"In Russia, everybody has a dog."

Well, I know I said I'd post this last night, but I fell asleep, so here's a quick version before I go to work.

Wednesday night was such fun. It was the piano rehearsal for Daphnis and Chloe with Gianandrea Noseda. I'm told there was quite a bit of swooning from certain members of the alto section when he walked in... He was full of energy and talked VERY quickly, and I should imagine many people couldn't hear a lot of what he said, but luckily I was directly in line with him and got most of it. I'd love to write reams about everything he said, but I haven't time, so I'll just list the main quotes I wrote down that amused us:

"I have to conduct in 4, unfortunately, because it's written in 4, this bloody music!"

"No sex any more. I will behave well." (by this point he'd used sexual metaphors to illustrate just about every point he'd made. Needless to say this continued for the rest of the rehearsal...)

"Kill someone with your voice!"

"I got a leg injury from it!" (this was when he described a game that used to take place at his school (in Italy - a boys' school) when he was 16 or 17 - the game involved them all piling on top of each other with no warning...)

"Lions, they are not insane."

"David, you are a great orchestra."

"[sing it] like if we take drugs." (After he clarified this, Jamie said "Well, if it's a lack of control you need...." - cue mock shock!)

"In Russia everybody has a dog. I asked one of them why. The answer? 'Because we get drunk very often, and forget where we live. The dog shows us the way home!' And in this section the 5/4 bars are just the dog." (This was my favourite thing all night - not so much this quote, as the fact that it turns out that the new bass who started on Monday is Russian! I didn't hear his name when it was announced, because the applause for "we have a new bass!" was still going on. Anyway, he spoke up at the point when the Russian dog story was introduced, and he and Gianandrea conversed in Russian for several minutes, to everyone's delight.)

EDIT: It's been pointed out to me by several people that I haven't included the premature ejaculation analogy (this is how Gianandrea described how to do a big crescendo to ff followed by subito p). I suspect this is because I was laughing so much at the time that I forgot to write it down :p

---

Gianandrea left after we'd sung all of Daphnis, leaving everyone inspired. I love it when that happens - you'd think it might occur at every piano rehearsal, but it doesn't - generally only with Mark Elder, but we can now add Gianandrea to the inspirational list! Anyway, then we had time to do Beethoven 9 - at last! We spent half an hour on it - amazingly, Jamie finished early (some people near me were muttering that he finished late, but as usual they'd forgotten that piano rehearsals are scheduled to end at 9.30).

Nothing really to report on Beethoven, although it was great to sing it, especially as we sang loads of the solo bits just for fun. More work on it is promised next week. Before then, the Proms... we even practised a bit for that! Well, sort of - we ended the warmup by singing "Jerusalem". Always invigorating :-)

You'll have to wait till tonight, but...

... when I get home from work I will report some of Gianandrea Noseda's words concerning sex, death, cannibalism, drug-taking, alcoholism and Russian dogs.

(Last night we had a great time!)

"So much of that is so very nearly right!"

(Dapnhis and Chloe on Monday night, that is, at our first rehearsal since July. We don't normally start back on a Monday, but the piano rehearsal, when we meet Gianandrea Noseda for the first time, is tonight!) (I'm supposed to be asleep, but I couldn't get to sleep due to millions of thoughts spinning round in my head, so I thought I'd try to unload some of the non-work-related ones - might help!)

Bits of the Ravel were indeed very nearly right, although of course it didn't sound as good as it did in July. We did sing all of it (although we spent rather more time on the first bit than the rest) and I think it'll be good on the night of the gig, although how impressed Gianandrea will be when he first hears it is less certain. Hopefully he'll take circumstances into account...

Couple of good Jamieisms to welcome us back, of which the one that got the biggest laugh at the time was this:

Jamie (to tenors): Can you sing it like you've got 5 horns? And you can choose which way they go?
Rest of choir: *boggle*
(tenors sing their line again)
Jamie (defiantly, to rest of choir): Does that sound better?
Rest of choir: *nods*
Jamie: Well, there you are.

There was also: "We could do the whole of Daphnis and Chloe as a Laurel and Hardy film!" (the film in question involved them only having 3 drinks for 4 people, and from Jamie's description I suspect it is Men o'War) (no, I didn't know, I looked it up!)

Bit of a fun exercise involving sliding chords, too, but I suspect you had to be there :-)

Must try to sleep again. But first, some things to point out:

1. Make sure you watch tomorrow's Prom (Thu) because it's the RPO, which, last I heard, featured the fabulous Andrew Nicholson on flute.

2. You'll no doubt be aware that Sunday's Prom was cancelled due to a fire, but did you realise it started in the artists' bar? Not sure why that amuses me so much :p Some people were wondering when was the last time a Prom was cancelled - seems it was in 1980 as a result of the Musicians' Union strike. And although now I've been reminded about the strike, I remember it very clearly (I was at Chet's at the time and it affected lots of the staff), I am ashamed to admit that I'd totally forgotten it happened.

3. The BBC is to follow up its Beethoven and Bach weeks with Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky next year.

4. This blog is the top Google result for .............mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm;pp - what I can't work out is what the searcher actually had in mind!

"Who’s top of the table? It’s not a London band..."

I was about to go to sleep, till I checked my email and found a comment from the fabulous Wendy pointing me towards an article I'd missed (thanks Wendy): the league table of British orchestras. Guess who's top! This is as it should be :-)

Long but good day today. I went to Hebden Bridge with a load of friends (some of whom I hadn't met before, but many of whom were current and past choir members). This was for a joint "hen day" for Meg and Rachel, who both get married in the next few weeks. The plan was to go for a walk and then have lunch, but the rain was so INCREDIBLY heavy that we had lunch first - a very long lunch - in the hope that it would ease off a bit. Well, it did, and we walked up an incredibly steep hill to Heptonstall, and then spent quite a while examining tombstones in the parish church graveyard in an effort to find two graves: that of Sylvia Plath, and one that someone remembered seeing on a previous visit, which allegedly ended with the line "She was a bad wife". We didn't find either, but it's a fabulous place, even in the rain! I recommend it.

Oh, and I'm getting a load of visitors to this site from this page, which is in Russian and appears to be about the lovely Mikhail Petrenko. Can anyone translate the bit where it links here? (it's at the bottom of the page) I'm curious, and the Google translator can cope with many languages, but not Russian :p

(In case you're wondering, the Honda ad searches are finally dying down, to be replaced with an amazing number of searches for either the picture of Eddie Izzard or asking how to pronounce Jesu!)

Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink

Isn't that the best name ever? I just discovered this guy (yes, I know - now - that he's been around for years, I'm not very observant!) He's a Dutch footballer who signed for Celtic last week, and scored on his debut a few days later. What I love is that they use the long version of his name - I heard a bit of the commentary for that game, and that's what made me notice him. And look at his shirt! (EDIT: for those searching for the mp3 of his song, is this what you wanted?)

Yes, I know that's not in any way choir-related, I just wanted to point him out to you :p

(Oh, and while we're on the subject of totally unrelated stuff, have a look at this website, that sells proper sweets like they used to have when I was little!)

Well, actually, I could start my music-related stuff with some links, couldn't I? Firstly, if you're going to London in the near future, try Play. Doesn't that look fun? (If anyone's already tried it, I want a report, please!)

Next, I found this newsletter (from the American Choral Directors' Association) by accident. It takes a while to load, but when it does, you'll see that on page 2 there's a section called "Warming Up Your Altos". Scroll down to read it. I was amused by the idea of the "alpha alto" :p I could understand the advice better if I knew what Julia Child sounded like, though (I've heard the name, but know nothing else about her).

I'm still enjoying the Proms. I think my favourite one so far has to be the Sibelius 5 from last Friday, but that's partly because I love that piece so much. Mind you, I also love Mozart's Requiem, but I was a tiny bit disappointed in the performance because the soprano soloist's tuning seemed less than perfect in several places. Was that just me? (I was surprised, because she's actually one I've heard of before!) (Actually, while we're talking about people singing out of tune, what about Franz Ferdinand? At the Reading/Leeds Festival, that was on TV all weekend. Again, a powerful performance, but the singing was so out of tune! I couldn't believe the commentators didn't, well, comment. And again, a disappointment, because I really like Franz Ferdinand.)

Oh, and The Bells was OK, I guess (although not as good as ours!) I couldn't make out many of the words, although "o kak svonka" stood out for some reason... and no Mikhail! Good to hear the piece again though, I haven't listened to it since we sang it.

Anyway, it occurred to me that there may be some people in the choir who weren't around the last time we sang in the Last Night of the Proms (well, strictly, the Proms in the Park - incidentally, I note that that page still doesn't mention us, although they have added Katie Melua, who was added to the bill ages after we were... but the good news is that it implies that Sky digital viewers can, if they choose, watch just the Manchester prom, uncut!). So I thought they might like to know what happened :-)

It was in 2004, and involved the Hallé rather than the BBC Phil, and was in Cathedral Gardens rather than Heaton Park. The plans changed somewhat after they were first mooted, at least partly because the BBC issued so many tickets that there was no room for a stage to hold both the orchestra and the choir at the same time. So the plan was that the orchestra would play for most of the concert, and then they'd come off and the choir would replace them to lead the crowd in the patriotic stuff. Except for the Fantasia on British Sea Songs, which... well, when we discovered what the plan for THAT was, we decided we'd be amazed if it worked. It had 4 consecutive new folk song arrangements inserted into the middle of it, each of which was to be sung by a different choir. None of these choirs were to be in the same hall - or even the same CITY - as the orchestra which would be accompanying them (i.e. the BBC SO in London). The added bits were "Ar hyd y nos" (All through the night) from Swansea, "The Road to the Isles" from Glasgow, "Danny Boy" from Belfast and "The Rio Grande" from Manchester. (I couldn't work out at first why only Manchester wasn't singing a 'local' song, but later my question became why it was only Manchester that had an actual sea song. I never found out the answer to this.)

We sang through the Rio Grande a couple of times before the day, and it was a fun arrangement. But on the day, guess what! Things didn't go entirely according to plan. We were asked to be onstage from 12.30 to 1.30 pm on the day of the gig, the plan being that at some point during that time, Leonard Slatkin (famous American conductor) would make time during his rehearsal with the BBCSO at the RAH to rehearse The Rio Grande, which is the bit that we were singing live with them via satellite link. Well, at 1.25 the link finally went live. We heard him saying grumpily "why do they need to rehearse it? We sent a CD of us practising it!" (which was true, but live's never *quite* the same...) Then he said "OK. Rio Grande, from the top." Then they started playing the National Anthem, which confused us somewhat. *Then* they went into the Rio Grande, and all was well until about bar 10, when the link died. The choir starts singing in bar 13....

We stood around while various BBC people talked furiously on walkie talkies and headsets, but no more was forthcoming from the speakers. At 1.40 we were told that the orchestra in London had left the hall (as you know, orchestras *never* stay a minute past the scheduled end of rehearsal - their management won't let them as they all go on higher pay rates if they do) and we'd missed our one chance to rehearse with them. So we went to plan B, which was "busk it on the night - and if the link goes, just keep singing and hope we're in the same place as them if/when it comes back". That's live TV for you, folks!

Sad, though, that even the *BBC* couldn't get it right. You'd think they'd had enough practice. You'd think it would be straightforward, but I've been involved in many TV recordings/broadcasts over the years and I can't actually remember a single one where there wasn't some technological mishap! I suspect the problem is insufficient gaffer tape :p However, to be fair to them, it *did* work pretty well on the night. That's the bit they *do* seem to be good at.

(I believe that there were many other non-technical things that went wrong that day, but despite that I really enjoyed it. Sadly, I know that lots of the choir didn't, and people still talk about that gig as an example of one where EVERYTHING went wrong. I must've been lucky.)

EDIT: Updated schedule is now online at the usual location. Email me if you don't have the link.

Mikhail Petrenko fan club

Is there one? There should be! Remember this post about the fabulous young Russian bass soloist who was a last-minute stand-in for The Bells? Well, I watched Saturday's Prom (I've seen much more of the Proms this year than I usually do - the combination of Sky Plus and HDTV means they all get recorded automatically without me having to remember, and they look great!) and it ended with Shostakovich's 13th Symphony. I hadn't realised this involved any singing, given that we didn't sing it in our Shostakovich festival, and I thought we sang everything. But it turned out to involved a male-voice chorus and a bass soloist, and it was Mikhail! (He is obviously making a career of being a stand-in, because he wasn't the published soloist for this Prom, and he'd already been a stand-in for Prom 2.) He was as fabulous as I remembered, and the reviews were mostly great. Personally I wasn't at all impressed with the men in the choir, though - they appeared to be mumbling most of the time, although the sound was OK (not great, just OK). You know how men look when they're being forced to sing something they don't really know? In a foreign language? They looked like that. I was quite surprised when I realised that it was an actual Russian choir who could presumably speak Russian without even having to think about it!

I notice that The Bells is tonight's Prom, featuring the LPC, who sang it with us - let's see how they manage without us! Can't believe they didn't return the invitation! Let's also see if their bass soloist turns up... we may yet see Mikhail again :-)

Other news: orchestral musicians are still having problems with airline security, and sadly there seem to be a lot of stupid people who can't see why. Just read the comments on that article. Unbelievable.

And the football season is fully under way - I was at Old Trafford on Sunday and witnessed United's impressiveness at first hand. I have a season ticket for the first time ever, which I'm very excited about. I'd expected to miss a few matches due to choir, but in fact the first two matches I'll be missing will be due to weddings! The second home game of the season is on 9th September, when Meg and Tom are getting married (not to mention the Last Night of the Proms and the 24-Hour Race at West Lancashire Yacht Club!), and although I can go to the third one, the fourth is on 30th September, when Rachel and Laurie are getting married! Luckily I love weddings, so I don't mind too much having to miss football matches for them, especially when it's such lovely people :-)

Pete to win!

I'm still ridiculously addicted to Big Brother, but thank goodness it finishes this Friday, so I can have music on in the background instead of housemates arguing. It's weird that I like BB so much, because I detest all the other reality shows... go figure...

Anyway, this is just a quick post to alert you to two new music-related blogs I just discovered. The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra have just started a joint blog, with posts so far by a cellist and a trumpeter. Example: "Towards the end we were required to “whisper in any order in random rhythm ‘ss’ ‘k’ ‘f’ and tongue click”. Being a loud-mouthed brass-player type, this is what I’ve been waiting my whole playing career for!! We were also asked to make wind noises, an instruction I think the trombones took a bit too literally." And there's also a very entertaining blog by a harpist, called Twang Twang Twang. I particularly liked the Joyce Grenfell harpist sketch :-)

I've added both those blogs to my sidebar (i.e. that list over there to the right of my page) so you can keep an eye on them. (They both have RSS feeds, if you're au fait with all that. So does this blog, for that matter, if you hadn't noticed.)

Oh, and also, in case you missed it, orchestral musicians are having big problems as a result of the new air travel rules.

Art thou troubled? Music will calm thee.

I've been in a foul mood for most of the last week. But then yesterday I had a singing lesson, and now I'm in a good mood :-) (Just to be clear, it wasn't so much the lesson that cheered me up, it was the hours of singing I thought I'd better do beforehand!) So if you're fed up for whatever reason, do try going and having a warble. All the things I've been fed up about lately are still exactly as they were, but today they seem less end-of-the-world-ish. So, yay!

I was going to post the other day to tell you that I was in Forsyth's and noticed that someone has actually published the sheet music for the Honda advert, and Forsyth's have it on sale at £3.95. I was very good and didn't buy it ("when would you ever use it?" I hear you ask, but that's not stopped me buying stuff in the past!) but go and have a look if you're curious.

As a result of singing-lesson-induced enthusiasm, I spent ages last night sorting out sheet music and CDs and iTunes playlists. And in the process I discovered that there are several songs I'd really like to have a recording of, but can't find one (there were a lot more than these, but I found quite a lot on the iTMS) - so if you have any of these you could send me an mp3 of, or let me know of a CD to buy, I'd love to know! A Hymn to the Virgin - Rubbra; A Lullaby - Hamilton Harty; A slumber song of the Madonna - Michael Head; Perduta ho la pace - Verdi; Silver - Armstrong Gibbs; Song to the Seals - Granville Bantock; Why am I always the bridesmaid? (music hall song)

To change the subject, a few links to point out: using music to predict when volcanoes will erupt; a review of Paris Hilton's new album which amused me greatly ("She sings like a woman who has heard of something called singing, can't be sure of exactly what it might entail, but is fairly certain you do something a bit like this."); and news that Katie Melua will be joining us at the Proms in the Park next month.

And finally, it occurs to me that I still have several "great choral moments" to share, so this seems as good a time as any to bring out another one! Well, two. Neither of which is strictly choral, but they're both choir-related...

The first is one that I was reminded of while sorting music yesterday. I found a song by Menotti, and this reminded me of the time - MANY years ago (not sure how many, but it was in the Free Trade Hall) - when we did Amahl and the Night Visitors. Actually, it must have been not long after I joined the choir (which was in 1993), because it was while I was sitting on the front row (John Currie used to put all the new people on the front row, which delighted me but thoroughly annoyed some of the older members who believed you should start at the back and move forward only every few years!). Why do I remember that? Well, this was a semi-staged performance, and the lead characters were in costume and acted as well as sang. And at one point during the gig, several members of the choir from the front row, including me and Ian Benton, had to go out to the front and give someone something (I think we were shepherds giving our gifts to the baby Jesus or something - it's a nativity story, in case you didn't know).

Anyway, that wasn't the moment I remembered. The Great Moment is one that probably won't mean much to anyone who wasn't there, but to those who were... Let me take you back. We REALLY didn't like this work while we were rehearsing it. There was very little to sing, and what there was seemed a waste of time. So we weren't looking forward to the performance at all. But on the night, I'm sure I wasn't the only one who got totally swept up by the thing. Amahl is a little crippled boy, you see, and the kid they had playing him (from the Manchester Boys' Choir, I think, although I could be wrong) was BRILLIANT. And at the end, when he was miraculously cured... well, there were more than just audible sniffs at the moment when he threw his crutches away and walked without them. I, personally, was in floods of tears, and it wasn't just me. As I remember it, most of the women in the choir were in a similar state, and the men were trying to cover up their own emotions by mocking the weeping women :p

Heh, that took longer to explain than I expected! I could leave the second Great Choral Moment for another time. But it could be ages before I have this much energy again, so here goes :-)

This one is much more recent (November 2004) and involves several current choir members, but I'm not sure whether any of them found it as funny as I did! I'm paraphrasing a post I wrote for my LJ at the time, so this will be more thorough than might otherwise be the case.

Jackie H is friends with a tenor soloist (Martin Toal) who had sung a few national anthems at major sports fixtures, and he'd asked her to arrange a group of singers (mainly Sotto Voce) to be the backing choir when he sang at the Tri-Nations rugby league final (Great Britain v Australia) at Elland Road in Leeds. We were asked to prepare standard Last Night of the Proms stuff (Land of Hope & Glory, Rule Britannia, Jerusalem) in addition to the English and Australian national anthems. We had to learn the latter from memory (we already knew all the rest) - it has somewhat odd words which we found hard to get right.

The Great Moment happened before we'd sung a note. We arrived at 2.30 as instructed. We said we were the singers. We were ushered to a very impressive dressing room - well, it was two adjoining rooms. The men announced that they'd have the room with the TV in (typical!). But then the ground staff guy who'd shown us in said "no, the men will have to go elsewhere, only girls allowed in here". Well, we were even more impressed at this. Until, a few minutes later, the guy came back and admitted he'd meant "only Girls Aloud in here"... he was somewhat embarrassed that he'd thought we were Girls Aloud (there were 8 women, of which I was, I think, the youngest...)

That was the Moment (which still cracks me up every time I think of it - I was mistaken for one of Girls Aloud!) but I should probably tell the rest of the story in case anyone is curious...

That was the first I knew Girls Aloud were singing too - I don't think the rest of the choir hadn't heard of them, but I was very excited by this news. Even more so when we were shown to our actual dressing room, which turned out to be shared with about 20 soldiers (Paras, in fact) (in desert uniform, which they'd been asked to wear because they'd all been to Iraq) and the cheerleaders (who wore England rugby kits, but they'd all rolled up their shorts at the waist so that they were really short). So everyone had some eye candy :p

There was lots of sitting around, interspersed with a brief rehearsal, then at 5.50 we were led into the players' tunnel. (The kickoff was 6.15.) This was the first we saw of Girls Aloud, who were performing on the pitch. The ground was packed, the players were out warming up behind Girls Aloud, and there were TV cameras EVERYWHERE. Then everything happened in a rush - the players all suddenly came off and went back into their changing rooms, and we were told to get into position on the pitch sharpish, because things were 2 mins behind schedule. So we dashed onto the pitch as Girls Aloud dashed off, and it was straight into Land of Hope & Glory. So exciting standing there during the long instrumental intro, waiting to sing - the atmosphere was fantastic.

We had to skip Rule Brit and Jerusalem due to time running out, but then they brought the players out, and wow! Loads of fireworks let off. Confetti shot into the air above the entrance. The soldiers fired their guns (I don't know what they were, but there were two and they were huge. We thought they looked like howitzers, but none of us was sure. They banged very loudly, anyway.) 1812 overture played over the PA (the loud bit with cannons). The players came and lined up right in front of us, the Great Britain team to our left and the Australian team to our right, and two soldiers stood in front of us on the red carpet holding the Tri-Nations trophy. The Aussie team looked just... well, BIGGER than the GB team. But all the players looked fierce.

We sang both the anthems - amazingly I remembered all the words to the Aussie one, although there was some creativity going on in the bass section behind me... - and then nearly tripped over a cameraman in trying to get off the pitch. We'd been warned to move as soon as the last anthem finished, because kickoff would be seconds later, and they weren't wrong - the red carpet was rolled up and whisked away before half the choir was even off the podium, and as I entered the players' tunnel the hooter for the start of the match went off and nearly deafened me.

That was the end of our involvement. We were home in time to see the second half. Of course, it all ended in tears - Great Britain got slaughtered. I suspect I cursed them. Martin Toal (the tenor soloist) lost his lucky charm status as a result - until that day, England (or Great Britain) had never lost a match at which he sang the national anthem, apparently.

More Great Choral Moments another time. Until then, keep singing :-)

"Is this heaven?" "No, it's Iowa."

Well, there were supposed to be quite a few choir people coming to my house tonight, but one by one they all cancelled, so I have a huge pile of sausage rolls to eat on my own. Luckily I adore sausage rolls! I should really have continued with the tidying, but instead I spent the last couple of hours watching Field of Dreams, which is one of the best films there is - I've seen it loads of times and it still makes me cry. (In a good way.) (If you've never seen it, go and buy the DVD immediately!)

Just thought I'd post a few links I've collected over the past few weeks.

Sting's next album will be "an album of 16th-century music performed entirely on ... voice and lute, there are a few four part harmonies that I sing and it's all music from the 16th century." I'm looking forward to this - Sting is one of my all-time heroes (along with Nelson, David Beckham, Clark Kent and others...)

A list of tongue twisters. Some of these are even more difficult than Jamie's "red leather, yellow leather, lavender leather" exercise!

Something called the Amen break, which I'd never heard of before. (Here's an mp3 of it.)

A list of all the musical genres there are, allegedly.

Some theories about why opera singers are fat.

A list of band name origins. (I like the Pretenders one - I never knew that!)

A thing about what classical performers wear (mentions Mark Elder).

William Byrd's theory about why everyone should learn to sing.

And finally, a really fascinating one that I could stare at for hours: a constantly-changing display of what's playing on American radio stations right now. No idea how it works but it's very cool!

"Find your own monkey!"

This was not a Jamieism, but a Maggieism. (When we did the Funky Gibbon exercise - the monkey noises - she demonstrated, and the whole choir did it at the same pitch she had, hence her request!)

The problem with being lazy (and not getting round to doing a choir blog post until a couple of days after the rehearsal) is that I can't remember what all the Jamieisms referred to. For example, "I love your buckets! Soft, but with a monkey underneath!" ... I think the buckets were buckets of cold water that we were supposed to be throwing, but I forget what the effect was supposed to be. The monkey is the one previously referred to, though :p

Then there was "Can you sing with horns? C# hornèd people! Sharper horns! Scary horns!" This definitely involved Jamie with imaginary antlers growing out of his head, as opposed to imaginary pigtails (it was a bit visual...) And at some point I wrote down "Pete impression!!!" I know this refers to Pete from Big Brother, and that Jamie reminded me of him at one point (which is kind of freaky, if you know who Pete is), but not why!

It was a really, really, really long rehearsal, by the way. (Just wanted to point that out to those who weren't there.) It was the last one of the season, of course, and there was a social thingy planned for afterwards, and Jamie had been asked (and agreed) to finish early to accommodate this. But what he didn't mention at the start (or indeed at any stage) was that in his mind, finishing early also implied transferring the break from the middle to the end. So we went from 6.45 to 8.45 with no break, on one of the hottest evenings EVER. And we only realised gradually, when he started a new movement at 8.10, that he had no intention of having a break. Of course, Jamie, being Jamie, was just as full of energy at the end as at the start (and he stood up throughout), but the rest of us were like the Wicked Witch of the West at the end of the Wizard of Oz. ("I'm melting, I'm melting!") I understand the need to not lose any rehearsal time, Jamie, but I think you need to take psychology into account at times. We did get through every note of the Ravel, lots of them several times (and still no Beethoven, despite many requests), but by the end most people had switched off, and even those who did write stuff down as instructed probably won't remember everything we did on Wednesday. Oh well. It did sound pretty good though!

I forgot to mention the start of the rehearsal, where Maggie did an exercise that turned into "Summer Holiday" (as usual it took me AGES to recognise this) and once we all got singing we couldn't stop, and Jamie ran in and thumped out the piano part. A nice start :-) Oh, and blond Jonathan! He definitely looked much blonder than he did last week. Or was it just me that thought that?

Going back to Beethoven 9 just before I finish, a couple of things. Someone asked recently whether I could put an mp3 of it online, and I pointed out that I did so a month ago, when I posted all the famous choruses. But to save you all looking back, here's the link again. And today I've added a text file of the lyrics, for those who know the tunes but need to brush up on the words.

Nearer the time, I must write about some interesting Beethoven 9 analyses. There are some fascinating musical details that I bet you've never noticed even if you've sung the work loads of times (I hadn't noticed any of them before I learned about them in an OU course I did). There's also a very well-respected academic who has a whole theory about B9 viewed in feminist terms. And then there's the theory about how it's all based on stuff to do with horses.... (yes, Mary, I did save that email!)

"Sit on your hands until you feel something hard."

(Was it just me that thought this was rather rude? :p It was actually Jamie describing how to find your "sitting bones"...)

It's been a long week. I had a big Pleiades gig at my school last Thursday, and then on Sunday we were singing again at my best friend's wedding. (Which went very well, but was very draining, vocally AND emotionally.) And then yesterday was my last day in the job I've been in for the last ten years. And then choir! Two rehearsals in two days. I didn't post after the first one because I was dying from exhaustion AND heat exhaustion (bear in mind that I've been too hot EVERY SINGLE TIME we've rehearsed at WHGS, including the occasions when everyone else has been trying to decide whether to wear one coat or two - so imagine how hot I felt this week!). But in any case I hadn't got much to say yesterday. We did most of the Psalmus Hungaricus (of which more in a moment). The only Jamieism of note was at the end: "If you sing sharp here, I will be so... mesmerised!"

Tonight was back to Ravel. Very low attendance - when we shuffled forward to fill the gaps, the whole choir didn't even fill the front two rows. But we did get a lot of useful work done. (Frustrating to know that we'll have to do most of it again, because although I'd love to believe that all the absentees will ask about markings they've missed, somehow I doubt it!) Actually the most useful thing I learned tonight was how to breathe in quietly. That's something I'm really bad at, and if I've ever been told before in exactly the way Jamie told us tonight, I've forgotten. So, for those who missed it: The cause of noisy intake of breath is unretracted vocal cords, i.e. throat not open enough. So anything that will retract the vocal cords and open the throat will help silent breathing. Three easy ways to do this:

1. Yawn.
2. Laugh quietly.
3. Look surprised!

(Note: you don't have to do all three!)

(Further note: misspelling of "vocal cords" is one of my biggest pet hates. Whenever I see "vocal CHORDS" I want to scream and throw things. Not good for the voice!)

Anyway. We also did an exercise in which we had to hum like a Belisha beacon - this was notable for the fact that Jamie hadn't previously known the term "Belisha beacon". Bless! Oh, and at some point (possibly the start of page 9 of the Ravel) we spent quite a while acquainting people with how a diminished 7th chord works. For those who missed it, the point was that a diminished 7th chord is made up of minor thirds stacked on top of each other, so that if every part moves up or down by a minor third, you still have the same chord. There are only three DIFFERENT diminished chords, and they sound the same whatever order the notes are in:

1. C - Eb - F# - A
2. C# - E - G - Bb
3. D - F - Ab - B

As you will see, every note in the chromatic scale is in one of those three chords. (And those tenors who were confused at being asked to sing Eb in the first bar of page 9, just for the exercise - hopefully now you can see why!)

Sorry to go on, you know I love stuff like this :-)

Couple more Jamieisms. One that made everyone giggle, although I'm still not sure whether or not we were all thinking of the same thing (!), was "Never push - pull! It's much more fun!" Then there was "Don't be soubrettish. More horn!" which confused some people, who may wish to know what a soubrette is! And finally, Jamie was amused that someone heard him playing the piano before the rehearsal, and asked him "Was that you playing the jazz?" to which he was delighted to be able to reply "No, it was just Ravel!"

And finally: some more (hopefully useful) downloads for you. Firstly, mp3 clips of Psalmus Hungaricus.

Beginning, up to figure 4
Figure 4, to 8th bar of figure 7
8th bar of figure 7, up to figure 11
Figure 11 to figure 16
Figure 16 to figure 20
Figure 20 to figure 25
Figure 25 to figure 31
Figure 31, to 4 before figure 40
4 before figure 40, to the end

And another sheet of extra cues, like the one I did for Daphnis. (Not quite as vital as for Daphnis, but if you're like me and want to know what's going on in the gaps, you might find it useful.) The full-size one is here, and the small version is here. As I said last time, the small version will fit on your screen whatever settings you have, but it's very fuzzy. Your best bet is to save the large version (by right-clicking the link, as if you were saving an mp3), and then open the saved version. Most printers should be set up to automatically shrink it to fit on one page, while keeping the quality.

After quite a few people asked for paper copies of the Daphnis cues, I photocopied a pile of them and asked Jessica if I could put them out for people to take, last week. She said it'd be fine and that she'd mention it to Jamie when he arrived (he wasn't there yet). By half-time the pile had vanished, and I assumed they must have all been taken, but then Jessica told me that Jamie wanted to check them before they were distributed, and would put them out this week if they were OK. But they haven't reappeared, so I don't know whether there's a mistake (which would be good to know, given how many people already have one!), or whether he's just forgotten, or whether he's actually decided this is information he doesn't want the choir to have for some reason... Who knows? Maybe I'll pluck up the courage to ask him at some point. Or maybe he'll produce the pile next week. Let's see.

"You should consider yourselves just as important as the wind machine."

This was my favourite Jamieism of tonight - it appeared during his inspirational speech on our role in the Ravel. At least I think it was intended to be inspirational :p Maybe he was feeling inspirational because it was his birthday today - we sang happy birthday to him and he seemed quite pleased (well, he didn't ask us to sing it again with more ping or higher cheekbones, so I took that as a good sign!)

There was also "Reminds me of a Police song!", which I think went unnoticed by most people, and those who did hear him say it were a bit baffled... but Sting is one of my idols, so I realised immediately that he was referring to the fact that we'd just been singing "dee doo doo doo" :p This was during the first half of the rehearsal, when we spent a LOT of time working on the weird chords in the middle bit of Daphnis. This wasn't helped by the fact that many people are now singing a different part to the one they learned a couple of weeks ago, and so it was slow work, but it was successful, because by the break the chords all sounded correct and confident. Which is more than can be said for page 11, on which most of the altos are still singing the tenor part. At least some of them did start to realise they'd done something wrong (judging by the flurry of exchanged puzzled looks afterwards), even if they didn't twig what it was :p

Oh, and there was the charades thing, but that was a bit visual! Jamie did the charades "it's a play" gesture in an effort to describe how to sing a chord. Then he realised that many of the other charades gestures were relevant to choral singing, and proceeded to demonstrate them all and explain why. You probably had to be there!

And then of course there was the drama of the chairmanship election. I must say that whatever I'd expected, it certainly wasn't that there'd need to be a second vote even after all four preferences for everyone had been transferred! Just goes to show. Anyway, I am pleased with the result - I think the best person won, and he will have my full support (but he already knows that). I'm not desperately upset that I didn't win, as the main (although not the only) reason I was standing was because I felt I ought to - I thought it about time there was a female candidate. However, it turns out the choir doesn't want a female candidate (cue chorus of "yes they do, just not you!") - but at least it was given the chance to choose :-) Never mind. I feel a bit like Cap'n Jack Sparrow in the first Pirates film, when he said "you will always remember this as the day you almost caught Captain Jack Sparrow" :-)

(That may not make any sense, but I know what I mean!)

Tripping hither, tripping thither, nobody knows why or whither

I have decided that today is the day that I start to deal with my email backlog, which is now over 300 messages. So if you've emailed me and are waiting for a reply (particularly all the people who have emailed in the last week or so to ask my views about choir things), please bear with me, I'll get to you as soon as I can!

Just wanted to share something with you though. In the post today came my newsletter from the Buxton Gilbert and Sullivan Festival. I have only been to this once - a couple of years ago, just after we did Iolanthe with the Hallé, Graham E asked if anyone wanted to come and sing it on stage in Buxton. Jackie H and I went to join him, and had a great time being fairies for a week (yes, we had to dance!) And ever since then, they've been sending me the newsletters.

Anyway, it seems that this year they're doing something slightly insane, which I think is great! They're making a world record attempt - they're going to sing all 13 G&S operas more or less nonstop, aiming to finish in less than 29 hours. Not only that, they're moving round between each one, so that not all the performances are at the Buxton Opera House (although some are) - HMS Pinafore is at the Cat and Fiddle, and Iolanthe is in a cave (Poole's Cavern), for example!

The attempt starts at teatime on Friday 28th July, and they hope to be done by the early hours of Sunday 30th July. Sounds like great fun to me, and I plan to do it if I possibly can. If you want to get involved (not necessarily singing all of it, you can join for just part of it, and they also want conductors, pianists and drivers), have a look at the website.

EDIT: On a different subject, I just listened to the Hungarian text mp3s and realised how extremely quiet they are. (That's how they were on the CD - I just copied them directly and put them online.) Well, I've now fiddled with them so you can actually hear them.

Track 1 (Mikoron David, p.2)
Track 2 (En pedig Uram, p.17)
Track 3 (Igaz vagy Uram, p.24)
Track 4 (Szent David, p.43)

"We like to break up the rehearsals here!"

By way of contrast to last night's rehearsal, tonight's was very short on Jamieisms for some reason. Lots more Hungarian though - we are all getting quite fluent! Wasn't quite as fun as last night - not sure why. We got a lot done though, although still no Beethoven 9 (a few mutters from a few people when Jamie announced the memory thing to the whole choir, but I think most people are pleased at the prospect, mainly because lots of us remember how fabulous it was last time we did it from memory - our very first concert with Mark, I seem to remember!)

Jamie also told us something I've known for a while but haven't mentioned here because I didn't know how secret it was - we're singing in the Proms in the Park bit of the Last Night of the Proms on 9th September. Not much to do but it'll be very public and hence excellent publicity for the choir. I understand we got this gig at the invitation of the BBC Phil - clearly they love us these days :-)

Not much else to say, other than something I meant to include yesterday and forgot. A bit of a tip to some of the newer members, really - old hands won't need to be told this. But at last night's sectional, I was amazed, when we sight-read through most of the Kodaly, how many people were complaining that they could probably have done much better if they'd known what line they were on. Hint: next time you get given any music, as soon as you sit down in your place, get out your pencil and spend two minutes (it will take no longer than that) going through the score and marking your line. Mark it however you like, but be consistent, so that your eyes start to automatically go to the right line whenever your brain registers the "my line" mark.

I have many other sight-reading tips (I know, I know, I promised to write them all down ages ago), but that one was the one that helped me most yesterday, and if you get into the habit of doing this, you will save yourself a lot of unnecessary confusion. Trust me on this :-)

EDIT: I just posted this and then realised I'd forgotten to explain the title! This was Jamie's attempt at humour when suddenly, in the middle of the rehearsal, there was a huge noise, and when we all looked round, one of the basses was on the floor. His chair had broken underneath him! Luckily he was OK :-)

"Can you be more Scottish? Ee bah gum?"

Yes, we're back to Jamieisms :-)

(We have no idea where he got the idea that Scottish people say 'ee bah gum'...)

Great ladies' sectional last night. I feel a bit guilty that I didn't do a blog post when I got home, but by the time I'd done all my school stuff it was the middle of the night and I couldn't stay awake. Hence me writing this in a huge rush before going to tonight's rehearsal - if I had two lots to write tonight, that'd be even worse!

A very hot and sticky evening in the WHGS upper hall, aka "the hottest place in the world". The windows were open, but it made no difference. Jamie apologised for using the phrase "warming up"... but he made us do it anyway :p

We met the Hungarian language coach, Béni Csillag. He was there to teach us the words to Kodaly's Psalmus Hungaricus, which we started last night. We also met Jessica, our new (permanent) choral administrator, who seemed very nice. (We were due to rehearse Beethoven 9 as well, but didn't. Jamie did confirm that we will be doing it from memory though - I told you!) The Kodaly surprised us all by being really, really lovely, with some gorgeous tunes and beautiful harmonies. I think we'd all expected an atonal mess, but that's not at all what we got. Really looking forward to hearing it properly - must get a recording ASAP. We got through the whole piece, I think (it's not that long) and it was sounding pretty confident by the end.

Jamie took the opportunity of it being just ladies to ask, on behalf of those members of the choir who are sick of this, that people stop talking unnecessarily in rehearsals. This was much appreciated by many people, but unfortunately several of the worst talkers were absent! Oh well. Maybe if no-one responds when they start talking, they'll get the message :-)

He also asked for comments and ideas about his idea for expanding the choir, but I won't write about that now because (a) he won't have explained it to the men yet, and (b) I need to be out of the house in 5 minutes! So I'll finish with a list of Jamieisms:

"Now make your Australian pirate face! (that's the same as your pirate face but on the other side)"

"Now can you be a very small, very excited dog?"

(re first note) "If you get it wrong I will kill you. Slowly, personally... with a teaspoon."

"You're not often gonna be asked to do scat. So when you are, I'd grab it with both horns!" (he asked us to do some scat singing, and we were TERRIBLE at it)

"Please don't hum. I'm sure if you were in any other choir they'd kick you in the ribs." (this was when he was trying to rehearse a part on its own, and people from other parts were humming their own part after being asked to be silent - VERY annoying)

"I'd love to let you go on - but I can't bear it!" (this was when the whole 1st alto section very confidently sang a whole line a semitone too low - they all had a blind spot about a D#....)

My favourite part, though, was when he asked us to say a line of Hungarian words (page 17-18) but miss out the consonants. This was the funniest thing EVER - but you probably had to be there! :-)

Ooh aw ah nah ng "zombie uh" ba ya

(I *know* you wanted a list of all the sounds in Daphnis and Chloé!)

(What do you mean, you didn't write "zombie uh"?!?)

We had another bash at Daphnis tonight. Didn't do all of it, but lots of it was reinforced. (Actually it sounded instantly more confident than last week - I think people have been practising!) Rory (for it was him again) did a lot of work on the more complicated chords, and they sounded more or less right by the end. There were two alto disaster areas though: bottom of page 5, where the two alto parts are supposed to be in octaves, but in fact all the 1st altos were singing G# instead of B, so we had four bars of lovely tuneful 6ths instead... and top of page 11, where just about the entire alto section insisted on singing the tenor part (and then wondered why it felt so low at the end!)

And then of course there were the hustings. (Those who, like me, suddenly realised they had no idea where that word came from may find this enlightening.) I deliberately haven't mentioned the chairmanship election on this blog before now, because it seemed a little unfair to the other candidates. But since I drew people's attention to the blog on my leaflet and in my speech, it seems silly not to use it now! (I originally planned to start my speech with something like "those of you who read my blog already know everything I think about choir-related stuff, so I'm mainly talking to the rest of you", but I dropped that on the grounds that it sounded patronising...)

Anyway. Answers to a few questions I've been asked tonight:

1. The reason there is much less writing on my pamphlet than the others is that the suggested limit was 130 words, and I stuck to that exactly.

2. The reason I chose a (not very flattering) photo of me singing rather than one of me looking chairmanlike is that, although singing is not the main part of the chairman's job, it *is* the sole reason for the existence of the choir, and I think that has to be at the root of everything we do.

3. It would be fair to say that I have found myself tending to agree with Jamie more often than not (and probably more often than many of the other reps), in committee meetings (including those at which he was not present). However, this certainly does not mean I have never challenged him when I have disagreed, and I would expect to do that more often if I was chairman. (The same goes for other senior members of the HCS, although generally Jamie represents them at committee meetings so I don't have that much direct contact with them. I'm pretty sure they all know me by sight if not by name, though.)

4. Do I really want to be chairman? Well, I'd like to be, but I wouldn't be distraught if I lost, because the other candidates are all very capable, and since the committee has worked very well together as a group over the past couple of years (in the opinion of several of us) I'm pretty sure this would continue whoever was running things. I see the election as a win-win situation for me personally, because if I win, great, but if not - more free time :-) I just thought it was about time there was a female candidate - there's never been one!

5. (I wasn't actually asked this, but I bet some people were wondering...) No, I probably wouldn't wear a football shirt or a geeky T-shirt if I had to go and meet some VIPs on behalf of the choir. It's fair to say that at the moment I don't own many posh clothes, but this will have to change regardless of the election result, because in September I change jobs from a special school to a grammar school, and the dress code is very different! In the meantime I do have my interview suit, if I have to do something posh at short notice :p

If anyone wants to ask me any other questions, please feel free.

Anorak alert!

On my way out, but thought I'd post this, since I've just done it. Armed with the Daphnis miniature score I got from the library yesterday, I've written out a few extra cues that might prove useful. (If there are any places I've missed, please let me know.)

(EDIT: Here's a small version in case there are people who are confused by the large one. The small one will fit on your screen whatever settings you have, but it's very fuzzy. Your best bet is to save the large version (by right-clicking the link, as if you were saving an mp3), and then open the saved version. Most printers should be set up to automatically shrink it to fit on one page, while keeping the quality.)

(ANOTHER EDIT: For sopranos at figure 11... I didn't put a cue here because the altos are singing so I thought that might be enough. But I realised tonight that the sopranos may need a bit more help, because their notes in the 3rd bar are really hard to get. So you may like to know that the violas and cellos (both divided) play the exact same notes for 2 bars from figure 11. Also, in the 2nd bar of 11, there's a bassoon solo that starts on a G#.)

I may as well also take this opportunity to point you to the 4 tracks of Hungarian text: track 1, track 2, track 3, track 4. I was just copying the CDs tonight for Rosy and figured I may as well put them online. Enjoy!

Train whistle blowin'

Well, I went to a choir committee meeting last night, and - as is traditional - it finished 5 minutes later than planned, which resulted in me missing my train by 10 seconds (it left just as I reached the stairs down to the platform) and having to wait an hour for the next one. Grr. But at least I did finish my book.

Quite a productive committee meeting, though, and I got all agitated when bringing up something that's been infuriating me for YEARS :p Let's see if anything comes of it!

While wandering aimlessly round the station in search of a drink, after missing the train, I was amazed to discover that the (Victoria) station bar was open. I can't actually remember the last time I saw it open, I presumed it had closed permanently! They had the football on, too, but it was so very hot in there that I chose to sit on the station platform rather than in the bar. (Plus, it was only Switzerland v Ukraine!) I did have a nasty thought, though, which was that if England get through the quarter-final against Portugal on Saturday, the resulting semi-final (against Brazil or Ghana or Spain or France) will be on a Wednesday night (5th July).... eek!

Laufet Brüder, eure Bahn!

I sang Beethoven 9 in Todmorden last night as a favour for Terry. Great fun, although it's always a little frustrating when working with anyone who's not the Hallé - you know the standard can't be anywhere near as high, but you still have to bite your lip a bit when the woodwind end up a couple of bars ahead because they weren't watching, for example. Still, for an amateur performance it was really rather good. The conductor (Chris Swaffer) and the chorus master (Greg Beardsell) were both excellent, in particular. (It said in the programme that Greg conducts the Manchester Boys' Choir (as well as the Bournemouth Symphony Chorus and many other things) - I can only assume he wasn't conducting them when they prepared Mahler 3 for us last month, as I think they'd have been much better then!)

The programme did manage to totally miss out the tenor soloist, which I should imagine he wasn't too pleased about. (Well, he was listed at the start, but didn't have an individual page with his bio.) He was very good though (Richard Barraclough was his name, and to redress the balance I won't name any of the other three!) and he particularly amused me during the rehearsal when he made a bit of a clatter by CLIMBING INTO THE BAR, which was a sectioned-off area in the same room. (Well, to be accurate, the clatter came when he climbed out again, but that was what coincided with a quiet bit!) (And to be fair, I think he was only trying to refill his water bottle, but the idea of a tenor climbing into a bar amused me too much to pay attention to such details :p )

All the soloists sounded great, actually, although the soprano caused quite a few problems by being totally unable to follow the beat. Even when they all moved so that she could see the conductor, she watched him yet paid no attention. She did get better, though, after quite a few goes at the solo quartet page that ends with her on a top B - she got that right in the concert, although she managed somehow to get a bar ahead at some point earlier in the movement, which confused things a bit - the conductor had so much to do trying to ensure that everyone else didn't follow her that he forgot to bring the choir in, so it was just as well that there were several of us who were confident enough to come in with their "Deine Zauber" anyway.

I went along expecting to sing tenor, as that's what I'd offered to do (I usually do when I'm helping out another choir, because they are usually short of tenors but have hundreds of altos). I was particularly keen on this because it was a chance to sight read, which you know I love, and as a bonus I would finally get to sing the Turkish march bit in the middle! (that's the Laufet Brüder bit referred to in the title). I did sing tenor for the first part of the rehearsal, but they seemed pretty confident (I found out later that there was a Hallé tenor there, who I know very well by sight but I've forgotten the name of (sorry!) - one of the newer ones, anyway). And there weren't that many altos (in fact I think there were fewer altos than basses!) and they weren't very confident, so I shifted over and sang alto. I know the alto part from memory - at least I did, but an hour and a half singing the tenor part put me off a bit, so I needed to glance at my copy from time to time.

Word to the wise, by the way - if you have trouble memorising things and you weren't in the choir last time we did Beethoven 9 (which we sang from memory), start learning it NOW. Because we sing it again in October, and it's very likely that we'll be doing it from memory again....

... as you work yourselves into a pirate frenzy...

Guess what! More mp3s :-)

Daphnis and Chloé choir bits:

Page 1-11 (8.6 MB)
Page 11-12 (1.9 MB)
Page 13-18 (3.5 MB)
Page 19-20 (1.2 MB)
Page 21 (1.7 MB)
Page 22-23 (4.0 MB)
Page 24-30 (2.0 MB)

This seemed more use than posting the whole thing.

Note that some of the openings (in particular on the first track) are extremely quiet, so don't decide too soon that it's not working :p Also, I've included a bit more than the printed cue in most cases, but each excerpt starts not long before the choir sing.

Brief summary of the story on Wikipedia and a much longer one here. Turns out it's all about incest! They didn't mention that when they told us about the pirates :p

We didn't have Jamie tonight due to his Oxford Blues thing, so Rory Macdonald, the Hallé's assistant conductor, came to introduce us to the Ravel. He was pretty good. I couldn't hear him at first, although to be fair this was mainly because someone near me talked THE WHOLE TIME he was speaking. So rude! But later on, she shut up and he spoke louder, so all was well :-)

We got through the whole thing, and I was pleased to discover that I remembered most of it from the last time we did it. I've been trying to work out when that was, and I've just remembered that it was so long ago that it was before my friend Andrew Nicholson became the Hallé principal flautist, because this piece features a lot of flute solos, and I'm pretty sure it was Andrew's trial piece - he got the permanent job as a result of his performance in this. (I could be wrong about this, of course. But I do remember him playing it, and very lovely it was too.)

I do hate using French vocal scores, though. Does anyone know why it is that they never have any cues - or at least very inadequate ones? Rory said "the anoraks amongst you can go out and invest in a full score"... I don't own an anorak, but you all know that otherwise that's me :p Rest assured that when I do get a full score, I will post helpful cues for you all to write in.

(Oh, while Rory was trying to explain to the tenors how to get one of their more difficult notes with no cue, he suggested using a tuning fork, and then produced a pitch pipe he's been using at Covent Garden when conducting the offstage shepherd boy in Tosca this week. He told us about the diva-like small boys he's working with. And then realised that his pitch pipe was in C#, which defeated the object of him getting it out!)

Nothing else to say, actually. But to finish, even more mp3s:

Jamie talking about his Oxford Blues Service (9.7 MB) on In Tune yesterday (thanks Graham)

The Time of our Lives - the official FIFA World Cup 2006 anthem, by Il Divo with Toni Braxton (3.9 MB). I include this because despite avidly following everything World Cup-related, I didn't know this existed till yesterday, when I found out about it while searching for something else. I hasten to add that I'm not a fan of Il Divo...

And finally, for the altos (although I'm sure the rest of the choir will get to hear about this eventually), some Goodies!

Funky Gibbon (3.1 MB)
Wild Thing (4.5 MB) (note: I heard this, when I was young, before I heard the original version. So to me this is the original. It's much more fun than the Troggs!)

And you thought obsession was a bad thing!

It's due to my obsessive nature that I was rooting through my CDs looking for the Rachmaninov Vespers, having realised that I needed to include the Ave Maria in my "Best Choruses" list, and while doing so I discovered my CD of Daphnis et Chloé, which I'd forgotten I owned. Since we're starting rehearsals on that tomorrow, I thought I'd post the first movement. [EDIT: Now removed, see next post!] I knew I'd sung it before, but couldn't remember anything about it. Now I've had a listen, it seems a lot more familiar. And those who are worried about singing in French will be reassured to hear that there are no words - it's all sung to 'ah' :-)

And some more additions to the "Best Choruses" list that I can't believe I forgot yesterday (I'll put all the links in one place eventually):

Dixit Dominus, 1st movement (Handel) (7.1 MB)
Agnus Dei, from Requiem (Duruflé) (4.2 MB)
Lift Thine Eyes, from Elijah (Mendelssohn) (1.9 MB)
Magnificat, 1st movement (Bach) (3.7 MB)
Passion Chorale, from St Matthew Passion (Bach) (2.8 MB)
Ave Maria, from Vespers (Rachmaninov) (4.3 MB)
Sleep Well, from St John Passion (Bach) (9.0 MB)

Oh, and did you all know about the Leek double sunset? It's tomorrow (and every year round about Midsummer Day). I found out about it the day afterwards last year, and have had it marked in my diary since. If anyone sees it, do report back!

So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye?

Quick quiz: what song is that line from? (Answer at the end of this post.) I mention it because I sang it tonight in a Pleiades rehearsal. Such fun! And even more fun is the fact that we have to perform I Predict A Riot in our next concert, so I plan to finally get round to writing out the a cappella version :-)

Anyway, my main reason for posting is to put this list online:

1812 Overture (Tchaikovsky) (14.4 MB)
Grand March, from Aida (Verdi) (13 MB)
Anvil Chorus, from Il Trovatore (Verdi) (3 MB)
Gloria, from B Minor Mass (Bach) (2 MB)
Beethoven 9 finale (21.4 MB)
Belshazzar's Feast: The Trumpeters and Pipers (Walton) (1.5 MB)
Lacrymosa, from Requiem (Berlioz) (11.1 MB)
Denn Alles Fleisch, from German Requiem (Brahms) (16.6 MB)
Brindisi, from La Traviata (Verdi) (3.6 MB)
Dies Irae, from Requiem (Britten) (4.1 MB)
In the Beginning, from Creation (Haydn) (2.9 MB)
Deep River, from A Child of our Time (Tippett) (4.5 MB)
Fuoco di Gioia, from Otello (Verdi) (3.2 MB)
The Dream of Gerontius: Profiscere anima Christe (Elgar) (6.9 MB)
Soldiers' Chorus, from Faust (Gounod) (3.8 MB)
Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves, from Nabucco (Verdi) (5.8 MB)
I Was Glad (Parry) (5.6 MB)
Mahler 2 finale (7.5 MB)
Mahler 3, 5th movement (4.8 MB)
Mahler 8, finale (7.7 MB)
Neptune, from The Planets (Holst) (7.7 MB)
Nessun Dorma, from Turandot (Puccini) (3.6 MB)
Polovtsian Dances, from Prince Igor (Borodin) (15.6 MB)
Chorus of the Scottish Refugees, from Macbeth (Verdi) (7.2 MB)
Dies Irae, from Requiem (Verdi) (2.5 MB)
Vivaldi Gloria, opening (3.2 MB)

You see, I have an annoyingly obsessive mind, and it's been bugging me for weeks that we didn't do ALL the "best choruses in the world" last night. So the above is my attempt to redress the balance by at least covering them all on this blog. (Obviously some major works, like Gerontius, should be there in their entirety, so I've just chosen my favourite bit!) I'm sure there are some obvious ones I've missed - any suggestions? (Elijah just occurred to me as I was writing that - will look that up some time soon. I think it's much less well known than maybe it once was, though.)

A couple of other things to point out - has anyone been watching The Singing Estate (Channel 5 on Sunday nights)? It's kind of entertaining in places. (If you've no idea what it is, have a look at their website.) There have been two episodes so far - it amused me that they featured this choir trying to sing Zadok and O Fortuna at more or less the same time we were performing them!

I did discover a few interesting links while exploring the Singing Estate website. Hands up who knew that the Radio One website had loads of stuff about singing? Mainly pop singing, but lots of it is relevant, including a load of vocal warmup exercises - with video to show you how to do them! Have a look, in particular, at Improve Your Vocals, Music Articles and Advice (loads of interesting links), and How to tell if I'm a good singer!

P.S. The song in the title was, of course, Bohemian Rhapsody.

Santuzza wasn't missed

Santuzza is the name of my main World of Warcraft character. (That's because we were rehearsing Cavalleria Rusticana when I first bought the game, see.) Sadly, for various reasons I won't bore you with, she has been unable to make any progress recently, so I've been concentrating on Iolanthe, my main alternate character. So the sight of Santuzza's name all over the Easter Hymn made me a little wistful. However, I'm delighted to say that the performance did not suffer from having our soprano section singing the solo Santuzza line (not that I ever thought it would) - they sounded fabulous :-)

The Easter Hymn was my favourite of all the things we sang tonight, although there were several others close behind. Could have done without Jesu Joy or the Bridal Chorus, and that movement of the Brahms is OK but it's my least favourite from the whole of the Requiem, and I've gone off the Vaughan Williams somewhat. But the rest of it was great! It all went very well, too. A very long day - the rehearsal was more than 3 hours long, and then we didn't have much of a break because we had half an hour of choir photo-taking before we could have our tea. That was quite fun, though, and I look forward to seeing the results.

The audience seemed to enjoy the concert. Not as full as I'd been led to believe it might be, but a pretty good turnout. I only spotted three people who stood for Hallelujah, which was kind of disappointing. But they weren't given much warning, to be fair. Oh, and there was some weird problem with the hall's PA system, which meant that it kept emitting random noises. Very offputting, and it took them most of the concert to sort it (Jamie had to go offstage at one point, it was so bad), but they did in the end.

Not much else to say, actually. Oh, a medical update, though: for those who were asking about Liz L, she's fine but her dad is very ill and that's why she's been missing. She hopes to be back on Wednesday. Lindsay H will be missing for a while, having fallen down some stairs and ended up with a new hip. And Alison, who was very poorly on Wednesday (but came to choir anyway, the fool, although she didn't sing) turned out to have a kidney infection and is much better now it's been treated.

P.S. I missed Abi today - I wanted her to share my ongoing semi-chorus bitterness :-) (The semi-chorus had an extra member today, I noticed. Not sure why that should be. And they made a bit of a mess of that bit they kept getting wrong in April - at least in the rehearsal. They sounded fine in the concert.)

EDIT: I almost forgot the most interesting thing I learned today! It's about Jamie's Oxford Blues Service (live on R3, 4pm Wednesday). I bumped into him in Starbucks before the rehearsal this afternoon, and I asked how rehearsals were going. He told me that it's all great - they've rehearsed with the band, and in the church, but that's when they discovered that they couldn't follow their original plan of using the church organ, as it's not tuned to A=440. So they're going to take in a Hammond organ instead! I told him that's much more rock and roll :p

"What's that piece we've been working on? With lots of humming?"

... said Jamie.
"... The Humming Chorus?" said the choir.
"No, not *that* one..." said Jamie.

(It turned out he meant Mahler 3 his psalm from the a cappella concert, in case you're wondering... There weren't many Jamieisms tonight, but the funniest moment was when we were doing the Easter Hymn and he was trying to encourage rolled Rs. The noise he made was highly comical!)



(I don't usually take photos during rehearsals, but the ladies were all sent for a slightly early break while the men rehearsed the Verdi Soldiers' Chorus. They sounded so wonderful that I couldn't resist taking a photo!)

I didn't get as annoyed during tonight's rehearsal as I did during the last one. The main irritation was that, having sung with tenors on Saturday (who always rush) I was back to singing with altos (who always drag). And the latter is far more infuriating. (Well, to be fair, not ALL tenors rush and not ALL altos drag. But the majority of the people around me on Saturday and tonight fitted these stereotypes.)

Nothing else to say, actually, other than that we now know the running order for Sunday, so here's a repeat of the mp3 links in the correct order, this time including the two a cappella pieces.

Zadok the Priest (Handel) (6.8 MB)
Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring (Bach) (3.3 MB)
Dies Irae, from Requiem (Mozart) (2.2 MB)
Lacrimosa, from Requiem (Mozart) (4.1 MB)
Agnus Dei, from Requiem (Fauré) (6.6 MB)
Soldiers' Chorus (Verdi) (2.0 MB)
Humming Chorus, from Madame Butterfly (Puccini) (3.4 MB)
Easter Hymn, from Cavalleria Rusticana (Mascagni) (6.2 MB)
O Fortuna, from Carmina Burana (Orff) (3.3 MB)
Bridal Chorus, from Lohengrin (Wagner) (6.2 MB)
Wie lieblich, from German Requiem (Brahms) (8.0 MB)
Nunc Dimittis (Holst) (3.8 MB)
Ave Verum Corpus (Mozart) (4.0 MB)
Lord, thou hast been our refuge (Vaughan Willliams) (9.1 MB)
Hallelujah Chorus, from Messiah (Handel) (4.5 MB)
Sanctus, from Requiem (Verdi) (2.8 MB)

Oh, and (totally unconnectedly) one thing I discovered yesterday - if you're a football fan, you might be interested in this BBC page, which lists all the music they use on football programmes.

Are you the famous Hallé blogger?

This is what a guy said to me today as I went past him to get to my seat at the Bridgewater Hall for the BBC4 People's Chorus thing. Needless to say I was delighted :-) Mind you, I was wearing my "I'm blogging this"> T-shirt, along with (like everyone else) a sticker with my name on, so I guess it was a bit of a clue!

The whole event was pretty fabulous. (There was a Guardian blogger there too, btw - see here and here.) I nearly didn't go - I was so tired when I woke up, plus I still have a sore throat and a cough, plus... footy! But I'm glad I did, because it's not an experience I'm likely to repeat any time soon. (I was surprised to hear that one Hallé singer left at lunchtime because she wasn't enjoying it, because everyone else I spoke to - and I counted 14 Hallé people, but there may have been more - was loving it as much as I was.)

The standard was much higher than I was expecting. So either the BBC were really good at selecting people, or only really good people applied. And it sounded as if most people had practised, because there were hardly any problems with notes, even where Tallis had done one of his clashes. (I have to admit I hadn't even looked at my music - I was relying on my l33t sight-reading skills (I had to resist the urge to type "skillz" then, I must admit...) and luckily they didn't let me down.) I started off with choirs 3 and 4 (I was singing tenor in choir 3, along with Paul and Richard; Dr Liz was singing alto in the same group) and we were joined by choirs 1 and 2 after the morning coffee break and choirs 5, 6, 7 and 8 after lunch. (Lunch involved the choir 3 Hallé group going to the Rain Bar to watch the first half of the England game while eating. We had to go back to the hall at half time, but I got text updates (silently!) after that - very helpful of England to not do anything interesting in the second half!)

The most fascinating thing in the hall was actually the camera in the picture above. We think it's called a boom camera, although when I just looked that up, it seems that the proper term might be jib camera. Whatever it's called, it was fascinating. There was just one guy controlling it, and he could make it go anywhere and point in any direction, seemingly effortlessly. And all the movements were so smooth! It was almost like an alien lifeform - it reminded me of the Martian in The War of the Worlds. I'm sure I wasn't the only person who spent most of my unoccupied minutes during the rehearsal just staring at it open-mouthed. So if I'm gaping when I'm on TV, that'll be why!

The music was the highlight, though. Spem in Alium sounded just wonderful. The first time we sang it with all 8 choirs together, spines were well and truly tingled. It was the spatial aspect that made it so magical - they'd arranged the choirs so that 1 to 4 were in the stalls, and 5 to 8 in the circle, with 5 above 4 and 8 above 1. That meant that when the choirs came in in order, which happened several times, the sound just gradually swirled round the whole hall. And sitting in the middle of it all, it was... what's the 8-part version of "quadrophonic sound"? Each of the choirs - including the one I was part of - reached my ears from a different direction, and I'm not sure I can adequately convey in words what an amazing effect it was. Wow.

Everything went so well that we actually finished early. We might have finished even earlier if one of the audience hadn't forgotten to turn their phone off - it rang in the worst possible place, i.e. one of several general pauses in the piece. So we had to perform it again. It was much better the second time, though, so it was just as well. (That reminds me of a Great Choral Moment that I meant to post ages ago, actually. It was when we were rehearsing Mahler 2 a couple of years ago. You know how when the choir comes in, it's marked ppp? Well, we'd spent a while trying to get it quieter and quieter, and Jamie finally pronounced himself satisfied, but asked us to do it again one more time to see if it could be even quieter. And that's when Alison's phone rang - and not just any ringtone, but the opening of Night on the Bare Mountain (you know the really fast, high triplet quaver bit), which was one of my creations. Hee! I was extremely amused.) (I used to make lots of ringtones for people, but people have got better at finding their own, so I don't often do it these days.)

Great day, although unfortunately I felt quite ill by the time I got home - Manchester was just so hot, and I'd been too hot almost all day (thank goodness for the air conditioning in the Bridgewater Hall, but I wasn't in there all day, and all the time I wasn't, I just felt faint and dizzy from the heat). Bear in mind that I'm usually too hot at WHGS, even on days when most of the rest of the choir are keeping their coats on and asking for the heating to be turned up. So you can imagine how hot I felt on an actual hot day! I was going to go to bed as soon as I got home, but Doctor Who was just starting, so I thought I may as well watch that while I cooled down, and by the time it had finished - and I'd been in my nice cool house for 45 minutes - I felt fine :-)

What did everyone else think of the day?

EDIT: To change the subject completely, just noticed someone searching for "how to pronounce pie jesu" and not having much luck. It's pee-ay yay-zoo.

EDIT 2: The Guardian blogger posted again and reminded me that I forgot to mention the "We've come from Barnsley" moment :-)

EDIT 3: It seems this post is now the number one Google result for "how to pronounce Jesu"! This being the case, I should clarify that the pronunciation is yay-zoo if it's Latin (e.g. 'Pie Jesu') but Jeez-you (or sometimes Jee-zoo) if it's English (e.g. 'Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring'). Hope that helps :-)

Shoop shoop shoop shoop

I just updated my online choir schedule. (I see the official one's still offline...) Bit depressing that almost all the bits that said "venue tbc" - and got my hopes up that we might not be going to my least favourite place - now say "WHGS tbc". Boo.

I also had a look through my music to see what Jamieisms I wrote down last week. There actually weren't any - except a visual one, when Jamie went over to the piano to demonstrate something. I think he took David by surprise, because David didn't move from his seat, with the result that he sat there for a couple of minutes with Jamie's bum right in front of his face. His expression was picturesque!

Jamie did say "keep the tiller in the water" again, so I decided I'd better put him straight once and for all! He claimed he did actually know it was the rudder that went in the water, and just got mixed up... yeah, right :p

Anyway, I was going to tell you about the Pleiades. This is a group of stars in the sky. It's also the name of my band, which has been in existence for 9 years now. Membership has varied in that time, but the singers are me, Alison P, Rachel B and a friend of mine (not in the Hallé) called Lindsey, together with my friend Nigel (who also plays guitar). I play the keyboards and the oboe from time to time instead of (or as well as) singing. There is also a bass player, drummer, violinst and flute player who each join us occasionally (although rarely all at once). We sing all sorts of stuff (in 4 and 5 part harmony, naturally) - the core of our repertoire is 50s/60s doo wop stuff, but we also do Commitments, Abba, Beatles, McFly, and everything in between. We don't do many gigs, mainly because we don't often get asked and none of us has time to go out in search of them! We do sing for the kids at my school twice a year, but the last proper gig we did was Sue's retirement party in Oldham last year.

We do have a gig coming up, though - Nigel is getting married next month, and we're singing at his wedding - a cappella stuff during the ceremony, and a regular set in the evening. I've arranged the a cappella stuff specially, and we practised it for the first time last week. (That's what inspired me to blog about the band, see.) As ever with the first run through anything a cappella, it was amusingly bad, but by the second and third goes it was all starting to sound rather lovely. I'm very much looking forward to the day! Anyway, hopefully we'll record these songs at some point, in which case I'll put them up here, but in the meantime here are a couple of songs we have recorded:

Mustang Sally (4.1 MB)
Will You Love Me Tomorrow? (3.4 MB)

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

2 reasons for the long mmmm: 1. As I'd hoped, we are all allowed to sing the Humming Chorus! Yay! (It's written for just sops and tenors... Jamie did say to the altos that we should choose for ourselves where to drop the octave. I believe some of the 1sts stuck it out for quite a while, but all the 2nds I could hear (including me, definitely) sang the tenor part throughout. Not all the basses got the hang of the fact that it would sound wrong if they dropped the octave, so it had to be falsetto in places, but I'm sure they will.) (By the way, for those who were wondering where this chorus comes in the story, see the synopsis here.) 2. Dean Cain. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. (I've been watching DVDs of Lois and Clark.)

Sorry for not writing till now. I've had emails asking me if everything's OK - it is, I've just been really busy. To be fair, a lot of the last 2 days has consisted of intense World of Warcraft sessions, but that still counts as busy! I meant to write a bit when I got home on Wednesday night, but I was tired and not in the mood. I got really annoyed during the rehearsal. It was one of those rehearsals when everyone loved all the music we were singing, but far too many people were thinking "it's OK, I know this, I don't need to concentrate as hard as if it was new", and not paying very much attention to what Jamie was asking for. Time and time again, he spent several minutes rehearsing a particular point, and then we'd sing it again in context and the majority of people near me would sing it exactly the same as they did before, paying no attention to the work that had just been done, which they hadn't taken in because they were too busy whispering to their friends or writing notes to each other. So poor Jamie's time was largely wasted, as was that of those of us who were trying to listen (because none of these things work unless everyone does them). And it'll be one of those concerts that's absolutely fine, and the audience will love it because the music is lovely and we'll be perfectly competent. But it won't be GREAT, and it could be. This is what annoys me.

I really am insufferably smug, aren't I? Sorry about that. Of course, in an ideal world, everyone in the choir would read this and think "you know what? she's right!" and do something about it, and the concert WOULD be great as a result. But sadly I think most of the people who need to pay attention don't read this blog :-(

Oh, before I forget: two schedule things. Most importantly, there is NO REHEARSAL next week (7th June) due to venue problems. The next week's rehearsal will go on till 9.30 to compensate. And (I'm not sure if this has been announced) that week in July with 3 rehearsals... there aren't really 3. The Tuesday one (4th July) is a ladies' section, and the Thursday one (6th) is a gents' sectional.

I've just remembered three other things that really annoyed me during the rehearsal, but before I do I'd better tell you what we did, which was quite a lot: Brahms Req (well, the end of the movement), Bridal Chorus, Humming Chorus, Jesu Joy, Mozart Req bits, Verdi Sanctus and Zadok. And, interestingly, they handed Lord Thou Hast Been Our Refuge and the Holst Nunc Dimittis out again, so I presume we're doing them in the concert. (It would be sensible if we'd been given back the same copies we had, with our own markings in, but sadly this was not the case.) I presume the semi-chorus will be the same... be interesting to see though! (See, I'm getting bitter again just thinking about it!)

Zadok annoyed me because lots of it is staccato, with definite gaps between the notes (actual quaver rests in many cases), yet there were a couple of people near me who made no effort to make their notes short, and sang lots of the staccato sections legato. I can understand (possibly) someone doing that ONCE, but the fact that these people obviously weren't listening to anyone around them was infuriating.

The Bridal Chorus made me mad because of the German. I cannot believe that the vast majority of the choir don't know how to pronounce German. We sing in German quite regularly, and the pronunciation rules are VERY LOGICAL and have NO EXCEPTIONS, unlike English. So when there are people who've been in the choir for years - in particular, ladies who sang Mahler in German only 2 weeks ago - who STILL don't seem to know, for example, that you pronounce "z" as "ts".... AAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH. (That's pronounced "AAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH", by the way.)

And the dynamics! Come on, people! We're practically a professional choir - why is our standard dynamic mf? Why can people never follow the instruction "pp" until they've been TOLD it's too loud? You see "pp", you should be SINGING REALLY QUIETLY! Just about everything we sang on Wednesday came out mf all the way through. I despair, I really do.

Anyway, must stop ranting, I'm sure you don't want to hear it. I think I did write some Jamieisms down (although not many), but my music is downstairs and I'm not, so I'll try and remember to write more tomorrow. In any case I want to tell you about the Pleiades, because it occurred to me the other day that I never have :-)

The Best Choruses In The World ... Ever

As I said yesterday, I have some reservations about this claim (where's the Anvil Chorus? the Soldiers' Chorus from Faust? Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves? Dies Irae from Verdi Requiem? The main bit from Beethoven 9? Grand March from Aida? Polovtsian Dances? I Was Glad? I could go on...). But in the meantime, here are a load of mp3s of the stuff for this gig. As usual, they'll be taken offline after the gig and are provided for personal study. If I've missed anything out, someone please tell me!

Ave Verum Corpus (Mozart) (4.0 MB)
Wie lieblich, from German Requiem (Brahms) (8.0 MB)
Bridal Chorus, from Lohengrin (Wagner) (6.2 MB)
Easter Hymn, from Cavalleria Rusticana (Mascagni) (6.2 MB)
Agnus Dei, from Requiem (Fauré) (6.6 MB)
Hallelujah Chorus, from Messiah (Handel) (4.5 MB)
Humming Chorus, from Madame Butterfly (Puccini) (3.4 MB)
Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring (Bach) (3.3 MB)
Dies Irae, from Requiem (Mozart) (2.2 MB)
Lacrimosa, from Requiem (Mozart) (4.1 MB)
O Fortuna, from Carmina Burana (Orff) (3.3 MB)
Soldiers' Chorus (Verdi) (2.0 MB)
Sanctus, from Requiem (Verdi) (2.8 MB)
Zadok the Priest (Handel) (6.8 MB)

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Hi all - just a brief note to apologise for not being at last night's rehearsal. I went to sleep instead, having only had a total of about 2 hours' sleep since Sunday... I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer! However, I do now have a new job (starting in September) \o/ It's here, and I'm very much looking forward to it. Also extremely relieved!

I'm told that the rehearsal was spent on Zadok, O Fortuna and the Sanctus from the Verdi Requiem. (I still can't work out why it's the Sanctus that's been included and not the start of the Dies Irae, but there you go. I'd have said the latter was far more of a popular classic.) Dr Liz says she was too busy giggling at the back to note any Jamieisms but she thinks there weren't any. Naughty Liz, I hate it when people do that! Clearly I need to make sure I am there next week so I can glare reprovingly :p However I will forgive her because she was the ONLY person who remembered my interviews and texted to say good luck :-)

I do have mp3s of the things for the choral pops concert, but I haven't got round to putting them online yet. Hopefully soon. Along with a Take That report...