manchester base. Some might say that’s a bit tenuous but there you are. It’s too late to change it now."

One more thing I forgot to mention about the Passion - the fact that technically it all went amazingly well, except for one notable thing. At the end (after the live transmission) when they were having the singalong, the crowd shouted for Tim Booth to come to the front and sing "Sit Down" (his own song, but it wasn't him that got to sing it in the show). And he did... but could the BBC get his mic to work? Or could anyone even run out and give him a handheld mic? Apparently not :-( Oh well - at least we SAW him sing it, even if we couldn't hear him at all!

Anyway. What else did I want to mention? Loads of stuff that's much more choir-related! To start with, I discovered a choral singer's blog, which appears to have been going for quite a while. (The most recent article made me blink... for a moment I thought Jamie had had a church named after him!) I've not read everything, but there are a couple of particularly relevant articles: The missing chamber choirs of Manchester, and The missing church choirs of Manchester. See what you think.

Another fascinating website I found recently: Musipedia. This is a way to identify tunes in various ways, including singing to your computer! It didn't manage to identify what I was looking for, but maybe you'll have better luck. (And maybe one of you can answer my question: you know the Wembley song? "Wem-ber-lee, Wem-ber-lee..." What is the name of the original tune? I have a few more football-song-related queries, but that's the one I most urgently need to know... and have been totally unable to find the answer to...)

And did you know about Google Latin?

A specifically Hallé Choir thing I've been meaning to say for ages: I'm really disappointed by the low number of people who have said they'll do the Sheffield gig next month. (Only 62% of the ladies.) It's really frustrating, because I absolutely love doing out-of-town concerts, and the vast majority, in the questionnaire, said they wanted to do more of them. But unfortunately if such low numbers sign up, we are unlikely to get to do ANY - the Hallé Concerts Society have a reputation to uphold, and since they do several concerts a year at Sheffield, Leeds, Hanley etc., they don't want to risk their relationship with those venues by putting on sub-standard concerts. And choral concerts with not enough singers to balance the orchestra count as sub-standard. So unless they are confident that the choir will turn out when requested, they won't book concerts that involve us. And THAT means that if we don't get more ladies going to Sheffield than are currently on the list, we are unlikely to get to go anywhere else any time soon. (And of course there is a similar problem with regard to "home" concerts. Everyone said in the questionnaire that they wanted to do more of the really big works - but when we rarely have more than 100 of the choir on the platform, they're just not going to book concerts that need a huge choir! There is of course the option of bringing in another choir - which we all hate, but there isn't much choice in the circumstances - but that costs them a lot of money so they are more likely in the future to just not put on concerts with big choirs...)

Anyway, baseball is on soon (yay!) so I'll stop. Go Braves!

EDIT: One more thing. Just updated our concerts page and noticed that we now have a replacement conductor for the Fauré. Micha Hamel - he's younger than me, and looks quite striking, doesn't he?

"Ironically, we're waiting for Jesus to come down!"

... said Keith Allen after the Manchester Passion went off air. (They wanted to have a bit of a singalong with the whole cast and crowd, but Jesus was still at the top of the Town Hall tower, from which he'd sung his last song.)

It was fun! Not seen the whole of the broadcast yet, because the traffic getting out of town was so bad that I didn't get home till 11.30 (normally I'd have been on the train, but helpfully there were engineering works. Typical.) But from the bit I saw, they weren't focussing on where we were standing. Not to worry - we were right at the front so had a fabulous view. (I took a couple of pictures before and after the show - will put them online shortly.)

The singing (of the "communal choir") was not quite as successful as they'd hoped, I suspect. Although there were lots of people singing. The problem was one of placement - the volunteer singers weren't all together, we were scattered through the crowd in groups. I think it would have been a lot better if all the singers had been where we were - we were put in the ridiculously named "golden circle" (i.e. right in front of the stage) as we were assumed to be the best (quite rightly!) But also in the golden circle were a load of people with guest passes - relatives of the cast, etc., I think - and most of them didn't sing at all but spent the whole time talking very loudly so they could hear each other over the speakers. Oh well. We sang very loudly anyway :-)

There was a warmup comedian guy before the show, called (I think) John Warburton. He explained to the crowd what would happen and what they were asked to do: "Don't cheer Jesus. if they set him free it'll all go wrong! ... It seems a bit harsh, but it's already happened, to be honest." He also sang Oasis's Live Forever so we could warm up our voices - of course, we hadn't practised that one and only knew one line of the lyrics, but still! Oh, and he got the crowd to do a "Manchester wave", which consisted of that hand symbol with the thumb, forefinger and little finger raised, and shouts of "ee!" as these hands were raised in one direction, and "ah!" when the wave came back the other way. It was more amusing than it sounds, honest!

There was also: "Anyone here from London?" [a few people cheer; rest of crowd boo] "Don't boo them, they're only here to steal our water!"

I still have a list of things I wanted to mention, but I'm off to Harrogate in a minute, so I'll finish tomorrow.

EDIT: Pics from yesterday are online here. (Still waiting for cats to come in before I can go out!) At first I was disappointed that the one of Jesus on the edge of the stage talking on his phone was spoiled by the lights. But in hindsight I think it's kind of appropriate!

As he faced the sun he cast no shadow

I'm off out in half an hour to sing in the Manchester Passion. And I have a list of things I've been meaning to blog about, so let's see how many of them I can cross of my list before I have to leave... (please forgive me if this post is a bit bullet-point-ish!)

I'm looking forward to the Passion, but resigned to the fact that whenever I've been on TV in a group, the BBC seem to like to show lots of the person next to me but always cut me off... But then I have been on TV (on my own) more than most people, so I can't really complain! Full report later, anyway. (Hallé singers to watch out for: me, Alison, Liz L, Lizzy A, and Barbara. Plus Liz's brother and a couple of sixth form girls who were brothers with me in Joseph.)

Gen asked me to point out this, which is the scary news story about atttacks in Manchester. I'd already heard this news before Dr Liz pointed out the same thing, with the added detail that most of the attacks have happened on or near the road where she lives! Eek!

Mentioning Dr Liz reminds me that I realised in horror the other day that she very helpfully wrote down notes from last Wednesday's rehearsal (which I missed due to Joseph) and I haven't included them! So here goes:

'There are no rits in heaven, surely, it just goes on'

Not many Jamieisms tonight (apart from the one above, referring to an ethereal part of the requiem), but lots of markings for our Fauré scores. I tried writing all of them down in my copy and a piece of paper, but I got confused. Basically, I think this sums it up... if in doubt, don't breathe!

Most of the rehearsal was spent on the Fauré. We didn't sing all of it, but did pick out the most important bits. I appear to be one of the few people who don't know it backwards (the only time I've sung it was at the first 'Sing with the Hallé' day) so it helped my preparation for the sight reading test at tomorrow's vocal assessment (eek!).

We worked on Psalm 67 again. It started sounding rather unfamiliar and insecure, but quickly came on. The men in particular were helped by speaking in an American accent.

No word from Jamie about last Saturday's performance. I think he was living by the mantra my mother uses... "if you don't have anything good to say about a situation then don't say anything at all". But the general consensus from the people sitting near me was that they were pretty ashamed of how it went (I wasn't there, but will be this weekend).

To close the reheasal we sang the last 4 pages of the Vaughan Williams. Sounded good, mostly!

Thanks, Liz :-)

Talking of vocal assessments, I got my letter yesterday. Nothing spectactular, but a bit better than last time (Jamie even said some nice things OTHER than "great sight reading"!) But then I got a call last night from someone who was understandably baffled... because she'd just got her letter, and has been asked to reaudition to stay in the choir... yet she was chosen by Jamie for the semi-chorus only a few weeks ago! I'll be interested to see how this one develops...

To change the subject completely, I watched a really interesting master class online the other day, by Barbara Cook. It covers singing Irving Berlin songs. Interesting stuff, even if you might not agree with all of it. If you're going to watch, better do so soon, as I don't know how long they'll keep it online. (It's over 2 hours long, but if you're short of time, just watch the first singer - about 25 minutes - as the work she does with all the other singers is similar.) (Oh, and you will need a good broadband connection to make it play properly, I suspect.)

Bit more exciting news: I got an email from someone at the BBC:

"Dear Choir,

The People's Chorus is a major BBC-4 music event - we're looking for a chorus of 1,000 singers to record Tallis' most famous work - 'Spem in Alium'. This massive choral undertaking is an exciting opportunity for the public to perform at Manchester's Bridgewater Hall on Saturday June 10th 2006. The piece will be rehearsed from scratch, with the thousand voices forming eight choirs, culminating in a performance at the end of the day of one of the most marvellous and sublime pieces of music in the world.

If you want to be part of this fantastic music event, please contact us via the BBC Four music web page here or send an SAE to PO Box 2631, Bristol BS8 9BG.

Thank you!"

To which my reaction was "Ooooooooooooh!" Only tiny problem is that England's first game in the World Cup is that afternoon... but they tend to do better when I don't watch :p

That's a week before our Hallé prom, and for those who haven't seen the set list:

Mozart: Ave Verum Corpus
Verdi: Requiem - Sanctus
Orff: Carmina Burana - O Fortuna
Fauré: Requiem - Agnus Dei
Wagner: Lohengrin - Bridal Chorus
Bach: Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring
Mozart: Requiem - Dies Irae and Lacrimosa
Puccini: Madama Butterfly - Humming Chorus
Handel: Zadok the Priest and Hallelujah Chorus
Verdi: Il Trovatore - Soldiers' Chorus
Mascagni: Cavalleria Rusticana - Easter Hymn

What else can I write quickly? Oh yes... Graham E points out that there are a few reviews of the Hallé's Wasps CD appearing, and they all seem under the impression that it's Hallé Choir men that are singing on it - not helped by the fact that it says Hallé Choir on the CD! I know the reasons why it's NOT the Hallé Choir, and have no problem with them (short answer: it was recorded a couple of days after our London trip last July, and the sessions were all during the day, and it was felt impractical to expect enough members of the choir to be able to take more days off work). But it was never mentioned that it would have our name on the CD!

Anyway, I must go now. I'll include the rest of my list with my Passion report... later tonight hopefully :-)

"Elgar started out as an organ scholar. Well, after being a small child, of course."

This is my favourite quote of tonight, and it's from the lovely Jonathan Scott. We all knew that he's (a) a fantastic pianist; (b) a fantastic organist; (c) very cute, particularly as he smiles ALL THE TIME. But until tonight I didn't realise that he had a website (go and look... some nice pictures, and a very full concert calendar, although it doesn't mention ours)... or that he's such a good stand-up comic! He kept it in reserve, too - he was fairly solemn when he introduced his pieces in the first half, but when he introduced the Elgar, the audience (and the choir!) was in tears of laughter by the time he actually played it :-)

Great concert tonight. Just about everything went really well (in particular, I'm pretty sure we stayed in tune all the way through - no mean feat!) The coming on worked brilliantly, which was a relief because I'd ended up being in charge of it. The going off was a bit of a muddle, partly because some people hadn't read Cathy's sheet of instructions but mainly because there was no chance to practise it, as this afternoon's rehearsal overran by 10 minutes. (I don't think Jamie realises quite how much bad feeling this creates, or he'd be more careful not to do it. It's very frustrating to have a great rehearsal, and get to the end of it with everyone thinking "this concert will be GREAT!" - and then spend 10 extra minutes removing that mood and replacing it with "well, now I'm not going to have time to do all the things I need to do before the concert! I'm sick of this happening every time!") But it wasn't so bad that the audience will have noticed, so no worries.

Only other tiny niggles - the 1st sops got very behind at one point in Laudibus in Sanctis, and only the fact that everyone else was watching (and stuck to the beat) prevented the thing falling apart. But it got back on track on the next page. Oh, and it was REALLY hot in the hall. So much so that I felt a bit dizzy at times. No doubt everyone else thought it was just the right temperature, though - I'm almost always too hot :p

Jamie seemed pretty pleased about the concert. He was certainly delighted in the rehearsals this afternoon and last night. A few Jamieisms (and quite a few John Wayne impressions, but they were all rather visual):

"Folks, you look like choral commuters!" (this was to the people who had their heads buried in their copies)

"The ee vowel is kind of like the Aga of your singing."

(To the 2nd altos, after we gasped in horror when he asked the tenors to help us on a low bit): "There's a lot of pride in your section. I admire it. Remember, I was one of you once. ... If you've got a new counter-tenor joke, I'd be glad to hear it!"

Anyway, we have two weeks off now! I must say I'm ready for a break (from everything, not just choir). Today was the first day in weeks that I haven't had a headache, and my blood pressure was measured again on Thursday and was higher than ever. And tomorrow is the first day in weeks I don't have to leave the house at all - I'm GREATLY looking forward to it! I haven't had a free evening since last Friday. Last weekend was all choir and Joseph, and this week has gone: Joseph, Joseph, Joseph, choir, choir, choir. Joseph was fabulous fun, though!

I've just realised I haven't mentioned my vocal assessment, which I came back to do on Thursday. I sang FANTASTICALLY... but only in the car and the practice room. Unfortunately as soon as I got in front of Jamie, things were less good. Although, I must say that his reaction to seeing me didn't help - there was no "Great to see you, Jocelyn - thanks for coming back after waiting for four and a half hours on Sunday!" What he actually said was "Oh. Just when we thought we'd made up some time!" So I didn't exactly feel welcome!

But anyway, my solo was OK. Sight reading was perfect (I'm pretty sure) note-wise, but my breathing had started to go by then and I was breathing far too often. (Breathing is my worst thing, but it's got much better over the last couple of years. But annoyingly there was no sign of this on Thursday!) By the time I got to the vocal exercises, I knew my breathing was terrible, and this of course made things worse. Nothing went disastrously wrong, but it was frustrating because I know I can do it so much better. (There have been a couple of times when I've managed to produce a sound for Maggie that's caused her to say "If you sing like that at your vocal assessment, Jamie will fall off his chair." Well, he stayed very definitely seated!)

I'm sure I've forgotten lots of things, but I'm falling asleep so I'll post again when I am thinking more clearly :-)

"I've got the River Nile backstage in a bin liner."

That's not a Jamieism, before you wonder. And the first part of this post is not actually choir-related, but I wanted to share something that amused me so much yesterday morning that I'm still giggling about it :-) (Apologies to anyone who's here from LJ, because this is a repeat, but the two audiences are fairly mutually exclusive, I think.)

I'm being a brother in Joseph this week, as many of you are aware. The show is at a nearby school that I've been helping out with their musical rehearsals as part of a staff exchange thingy. Me actually taking part in the show wasn't part of the plan, let alone ACTING (which I'm not very good at). But there are 11 brothers in Joseph, and they are counted and named individually on several occasions, so it doesn't work if there are less. So when one dropped out a few weeks ago, they asked if I'd be in it, since I knew all the words... I feel EXTREMELY old, since everyone else on stage is over 20 years younger than me :p

The quote in the title is something I heard the producer say last week, which greatly amused me at the time. But I didn't realise what she meant till yesterday, during the technical rehearsal. We'd just finished "Poor Poor Joseph", which involves camels and Ishmaelites and Joseph being sold as a slave. We were about to go on to "One more angel in heaven", which involves cowboys. And the producer wandered onstage with a very long piece of blue material.

PRODUCER: Where d'you want this?
DIRECTOR: What is it?
PRODUCER: The river!
DIRECTOR: What river?
PRODUCER: The River Nile!
DIRECTOR: What's that for?
PRODUCER: So they can cross over it to get to Egypt!
DIRECTOR: Well, unless it can become the Colorado River, it's not going in, because we're doing the cowboy song now.

Hee! Now I realise that's not that funny written down. But I have been giggling ever since at the thought of this poor woman bringing on the RIVER NILE. From a BIN LINER. And being sent away because it was too late :p

Anyway, today was the dress rehearsal and the opening night, and I'm pleased to report that the River Nile did make it into the performance. (It wasn't explained that that's what it was, though... I wonder how many of the audience realised?) There were a few problems with mics (aren't there always?) but on the whole things went well. I get to do it all again tomorrow and Wednesday. I believe there'll be a DVD, if anyone's interested in seeing it :p

And then on Thursday I may get to do my vocal assessment. Yes, mine was supposed to be yesterday. But I didn't do it, despite being there for almost 5 hours! I'll explain why in a minute. The reason I was there for that long was of course that I'd volunteered to be the organiser for the day (I wouldn't have, if I'd known I'd have a 4 hour rehearsal immediately beforehand, but that was only arranged last week!) It was all rather chaotic at the start. David was 15 minutes late, so we started late and then got later due to Jamie's illness (see below). Then, the assessment room was such a pigsty that Maggie and I and the security guard removed 2 binliners full of rubbish (literally). It looked as if it had been used as a dressing room for their school production, and I presume they had the show on Friday night and thought "we can clean this on Monday". It really was unfit for human use, and I have asked Cathy to make a complaint. Certainly we shouldn't be charged the full amount. Particularly given that it was so very cold! The security guard (a fabulous guy called Jimmy) found a fan heater for the assessment room, but there was no heating on anywhere else, so the foyer (where we we waiting) was freezing, and the warmup rooms were very inappropriately named! Also, I'd forgotten that the Youth Orchestra and Youth Choir rehearse at WHGS on a Sunday afternoon, so the first hour's worth of singers had to compete with extremely loud excerpts from Carmen above them!

The other big problem was that Jamie was not at all well. He came out of Dorothy's assessment halfway through (escorted by Maggie) and stayed outside for quite a while. I was expecting him to come back and ask if I could somehow cancel the rest, but he continued, although he did leave the room on 3 or 4 more occasions. By the end the poor guy looked close to collapse. (After he went back in after his first long break, he didn't play the piano again - he asked David to play for the sight reading too, so we jiggled the process slightly to accommodate this.)

That's why I didn't do my own assessment - I was supposed to be on near the start, but said I'd go last since I was staying anyway, so as to get the schedule closer to what it should be. But at the end he looked so bad I offered to come back on Thursday and do it then, and he accepted. I do hope he's had a good rest today...

I must say I enjoyed having the chance to chat to people I never normally get the chance to meet. And everyone had a fabulous attitude - we were almost an hour late at some points, yet no-one complained or even looked fed up, they just all took it in their stride. I think my egg helped... I got these for Rachel B for her birthday recently, and when I saw them I decided I had to get some for myself too. And it occurred to me that they're so calming that it might be a good plan to take one to WHGS. So I did, and put it on a stool for people to stare at, and it occasioned much comment! One of the Youth Choir mums came back several times to look at it, and made a note of the website I got it from (which is iwantoneofthose.com... WARNING: do not visit that site unless you are totally broke. Because otherwise, you soon will be!)

Oh, and talking of 1st altos not having their brains switched on (sorry, ladies!), the person who turned the wrong way coming out of the assessment room (and consequently tried to exit the building via a door marked clearly "this door is alarmed", and set the alarm off), and the person who arrived over 2 hours early because she got confused about the 24-hour clock? Both 1st altos :-)

Finally... most amusing choice of solo? I think it has to be Abi's. It was fairly incongrous in Italian, till we realised that the translation was something about throbbing bosoms.... definitely a conversation-starter! The tenors were very excited :p

"Relax on the men, and altos... do it with me"

(I know, I know, I have a filthy mind! But the title IS an actual Jamieism from this afternoon. What can I say? It amused me :p )

So, those who didn't do tonight's pre-concert concert will be wondering how it went and what we sang. The second question is easier to answer:

Mihi autem nimis
Salvator mundi
Christe qui lux
Loquebantur
O nata lux
Hymn - O God our help...
Lord, thou hast been our refuge (1st part only)
Hymn - How shall I sing that majesty
Nunc Dimittis

The more eagle-eyed among you will have spotted that there are two items on that list that we hadn't rehearsed before today. They weren't hard, though (although when Jamie invited the audience to join in those two items - they were given the same sheets we had - I don't know how many of them did, but I couldn't hear any of them) (but then again, there were probably only about 40 people there). A good idea to do them, I think - "O God our help in ages past" is of course quoted in "Lord, thou hast been our refuge", and the other hymn is, it turns out, the Tallis theme that the Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis is a fantasia on :-) (The fact that the orchestra were playing this in what Jamie described as "the post-concert event" is the whole reason for the Vaughan Williams/Tallis programme, if you recall.) So both these hymns were good for illustrative purposes, and in particular the Tallis one - that I, at least, had never heard before - was fascinating. (I arrived 5 minutes late at the rehearsal this afternoon, having been unable to change my plans at such short notice to include the extra time it takes to get to WHGS, and they were singing it when I got there. It took me a minute to work out what it was and why they were singing it, but when I did I was delighted!) If you click the link above, it should take you to a web page that plays an audio file of the hymn. There are a couple of wrong notes, but it's close enough that you should recognise the tune.

There were a few more Jamieisms from this afternoon, but before all of them was a quote from Ken that worried some of us after the first few words, because he looked so serious! "Due to all the hurtful comments about the inadequacy of my little bell, I haven't brought it today." This caused Jamie to play a brief burst of If I were a bell (from Guys and Dolls) on the piano, and he spend several minutes improvising on this theme in the break...

Jamieisms included: "Was that a rant?" (after a bit of a rant about the fact that no-one knows any hymn tunes any more); "Can you do it like the French man? Dieu!" (this referred to the start of the word 'generation'); "Bit more goo. I haven't used that word in ages! I've missed it!"; "Release with Jamie - the aerobics video..."; "Ladies, put a ring round the gentlemen's quavers there."; "Let's have no aitches in this choir... apart from at the beginning of the Hallelujah Chorus, once a year."

He got a bit annoyed at the end - with good reason - when we ran through the things we'd rehearsed on Thursday, and several of the problems that we'd fixed then seem to have unfixed themselves. I suspect there are still a few dimwits in the choir who think their memories are so good they don't need to write stuff down. Or something. ARGH.

Then followed a very quick dash into town to find refreshment and get changed in the hour we had. A far-too-long proportion of my hour was spent queuing in Starbucks with Lisa and Libby. The Mount Street one (nearest to the B Hall) was closed for some reason, so I went to the one the other side of the town hall, where there turned out to be a very long queue and some very slow staff. But I got my coffee in the end.

And then, the concert. I suppose it wasn't really too bad, but it was nowhere near as good as it should have been. Main problem: everything went flat. Secondary problem: not everyone was paying attention, so when Jamie asked sections of the choir to sing their part alone for demonstration purposes (which he'd said he was going to), it didn't always work, because of people not using their brains. For example: in Salvator Mundi he asked the sops to sing their opening phrase. No problem. Then he asked the altos and the basses to sing their opening phrases, to illustrate that THEY ARE THE SAME AS THE SOPRANO PHRASE BUT IN DIFFERENT OCTAVES. Now, to be fair, he said "altos" when he meant "2nd altos"... but surely any 1st alto who was paying attention would notice that their part is NOT the same as the sopranos? So the 1st altos sang when they shouldn't have, and the point of the demonstration was lost as a result. Sorry, 1st altos, I love you all dearly, but you weren't very switched on there!

That was by no means the only mistake though. The men managed to sing the whole of the second line of Christe qui lux a tone apart instead of in unison, when asked to demonstrate it. (It was perfect when they sang it again though.) There were quite a few mistakes in the semi-chorus too. (They were still at the note-bashing stage this afternoon... you'd think they would have done some work at home if they knew they didn't know it... Sorry, I'm still incredibly bitter about the whole semi-chorus thing! I'll get over it eventually... although probably not any time soon, because I'm still distraught about not being picked for that English Rhapsody CD, and that was YEARS ago. But just the mention of anything to do with that CD sets my teeth grinding.)

But oh, the flatness. While I'm upsetting all and sundry, I may as well say that I'm sure it's the sopranos who are the main cause of the pitch problems. Sorry, sops. It sounds to me as if they START slightly flat, and they get flatter bar by bar. You can hear their lines sag. (In the concert, Jamie stopped O nata lux half way through. It was probably because we were running out of time, but I was so relieved, because it had gone so incredibly flat in the previous few bars, I couldn't see how it could recover. (The other horror moment is that "so passeth it away and we are gone" bit in the VW. I dread it every time, because it ends on a unison E flat, and I can always hear the sops going lower and lower as they approach it, so there's no way it'll end with us and them on the same note.)

(Oh, and btw, to correct an urban legend - I do NOT have perfect pitch. But I do have a good memory for pitch, good enough that I can usually give a pretty good approximation of any note I'm asked for. But you know when we do exercises in the warmup, and they go up by a semitone each time? I never have any clue what notes I'm singing then, because it takes me a few seconds to decide what pitch it feels like, but the pitch changes before I can work it out.)

I suspect that there are some sopranos (I know it's not all of them - some of them are really musical) who don't actually listen to the rest of the choir - they are so used to having the tune that they expect everyone else to follow them. Of course they usually have an orchestra to keep them on track, but whenever there's an a cappella bit it's almost always the sops who drag the pitch down. The frustrating thing, of course, is that everyone in the choir knows (a) what we need to DO to stay in tune, and (b) that we CAN stay in tune. For example, on Thursday we sang Loquebantur for about 15-20 minutes, and when Jamie played the chord at the end, it was exactly the same as at the start. And that's by no means an isolated example - we all know that during a rehearsal when we're on a roll, which we have been quite a few times lately, the pitch stays spot on. So when it doesn't, it's doubly frustrating!

OK, that was a rant :-)

"Folks, there are people TOUCHING each other!"

This was Jamie's delighted comment during the warmup tonight, when he had us singing Maggie's "Laudamus te" exercise to each other in pairs to see if we were supporting properly. There was indeed a certain amount of groping :p

I hope you'll forgive me for just listing stuff tonight rather than giving long explanations (although I bet there are some people who prefer it this way!). I'm really tired, but I tried to sleep and have too many things whizzing round my head, so this is an effort to offload some of them.

I went to see United last night - great game, made all the more entertaining by my nephew singing the Gary Neville song all the way through despite Gary Neville not actually playing. (It's the only one he knows all the words to.) (My nephew, that is, not Gary...) Dr Liz very kindly wrote a blog post about last night's rehearsal for me to just copy and paste, but sadly I turned out to be useless and didn't read it till tonight, by which time it didn't quite make sense to just paste it. So here is a slightly edited version:

"Sounds better now you're all kissing"

Rehearsal started with Maggie's warm up, as normal. There was quite a lot of stomach holding to feel muscles moving, yet another reason why having a six pack would be great! (but I'd never managed to do enough sit ups to develop it, and then to maintain it).

The first half was spent on the Holst. The quote from the top was Jamie making us pull faces to improve the sound and as normal it worked! Hopefully we can all recreate this for the gig itself. Jamie was on form tonight: "you need more space in your voice or you'll sound like Axl Rose - OK, so that's a blank for most of you." He then did a short Axl Rose impression, classic! (Axl Rose is the lead singer of Guns'n'Roses, for those of you who aren't a child of the 80s like I am!). He was also heard to utter "it's so great when you all get physical together" which raised a few titters.

It was announced in the break that the advert for choral administrator was going to be in the Guardian on Monday and on their website.

Most of the second half we sang the impressive 'God is Gone up'. I like it! And it'll sound great with the organ. It's got ace words, including 'methinks' and 'flakes of glory'. Jamie made us all put our thumbs in our mouths to try and push our molars up (hope everyone had washed their hands recently), and after making us make a certain noise (can't remember what it was) he decided that it was quite scary and "I'd not want to meet all you in a dark choral alley".

Then we sang, rather badly I have to admit, the Vaughan Williams. I think Jamie was rightly disappointed as we've put in a lot of work and none of it was there tonight. But it was the end of the rehearsal, so maybe people were tired, I know I was.

Thanks Liz. (I saw Guns'n'Roses live at Maine Road, back in the day. I loved them (and still do). So here's an mp3 of their most famous song, Sweet Child O' Mine. Air guitars at the ready!)

Anyway, tonight there was another rehearsal, at which we got a lot done. We did work on: O nata lux, Salvator mundi, Mihi autem nimis, Loquebantur variis linguis and Laudibus in sanctis. A few Jamieisms:

"Altos, there was one note I hated."

"Who is it who's not being interesting enough? .... Sopranos!"

"Like a sort of Renaissance rapper..." (this was after demonstrating the Alleluia weird underlay in Loquebantur)

"I might look at you! And if I do, you'll feel better about the world!"

The best physical Jamieism was his Darth Vader impression (when demonstrating how not to do a silent breath!) (apparently the trick to doing a silent one is to look surprised... I must practise that, I'm terrible for breathing noisily). There was also much amusement at the 1st sops repeatedly not coming in because they weren't watching, thus giving him lots of opportunities to insult them - always entertaining!

The 2nd altos, on the other hand, got a "Lovely harmonic!" comment at some point, and the choir as a whole got "I didn't think it was possible to do this that well!" - which was nice :-)

Unusually, there was a Jamieism that was just plain wrong.... "Keep the tiller in the water!" he said. Jamie, take it from one who sails regularly and has all too often ended up with the tiller in the water, it is a BAD THING when this happens, as it means you've capsized :p What you actually want is the RUDDER in the water. The tiller is the bit that guides the rudder, and should very definitely be above the water level! (I'm going sailing for the first time this year on Saturday morning, wind permitting. I'll let you know how wet my tiller gets :p )

Anyway, nearly there. A quiz question for you all: why do I have "SPIKE!" written on page 4 of Loquebantur? A packet of Smarties to the first person to guess. (I will be extremely impressed if anyone does know the answer, so I should probably make it easier by saying that I might just as well have written it on any page of any piece... it's on that one mainly because I've practised that page more than all the rest put together, it being the semi-chorus audition piece.)

And 5 more quick things.

1. I see that the official choir web page currently states "Unfortunately due to technical difficulties the choir schedule is currently unavailable." My unofficial one is fine, however, and has just been updated with the news that the rehearsal on 7th April is at 6.45 after all :-)

2. I just glanced through the newly-issued Hallé Proms leaflet, and was horrified to see that they spelled Princess Leia's name wrong! (I'm such a geek!) You'd think they might have checked. Sheesh. Pleased to see we're apparently doing the Humming Chorus in our gig, although I will be far less pleased if Jamie makes us sing it as written (i.e. only sops and tenors)... I'm sure a few altos could help the tenors out...

3. There was an article in the Guardian today saying that the Hallé have cancelled their USA tour. Remember Mark telling us about his experience at the American Embassy? (see this post if you've forgotten) It turns out to have been for nothing!

4. Those of you who are singing in the Manchester Passion on Good Friday, I now have sheet music and instructions (including when to shout "Crucify him!") I know about Alison and Liz L - if there's anyone else who's signed up, let me know and I'll give you the stuff. (It's not too late to get in touch! Give them a call.)

5. Finally, I know Liz L will appreciate this. I'm being a brother in Joseph next week, and I am delighted to be able to report that "Any dream will do" will NOT be performed at the start \o/

The apostles spoke in many tongues, alleluia

I'm off work - have had a really bad headache for nearly 5 days now, am about to go out to doctor's to find out why - so I thought I'd do a quick update.

Firstly, for those who don't come here via my choir website, you might like to know that I have updated my online choir schedule (choir members, email me for the link if you don't already have it). Please note that the schedule on the official site was significantly out of date as of early this morning. Please note, in particular, that the rehearsal on Friday 7th April is from 6pm to 9.30. I wasn't aware of this, although I'm assured we have been told and I'd just missed it, so I thought I'd better point it out in case anyone else has been daydreaming like I obviously have!

Secondly, we've had a huge increase in the number of blog visitors looking for the Honda choir ad to download (so I feel useful for keeping it available!) I'm intrigued as to the reason for the sudden increase, though - have they started showing it again? I haven't seen it since January, but I don't watch that much TV that has ads in it.

And finally, someone was searching for translations of the Byrd and Tallis music we're doing in the a cappella gig, and since I've just been investigating that myself as a favour to Cathy, I thought I may as well share my findings. Enjoy :-)

"They look like kind of crazed clowns!"

This referred to the tenors, who were this week's stars. The facial expression in question was the one they were apparently doing when attempting to keep the rest of the choir in tune. (I was fascinated, btw, to get a chance to watch the 1st altos sing their first line of Salvator Mundi. I'd noticed immediately that most of them were flat on their 2nd note - this was very noticeable because it's supposed to be the same A as the first note of the piece, 3 notes earlier - and when I watched them, I could guess why. A few of them (I could name names, but I won't) were doing the oft-demonstrated 'correct facial expression' (i.e. high cheekbones) but most weren't, and the difference was striking.)

Not many new Jamieisms tonight (although "Use me! Abuse me!" came up a few times - I think he's decided it's a good catchphrase) but I thought I'd do a post while Blogger is actually working. (Plus, I have some work I must do before I can go to bed, and I need to work up some energy for it...) For those who don't know, this blog costs me nothing, because I use the services of Blogger (owned by Google, FYI). Usually it all works fine, but if there is a problem with the Blogger servers - as there has been in the last week or so - then there's nothing I can do about it, sorry.

There was "Folks, the words are reh-deh-mee-hee-hee... stee-hee-hee...", but that one was a bit visual... There was also some discussion of Cylons (in connection with resonating wavebands - don't ask...)

Anyway, we did a lot of stuff. For those who weren't there: Salvator Mundi, Nunc Dimittis, Lord, Thou hast been our refuge (with the semi-chorus for the first time), A Hymn to the Virgin, Psalm 67 and the last bit of Laudibus in Sanctis. I'm still bitter about the whole semi-chorus thing, but they did sound quite good by the end (although not at first - there were a few voices that stuck out quite prominently, plus they seemed unable to follow the beat). I must admit that the fact they are also singing Choir 2 in A Hymn to the Virgin made things a lot worse for me personally. I sang this piece at school and loved it, but we did it as two equal choirs, so of course I sang choir 2 as I always have, and that's the part I have always loved. I was delighted when we did it in the carol concerts a few years ago, until I found that we were doing it as main choir and semi-chorus and I wasn't picked (I'm not talking about the last time, when we did it with the Youth Choir - I thought that worked really well). So tonight, I assumed it was going to be the semi-chorus doing Choir 2, but Jamie never actually said so before we started singing, so I got all hopeful that we were singing it antiphonally (i.e. as two equal choirs on opposite sides). But it turned out that my initial assumption was correct. Oh well :-(

Right. Must do some work. (I'm not at choir for the next two Wednesdays, btw - although I can do the extra Thu and Fri rehearsals - so if anyone wants to jot down any Jamieisms that'd be appreciated. Next Wednesday I'm off to see United play West Ham - originally the tickets were for a Saturday, but the match was changed due to the Carling Cup Final. I'd try to give the ticket away, but I'm taking my 9-year-old nephew. And the following Wednesday I'm being one of Joseph's brothers, singing in a school show!)

Before I go, though...

FOR EASY REFERENCE - links to mp3s of all the a cappella gig stuff, in running order (except 2 items, one of which is extremely easy... All are in the correct key except the two indicated.)

God is gone up - Finzi
Salvator Mundi - Tallis
Mihi autem nimis - Tallis (G minor - major 3rd lower than our version)
O Nata lux - Tallis
A Hymn to the Virgin - Britten
Nunc Dimittis - Holst
The Lamb - Tavener
Christe, qui lux es et dies - Byrd
Laudibus in Sanctis - Byrd
God be Merciful (Psalm 67) - Burton
Loquebantur variis linguis - Tallis (G minor - minor 3rd lower than our version)
Lord, Thou hast been our refuge - Vaughan Williams (with baritone soloist singing some of the semi-chorus bits)

EDIT: Please note that if you are reading this after April, most of these links will no longer work.

"So when we sing, in a very different musical style from grabbing a giraffe..."

Not for the first time, the most time-consuming part of writing a choir blog entry is deciding which of the Jamieisms should be the title :-) The one above is probably my second favourite of last night's rehearsal, but my favourite is a bit too visual to work here. (It was "Sopranos, you've got to go ^^^^. Basses, you've got to go >>>>. And tenors, you've got a G natural." And the ^^^^ and >>>> are fizzy gestures. ... You probably had to be there!)

Another great rehearsal, made even better by the return of both Liz L (with comfy cushion) and Dr Liz (who brought me a fabulous pink T shirt from Egypt!). The only negative part was that a couple of altos were upset by the behaviour of some other altos - and when they told me why, I was horrified; I didn't know stuff like this was still going on, I thought all the unfriendly people had left years ago. Been racking my brains since, trying to think of a solution, but I have already started discussions with other committee members about it, and I won't let it just drop, I promise.

But, let's talk about something nice. We started with Mihi autem nimis, which I don't think we'd tried till last night. It's not too difficult, but as ever it's difficult to do it really well. The 2nd altos were on a bit of a roll, though - Jamie got very excited by the harmonics we were apparently producing on the last note, and held us up as a shining example to the rest of the choir. (Which is as it should be, of course!) He didn't just like the last note... we got "By the way, the Alto 2s are winning for the best E vowel at the beginning." And "This is talent!" somewhere in the middle. I don't know about anyone else, but it had the effect of making me concentrate extra hard on how I was singing, so that I could do it the same way again in the future. And it put me in a really good mood too! Self-esteem is a wonderful thing :-)

Other Jamieisms during this part of the rehearsal: "You don't need to look like some possessed advertisement for chocolate!" (I forget what that was referring to), and "60 million Smarties are awarded immediately." (to the bass who spotted a misprint)

Then we did the first half of Laudibus in sanctis. It's getting pretty good. Bit more meaningful now, as well, because Jamie pointed out the meanings of the words. This produced "If you are imaginative and talented in this respect, draw a trumpet." - and "These people are happy! So was Byrd! He just didn't have a tambourine!"

We finished by doing some work on Lord, Thou hast been our refuge, followed by a quick sight-read through Holst's Nunc Dimittis, which was handed out at the start of the rehearsal. Never heard it before, but it's really lovely. Just managed to find an mp3 on the iTMS:

Nunc Dimittis (Holst) (3.8 MB)

Other stuff: Most people know about Ed Gardner's new job, but here's a link for those who missed it. (He was the Hallé's Assistant Conductor a couple of years ago and is very lovely.) There's a related story about ENO here.

Bit more news about the Manchester Passion: we now know a few of the people who are going to be involved. They include Keith Allen, Darren Morfitt, Tim Booth, Nicholas Bailey and Bez.

An interesting story about conductors and performers who sing along - we've had a few of those over the years!

And finally a couple of recent searches: someone searched for "the dissonance at the end of Tallis O nata lux" (I couldn't remember which one, but I just looked, and I presume they mean the false relation in bar 80, when the tenors have an F natural while the sops have an F sharp). And there was also a search for "how to seat choir members according to part they sing". I felt unreasonably guilty to realise that none of the results on the search page (including my blog) told this person the answer to this, so here it is:

Every choir I have ever sung in, including the Hallé, has had the men in the middle, with sopranos (S1 and S2) on the left (from the conductor/audience's point of view) and altos (A1 and A2) on the right. (I know there are choirs that arrange themselves differently, but I have never encountered one.) Usually the tenors (T1 and T2) are on the left of the centre line (next to the sopranos) and the basses (B1 and B2) on the right (next to the altos), but if there are particularly few tenors they may well be put across the front, with all the basses behind them.

We usually stay in this arrangement when the parts divide, and in the Hallé the order (from left to right) is: S1, S2, T2, T1, B1, B2, A2, A1. Sometimes this is varied to have, say, A2 at the front and A1 behind them, and similarly for other parts, if the 2nd parts have much smaller numbers.

Currently we are sitting "in two choirs", and this always means S1/A1/T1/B1 on the left and S2/A2/T2/B2 on the right. The arrangement within the two choirs varies, but for this concert we have A1, T1, T2, A2 at the front and S1, B1, B2, S2 at the back.

Hope that helps :-)

"Use me! Abuse me!"

Well, I was up till half past five this morning finishing the oft-mentioned Joseph backing tracks - long story why, but they're finally all done! Very much looking forward to going to sleep in a minute, but I thought I may as well offload tonight's choir thoughts while I'm eating. (I was talking to a tenor called Simon whose name I didn't know till tonight, and he told me he reads my blog and finds it useful for finding out what he missed when he was absent. When people say things like that to me, it always inspires me to write stuff when I'm extra-tired!)

Again, we got a lot done. Jamie got very excited several times (yes, even more so than usual!) This prompted Judy to mutter "Somebody hose him down!", which was going to be the title of my post until Jamie came out with the instruction above :p (In case you're wondering, the "use me" refers to the fact that not enough people are watching. The "abuse me"... well, I'm not sure I want to know!)

We started with Christe qui lux es et dies, which we hadn't tried before, and I can't say I like it. It seems extremely boring. Maybe Jamie has some plan in mind to make it exciting, but I can't imagine what. Oh well. We spent a lot of time on it, but this time did include two amusing impressions from Jamie - one of Bart Simpson (this was illustrating how to sing "Domine" with an American vowel sound, but not TOO American) and one of him "reining in a horse that's just woken up, but you really would like to leave quite soon, so you need to get him to move" (this was to assist with breathing control).

We then had a quick run through Laudibus in Sanctis. Not bad, although it was frustrating that it was nowhere near as good as in the sectional. This was mainly because all the people who (presumably) missed the sectional, and therefore didn't know the music very well, were dragging behind the whole time. Argh! The most amusing part of this bit of the rehearsal, though, was related to this. Jamie conducted the second half of the piece with no score, and the deal was that he would only bring people in if they waved to him just beforehand to alert him to the fact they were about to sing. I'd love to have seen it - he said it was hilarious to see how eager people looked when waving!

A new piece next, Psalm 67, composed by Jamie himself. He spent quite a while explaining why the piece had been written the way it had, which was interesting (I love to get background info!). It has some lovely harmonies already; I look forward to hearing it when everyone is singing the right notes :p

Oh, and there was a long-awaited acknowledgement of 2nd alto greatness from Jamie! There was giggling, you see, when he asked us to pronounce "us" with an "ar" at the start...

Jamie: "It's always the altos!"
2nd altos: *glare*
Jamie: "It's always the 1st altos! 2nd altos - YES!"

Then followed a page of Lord, Thou hast been our refuge, which was similar in many ways to Jamie's piece. This was what produced the "Use me! Abuse me!" plea... There was also a bit of a thing about descending minor 3rds (hint to sopranos: if Jamie asks "what interval is that?" you are usually safe to guess "descending minor 3rd"....) in which he suggested that a member of the committee might go through all the repertoire and produce a guide to where this interval appears... I hope he was joking - you can never be too sure!

We finished with God is gone up, which was fun as ever, but slightly annoying because now I'll have it on the brain for the 2nd week running! In the car on the way home we heard most of The Music Makers on Classic FM. We spent the whole journey trying to decide whether or not it was our recording that they were playing. We decided eventually that it wasn't - but it turned out it was! Which reminds me, there's a brief review of that CD here that I hadn't seen before (thanks Graham).

Oh, and finally, just wanted to mention that on Saturday I sang tenor in a gig in Doncaster for Ken's Nightingale Singers. It was fun, but the highlight for me was a semi-improvised version of Czardas by a fabulous violinist called Daniel Axworthy. I was sitting next to him for most of the gig - he was singing tenor as well as playing a couple of violin bits - and he seemed like a great guy. But when I got home I googled him and found that he was the violinist in the arm-wrestling story, which I vaguely remember reading at the time. But if you ever get a chance to hear him play, do :-)

"Suddenly there's a section singing. As opposed to a horse."

... No, I have no idea what that meant. But I can tell you that it referred to the 2nd sopranos... maybe one of them can enlighten me? (Well, I know what he meant by the first bit. It's the horse that baffled me!)

Ladies' sectional tonight. And it was a typical ladies' sectional in two ways: 1. We got a lot done. 2. Jamie appeared to be having such a good time that he was even more entertaining as usual, and this resulted in much amusement :-)

We spent most of the time learning Laudibus in Sanctis, but we also did a bit of work on Lord, thou hast been our refuge and God is gone up. There were so many Jamieisms I didn't attempt to write them all down, but some that I did were:

"It needs some kind of archival evidence that this bar was rehearsed."

"Can we make sure it sounds like an Italian singing the song from Mary Poppins?" (this related to 'chee' at the start of 'cymbala'...)

The one that had everyone almost crying with laughter was a bit visual, but it involved taking ownership of a B flat, and Jamie doing an impression of aitting on a park bench repeatedly. You probably had to be there!

Anyway, one other thing before I tell you about Mack and Mabel. You might not have seen this review in the Independent, which is of the whole Shostakovich festival, and ACTUALLY MENTIONS THE CHOIR! (Oh, and that reminds me - sorry to anyone who's emailed me this week, I've been snowed under with work, but I'll try to get caught up at the weekend.)

So, Mack and Mabel! There's an M.E.N. review here. And I'm a bit surprised to see that the comments at the end of that review suggest that not everyone liked it as much as I did. But hey, it takes all sorts :-)

You see, whenever I go to see a show, I always look at the programme to see if there's anyone I know in the band. (It does sometimes happen...) And when I did this for Mack and Mabel, I was surprised to see there was no band listed. Then I noticed that the pit of the theatre was empty, and no musicians were warming up. Odd, I thought - surely they're not performing to a backing track? Then I noticed that in the cast list, next to each actor's name was not only a character name but also an instrument - several, in some cases. I wondered out loud what this might mean, and my 10-year-old niece said that the actors must be playing the instruments as well. I explained that this never happens... and felt quite stupid when it turned out she was absolutely correct!

There were 10 actors in the cast, I think. David Soul was the lead, but I'd never heard of any of the others. But they were fabulous. Each of them not only acted and sang (solo and in harmony), they also tap-danced, and they all (except David Soul) carried a musical instrument throughout. And played it. And I don't just mean they played a few random notes - they supplied the actual backing parts for the show. From memory, too! There was a musical director who played a keyboard, but he was up on a balcony on the side of the stage, and he didn't conduct, so the fact that they played as an ensemble was even more impressive. And they switched modes all the time. For example, there was one guy who had a trumpet. During one song, here is what I think he did:

• Played trumpet in the intro
• Sang the first verse as a solo
• Played the trumpet again
• Sang the second verse as one of the harmony parts
• Played the trumpet again
• Removed the mute from his trumpet and used it as a prop (he mimed offering a drink to someone)
• Grabbed a followspot (you know, a spotlight used to follow a single actor) and lit up the lead actress as she danced around the stage (Mack and Mabel mainly takes place on a film set, so spotlights were part of the props - but these were ACTUAL spotlights, and the actors operated them!)
• Did a tap dance

And while the trumpeter was doing all these things, the other actors were doing similar stuff - singing a bit, playing a bit, acting a bit, constantly switching. Now I might've got the songs muddled and he might not've done ALL those things in one song, but he certainly did all those things at various points. It was all so CLEVER! Oh, and at one point the lead actress had a big romantic scene that took place on a train. And the whole cast swayed from side to side to portray the movement of the train. But it was the lead actress who supplied the sound effects that made the train seem real... while delivering this big emotional speech, she kept up a train rhythm on a cabasa. I don't think I could've done it as rhythmically as she did!

Anyway, maybe not everyone will be impressed with it. The acting, singing and playing was all "good" rather than "fabulous". And there was hardly any set, which might bother some. But the cleverness of the production delighted me so much that it more than made up for any tiny quibbles such as these. Go and see it!

P.S. Just after posting this, I got an email from Rachel P (1st alto), who says "On Saturday the Manchester University Symphony Orchestra have a concert in the Cosmo Rodewald concert hall in the music department (sorry, Martin Harris Centre for Music and Drama) and are in need of an audience. The concert starts at 7.30, I believe it costs students £3 and non-students £10, and the programme is Henze Symphony No.1, Tomasi Trumpet Concerto and Shostakovich Symphony No. 9 (in which i'm playing piccolo...)"

"Don't let the mouse turn into a small otter just yet."

Right, I have 25 minutes to write all the things I wanted to write last night and the night before (but was too tired), while eating my tea before going out to ANOTHER rehearsal...

I'm in a much better mood now. I applied for two jobs recently and found I hadn't even got an interview for the first one (still waiting to hear from the second). Then I got to choir last night and found that I hadn't been picked for the semi-chorus. THEN I heard that the guy from the BBC Manchester Passion thing had contacted someone that *I* told about it... but hadn't contacted me!

Well, the triple rejection kind of got to me a bit, and I sent a second (aggrieved) email to the BBC guy, which I felt a bit embarrassed about today, when I'd calmed down. But at least the triple rejection is now only a double one, because I've just spoken to him and he's put me on the list :-) He wants more people, though, and says no-one will be turned down, so if you're free on Good Friday, please contact him (details in my previous post). He also wants people to join in the carrying of the huge cross through the city centre, so if you have non-singing friends or relatives who'd like to come with you, get them to contact him too!

I must admit to being devastated about the semi-chorus thing, though. I actually thought I might've had a slightly better chance than usual because (a) I've been practising and having proper lessons, and (b) several altos who I'd normally regard as automatic picks didn't audition. Oh well. Well done to those who DID pass :-)

(There is one thing that people might like to remember, though, when it comes to vocal assessments. Those of you who panic about sight-reading can take heart from how little importance it plays in auditions and assessments, compared to singing beautifully. Because I'm pretty sure I got that sight-reading PERFECT (well, apart from running out of breath at the end), and as usual it did me no good at all!)

Anyway, last night was really good, other than the semi-chorus list. It was the second of our open rehearsals, to which anyone interested in seeing what a Hallé Choir rehearsal is like could come along. There seemed to be quite a lot of extra people - maybe 30? A colleague of mine from school came with me, and she had a fabulous time, although she said she can't work out (a) where Jamie gets all his energy from; (b) where WE get all our energy from, to concentrate so hard for so long. I don't know the answer to either of those, but I wish I did, because my energy ran out several days ago!

Graham E was back, too - great to see him, although I didn't get a chance to talk to him. No Liz L, who presumably still can't sit down - how are you, Liz?

We sang right through the Fauré, which was very lovely. The title of the post is a Jamieism from the first page, on which Jamie wanted the first sound to be like "a perfectly formed mouse..." The other one that amused me was when he didn't like the way the sopranos sang something, and they pointed out that they were only following what it said in the score.

"Oh, you're so MUSICAL!" he said, accusingly.

Argh, running out of time, and I haven't told you about Mack and Mabel. Full explanation when I get back from tonight's rehearsal, but here's a short version:

1. It's on at the Palace all this week, till Saturday, then continues its tour until stopping in the West End in April.

2. I went to see it on Tuesday night and was blown away by how AMAZINGLY clever the production is.

3. If there's any way you can get to see it, please do so!