The only thing louder than Britten's War Requiem...

OK, this might end up being a bit long :-)

Sorry for the long gap. I know there are hardly any people reading this these days, but it probably didn't help my reader numbers when I vanished for several weeks. Anyway, for those of you who are still here, I'll try to make it up to you.

Life has been a bit overcrowded lately. I went to Italy last month with my mum and sister (my photos are online if you want to have a look). We saw lots of things I've seen before but wanted to see again, and lots of other things I'd never seen but always wanted to, and I got the chance to use my Italian - I'm by no means fluent, but I'm a bit beyond basic, and I spent every spare minute in September revising, once I knew we were going. I can understand a lot more than I can produce, of course. Choir has really helped - we sing in Italian quite often, and even when we're singing in Latin (which is far more common) we are always instructed to pronounce it as if it was Italian - so I'm very familiar (and comfortable) with the pronunciation rules. The trouble turns out to be this: when I know what I'm going to say, I can pronounce it perfectly, and this seems to cause Italians to assume that I *am* actually fluent, so they reply to me with this in mind, and are surprised to find I might not understand every word they say!

We flew to Pisa and returned from Naples, and stayed at several places in between, travelling by train. If you ever want to know ANYTHING about travelling by train outside the UK, I can thoroughly recommend The Man in Seat 61. I'd heard of this website many times before - the guy often writes in the Guardian (e.g. recently he described his favourite winter train journeys) - but I'd never needed to use it before. His information was absolutely spot on, even to the extent of warning that British credit cards don't usually work on the Trenitalia website!

My use of this website had a bonus - not long after I'd used it to investigate Italian trains, travel arrangements for the choir's trip to Valencia next summer were being discussed. Most of the choir will be flying, but that wasn't really an option for me, partly due to the cost but mainly because a large part of it had to be paid immediately, and that was impossible. (A couple of people kindly offered to lend me the money, but I already owe far too much to far too many people, and there are no signs of things improving just yet!) There was at least one other member of the choir (that I knew of) who was keen to investigate non-air travel, although in her case it was for environmental reasons... I'm all for that too, but it was only my second priority. Anyway, to cut a long story short, three of us will be travelling from Manchester to Valencia (and back!) by train next May, following instructions from the Man in Seat 61, and we're really looking forward to the adventure. (I do wish it was a different week though - it means missing both the UEFA Champions' League final AND the FA Cup Final, but it can't be helped.)

My stint as a temp at RNID finally ended on Friday - it was supposed to be for 2 weeks and ended up being 14 months. They have finally appointed a permanent replacement - well, two in fact, because the job has grown so much while I've been doing it (that's how I ended up so stressed!). I don't yet have a new assignment from Office Angels but they hope to get me one very soon. In the meantime I can finally catch up with some stuff of my own. Money is still a major concern - particularly as I have no income until I get a new assignment - but I do have a couple of side projects which may start to make a little bit of money soon, so I'm hopeful I'll survive.

Choir update: hmm, there's loads! So, very briefly: VW Sea Symphony from scratch on 12th October - this was great fun despite me being in an absolutely FOUL mood all day. (It was my birthday, and just about all my friends - except those in the choir - forgot. And I didn't get picked for the semi-chorus again, and even though I'm used to this, I still get really depressed every time it happens, and lose confidence. They did sound fantastic though!) It went really well, and I do like to do lots of sight-reading, especially when the people around me seem grateful that I was there :-)

Mahler 2, a few days earlier on 9th October, was unbelievably amazing. I can't remember the last time I was so overcome with emotion during a concert. I'd expected to have to struggle to stay awake in the movements before we sang, but I was totally absorbed by how well the orchestra were playing, and in no time it was our turn. But I could hardly sing properly at all - just before we were due to sing, I couldn't stop thinking about the people in the audience who DIDN'T know how the piece ends, and imagining the effect of our entry on these people (especially as we remained seated). This feeling grew all the time we were singing, and when we finally stood up, I had such a lump in my throat that I dread to think what I sounded like. I had tears running down my face - so much so that I couldn't actually see anything by the end. Wow! Sadly my name had been missed out of the programme - this seems to have happened to a few people recently, but it's the first time it's happened to me - but I didn't know that until afterwards so it didn't distract me during the concert. (It definitely would have - I hate the way my mind fixates on stupid things like that - so I have resolved never to read programmes before concerts in future!)

Oh, and our Gerontius CD is finally officially released, although I haven't heard it yet!

Currently we are in full-on Russian mode, because our next concert is Alexander Nevsky, a week on Saturday. I've never sung this before, but so far it doesn't seem too hard - the Russian is the hardest bit, but it's quite repetitive, and we've been given lots of help from the fabulous Xenia. (By the way, I took the audio files we've been given and created a 6-minute audio file of Xenia speaking the entire text with no repetition - I've emailed it to a few people, but if any other choir member would like it, please email me.)

I'm very excited about Alexander Nevsky, because for years there has been one thing I've known about it.... To explain, I need to give a small amount of background. Quite a few years ago (I suspect it was 1995) the choir performed Britten's War Requiem in Chemnitz in Germany. (I think we've done it again since then, but 1995 was the first time I'd done it.) There's a bit towards the end, in the Libera Me, when the sops sing (in the top octave) G F# G Ab F# (to the words "Libera Me"), and the altos were asked, on this occasion, to sing it with them. Some altos protested - we weren't as used to occasional high notes then as we are now - and John Currie, who was the chorus master at the time, said "Don't worry, when you hear the noise at this point you'll be so scared you could sing a top C. It's the loudest noise in all music.... well, except for Alexander Nevsky."

Well, thirteen years later, I've still never heard Alexander Nevsky, but I do remember how loud that bit of the War Requiem was, so my excitement has been building for all those years! I'll be SEVERELY disappointed if I don't need earplugs. (Note to self: remember to take earplugs!)

I've been busy with my band as well - we've recorded our Christmas set (been meaning to do that for years, but there's never time at Christmas, so this year we did it in September!) and tried some fun new songs. We had a fabulous rehearsal a couple of weeks ago - we were all exhausted when we arrived, and I'd had a really bad day (the worst part of which was, I'd had nothing to eat all day because I only had enough money for one meal, so I'd saved it till teatime, but then I realised - when I was at the till in the sandwich shop, with the sandwich already made - that I didn't have enough money for the sandwich AND the bus fare to Rachel's house, so I had to walk out and leave the sandwich there, which was not only embarrassing but meant I was absolutely starving!) But it was one of those rehearsals that was just fun from beginning to end, and we all left in a fabulous mood - I was still grinning about it for the whole of the next day!

We have various gigs coming up between now and Christmas, but the one I want to mention is the Henry Watson Music Library Christmas Music Day, which this year is on Saturday 13th December. They are looking for more groups to take part this year, so if you have a choir or other ensemble, do consider it - you won't get a fee, but we got several further engagements as a result of our performance there last year, so it's definitely worth doing! If you want to contact them, their phone number is 0161 234 1976, or you can email them.

Anyway, I have about a million links I've been stockpiling for you (only some of which are music-related), so I'd better list them all. In no particular order other than the order in which I saved them....

I was fascinated to learn about Stanislav Petrov - a true hero, and one who deserves to be more widely known.

By way of contrast, a website that helps you to determine how long you might survive if you were chained to a bunkbed with a velociraptor! In my case, apparently 60 seconds - go me!

From ChoralNet: links to a discussion about how best to rehearse the melismas in Messiah. (Just in case there's anyone who isn't sure what a melisma is but can't be bothered to look it up, it's just the name for singing more than one note on any particular syllable - e.g. "we have tuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurn-ed" - the semiquaver runs on the "tuuuuuuuu" bit are a melisma.)

From Podium Speak: link to a news story about how musicians think differently to non-musicians.

A new part of Classic FM's website (well, it was new to me): HearHere. Interestingly they seem a bit confused about whether it's HearHere or HearHear, but the website seems to be the same whichever way you spell its address.

Mrs O'Malley's Sweet Shop - proper old-fashioned sweets! Lots of it is American, but lots isn't. Anglo bubblies, for example!

A really interesting explanation of how mobile phone networks work, for those who like to know that sort of thing.

Next year's Manchester International Festival is taking shape - Rufus Wainwright has written an opera for it.

Fans of 80s pop will enjoy the literal video on "Take On Me"!

From the Guardian, a review of a new book by Oliver Sacks. (More on this from A Cappella News.) (The book is now available in paperback.)

Also from the Guardian, an article about the recent Bernstein festival that Chet's did (and Maggie sang in).

I've discovered quite a few performers by seeing them for the first time on "Later with Jools Holland", and the most recent one I've been fascinated with was Amy LaVere, who sang while playing a double bass - did anyone else see her? I'm looking forward to hearing more of her stuff.

A ridiculously addictive game called Blocks with Letters On. Starts easy, gets harder very quickly. Warning: don't try it unless you're prepared to lose at least an hour!

From David Griggs-Janower (and Brian Eno), an article about what's good about singing.

John Adams writes about how he came to be regarded as a threat to US National Security.

In case you weren't aware, the Vendee Globe starts on Sunday (9th November). That's the solo round-the-world yacht race that only happens every 4 years (the one Ellen MacArthur came second in, in 2000-2001, which is what first made her famous). There are several British entries this time, but the two I'll be watching out for are Mike Golding, who came third last time despite losing his keel towards the end, and Alex Thomson, who has had an unbelievable amount of bad luck. He had to retire from the race last time after problems with his boat, and a few weeks ago his new boat was accidentally rammed by a fishing vessel, and his team have been working round the clock to get it ready for the race. Also, they both entered the Velux 5 Oceans Race in 2006, and Alex lost his keel in the Southern Ocean and Mike turned back to rescue him (in these races, the competitors travel so far from land that a fellow competitor can usually reach them far quicker than land-based rescue services), and then Mike lost his own mast while they were both on board and had to retire from the race himself. So they're both due for loads of good luck, and I'd be thrilled if either of them won. If you're interested, you can follow the race on the official site.

Great Guardian article about muso moments in pop songs.

The BBC has cancelled Christmas Top of the Pops! Christmas Day just won't be the same :-(

From Londonist, more Monkey news! I haven't managed to find a photo of Monkey on top of Nelson's Column (which apparently he is at the moment) - if anyone else does, please point me to it!

An article about the opening chord to "A Hard Day's Night".

Via A Cappella News, a fascinating New York Times article about the Metropolitan Opera Chorus and their inspirational chorus master. (Read this one soon, because NY Times articles don't stay available for long before you have to register to read them.)

For fans of Last Choir Standing, it seems that Only Men Aloud are hoping to have the Christmas number one single! Pity they won't get to perform it on TOTP if they do...

An anonymous person sent me a link to Cool Conductor.

Much to my surprise, Germaine Greer writes about violas! She didn't mention this area of expertise when she was on Never Mind the Buzzcocks last week...

You probably won't like this as much as I did unless you know the script of Star Wars like the back of your hand, but it's great even if you don't: an a cappella tribute to John Williams. Clever stuff.

I enjoyed watching Dead Set last week (if you missed it, you can still watch it online via that link - summary is that zombies take over the world and the last safe place turns out to be the Big Brother house) but I was even more amused at Simon Pegg's only criticism of it!

Yma Sumac has died. I'm ashamed to admit that I had never heard of her until she was mentioned in a Buffy episode, but it seems she had a unique voice - listen to the stuff on her website, it's very weird indeed! EDIT: The BBC have a story about this today. I suspect that the "experts" they've quoted are either a bit confused or a bit stupid (or both), because I would dispute their claim that "most people are capable of three octaves. The average person could sing within this range with very good guidance from an expert." I think they mean TWO octaves (e.g. the G below middle C to the G on top of the treble stave), but maybe they're calling it 3 because there are 3 Gs in it.... what do you think? And as for Mariah Carey, I know she can sing stupidly high, but I am yet to be convinced that she can span four octaves, let alone five. For example, from the F at the bottom of the bass stave to the F that's a few leger lines above the treble stave is four octaves inclusive, and I suppose some may claim this range "spans 5 octaves" since it contains 5 different Fs. But, while I might have heard her sing that top F, I haven't heard her sing anything quite as low as the bottom of the bass stave... If anyone has any evidence to support her, I'd like to hear it!

I Classici Tifosi made me laugh a lot when I found it. They're a group of classical musicians (soprano, tenor and string quartet) who take Italian football chants and record them in a classical style. The most amusing part is that some of the lyrics are (unsurprisingly) quite rude... but the whole website is in Italian so you may not immediately realise this! I think my favourite so far is Totti Gol, but I haven't listened to them all yet - I picked that one out because I love Francesco Totti :-)

And finally (because I seem to have been doing this all night...) you may have noticed from the addition to the sidebar that I have recently succumbed to the temptation of Twitter. If you choose to follow me there, that would be fun, although I don't promise it will be anything other than meaningless waffle! The beauty of it is that all the updates are necessarily very short, so people tend to update more often. I've deliberately avoided Facebook for various reasons I won't bore you with, and I don't expect to change my mind about that, but Twitter is the next big thing, trust me!

"Their great apotheosis was a wonderfully theatrical trick but enormously moving, too..."

Sorry for the lack of posts - I've been away, and since I've been back I've been trying to catch up with stuff, not helped by choir commitments on 4 of the 6 days since I've been back! So, a proper post soon, but in the meantime here are some Mahler reviews:

Alfred Hickling in the Guardian

David Fanning in the Telegraph

Robert Beale in City Life (Manchester Evening News)

I think it's fair to say they were all impressed :-)

Behold, the sea!

It occurred to me last night that I haven't got round to posting mp3s of the Sea Symphony. So, here you are:

1st movement
2nd movement
3rd movement
4th movement

We read through the hard bit at the end of the 4th movement last night. Very entertaining! Turns out most of the choir can count to 2, and 3, and 4... but not so many of them can still do it when the time signature changes repeatedly :-) Still, it was a lot better than I suspect most other choirs would have managed on their first attempt. My personal tip to anyone who struggles with music like this, which is fast with constantly changing time signatures: what I find helps me most is tapping the downbeat of every bar with my finger on the page. I think this works because it gives you a physical connection to how long each bar is. Apart from that, the most important thing to remember is to sing ON THE BEAT. It doesn't matter, when sight-reading, if the notes or rhythm are slightly wrong, but if you don't sing on the beat you've got no chance, plus you are making it more difficult for everyone else. (See my sight-reading tips for a fuller explanation of this.)

I'm really enjoying doing Mahler 2 in such detail, and when we got our top G restored to us last week, it put me in a good mood for several days! (Not that I'd enjoy singing top Gs all the time, you understand, but when we do get such an important one, it's a big deal, and we want to keep it!) I'm really looking forward to the concert.

And a few final links:

A fascinating (and lengthy) interview with Angela Hewitt about Bach.

Another post from David Griggs-Janower about the state of choral music (I mentioned part 1 of this a few posts ago, I think).

And, were any of the rest of you members of the Puffin Club when they were little? I was, for years, and I LOVED it, but I'd totally forgotten about it until I read that Puffin Post is coming back!

EDIT: I almost forgot to say - I had a lovely day out on Saturday, singing with the Needwood Singers in Aysgarth Church in North Yorkshire. A nice drive up there with Claire Croft (her mum is the conductor, which is how I ended up singing with them), a fun afternoon of sight-reading, a HUGE amount of free food provided for the choir between rehearsal and concert, a good walk around Aysgarth Falls, and then a concert that went pretty well. I think my favourite item on the programme was Vaughan Williams' Turtle Dove, which I don't remember ever singing before.

And, finally finally, quite a few people have told me that they missed my radio programme but would have been interested to hear it, so (assuming they weren't just being polite!) I've put the mp3 online (and added a link to the sidebar). It's just under 15 minutes long.

Is it just me that can't open bags of pasta properly?

They all have this "easy-seal" thingy, but that's not a lot of use when I can never open the bag without the contents going all over the place... the easy-seal thingy can't seal it after that :-)

Thank you to all the people who have told me they enjoyed my radio programme last week. If you didn't hear it but you'd like to, you've probably missed your chance with "Listen Again" (unless you read this within a couple of hours of me writing it), but the BBC did send me a copy so I can put it online at some point if need be. To those who *did* hear it, please can I clarify that it was recorded in July this year, at which point I had had a temp job for 10 months. When I was interviewed I did discuss the temping experience at length, so I was a little horrified to discover that they'd edited the conversation to give the impression that I had been unemployed ever since I quit teaching. (If you listen carefully, I didn't say that, but I realise it gives the impression I did!)

The flood of job offers that the producer thought I'd get as a result of the programme hasn't materialised (although there have been the usual emails from total strangers...) but he belatedly realised he'd also cut out the discussions about what I can actually do, and that I'm in Manchester. But maybe something will turn up eventually. (Ironically I did get turned down for a BBC job - it was for the education department of the BBC Phil - a few days before my programme was broadcast. As usual, no interview and no feedback as to why, but at least I got an answer, which is rare!)

Anyway, choir news: We started back last week with a read through Mahler 2. My attempts to get a head start on the memorising (because I'll be away the week before the concert) were derailed by the number of alterations to the parts - I wish I'd known about them earlier! Oh well. I'll amend my single-part PDFs when I have a minute - and when the alterations are written in stone (I'm still hoping there'll be a change of heart about giving ONE OF THE BEST ALTO MOMENTS EVER to the 2nd sops...)

I've updated my online choir schedule in light of recently-announced venue changes, so the handful of choir members that are still reading this may wish to check it out (email me if you've lost the link). Also, I've added the football fixtures till Christmas, and you may wish to note that Man Utd are at home both tomorrow (17th September) and next Tuesday (23rd September). I am distraught to have had to give my seat to my brother for both matches (if I wasn't going to miss a rehearsal the week before the concert, I would certainly have gone to Old Trafford tomorrow - Berbatov's home debut, and the return of Ronaldo!) (Note: I did check the Man City fixtures too, but none of them clash with choir commitments.)

What else? Well, Maestro finished, and I did watch all of it without particularly enjoying it. Also I wanted Goldie to win (well, Alex James really, but he was voted out far too early). Various articles have appeared following the final, including another Spectator article by Alex James, a discussion about why there aren't many female conductors, and a summing-up from the Guardian. (Oh, and wasn't Bryn Terfel great at the Last Night of the Proms? Even though it didn't feel like a proper Last Night without the proper Sea Songs....)

Other musical stuff in the news: let's see. Everyone seems to be raving about Messiaen's St Francis of Assisi, but unless I'm remembering a different piece, I'm fairly sure we sang it a few years ago and it's the only time I've ever actually fallen asleep IN THE CONCERT, I was so bored. Clearly I have no taste!

Vernon Handley died last week, and there are many obituaries, notably from The Guardian, On an Overgrown Path and Tom Service.

There's yet ANOTHER choir programme coming to TV, but this one's a drama: The Choir. I heard they were still looking for actors for some of the parts.... you might be lucky!

The Royal Opera House put on an opera for Sun readers, but its ex-chief was traumatised when he worked there. The Monkey opera is to get its very own theatre. Here's a lovely story about a choir of fishermen. BBC World News (for reasons I don't entirely understand) is asking you to choose between Beethoven and Mozart (and other easier choices). The Manchester Evening News points out some of the solo classical performances in Manchester this season. And From the Front of the Choir has some debate about the debate on the Last Choir Standing website!

The Manchester Commute Challenge is today. Wonder who'll win this time? I suspect the performance of the train will depend on whether or not the cable thieves have been at work - I was about to say I got home late last night because of them, but actually I was slightly early... because when I got to the station, the previous train hadn't arrived yet, and when it did eventually turn up, it left only slightly before my regular train should have, so I got home a few minutes early (although without a seat, obviously!)

And finally, some fun stuff. Tip of my Tongue claims to be able to come up with words you can't remember, although I haven't had much luck with it so far. Mind you, that's probably because I can usually remember either the whole of the word or none of it :-)

More Cowbell looks as if it will be fun to play with (I haven't actually tried it yet). (The phrase "more cowbell" isn't that well-known in the UK... yet!)

This Split Words game is much harder than it sounds, and I wasted quite a while on it the other day (I got nowhere on the highest levels, but level 4 isn't too bad, depending on the topic...)

And finally finally, this video of a cat attacking a printer made me cry with laughter. YMMV :-)

Other listings magazines are available...

I'm in the Radio Times again :-) (Next week's edition, with a very purple cover - in newsagents etc. today.) It's a good deal better than last time I was mentioned by name in the Radio Times, when I was described as a sad case. However, the making of that programme was not a pleasant experience, so I should've known they weren't going to put a positive slant on anything. This time, it was thoroughly pleasant, so hopefully the result will be more positive. However, I'm a bit scared, because this is the first time there's been a programme in which I was the main person....

This is the interview I told you about in July, and it's being broadcast next Tuesday (9th September) at 9.30am on Radio 4 (and of course on iPlayer for the following week). The series actually started today, and I've just listened to the first episode, and now I'm a bit scared - the guy that today's show was about sounded pretty impressive and well-rounded, and although I know it's extremely stupid of me to be worried about how I'll compare to him, I am!

So, any other news? Well, of course for the past 24 hours all the news has been football-related, but anyone who's interested in that will already know all of it, so I won't go on about it here. Non-football news: well, Last Choir Standing finished on Saturday, and of the ones that were left, I think Only Men Aloud were worthy winners, although I don't think they were the best in the series, as I've said before. (If you haven't seen any of the series, that link takes you to a page that has a video of their winning performance. And even if you disapprove of the fact that a choir competition placed so much emphasis on choreography, listen to their multi-part close harmonies. They sing complex arrangements, and they do it well.)

Other stuff: Martin has pointed out that there is apparently now a release date for the best CD ever made. Can't find confirmation of this anywhere else, and online shopping sites are notorious for inventing release dates for forthcoming items, but it's still exciting!

A few more random links, in no particular order:

A fascinating Spectator interview with Daniel Barenboim.

Yet another of those articles about how choirs are good for your health.

An article about a London concert hall I'd never heard of.

Björk has some things to say about being a female producer.

The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra blog is always thought-provoking, and the latest entry is no exception.

Edinburgh Royal Choral Union is 150 years old, and they are getting a civic reception as a result. Hmm, surely there can't be many other choirs that are 150 years old...

And today there was news of a Welsh choir that's not having much luck.

The Guardian had an in-depth interview with Simon Rattle on his return to Liverpool.

Report of a visit to Bayreuth.

Something that's been bugging me this week - I suddenly remembered the fabulous painting that's hanging in Symphony Hall (right near the front entrance - go in and turn left immediately, and there it is). But I realised I don't know which bit of Mahler the painting is describing, and a brief bit of googling didn't help (although that is how I found the artist's website). Does anyone know? Or is it just supposed to represent Mahler in general? I think that when I first saw the painting, I assumed it meant Mahler 8, but now I'm wondering whether it could be Mahler 2. It's probably just non-specific Mahler, though.

Finally (for the links), a good site for you to bookmark - if you frequently find yourself wondering what the music from an advert is, there are many sites that claim to tell you the answer, but Commercial Breaks and Beats is the best I've found. I was reminded of it when I found I couldn't identify the music currently being used to advertise the Nissan Qashqai, and this fabulous site helpfully tells me on the front page :-)

Anyway, finally finally, I promised to give some hints about memorising stuff, and I will, but I'll put them in a separate document and add it to the list of downloadable stuff at the top of the page. Check there again soon, if it's not yet there when you read this. EDIT: It's there now.

Just hear those sleighbells jingle...

I was singing Christmas songs this week, and very fun it was too. Why Christmas songs in August? Well, I've wanted to record my band's Christmas set for several years, but Christmas itself is always insanely busy and there's never time... so last year I resolved that we were going to do it in the summer. We tried to do it in July, but two of the singers were unavailable, so we rescheduled for this week. Unfortunately there was a technical problem with the minidisc recorder (the rewritable discs refused to allow themselves to be rewritten and there were no blank ones) so we'll have to try again in September! But we sang the songs anyway, and because we love those songs, I don't think anyone really minded. And in any case, we forgot the coconuts (for the reindeer hooves in Sleigh Ride) so we would have had to do it again anyway :p

(You know, it always amuses me hugely to carry sleighbells round in my bag, because when they jingle, people can never quite work out whether or not they'd really heard what they thought they did. It turns out this is a million times funnier when it happens in August... and the best bit was that people in the office suddenly started talking about booking a Christmas do, for no apparent reason. I like to think that this was caused by someone subconsciously hearing my sleighbells!)

Anyway, today I've done something I meant to do last weekend, which is to create individual printable parts for Mahler 2 (to help with the memorising). You'll be able to find your own part somewhere in this index. When you've downloaded them, theoretically your printer should print each page at the correct size, however big it appears on the screen - if your printer doesn't do this, email me and I'll see if I can help. (I've also put the Sibelius file - with all the parts on - in the same index, in case anyone wants to fiddle with it.) EDIT (Tue 26th August, 7.40 p.m.): If you downloaded any of the parts (or the score) before now, please go and do it again - I noticed a mistake which I've now corrected! FURTHER EDIT (Fri 5th Sep, 11.10 p.m.): Couple of errors in Bass 2 part corrected; Bass 2 PDF and full score Sibelius file re-uploaded.

FURTHER EDIT: Because I was asked today how to pronounce all the German text, I've now added (to the same index page mentioned above) a file containing the text of the choir bits (with most of the repetitions removed, and there are some words that some parts don't get to sing), plus an mp3 of me speaking this text. I don't claim that my pronunciation is perfect by any means, but hopefully it's close enough that if you want to you can get it in your head before you start rehearsing it, at which point everyone's vowels will turn out to be not quite German enough anyway, so you'll be ready for the final language instructions!

What else? I'm a bit shocked at the latest results of Last Choir Standing. That means that all three of the choirs that I thought were the best are now out (Sense of Sound, Last Minute and ACM Gospel Choir). Of the three that are left, I do hope Only Men Aloud win, as I think they're much better than the other two. Although, much as I've enjoyed the programme, I do think it's a pity that it's reinforced the idea that choirs can only be good (and fun) if they're performing pop songs and dancing. It would have been lovely if there had been a choir that had stood still and wowed everyone with their SINGING... we know this is possible, but sadly the general public won't, at least not as a result of this! And surely they could have done SOME classical stuff? There's been a tiny bit - one choir last week did an edited version of O Fortuna, and one this week did a piece that was based on Beethoven 9. But that's been it. There haven't even been any opera choruses!

Some other random links: The Manchester Evening News has a preview of the new musical season in Manchester. And Manchester Confidential tells us that there are plans for a Royal Opera House North. The MEN also had an article about what it's like to sing as a twin. (Has anyone heard this group? I haven't, but I'm intrigued.)

David Griggs-Janower has some interesting thoughts on the state of choral music.

The Stage has some useful tips on preparing for an audition (the story is linked to the X Factor, but the advice is good in general, I think).

A friend of mine alerted me to the existence of some very clever music software (it also has an official website). Looks like it would take all the fun out of music-making, but I mention it here just to show you what can be done to fix mistakes on recordings these days!

There's a BBC Radio 3 Pianothon in Manchester (and other venues) in October. Ever wanted to play the piano in public but not had the opportunity? Here's your chance - and you might be on the radio! If nothing else, it would make you practise...

This band name generator may amuse some of you :-)

And finally, a few recent articles about conductors by Tom Service (he's the one who's writing the book): The Abbado effect; Wagner's dog whip; and Gergiev in South Ossetia. Also an article about West Side Story and why it's not performed more often; and an interesting interview with cellist Matthew Barley (yet another person I was at school with!)

Next time: some hints on how to memorise music, for those people who say they just can't do it...

Citius, Altius, Fortius

Hmm, I seem to have not written here for a while - sorry about that! Been busy! But I received an email asking me whether I had any Mahler 2 mp3s to post, which reminded me that of course I meant to do that weeks ago! I'll be putting up pdfs of individual parts too (e.g. the whole of the alto part on a single page) because I've always found things easier to memorise that way, so maybe others do too. Not had time to do that yet, but hopefully this weekend.

Anyway, the very end of Mahler 2, in 3 chunks:

Langsam, mysterioso (first choir entry, figure 31)

Etwas bewegter (alto solo, figure 39)

Mit Aufschwung, aber nicht eilen (sop/alto duet, figure 44)

(I've always had it in my head that the choir sings for only the last 5 minutes of the symphony, so I was quite surprised to discover that these three tracks have a total length of almost 15 minutes!)

(If you prefer video, try this one and its continuation. I think the choir's a bit out of tune, but it's fun to watch anyway.)

While we're doing mp3s, I want to share two more with you, because I've had them on the brain for weeks. They're from the fabulous (but hard to find) album Simunye, by I Fagiolini (Anna's group). I've had the album for a few years, but I'd forgotten about it till I Fagiolini were featured artists on Radio 3 recently and both these tracks were played. If you get a chance to hear the whole album (or any of their others - sadly I only own this one)... do!

Ah Robin

Douce Dame Jolie

I have a load of random non-mp3 links to share too, so let's get them out of the way:

Someone is writing a book about conducting and wants help.

A really interesting selection of music you should try. I haven't heard all this stuff myself, but the stuff from the list that I have heard makes me want to hear the rest.

All sorts of arguments about vibrato: an Elgar performance that didn't please everyone; plans to do another one at the Last Night of the Proms; another viewpoint.

More arguments, this time about whether or not you need to be able to read music: Damon Albarn's view; a response; another response.

Reviews of the best Prom so far (although the Doctor Who prom came close!): from the Guardian; the Times; the Independent; and the FT. (The last one, indirectly, sort of mentions us!)

Article by Peter Phillis about conducting at the Proms.

I've recorded Maestro but I haven't had time to watch it yet. People have been raving about it though. In the meantime, here's a brief article by another of the competitors (I think I mentioned Alex James a post or two ago).

Did you know about the peregrine falcons nesting in Manchester city centre? No, neither did I. Have any of you actually seen them?

A new type of sportsperson: extreme cellists!

Courtesy of ChoralNet, a beautifully written post about a particularly moving choir rehearsal. I'd love to hear the piece she's talking about!

Brief article about singers who cancel gigs. I was about to say that it seems as if our curse in this area has been finally lifted, but that would be tempting fate!

Interesting article about being a professional 2nd oboist. When I got the chance to play in the orchestra at Chet's (which wasn't that often, as there were 4 oboists in my year alone) it was as a 2nd oboist, so it's nice to read about what life might have been like if I'd practised more :-)

Are you enjoying the Olympics? I've watched far more of it this time than I ever have before (albeit while doing other stuff at the same time), but my favourite bit so far was definitely the opening ceremony, and I don't really care how much of it was slightly faked! Anyway, here's a selection of someone's favourite national anthems. I must admit my favourite has always been La Marseillaise - so dramatic! And the Star-Spangled Banner often brings a tear to my eye, although that depends hugely on who's singing it... I *love* it when they sing it at the Superbowl and the World Series etc., and they somehow arrange for fighter planes from the US Air Force to fly overhead at exactly the perfect moment. But watch this performance, which I saw today: the blogger explains the context. Made me cry.

A test to see how many of the 100 most common English words you can guess in 5 minutes. I only managed 26 - I'm very ashamed! (ARGH! I don't think I even put "very"!)

Fantastic Contraption - an online physics game. You'll either love it or hate it. I loved it - I had to stop myself playing it or I would have got nothing done since I discovered it...

And finally, again, Last Choir Standing. I'm still loving this, much to my surprise. Classic FM have a special choir page which I'd never noticed before - has it always been there? Anyway, I think I found it from the Last Choir Standing page. There's also a page of choral links there that I must investigate more fully at some point. But in the meantime, here are thoughts about the competition by From the Front of the Choir; further thoughts from A Cappella News; and a report from The Stage, who attended the most recent show.

I must admit I'm quite surprised at some of the results now - at first I found myself in agreement with the judges most of the time, but this is no longer the case quite so much (although I haven't yet totally disagreed with them...) I was actually expecting Sense of Sound to win the whole thing, so I'm very surprised that they're out while choirs that are nowhere near as good (in my opinion) are still in. I was also shocked that Last Minute didn't make it, because I was extremely impressed with them. Plus, they had Justin Finch-Fletchley as their lead singer!

I have no quibble with the others that have gone. Of the ones who are left, even though they're not the five I would have kept... well, I would expect the final to be between ACM Gospel Choir and Only Men Aloud!, and I think the gospel choir will win. But I've been wrong so far, so let's see!

"Utterly thrilling singing"

Well, I think the Manchester Evening News review of our concert is possibly the best review we've ever had for anything - but then Thursday night was one of the best concerts we've ever done! I'm told that there's also a 5-star review in the Guardian, but it hasn't made it to their website yet. I'll add the link here when it appears.

EDIT: Guardian review. Doesn't mention the choir at all (or the orchestra, for that matter!) but since he gives the concert 5 stars I think we can assume he liked it all :-)

The concert was so good that no-one even grumbled about having to stay afterwards till 10.30 for a patching session - we were all in too good a mood! It turns out that the reason for this very unusual scheduling was that not only was Bryn not there today (due to his Welsh Proms concert), he wasn't there on Friday either (presumably he was rehearsing for today), so the only chance to record his bits was in the rehearsal on Wednesday, in the concert on Thursday, and in the patching session afterwards.

We've now finished all the patching for the recording, and it all went brilliantly - we even finished slightly early both tonight and last night, which was much appreciated. The early finishes were particularly surprising given the huge number of coughs from the audience during the concert - there was a note in the front of the programme asking them to be particularly careful to muffle coughs because the concert was being recorded, but I guess lots of people didn't buy a programme, because they coughed NONSTOP. And always in the quietest bits! I mean, someone even coughed in the very first bar of the piece, and someone else did an explosive sneeze in the bar of silence when Gerontius had just died. Unbelievable. I do wonder whether all those people would have even attempted to muffle their coughs if they'd realised that for every time there was a cough, about 300 musicians had to spend several minutes re-recording that bit, at considerable expense. And that's quite apart from the fact that the drama was repeatedly interrupted. Argh!

However, all the coughing bars have now been patched, and we re-recorded everything else again too just to try to get it even better (although it was pretty good in the first place - see review!) I'll be interested to see whether it's sold as a live CD when it eventually comes out - it was recorded live, but there was so much patching necessary due to the coughing that I wouldn't call the result live. But then maybe that's how all live CDs are? I don't think I've done one before. Does anyone know?

(By the way, I noticed the recording company's name on the side of their van and looked them up - and the producer has his own separate website too. Lots of impressive stuff on both sites.)

I won't try to single out any of my favourite moments from the last few days, because there are so many - but there is one moment I wanted to mention. When we finished our last-minute rehearsal just before the concert on Thursday, several of us made a dash to the toilets, but Judith was ahead of everyone because she still had to get changed. I was right behind her when she rushed backstage, so I witnessed her run right into Bryn Terfel. She said something to him in Welsh (I'm assuming it was "sorry!") and he seemed delighted! And that's just reminded me that I meant to ask her what it was he said...


Anyway, the Gerontius project is finished, and it seems REALLY weird to realise that I won't be singing any of it again any time soon - it feels as if I've sung it every day for months! I need to update my "things to watch out for in Gerontius" list, because I noticed several things this week that I've never spotted before - for example, sleighbells in the Demons' Chorus! That was a surprise!

The next singing I will be doing is Pleiades (my band) on Monday night, and a singing lesson the following week... but the next choir thing is starting Mahler 2 in September. Can't wait - I love Mahler 2. We're doing it from memory, which I'm very pleased about. I understand there were some copies given out yesterday, but if there was an announcement about this I certainly didn't hear it! But no problem, because I have a full score. I'll post an mp3 at some point soon in case anyone wants a sneak preview.

I'm still enjoying Last Choir Standing - much more so tonight (I watched it just now) because we finally got to see whole songs, and there was more singing than talking. Tonight I agreed with just about all the judges' comments (and could usually predict what they were going to say) but not with their eventual decisions. I would have removed Dreemz the first time rather than the Brighton Gay Men's Ghorus (although Dreemz did get removed in the end), and the choir I liked best was the Alleycats, who didn't make it through. But the judges were correct when they pointed out the tuning problems - such a pity, because I would have loved to see more of that choir. And the tuning problems weren't THAT bad, and other choirs weren't always much better. I thought the Alleycats should have got more credit for doing very difficult arrangements very well, especially as there were so few of them. But I did like Sense of Sound very much too, and Ysgol Glanaethwy were OK but a bit boring, I thought. (Oh, and there's a brief article about the programme from a choral director here.)

What else do I have to tell you? Let's see...

Choral outrage in Edinburgh.

A feature about sign names. (I have acquired three different sign names since working at RNID... I wonder if you can guess what they are!)

Via Tenon Saw, a useful online metronome (it also plays an A on request!)

I mentioned Bachtrack last time, and they've contacted me since then to say that they'd love to have more choirs contributing. I believe that moves are afoot to get our concerts included, but if any of you are in other choirs and want to get your concerts listed, you just need to go to the site and register. It's free publicity, and since the site was featured in the Guardian (that's where I found out about it) I imagine they get lots of hits. What have you got to lose?

I also mentioned the Soweto Strings TV programme being repeated - if you still haven't seen it, you can see it online via the BBC iPlayer for the next few days.

And, finally, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog! If you're reading this after Sunday, you've already missed the free download of this, but you may want to watch out for future developments. If you're a Joss Whedon fan (particularly of his Buffy musical episode), you will love this. If not - maybe not, but you never know!

Anyway, I need to go to bed so I can get up in time to go see the Tall Ships :-)

OMG BRYN TERFEL!

I seem to have spent quite a lot of time yesterday getting excited about singing with Bryn Terfel. Not that the other soloists (Alice Coote and Paul Groves) weren't fabulous as well, but we've sung with them before - Bryn is a whole new experience!

I've been telling people at work about BrynFest and Bryn pulling out of the Ring Cycle last year and Bryn's official fan club (seems very secretive, you have to pay them before you can even see most of the pages on their site!) and Bryn singing Rule Britannia at the Last Night of the Proms one year dressed in a Welsh flag - and I'm sure he kicked a rugby ball into the crowd at the end, can anyone confirm this? I just spent quite a while searching for a YouTube video of this, but sadly I think it may have been in the days before everything appeared on YouTube. (There is lots of Bryn on YouTube now - I think I like this one best, but I haven't watched most of them!) I couldn't even find an article describing it, hence no link!

I also only realised yesterday that Bryn is singing at the Last Night of the Proms again this year, although I'm a bit disturbed that they don't appear to be doing the whole of the Fantasia on British Sea Songs - I hope that's just a mistake! (Have a look at the official Proms website if you want to see what else is on.)

And, talking of his forthcoming commitments, I see from his concerts page that he's singing in a Welsh Prom this Saturday, so I guess we'll be recording Gerontius in a non-traditional order so we can get all his bits finished tomorrow night!

I am still buzzing from last night's orchestral rehearsal, and not just because of Bryn - it's just such a fabulous piece. It occurred to me last night that there aren't many pieces where I can remember page numbers for years afterwards. I do know a few page numbers from Messiah - e.g. Hallelujah is page 171 and Frunto Us is page 55, I think - but we do that every year. I can't think of any other work that we DON'T perform more than every few years in which I can always remember what happens on page 111!

Actually I'm not even sure that page 111 is my favourite bit, although it's certainly one of them. (If you missed my list of things to look out for in Gerontius, you might like to have a look, by the way.) The Demons' Chorus is definitely up there, as is the "Go in the name of" bit that starts on page 41. And of course the momentary glimpse of God on page 159. (They did that several times last night, and I was very amused at the number of people who jumped out of their seats each time!) And I just love some of the quiet bits too. (Although, oddly enough, the bit I've had on the brain all morning so far is "in all his ways most sure". No idea why.)

It all just sounded so wonderful last night, and it will be even better with a capacity audience - and it's such a pity that the hall isn't ten times bigger, because we would still have filled it. I know my mum isn't the only one who hasn't been able to get a ticket, but she's planning to keep calling this afternoon - you never know! At least there'll be the CD, but it's not as good as the live experience.

I'm particularly enjoying singing in the unorthodox formation. I'm right on the end of the altos, next to the 1st tenors, who are usually so far away from me that I can't hear them at all unless they're singing when I'm not. Now I can hear them all the time, and the ones near me are very good indeed. And the Youth Choir sounds better than ever.

Anyway, more tomorrow maybe, but for the moment my lunch break is nearly over, so I will finish with some random links.

Wordle is great fun - you paste some text into it (as long or as short as you like) and it creates... well, try it and see!

The International Music Score Library Project has reopened!

Did you see the drunk referee? Unbelievable! (Thanks to Barbara for that one, although I've seen it everywhere since she pointed it out!)

They're repeating the Soweto Strings programme tomorrow night, so if you missed it the first time, do try to record it (it's repeated in the early hours of the morning too). It's very inspirational, plus our orchestra is in it briefly :-)

Did you hear about the place where you're not allowed to die?

And finally, I recently discovered Bachtrack, which has all sorts of interesting stuff on it, although the concert listings are extremely incomplete (i.e. they don't seem to include any of our concerts!)

D'you wanna see the stripes?

Well, I didn't get the job for which I had an interview last week, which is a bit discouraging because it was the first interview I'd managed to get since last August... oh well! Maybe something else will come up in another 11 months' time...

I alo didn't get picked to go to Poland with the choir, so all in all last week was one disappointment after another. However, on Tuesday this week I did get a free trip to London, courtesy of the BBC - a Radio 4 producer is making a 15-minute programme which (unless I've misunderstood) will be more or less entirely about me! It's not due to go out till September - I'll let you know when I know the date.

It was a really long day - I left my house at 6am and got home at midnight. But it was really nice, especially as one of the interviews consisted of a recorded informal chat over a lovely lunch (at the expense of the BBC, naturally) with one of my best friends from school, Anna Crookes (nee Markland). It's a few years since I last saw her, so we had a great chat, most of which probably won't make it onto the radio!

The interviews were over sooner than I'd expected, so I had a couple of hours free before meeting another of my best friends for a meal after he finished work. I had a bit of a wander through the West End (I was a student in London, about a million years ago, so I know it well enough to find my way round the centre without referring to maps) and ended up sitting by the river outside the Festival Hall reading for a while. This was very peaceful and relaxing, until a very irritating band started playing nearby.

I think they would have liked to have been a mariachi band, but in fact it was just two trumpets and an accordion, and they played the same songs REPEATEDLY for ages, without apparently breathing at any stage. This was quite impressive, but it would have been more impressive if the trumpets had played in unison (or even harmony) rather than *almost* in unison... and if they'd known any of the tunes accurately. They weren't improvising - every time they repeated each song, the tune was slightly incorrect in exactly the same way. It wouldn't have bothered me if I didn't know the tunes, but I did, so it drove me up the wall!

(They played Fernando nonstop for at least ten minutes, before segueing into Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps for another five minutes, and then alternating between the two songs for even longer. Then they stopped, and I thought that was it, but they just moved to a different position on the Golden Jubilee Bridge and started again, this time with Tequila and Tico Tico. And then they moved a third time and spent a while on Autumn Leaves. The fact that I can still remember all the songs two days later, and that I doubt I'll ever hear any of those songs again without being reminded of that afternoon, should tell you how many times they repeated them in the hour and a half I sat nearby!)

Despite the band, though, it was a lovely day, although I'm still exhausted as a result. This wasn't helped by having an intense choir rehearsal last night instead of collapsing into bed for an early night, but hopefully I can do that tonight - and choir was fabulous! We got lots done, but also there was lots of amusement, particularly at Gill's question about how to pronounce the word "chucked" (you had to be there!)

It was the last one before the Week of Choral Madness (tm) which is next week (for those not in the choir, I should explain that we will have long rehearsals and concerts and recording sessions every evening from Tuesday to Friday, plus all day Saturday and all day Sunday), and everything seems to be going very well indeed - I'm really looking forward to the week, exhausting though it will be. Not only is the sound amazing, but also there are notes which are correct which I'm pretty sure have never been correct before, whether it's been us or any other choir performing! It'll be nice to produce the definitive recording of Gerontius - I know many people probably think this has already been done, but we'll show them :-)

Anyway, this is already longer than I'd intended, so I'll stop in a minute - I do have several links to share with you as usual, though! But first... Did you watch Last Choir Standing? What did you think? I couldn't resist in the end, and it wasn't QUITE as annoying as I thought it would be! One of the things I hate most about these talent shows is the fact that they never seem to show very much of the actual performances, preferring to spend most of the programme interviewing the performers and judges. I really can't understand the logic behind this - is this really what the general public want to see? I can only assume so, since it keeps happening (I never usually watch any of the shows if I can help it, but occasionally I've been round at someone's house and they've insisted on watching it). This year's Young Musician was a major disappointment for this very reason - when I saw that it had gone down the same road as things like The X Factor, I was really quite upset.

Anyway, Last Choir Standing did show more of the performances than Young Musician did, although I still don't think they showed any song from beginning to end. Lots of the performances were really good - some were less good. (If you want to see a few without having to put up with the other stuff, some of them are on the website.) The judges weren't too annoying - even Russell Watson! - and in most cases I found myself agreeing with them. I've surprised myself by realising that I actually want to watch more of the series. I'll be interested to see how it all progresses, and whether or not they show more of the actual singing as the competition progresses. I hope so, because some of it is great. But just in case, I think I'll continue to watch via Sky+ so that I can fast forward through the annoying backstage bits!

(If you missed episode 1 and would like to see it, you have 2 days left to watch it via the BBC iPlayer. Episode 2 is this Saturday.)

Anyway, links!

From the Lifehack blog: 8 good reasons to be a lousy musician.

From the BBC Music Magazine: Sistema Scotland plays its first chords.

I noticed this the other day... I suspect it might be a mistake (i.e. the list of performers) but I rather hope not - I'd love to sing Live and Let Die in a choral arrangement! In fact, I might do one and try to sell it :-)

From the Manchester Evening News, I found out about the Carpet of Flowers event which will be in Albert Square next week.

From the Guardian: Community singing doesn't need bureaucracy.

From A Cappella News: The Psychology of Karaoke Explained.

From the Guardian: Operatic dentist lands £1m recording contract.

I'd totally forgotten that the Tall Ships are in Liverpool from 18th July!

My current favourite lolcat is Next Add Tuna :-)

From Slashdot: your computer as your singing coach.

The longest concert in the world has been going on for nearly seven years now, so you've probably heard about it before. But it's in the news again because there was a chord change! Kind of like the intro to Shine On You Crazy Diamond but stretched a bit. (If you've not heard that song, it starts with a G minor chord that's held for several minutes. The moment when the chord changes to D minor is one of my favourite musical moments.)

From Jason Heath's Double Bass Blog: Bury The Violas!

And finally, was anyone else really disappointed with the Glastonbury TV coverage? I know the BBC couldn't possibly have shown everything that was on, but they could have shown so much more than they did! Why was Amy Winehouse's set shown so many times? It was rubbish! Buddy Guy was on at the same time and from all accounts he was amazing. (That link is to a video of his performance - so we know the BBC did film him! I haven't had time to watch all of his set yet, but I will.) I can understand, I suppose, why they would show Amy Winehouse instead of Buddy Guy when they were both live at the same time, but surely they could have shown a BIT of him rather than repeating her one of the times? I was just as annoyed that they didn't show anything of Leonard Cohen, but I've just discovered that he asked not to be recorded, so I suppose I'll have to forgive them. But I would also love to have seen Franz Ferdinand's surprise performance, which again is on the BBC site so was clearly filmed - I wonder why they didn't show it? I liked Jay-Z a lot more than I'd expected to, but again, why couldn't they have missed out just ONE of the repeats of his set to show Franz Ferdinand?

The Proms start next Friday, so no doubt I'll have similar things to rant about then. For now, I need to sleep :-)

A post almost as long as the full list of Glastonbury performers

... which is a very long list! I've been dipping in and out of the TV coverage, and I haven't seen anything that made me sit up and take note yet, although The Feeling came closest to doing so. (I really like The Feeling, but everyone else I know seems to find them boring and derivative. But they're all wrong!)

Sorry not to have posted for ages, I had a stupidly busy month or so, followed by a week or two's total exhaustion. I'm just getting my energy back now, and starting work on my list of things-I-should-have-done-ages-ago. Which includes this! (People to whom I owe email - sorry, you're also high on my list, and I'll get to you soon.)

Anyway, I have a load of links to post, but first let me look back and see what musical things I've done since Whit Friday.

There's been quite a bit more intensive Gerontius work, which is going very well indeed I think. Last weekend we spent a day rehearsing at my old school, which was nice. I hope everyone took the opportunity to have a look inside the Baronial Hall and Cloisters (there's some information about all the buildings at the Chetham's Library site).

I also had my vocal assessment (I assume everyone has by now) - I thought it was fun in the new format. I actually did a huge amount of practice beforehand, but most of that was actually for a couple of non-choir gigs I had just after my assessment - the timing was fortuitous; I probably wouldn't have practised that much for JUST an assessment that involved no solo singing, but it certainly helped!

The two gigs were both at Manchester Central Library as part of the current Mills and Boon exhibition. (There was an interesting article about it in the Times.) If you're wondering how we got the chance to do this, the answer is that it's as a result of my band performing at the Henry Watson Music Library's Christmas Music Day - and we've also had other bookings as a result of that same day, so any groups who chose not to take part last year may wish to rethink this Christmas!

We sang for a couple of hours at the launch party, which was great fun even though we couldn't be heard very well (note for future reference: singing in the Henry Watson library itself, on the second floor, is fine; singing on the first floor, near the room with the fabulous high roof... not so much). I'd told them that the core of our repertoire is 50s and 60s girl group songs, so I was delighted when they subsequently entitled the entire exhibition "And Then He Kissed Her". So we opened our set with that song, and finished a couple of hours later with "She Loves You", and it all went down very well. (They had hired actors for the occasion to play "heroes"... they dressed in tuxes and wandering round looking moody, and their function for the evening was to escort the various VIP guests - including many Mills and Boon authors - around the exhibition.)

A week or so later, still as part of the Mills and Boon festival, the library held a Regency Day, and they asked us to perform a couple of sets of "Regency songs". This was much more of a challenge, because although all the singers in my band are very experienced choral singers, we have never been asked to perform anything classical as a group before. Luckily we had a few solos and duets between us that we'd often sung for fun, and I dug out a few new things and filled up the rest of the time with folk song arrangements which I'd done specially. (Everything else had to be rearranged slightly anyway, because we were performing with guitar accompaniment rather than piano - I was the only pianist there, and in most cases I needed to sing rather than play, so I had to write out all the piano parts for guitar.) I spent a truly RIDICULOUS amount of time trying (and failing) to prove to my own satisfaction that folk songs would have been performed in private recitals in Regency times (1811-1820, in case you were wondering - the period when George III was still king, but due to his madness, the Prince Regent was in charge). I spent even longer trying to establish the dates of the folk songs on my list, but I did at least get somewhere with that enquiry. Even so, the song that went down best on the day was probably Rachel and I doing Via, resti servita from The Marriage of Figaro (better known to us as the "age before beauty" duet). We've sung it for fun lots of times (rarely without collapsing in fits of giggles) but have never performed it before. (We do it in English and omit the recitative at the start.)

And finally, in musical news: I saw the Police live at the MEN Arena last week. I'd had the ticket for over a year (just as well, because I couldn't have afforded it otherwise) - the concert was supposed to be last October but was postponed because Sting was ill. I was in an absolutely foul mood when I went, not helped by the fact that I was alone, for once not by choice (the people I'd originally been due to go with had sold their tickets to people I didn't know). But it was an absolutely fabulous gig, and by the end I was grinning from ear to ear. Highlight for me was "So Lonely", which is one of my favourite Police songs anyway, but by the time they finally played it (in one of the encores) I'd assumed they were missing it out, so I was thrilled when the intro began. I was also amused to notice that during the guitar solo, Sting decided to have a lengthy conversation with Andy Summers (who, in case you didn't know, is the one who was PLAYING the guitar solo). It didn't seem to affect the quality of the guitar-playing, mind you. (But then, I can never understand how Sting manages to sing while playing unusual rhythms on his bass.)

Talking of Sting singing, it was interesting that he didn't sing quite as high as he used to. Several of the songs were definitely in lower keys than the originals, and in many of them Sting sang a different harmony part than his usual one. He did go for quite a few high notes - and nailed them all - but he was much more choosy about them! (Before you ask - he'll be 57 years old later this year. But he still looks - and sounds - amazing.)

The other thing to mention is Stewart Copeland's amazing percussion playing. For most of the songs, he just played his usual drum kit (although that was quite impressive enough) but for some songs, notably Wrapped Around Your Finger, he used a full array of unusual percussion instruments as well. There were people sitting BEHIND the stage - I didn't notice until almost the end of the concert that the stage wasn't quite against one end of the Arena as it usually is - and I don't know how much of the rest of it they could see, but they must have had a fabulous view of Stewart!

So, what else?

I'm still working as a temp at the same place, and more broke than ever, but I do have an interview on Wednesday - the first one I've managed to get since last August - at an organisation for whom I would absolutely *love* to work. It's for very little money indeed (possibly even less than I'm on at the moment, which I didn't think was actually possible), but it is for slightly fewer hours per week, so if I got it, it would hopefully leave me with a bit of time to make some money by other means. I need to find *something* extra in any case, because I'm fed up of not having enough money to have 3 meals a day and STILL being behind with my mortgage! (I'm earning a bit extra this weekend by revamping a couple of spreadsheets for my boss, for example - I'm hoping I can get a bit more stuff like that to do.)

I had a small amount of interest in my mention of doing bespoke arrangements for groups, but nothing concrete has happened yet - I do have some plans to do something about that, I just haven't had time to put any of them into action. Here's a new offer, though, which might be of use to slightly more of you: backing tracks! It occurred to me, when I was creating a few backing tracks for myself to practise to recently, that this might be something other people might need. I've done quite a few in the past for various people - they're not amazingly high quality, but they're certainly good enough to practise to, and (depending on how fussy your audience is) maybe to perform to as well. Some free samples of my previous work: Poor Poor Joseph, Pharaoh Story, and Those Canaan Days, all from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat (these were used in performance - the school had bought a set of backing tracks, but it turned out that many of the songs were missing, so I said I'd fill in the gaps so that they didn't have to miss out whole chunks of the show). Also You're Still The One (Shania Twain) which I did for my sister (although she said the result wasn't good enough for her to even practise to!) and Bist Du Bei Mir, which is one of the ones I did for myself recently.

Limitations: well, these mp3s are entirely computer-created, so the backing vocals can't sing actual lyrics (I believe there is a piece of software which can work with Sibelius to do that, but I don't have it, and in any case the Sibelius technical forums suggest that it doesn't work brilliantly). Also, I don't have the expensive extras which enable the full range of realistic instrument sounds to be used - all the basics are there, but some sound more realistic than others. But if you just want piano accompaniments, that's not a problem anyway - the piano sound is fine. However, on the plus side, I can amend the tracks as necessary - so if you wanted them in a different key, or slightly faster, or with rits in specific places, or with the intro repeated between the verses... easy! Oh, and if it's a song for which there is no sheet music (or at least, if there is, you don't have it), I can still create a backing track, although it would take a bit longer.

Anyway, if you're interested, in either backing tracks OR arrangements... email me.

EDIT: I almost forgot to mention... Was I the only one who didn't know that Bist Du Bei Mir wasn't actually written by Bach?

Finally, before I do all the links I've been saving to share with you... I promised to explain RSS feeds! I know there are many explanations of these all over the web, but I assume that if people are still asking for explanation despite this fact, then the explanations must not be clear enough. So let me try!

I've always been an obsessive type of person, and when I first started using the web, I quickly acquired a long list of favourite websites. Of course, these could be saved so that I didn't have to type them in every time, but I still had to visit each one regularly in order to see whether anything had changed. This was annoying and time-consuming, because although some of the sites changed every few minutes (e.g. BBC News), some only updated themselves every few months. But the only way to know was to actually look at them.

A long time later, tabbed browsing arrived. This is one of a long list of things I don't know how I lived without, and simply means that rather than opening my favourite websites one at a time, I can open them all at once. It takes a while to load 100 websites at once, but it's possible, and when the loading stops, you have all the pages open on separate tabs within your browser, so it's much quicker to look at them all. (I regularly open 80 tabs together, and I can see at a glance which ones have new stuff on them, so when I go to read them, it works as follows: I look at the first page (on the front tab), and either read it before closing it (if I can see it's got new stuff on it) or close it immediately with a keyboard shortcut, bringing the next tab to the front.)

(If you don't currently use tabbed browsing, I urge you to investigate it. Unfortunately most versions of Internet Explorer don't have this feature, but in any case if you're still using Internet Explorer I urge you to investigate Firefox or Safari, and not just because of the tabbed browsing.) (I'm well aware that many work computers still run Internet Explorer and that you probably can't do anything about this - this is certainly the case for me at work, and I curse the fact daily!)

Anyway, what does all this have to do with RSS feeds? Well, there is still a disadvantage with the opening-100-pages-at-once method, which is that you still have to look at each page to see whether or not it's changed since the last time you looked at it. Wouldn't it be good if there was a way of being notified when a website is updated, so that you don't have to look at it until then? Well, this is what RSS feeds do. Many websites have them these days (they're not always called RSS feeds - sometimes it's XML or Atom or just Subscribe, but the function is the same, and the icon is usually the same - see below).



But how do you actually use them? You need an RSS reader (also called feed aggregators - Wikipedia has a list of the main ones) - this is a piece of software that scans the list of websites (specified by you) and grabs any new articles from any of them. The software can either be stand-alone or part of a more general piece of software - for example, I used to use NetNewsWire, but then Safari (which is the main browser for Apple Macs) added an RSS reader, so now I just use that. I have it set to scan my list of websites every 30 minutes, and after it's done so it displays the number of new articles. To read them, I just have to open my RSS page, which displays all the new articles on one page. If I choose to, I can click on any of the articles to look at the website they came from, but I don't always need to do this.

And how do I get the feeds onto my list in the first place? It's particularly easy with Safari (or Firefox), because all I have to do is to click on the RSS icon and then save the result as a bookmark. You can see an example of an RSS icon in use on the BBC News page, where it's in the top right-hand corner. (The thing next to it that says "news feeds" actually takes you to a help page - the feed itself is reached by clicking the icon.) If you're using a separate feed reader, there are various ways of adding a new feed to the list - sometimes just clicking the icon will do it automatically, but you might have to drag the icon to your reader or copy and paste the address etc. The software should have instructions that tell you which.

(This blog does of course have an RSS feed itself - the link is at the bottom of the main page, called "Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)". In the current version of Blogger it's a bit fiddly to add an RSS icon and I haven't got round to it yet.)

Anyway, I hope all the above makes sense. Short version (for the TL;DR folks) - if you look at the same websites regularly, RSS feeds can help you save time by telling you when they're updated.

So, finally finally, in no particular order other than the order in which I saved them... a load of links (not all are music-related).

From A Cappella News: The17 Choir - a group of 1700 people in Derby who will be part of a choir for a one-off performance. 100 groups of 17 people will each record just one note!

From The Spectator: a great article by Peter Phillips on the English choral tradition.

Also from A Cappella News: singing in a choir makes you healthier.

More news about Maestro - the forthcoming celebrity reality show, where they battle to conduct an orchestra at the Proms. Also, an article by one of the competitors about his experience.

And, in the same vein, Last Choir Standing, the latest BBC reality TV show. There was a trailer for this before Doctor Who tonight, so now I know it starts next Saturday. I'm a bit torn, because I absolutely DETEST all these types of shows... but it's choirs! I might try the first episode and see whether or not I can stand it. Anyway, here's a Times article about it; a Guardian article which is mostly about it; and an article from The Stage which has quite a bit more detail. Let's see what we think!

Not music-related at all, but fascinating: the biggest drawing in the world.

From On an Overgrown Path: article about Gerontius recordings.

BBC article about the search for the formula for the perfect voice. Not sure I agree with any of it, but it's interesting. (And, talking of voices that AREN'T perfect... Amy Winehouse is singing live on my TV at the moment, and although I like most of her recorded songs, I'm really unimpressed with her voice live - is it just me?)

Some interesting news about the Monkey Opera which I saw last year - turns out the artwork will be part of the BBC's opening sequence for its Beijing Olympics coverage. Which reminds me - here's the BBC's Euro 2008 title sequence (featuring the 1st movement of Mozart's Symphony no. 41) and the ITV version (featuring the Queen of the Night aria from the Magic Flute). Oh, and just in case anyone was wondering about the two songs that have been repeatedly played during games - the one they play at the start (and that the fans sing throughout) is Seven Nation Army by the White Stripes, and the one they play after every goal is Samba de Janeiro by Bellini.

In totally unrelated news, there is a game coming out for the Wii in which Space Invaders get their revenge!

If you want to improve your spelling, here's an online spelling test in which you compete against another player. It's not that hard - I can usually win easily, even on the highest level, but then I'm good at spelling! Hint: you have to turn the sound on though...

Here's the lineup for the concert in Poland in September that some of the choir might be singing in. (Thanks to Martin for the link.)

I know I've mentioned I Can Has Cheezburger (the Lolcat site) before, and it remains something that you'll either love or hate - but it still cracks me up daily, and my recent favourite is the printer error one :-)

Sensible Units does exactly what it says on the tin.

Interesting article about drink and drug problems among classical musicians.

When I discovered I Am Neurotic, I texted my mum to tell her, knowing it would amuse her, and I was right - she rang me up and was laughing so much she couldn't speak! It may or may not have the same effect on you!

From ChoralBlog: an interesting post about choral auditions.

From Podium Speak: some information about the effect of singing on cats. (When I practise, my cats tend to leave the room - I *try* not to take this personally!)

Some fantastic photos of the Earth from space, taken from the space shuttle.

I'm mentioning this mainly because I was surprised not to see it more widely reported - the guy who wrote the original Star Trek theme died recently.

From author John Scalzi: some thoughts for people about to get married. It's actually written for same-sex couples, but I think it's good advice for anyone. (But then I've never been married, so what do I know?)

This sounds like a really good book, if the quotes here are anything to go by.

From VHK's singing blog: some sensible words about programme notes.

From author Charlie Stross: an interesting post about whether or not you should unplug your TV when you're not using it, etc.

Some thoughts about musical demographics fro the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra blog.

I'm quite fascinated by this new skyscraper in Dubai. It's not been built yet, but do look at the animation video. (Although, if you were thinking of moving to Dubai at any stage, you should probably read this. How true it is, I have no idea!)

Spinningfields Summer Music apparently features a 4-piece string quartet! Pretty groundbreaking! Oh, and there are some more exciting musical events in Manchester in the next few weeks.

Oh, and today was the Round the Island race. I've wanted to see this ever since I discovered its existence, but yet again I didn't make it. It was only lack of money stopping me this year, so maybe I'll be solvent by next year and I'll be able to go!

---

Right, only 7 hours after I started writing this post, I'm done! Must get back into the habit of doing this more often (and therefore more briefly). It's just a bit hard to get motivated when I suspect that there are very few people still reading since I moved to this address. But to those of you who are still here: I'm grateful :-)

Queen's birthday honours

Look who's been knighted!

Sorry for me being quiet recently. It's been a ridiculously busy few weeks, but after tomorrow (well, later today) things calm down a bit. Last week my band performed at the launch party for the Mills and Boon exhibition at the Central Library. (Great fun, and we all got a fabulous goody bag!) Tomorrow (today) they are having a Regency Day to continue the theme of romance. We are singing again, but since the music involved isn't stuff we usually do (i.e. not pop) it's taken many, many hours of arranging. Looking forward to it though. If you are in town and want to come and listen to any of it, events kick off in the Henry Watson Music Library (2nd floor) at 1pm. Now, though, I should probably sleep!

Mike Hall

I have loads of things to write about and no time to do it. Hopefully soon. But in the meantime I just wanted to share some really sad news. According to the BBC News website, Mike Hall and his wife have been killed by an avalanche in the Pyrenees. For those who didn't know him, he was one of the orchestra's 2nd violinists, and one of the few whose name I knew. I attended several training courses delivered by him a few years ago, and he always said hello to me since then. He was a really, really lovely man, and I will miss him.

EDIT: The Manchester Evening News has more details, including a photo (which I've copied here) for those who aren't sure which one he was.