Germmtits!

(I discovered tonight that trying to text "Gerontius" using predictive text produces the above...)

No Jamie tonight (he was supposed to be there but couldn't make it; we didn't find out why) so David took the rehearsal and his place as accompanist was taken by the lovely Jonathan. We like it when he's with us because he usually appears to be enjoying himself. Plus, he's very cute :p

We sang through just about the whole of Gerontius. This was interesting as it was (I think) the first thing we ever did with Jamie, in St Paul's Cathedral in 2002, and (to me at least) it really showed how much progress we've made since he took over. There are parts that I remember always sounding less than great, but they were pretty good first time tonight. (I hasten to add that none of these bits were in the alto parts!) But it also made me realise that I've personally improved in some ways; in particular, I found that I could sing through most of the phrases without running out of breath. I've done this piece several times and never managed that before. It's encouraging :-)

David was absolutely correct, though, to point out that while the loud singing is fantastic, the quiet bits need work before they can sound as exciting. I've noticed this before; a lot of choir members seems unable to sing quietly when the music calls for it, at least until it's been pointed out to them several times that they're singing too loudly. (I have been accused of singing too loudly myself in the past, probably with good reason, but that's been in loud bits... I like to think that if it says "ppp" then you can hardly hear me.)

Sometime I will share my list of "good bits to watch out for in Gerontius". I know you all want to see that :p (you won't be surprised to hear that I have many such moments marked in my score!) Highlights from tonight, though: "I know this piece is about death, but...!" (David to the basses, after hearing them sing a line alone) ... and of course the "Dispossessed" contest, which the altos won hands down (there were impressed whooping sounds coming from the tenors after we did it the first time!)

Other stuff: It was great to see Rachel back tonight, amongst others who've been missing for a while. She's not been to choir since before Christmas. Oh, and we were given music for the opera stuff coming up, although we didn't try any of it. 4 things: Brindisi is familiar enough; Tannhäuser has us singing for a total of 23 bars (looks as if it might be offstage, which would be useful as then we wouldn't have to sit through the rest of it!); the Scottish Refugee chorus from Macbeth has, typically, no alto part at all, although the soprano part divides into 3 and goes down to bottom A... go figure!; and the Fire Chorus from Otello has the tenors split into 3 parts while the sops and alts hardly split at all. This isn't the first time this has happened, by any means - I often wonder whether choirs a century ago were drastically different (in terms of balance of parts) than choirs today!

Oh, and two final Gerontius points: firstly, some information about the story and musical details is online here, and a discussion of how to pronounce Gerontius is here. Summary: It's almost certainly a HARD g (i.e. not Jerontius)... I'm pretty sure this is how both Mark and Jamie pronounce it, too.

And it's back to Elgar....

Seems like a really, really long time since we had choir! A couple of things to point out:

1. If you own your own copy of The Dream of Gerontius, you should bring it to tomorrow's rehearsal.

2. The BBC Proms site went live today, and online booking is now open, although the bookings won't be processed immediately. Tickets for our prom are from £6 to £25.

3. It looks as if we're not going to be involved with the Proms in the Park this year, as the Manchester one features the BBC Phil rather than the Hallé.

See you tomorrow!

"The Hallé Choir ... soared through the Easter Hymn to memorable effect"

Briefly: Times review of the Cav gig here and Manchester Evening News review here, in case anyone hasn't seen them. Four stars from each. I haven't seen anything in any other papers - if anyone else has, could they let me know please?"

"Teeth in!"

... said the irrepressible Bruce to the front row sopranos, as he held open the door for them to go onstage. Cheeky thing! However, we will forgive him as it his birthday today :-)

Great gig. Everyone really enjoyed it - particularly the audience! They particularly liked the Easter Hymn; they burst into tumultuous applause after it, even though the music hadn't actually stopped. (I love it when that happens - it really irritates me when, in some other halls, spontaneous applause is frowned upon because it's "not in the right place". If the audience want to approve, let them, I say!) Mark had to wait quite a while before continuing. Don't think he was too upset though! (unlike at the start of the concert, when he stood on the podium and stared at two latecomers until they got to their seats... the couple in question got a round of applause, but I don't think Mark was too impressed)

The soloists were great, particularly Santuzza (Dolora Zajick). They all wore black apart from Lola, who (being the "scarlet woman" of the piece) wore a bright red dress. (I am very slow at noticing things sometimes, so I must admit that the significance of the colours didn't dawn on me until Lindsey pointed it out.) The only disappointment was that Turiddu (Ian Storey) sang with a score, whereas the other soloists all did it from memory. He had a fantastic voice, but the communication just wasn't there. For example, he sang a long aria to his mother (Mamma Lucia, played by Frances McCafferty), during which she gazed worriedly at him throughout, perfectly in character, yet he didn't look at her once!

I took a few photos in the interval - some better than others, as ever - which are up on the choir website. (Yael asked me tonight if I could possibly put thumbnails on (linking to full images) instead of the images themselves, which would really help non-broadband people. I felt a bit guilty as I've been meaning to do that for ages, but the way I currently do it takes approximately 5 minutes (literally) to get the photos from camera to web, and I have had no time to sort it out an alternative method (which would probably be just as quick once in place). Sorry! I'll get to it sometime, I promise.)

Not many Jamieisms tonight, sorry, although you will be pleased to learn that we did do "the Spider-Man warmup" (a good way of stretching when there are a large number of people in a small space), and the ladies were asked to sing the opening chorus "as if twirling a long, handlebar-type Edwardian moustache" :-)

No choir next week, but I'll be seeing quite a few choir people on Saturday night for Sue's party, at which my band is performing. Can't wait!

"Don't go away, darling. It was just lovely. The scream was great."

(Mark Elder to "una donna solo, assai lontano, gridando" (a.k.a. "the woman who runs up behind the choir at the end and screams a lot")

Orchestral rehearsal for Cav. We were hopeful at the start when Mark said he'd do our bits first and then do the middle section after we'd gone home - "wahay, early night!" we thought... but in fact we left at 9.00, only half an hour before scheduled. Oh well.

Rehearsal wasn't too bad, although it took a bit longer to get things just right than we expected. The biggest surprise, announced by Mark at the start, is that all the soloists who are supposed to be in the concert have actually turned up! (Mark has some sort of curse on soloists - invariably one or more of them is taken ill at the last moment, in any concert he conducts. So to have all the ones we're supposed to have is very rare. Of course, he's probably now guaranteed that one will develop some lurgy or other before the gig on Thursday...)

We arrived to find the aforementioned Ian Storey (tenor soloist) standing at the back of the choir seats singing an aria accompanied by two harps. It was lovely! Turns out that this is his offstage aria, and they were trying to find a good position from which to do it (this is always a time-consuming aspect of offstage stuff, as ladies who've sung The Planets will testify!) Later on they were trying it again from the side of the stage to see if that was any better. It'll be interesting to see where they end up (I suspect it won't be on the choir balcony - Ian was plainly unimpressed by that, complaining that it was "like singing in a bathtub").

Our own tenors surprised me slightly by not sounding quite as inebriated and enthusiastic as usual in their drinking song, which has been a highlight of every rehearsal so far (particularly the slide halfway through the tune!) I'm sure they'll be back to normal by tomorrow though.

All the soloists were great. Santuzza in particular (Dolora Zajick, an American mezzo) was very lively, and had the choir giggling at her impression of the Screaming Lady! As for the Screaming Lady bit, which culminates in the last note the choir sings (a very loud C major chord) it took AGES to sort out. This was partly because it involved an offstage action (see above) but also because no-one had decided when the choir should stand to sing this chord, and Mark wanted it to be a surprise, which it wouldn't be if we stood up too early. So Jamie had the idea that we should leap to our feet at the SAME MOMENT as we burst out with this unexpected chord. Seems straightforward enough, but some of the sops in the front row couldn't cope with this :p Still, they got it in the end. There were quite a few people I could hear singing wrong notes, despite a C being played on basses and timps for quite a while before the chord... I don't think these could be heard, though, with the number of people blasting out the top C! (Not sure how many, but it's not just Santuzza, it's all the sops in the Hallé Choir and Hallé Youth Choir who "have it in them". Quite a sound!)

"Make an Italian face... no, actually, Sicilian"

was my favourite instruction of tonight :-)

Piano rehearsal with Mark Elder for Cavalleria Rusticana. Much fun, as usual. The Hallé Youth Choir were there to run through the Easter Hymn with us (they're singing the church choir part in that) and there was a great sound a lot of the time. Other things weren't quite as good at first - we were finding it hard to sing rhythmically and in time, particularly - but it was fine by the end. (Although, infuriatingly, there were some people behind me who talked almost all the way through. I suppose this explains why they seemed so confused when we altos switched, within the space of a few bars, between the alto, soprano and tenor lines. I assume they were also talking during the rehearsal when we all wrote down which line we were singing :-)

Mark did like quite a lot of what we were doing, though, even before we got all of it correct - at one point he told us that "Covent Garden don't do it as well as that!" And he is in a position to know, so that was nice. He told us a few interesting things, as usual, one of which was that the tenor soloist (Ian Storey) is rare in that he's an Englishman who sings in Italy regularly. Mark says that he (Ian Storey) is very good-looking - can't say I'm convinced, from the photos on his website (example below), but I will reserve my opinion till I've seen him in the flesh :p





Talking of good-looking, Mark also informed us that Mascagni (pictured above), in his day, was considered to be very good-looking (in a different way from Puccini, who apparently had "bedroom eyes"). And that until recently, you could go into a barber's in Milan and ask for a Mascagni haircut - "no, I couldn't!" retorted one of the more follicly-challenged basses!

New choir schedule issued tonight (as usual, it's online) and letters about the London trip in July. And in case anyone hasn't been able to get a Cav recording and wants to practise, I've put mp3s of the chorus bits online. I haven't labelled them, but they're in the correct order in the score and all the choir bits are there. (Obviously, these are only for private study - I'll remove them after the concert.)

"Your tongue should be almost bursting with excitement!"

"Well, Jamie's on form tonight, isn't he?" said someone in the tea queue tonight. And he was. I forget what the title quote was about, but it was one of the double-consonant Italian words (I suspect "neggiamo"). There was also the reverse um-cha thing, which produced a sentence that was something like "you expect to come in on an um but you actually come in on a cha - but it FEELS like an um. You know, like speaking French with a Spanish accent". Seemed perfectly clear to me, but since it was the sops who actually needed to follow this instruction, more help was needed, so Jamie got the whole choir to chant "1, 2, 1, 2" till they managed to come in correctly :p

There was also the demonstration of how to sing a D so that lots of high harmonics are audible. This was very impressive, although we were a little disappointed that he stopped after the A and the high F sharp! (If you didn't hear this, it's much too hard to explain what he was actually doing. But trust me, it was very clever.)

Oh, and there was something about how to make a pirate's "arr" noise, but people were talking behind me (I *hate* it when they do that - it was particularly bad throughout the choir tonight, presumably because people hadn't seen each other for almost 2 weeks) so I didn't quite catch whether you do it by pushing your larynx or *not* pushing your larynx. The former, I think, whereas the latter is what's usually required for singing. I think.

BTW, I would very much like to get a photo of the look on Jamie's face when he demonstrated how he wanted us to sing "beviam, beviam, beviam" - "Look dangerous!" he said, and he did. Although I'm not sure why, when the words mean "we drink, we drink, we drink!"

Two slightly unrelated things he mentioned - firstly that he'd heard from the recording engineer for the Elgar, who told him that he was so moved while listening to one of the choir bits that he'd burst into tears! Should be worth listening to... And also, Jamie says he is taking part in tomorrow night's Brand New Flashmob Opera... but he didn't say in what capacity (I presume singing). Apparently at the climax the chorus have to sing the Hallelujah Chorus in order to save the heroine from going to hell. In the Meadowhall shopping centre in Sheffield. The mind boggles!

There were three new members who joined the choir tonight, and I had one of them (Jane) next to me, which was nice, particularly as her brother is an old friend of mine. But I felt really sorry for her - she joins the choir as a 2nd alto, and the very first thing she has to sing is the bit of Cav where we're singing the soprano part, which goes up to a top A flat! Oh well, it will only get easier :-)

Daniel Barenboim and I...

... were both at the Bridgewater Hall tonight :-)

I was there for a choir committee meeting. When I arrived I was surprised to find my way to the Artists' Entrance blocked not by the usual Hallé truck but by three HUGE orchestra-type trucks. I figured there must be some huge rock band playing - I couldn't think who else would need that much equipment - but when I went to sign in, I found that the sheet next to the committee one was for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and DB's name was at the top! I was quite excited by this, particularly as I'd totally forgotten they were playing here this week. During the early part of the committee meeting (which Jamie only attended part of, as he had a much-sought-after ticket for the concert) we could hear CSO players warming up. Gave the place a real buzz!

2 other vaguely-choir-related things. Firstly, I'm currently reading Michael Kennedy's "Portrait of Elgar" and was amused by this quote, in which Elgar explains why he disliked meeting choirs when rehearsing a new work: "I can face any orchestra under the sun, the players always enjoy new effects, but a chorus looks so disgusted if they haven't a shouting four-pt yell from beginning to end". (That is SO not true of us!)

Secondly, those choir members who took part in the Henry V tour of a year or two back will be amused to note that Prince Charles plans to open his wedding with music from this: "Touch Her Soft Lips And Part" :p

"You know, we should make a record of that!"

Isn't the internet great? A minute or two Googling means I can show you what Dr Teeth looks like. (Like, I suspect, most other people, the only one of the Muppets band I remember is Animal the drummer, so the whole Dr Teeth thing is a bit of an education!) Now if only I could remember what Jamie was trying to illustrate with his mention of Dr Teeth... I think it was something to do with mouth position (amazingly enough).

We had an extended warmup tonight, because when we arrived the orchestra hadn't quite finished recording something else. I thought people would grumble about this, since lots of people had had to really rush to get there by 6.15, but in fact the situation seemed to be accepted quite readily. (Mind you, this was helped by the fact that we were promised an early finish!) The Dr Teeth thing was part of the warmup. So was Jamie's attempt to get us to do the lower register "vvvvv" exercise - "as if you're trying to sculpt concrete with your mouth"... Oh, and I was delighted because we did my all-time favourite warmup - the one where we just sing chords. When I was at school I always loved it when Mike Brewer conducted the choir, because he invariably did that one. (It's more an aural exercise than a warm-up, but it's good to do because lots of people find it really difficult - must mean it's good for them!) Today, because we started in F minor (main key of The Music Makers) and hummed not-too-unrelated chords, it had the nice side-effect of sounding rather like the music from the "Fellowship of the Ring" film just after Gandalf died :-)

We didn't go into the hall till 7.30, but we were hopeful that the last 9 pages wouldn't take long to do, as we'd just rehearsed them very thoroughly. (The previous 4 pages didn't involve us, so they planned to do those after we'd gone.) One thing that I love about working at such a high level is the precision of the instructions. It's kind of a compliment to be considered capable, as a group, of following instructions from Jamie such as "we need about 7% more sound from the altos and basses on the bottom B, and about 10% more from the 2nd basses on the bottom E on the next page". Or, from Mark, "This should be happy. Not sad. Maybe a little wistful, but that's as far as we go."

The extended warmup and rehearsal paid off, as we finished at about 8.15 instead of the scheduled 9.30. And now we have an unusually long time before we meet again - no rehearsal next week, so the next time is on Wednesday 6th April for an intensive session on Cavalleria Rusticana (the concert is only 8 days later!) One final thing though: Thanks to Graham, here is a Manchester Evening News review of last week's concert (it didn't appear online for some reason, so Graham scanned it). Disappointing that there were no reviews in the national papers. Oh well, their loss.

"So where do they breathe, Jamie?" "NEVAH!"

Not much to report from tonight. It was Liz's birthday, though, so I had several rather nice flapjacks in the break. (I also belatedly remembered I had my camera with me - the few pictures I took are on the choir website.) (For those who don't know Liz, she's the one with Gill in the first photo). It was also Andrew the recording guy's birthday - he told us that he doubted we could possibly produce a more atonal version of "Happy Birthday" than the one the orchestra had played earlier... sadly we didn't get a chance to try! It was Andrew who came out with my second favourite quote of the night: "Can it be very sotto voce? I mean very. I mean... VERY."

Recording went quite well. Couple of patches from last night, then we got almost to the end. Just the last 13 pages to do tomorrow night. I'm pleased to report that the basses FINALLY found their A natural in the last bar of page 58. Jamie pointed out to them on Thursday, when one of them asked for help, that they merely had to repeat the exact phrase that the basses of the orchestra had just played TWICE (quite how none of them had noticed that before is beyond me, but they are basses :p (sorry Graham!)) (I suppose I should confess at this point that last night Mark said there was a place where everyone in the choir was coming in late except for one bass. I'd forgotten it amid the thousands of times he's said the altos are the only ones doing stuff right :p ) Anyway, they were still getting the A natural wrong tonight, but after a few goes it was finally fixed.

The "sotto voce" quote above reminds me that I was asked tonight why I hadn't written about the recording session I helped out at on Saturday (the choir involved is called Sotto Voce). The answer is that I didn't have anything particularly interesting to say about it! (so what's new there, I hear you shout :p ) Anyway, there's a report (and photos) on their website.

One final thing. Maggie told me this morning that the tongue should never be higher than the top of the bottom teeth when singing any vowel. Turns out I quite often have it in the middle of my mouth, which blocks the sound! Is this yet another thing that everyone knew except me?

"That was absolutely fantastic... but..."

(that's the favourite saying of Andrew, our recording engineer!)

While we're on favourites, Mark mentioned in passing tonight that the orchestra's two favourite bars of The Music Makers are apparently "world losers and world forsakers"... which are a cappella! Not quite sure what to make of that!

Anyway, the first night of recording went fairly well. Finished exactly on the stroke of 9.30 (someone asked me last week if there was any chance of any of the sessions finishing early - I laughed at her :p ) and by then we'd got halfway through, just up to the bit where the soloist sings for the first time. (She wasn't there tonight, so they can't have planned to get any further.) I figure tomorrow night will be the second half and Thursday will be lots of patching. Disappointingly there wasn't as much time for reading as there usually is in recording sessions - we sang most of the time. Maybe tomorrow (not that I don't like singing, it's just that I have a lot of stuff I need to read this week) :-)

Incidentally, the place where we stopped tonight (figure 48) is what I've labelled in my score as the "Christmas bit". It sounds incredibly Christmassy to me - now if only I could work out what it is that it reminds me of exactly!

Mark told us when we arrived, btw, that he was very pleased with Thursday's gig; "I thought you covered yourselves in glory, and many other things besides!"

Oh, and two different choir people asked me today what a blog is. Short version: it's not an acronym, it's short for "web log" and is basically an online diary. Skip the rest of this post if that is a full enough answer to the question for you!

Longer version: Some blogs (like this one) just ramble on about stuff, in the same way as a normal diary; others (like Blog of a Bookslut) are mainly collections of links to interesting stuff their owners have found on the web. Many blogs have a theme and are hence useful for keeping up with news in that area (e.g. The Leaky Cauldron is a blog about Harry Potter, and has so many contributors that you can guarantee that if there is some Harry Potter news, they will have it in minutes. Saves time looking elsewhere!) There are 3 main useful features of blogs: 1. Anyone in the world can read them (unless they are password protected) so they're a good way of communicating with lots of people; 2. The comments feature enables interactivity; 3. The fact that it's easy to include website links means that instead of describing everything in detail, you can direct people to other websites that have all the information already there.

If you want to know more, see here or here or here. Or the extremely comprehensive Guardian report on blogs. Or better still, try reading a few. I can recommend any of the ones listed down the right hand side of this page. Brief summary follows:

James and the Blue Cat - written by one of the writers of "Green Wing", but otherwise just general stuff; makes me laugh!
Neil Gaiman - by a fairly famous author (this is one of the longest-established blogs on the web)
Blog of a Bookslut - news from the literary world
The Leaky Cauldron - Harry Potter news
Random Acts of Reality - written by a paramedic
The Policeman's Blog - what it says on the tin
Making Light - written by a US book publisher; mainly general stuff though
Beyond Northern Iraq - written by a BBC reporter who lost a leg while covering the Iraq war
Fluxblog - an MP3 blog (has songs available for download, changed most days)
Baghdad Burning - written by an Iraqi woman living in Baghdad
The Alien Online - written by an ex-bookseller, mostly about science fiction (books, TV, films etc.)
The Woolamaloo Gazette - written by a bookseller, but mostly general stuff; Joe is, however, famous in the blogging world because he was fired by Waterstones as a result of (fairly harmless) comments he posted on his blog

Well, that was a longer post than intended; now I need to sleep. And guess what - still no essay done! Shame on me :-)

A scene of endless sin and pleasure, eh? Looking forward to seeing the music for THAT!

I'm supposed to be writing an essay that's now two weeks late, so of course I'm procrastinating. Decided I needed to blog as there are at least 3 things from Thursday's gig I realised I forgot to mention. But first... I just updated the forthcoming concerts page. And I don't know why it never occurred to me before (another CRAFT moment, probably!) but I've now added links to the official Hallé pages for those concerts. That means that not only can people easily see who the soloists are and what else is on the programme, but they can buy tickets online! Honestly, the Hallé should pay me commission :p

Discovered, while looking up said links, that the Wagner concert may be more interesting than I'd expected. I'm not a Wagner fan generally - I may have just been unlucky with what I've sung, but I've found all the Wagner I've sung so far to be extremely boring (plus, it seems to give me a sore throat!) Well, in May the ladies are singing part of Tannhäuser. We haven't been told which part - but according to the Hallé page, the only bits they're doing are "Tannhäuser's glorious Overture and the Venusberg, a scene of endless sin and pleasure". And since generally the chorus doesn't sing in overtures... 

Another web-related point of interest: I discovered that if you google "2nd altos", this blog is now the top result! (It's only in 2nd place if you miss the quotes out, but since it was 3rd last week, I imagine there may be yet another change...) Oh, and in case anyone's wondered where the title came from, it was the name of our CHAMPION 2nd alto quiz team (Gill, Chris, Liz, Alison and me) from the choir Christmas social. (We very kindly allowed Alison to join us, even though she's just been banished to 1st alto, since she sang 2nd for so many years :-) Which reminds me: I heard, quite some time later, that apparently one of the other teams - the one with lots of tenors, I believe - complained that we cheated! The cheek! Well, there were several teams I saw cheating, but I can promise you we weren't one of them. We didn't need to :p

Anyway, before I forget AGAIN, four things left over from Thursday night. (Yes, I just thought of another one!) Firstly, those of you who like the Jamieisms may have been disappointed that I didn't include any. So here are three: 1. Much giggling (mainly from the altos, I admit) at the poor guy trying to get page 30 perfect - the lyrics there are "or one that is coming to birth". Well, he discussed "the depth of tone on your come" and advised us to "get quicker to the birth and enjoy it". I suppose "you need a lot more tone on the bottom" is harmless in itself, but by that stage everything was funny :p

2. While warming up, doing the rolling-the-shoulder exercise: "Rolling, rolling, rolling. Keep them shoulders rolling. Keep them shoulders rolling, Rahh-ahh-ahh-ahh Hide, I think you'll find the vowel is!"

3. Still while warming up, but I forget the context: "More blood on the floor! You know, that sort of thing! Tap the sweat from it at the end of the performance! The Cream of Manchester!" (I was reminded of this one while watching a Friends episode yesterday, in which they mentioned Boddingtons beer. Amazing.)

And finally, one great bit from the concert itself that I forgot to mention was how fantastic it feels when the orchestra applaud us. They applaud everyone who performs with them, of course - it's be rude not to - but often when we sing with them they turn and smile at us too, and on Thursday night I swear a couple of them cheered! Great feeling :-)

Tonight is the first of three long recording sessions for The Music Makers. Top tip to people who haven't done a recording session before: BRING A BOOK :p

McFly, you fools!

Sir Ian McKellen came to our concert tonight!

Sadly I didn't find this out till after it was over, so I didn't actually see him. Although it's probably just as well, because I'd have been totally distracted and spent the whole concert scanning the audience :p

(On my way to the station after the concert, I was busy texting everyone I know to tell them this news. My friend Nigel responded by saying it was a pity Sir Ian didn't come to one of the pop concerts I do at school with my band, as then he could've called out "McFly, you fools!" ... If this makes no sense to you, sorry - it requires far more explanation than I have time to give, but it amused me a great deal :-)

Right, better get this finished, as I've just noticed that 63 people looked at this blog in the past week, 4 of them in the last few hours... I did start it on Thursday night but sleep and work have prevented me finishing till now (Saturday lunchtime), and I need to leave the house in 10 minutes for another helping-out-a-friend's-choir favour. Must stop saying yes to those, I have too much work to do!

Anyway. The concert was pretty good in the end. Not perfect - at one point the 1st altos behind me were a bar ahead, for example, but luckily we 2nds were watching Mark and stuck to our guns! - but a good deal better than Wednesday night. We'd watched the first half from the gallery of the auditorium - unusual, this, we normally sit in the choir seats even when not singing, but apparently Mark had decided it was important to do it this way on this occasion. (Not sure why!) Highlights of the first half for me were Sospiri (one of my mum's favourite pieces, but I hadn't heard it before; sounded more like Vaughan Williams than Elgar) and Elgar's orchestration of a Bach Fantasia and Fugue. The fugue was so OTT it was fabulous - I can imagine Elgar sitting there chuckling to himself while writing it, and I'm sure Bach would have smiled wryly! It had piccolo flourishes, trombone waggly bits, harp glissandi and cymbal crashes, and so much more. I recommend it!

Mark made one of his speeches before The Music Makers, which I'm sure the audience appreciated. Then the alto soloist came on (in the one of the least flattering dresses I've ever seen, I have to say, but it was OK because she sang beautifully) and we were under way. It was an exhilarating sing, and I'm looking forward to recording the work next week. (As ever, I think it'd be better if we recorded it *before* performing it, because the performance would be much better IMHO, but never mind!) I asked Wendy, whose first concert it was, how she found it, and she said she'd been terrified when about to sing the first line, but as soon as she started to sing she loved it :-)

I forgot to mention that we had a "warm-up" an hour before the concert - I use inverted commas because we didn't actually sing, just wrote lots of last minute instructions. And I was astonished - and quite disgusted - to see that at least one person didn't appear to write a single one of them in her score. In fact, I didn't think she had a pencil, and after half an hour of us writing and her not writing, I was about to pointedly offer to lend her one, when she produced one; but since she'd been reading her programme rather than listening, she didn't know where she was supposed to be writing the latest instruction, so gave up and went back to reading her programme. As I said before, I am very jealous of these people who can presumably remember hundreds of instructions without writing any of them down, but I have to say that I feel very nervous when singing with them, as I know that at any moment their memory might fail them and they might spoil the performance for everyone else by turning a page when we've been told to keep still, etc. Oh well.

"Tenors: At the moment your Ming, without meaning to offend, sticks out rather."

(That was my favourite comment of the warmup. It narrowly beat "Basses, your E natural needs some northerly attention.")

Just a short report tonight, as I must sleep (and NOT get sidetracked by World of Warcraft, but that's another story!) Orchestral rehearsal for the Elgar tonight. Always exciting to sing with an orchestra, particularly when it's one of the best orchestras in the world. So orchestral rehearsals are eagerly anticipated by most members of the choir. Unfortunately tonight's wasn't one of the best. We sang right through the piece at the start, and none of it was very good - it just wasn't together. The tuning was fine, and there were no problems with notes, but it was just messy. And the problem is that a lot of people tend to respond to this by concentrating extra hard, except that their version of "concentrating harder" is to stare more at their score... which is of course exactly the WRONG strategy! When we went through stuff the second time, it worked much better because people were watching Mark more. But the first time shocked people, I think - we all knew it wasn't going at all well. When I thought about it later, I realised that actually it wasn't that bad in the grand scheme of things - it never actually fell apart, it was just untidy. But we've done so much work on it that we know it ought to be much better than it was that first time.

The concert will be great though, I think. It's a fascinating-looking programme, and Jane Irwin has a fantastic voice. (Maggie sang the solos last night, and that was also fantastic, although their voices are quite different.) My favourite bit, by far, is the bit at figure 76 that Mark explained was the Windflower bit:

it must ever be
that we dwell
in our dreaming
and our singing
a little apart...

I can't actually sing the Eb major bar without my voice wobbling. People who've sat next to me will know that I tend to write "GB" in my score at such places, to warn me that this might happen. ("GB" = "Good Bit" :p ) Apart from that, though, my breathing - which has always been by far my weakest point of singing - wasn't too bad at all tonight. This was a nice surprise, and I have various theories that might explain it, but I need to see if I can repeat it tomorrow before I analyse too much!

Ooh, my other favourite bit is a bit I never noticed at all before tonight. At one loud point early on (figure 19, "we fashion an empire's glory") the trumpets actually blast out La Marseillaise while we're singing! If they do that on the recording I've got, they must certainly do it extremely quietly - no blaring involved - because I've never noticed it. Must listen again to check. (It took us totally by surprise - Mark got them to play it on their own, and when they played the French national anthem we presumed they were kidding - but they weren't!)

"Did he say THONG?!?"

("he" being Mark Elder. And the answer was "yes", and it was very amusing at the time, but I can't remember now what the context was!)

Music Makers piano rehearsal tonight. I don't think there are any non-choir people reading this, but in case there are, I'd better explain what a piano rehearsal is. Slightly confusing term, because we do of course rehearse with a piano 95% of the time! You see, when we perform with the orchestra, the concert is conducted by a top internationally renowned conductor (usually - but not always - Mark Elder, who's the Hallé Music Director and Principal Conductor). But we don't rehearse with the conductor until we already know the music really well; our normal weekly rehearsals are with Jamie, who's the Hallé Choral Director. (He does conduct a few concerts himself, but mainly his job is to prepare the choir for concerts.) When the concert is imminent, we rehearse with the orchestra (obviously), conducted by the conductor of the concert; there are only one or two of these "orchestral rehearsals". (Of course it'd be lovely to rehearse with the orchestra the whole time, but it'd be unbelievably expensive!) And in order to save time (and hence expense) with the orchestra, there is usually a "piano rehearsal" just before the first orchestral rehearsal. This is a rehearsal at which the conductor of the concert comes to rehearse with the choir, but not the orchestra (hence "piano rehearsal"). It's an opportunity for the conductor to clarify speeds and other details, and to listen to the choir without having to worry about the orchestra. (The piano in question is played by our regular accompanist, the extremely amazingly wonderful David Jones - he's SO good that on the rare occasions that he makes an audible mistake, a shocked ripple runs through the choir...)

Anyway, that's what a piano rehearsal is. So tonight Mark came to see us - tomorrow night is the orchestral rehearsal (only one this time) and Thursday night is the concert. As always with Mark, it was an inspirational evening and everyone left grinning. He had some very nice things to say about the Tippett gig (in particular, he said that in the Spirituals he could understand every word - high praise indeed!) Many laugh-out-loud moments, but Jamie had us giggling before Mark even turned up - he made us practise facial expressions (for example, "your 'crotchet = 152 der duh-duh der duh-duh der And Therefore Today' face") and then consolidated the amusement by extending his evil KitKat warmup exercise to "kitty katty kitty katty". (Could've been worse, at least he didn't insist on Lavender Leather...)

Ooh, I just remembered. You remember the cute tenor soloist with the beanie? Well, I thought I saw him when I got to the rehearsal tonight, but I assumed I'd imagined it. But I hadn't, because he (and the bass soloist) are singing with us for this project (gig and recording) due to our numbers of men being rather low. I'd tell you what Sylvia said about the bass guy, who was sitting in front of her, but she'd only be embarrassed :p

Tonight also featured a 20 year service badge presentation - whenever someone's "time is due", the tradition is that Mark presents them with a special pin that they wear on their choir outfit. This time it was Jean's turn, and Mark (as usual) said all the right things, and (as she sat down again) said "Now... what would you like to sing for us?" I'm told that while the rest of the choir was laughing at this, Jean called to him "This!" So everyone was happy :-)

Falling asleep now, so I'll just list the Markisms I scribbled down in the back of my score. (As an aside... I have so many things written on my actual music - not amusing comments, but actual instructions - that in some places I'm now having to write new instructions in the margin and draw my attention to them with arrows. So I'm INCREDIBLY impressed that there seem to be quite a few people in the choir who can apparently remember all these instructions WITHOUT WRITING ANY OF THEM DOWN. Wish *I* had a memory as good as theirs! And amazingly it seems to be the ones who don't make it to all the rehearsals who have THE BEST MEMORIES OF ALL. Funny, that.)

• Mark's story about performing Mahler 6 on a Saturday night in Brighton, in which during his intro he mentioned how long it lasted, and a man gasped "I've got a bus to catch!"

• Mark: "We've all got to agree on how short the king is!"

• Mark: "I'd even breathe, everybody." Choir: "Hurray!"

• Mark's impression of Elgar in conversation with Jaeger

• The look on Mark's face when he turned round and caught Jamie, who was sitting behind him, doing an escalator impression to the men (non-choir people: this is to remind them to think downwards when singing upwards)

• Mark: "I saw Janet Baker do that once. I'll never forget it. 11 o'clock in the morning, in Edinburgh. No, sorry, 11.30." (He was referring to her bending her knees when singing a high note.)

• Jamie and Mark doing a knee-bend duet is the image I can't get out of my mind :p

Benedicite

Quite often, I am asked to help out other choirs by joining them for concerts. (The invitations generally come via fellow Hallé Choir members.) Today was such a day, and it really reinforced something I already knew but tend to forget, which is how fortunate we are to be able to sing with singers who are generally in tune, an orchestra whose players can all actually play in tune, and above all, conductors who can conduct well. It's incredibly frustrating, when this is what I'm used to, to experience "how the other half lives". (Although, in some ways it's actually kind of nice, because I do feel useful being able to help.)

The concert today was at a big independent boarding school in the middle of the countryside, and the choir consisted of a mixture of schoolchildren, staff, parents, local people and "associate singers" such as myself. Not sure about the orchestra but it looked a similar make-up. The soloists were schoolchildren (well, one of them was an RNCM student, but I think I heard someone say that she was an ex-pupil of the school). The conductor was a teacher at the school, I think, and I'm afraid I didn't think much of him. People who know little about music occasionally say to me that they can't see why a conductor is necessary - surely the musicians will stay together if they just count properly? Tonight's concert showed why a conductor is needed, because many of the things that went wrong could plainly have been avoided if we'd had a better one. The main problems were that (a) he wasn't consistent (e.g. movements that he'd done in 4 in the rehearsal were in 2 in the concert) and, more seriously, (b) his beat was insecure - if the violins went slower, he followed them; he hesitated before downbeats, which consequently got later and later; that sort of thing.

The Vivaldi Gloria was a safe enough programming choice; it worked well enough in rehearsal, although the two girls who sang the "Laudamus Te" duet didn't seem to know it very well, and one of them ran out in tears after a fairly disastrous attempt at it. (Oh, and I found out that the Ricordi edition - which I have - is quite different from the OUP edition - which everyone else had - in many places! Helpful!) And it worked fine in the performance, despite the conductor trying to bring the choir in a beat early for their first entry. But it was a reasonable choice for the group to attempt. The other work on the programme - Andrew Carter's "Benedicite" - really wasn't, in my opinion.

It's a pity it didn't work, because it's a piece I didn't know at all, and I really enjoyed discovering it. (In particular, I loved having some proper sight reading to do!) It has interesting harmonies, foot-tapping rhythms, and good tunes. And it's not actually that hard, despite offputting details (for example, the opening time signature being 2+2+2+3 over 8). But it needs a confident choir, which in turn needs a confident conductor. Tonight it had neither. And I can't help blaming the conductor; the choir actually knew it pretty well, but were not confident in their leads, and they needed support that they just didn't get.

Despite this, I did actually enjoy the day, although I do have a bit of a sore throat from singing tenor very loudly to help the guys in front :p

Hurrah for Tom

Bit of an unusual rehearsal tonight. You remember we were on Radio 3 yesterday? (You can still listen to it online if you missed it... I missed it myself due to football being on, much good that it did me to watch that! Only trouble with the "listen again" thing is that I can't see an obvious way of fast forwarding to our bit, which is right near the end. Maybe I'll try tomorrow.) Well, as predicted, the Spirituals weren't broadcast. But we were right when we thought the BBC recorded them anyway, because tonight Jamie informed us that they had left the tape running "as a favour", and he thought it'd be useful to us to hear it. This was made possible by the lovely Tom, who's a fantastic tenor in addition to being lovely, but in this case the relevant piece of info about him is that he works as some sort of sound engineer type person at the BBC. Tonight he brought along a load of decent audio equipment so that we could hear the recording from the gig. It was very interesting, as was the discussion afterwards.

Personally I was struck by (in no particular order):

1. the splashiness of the s sounds (I thought they could have been much tidier);

2. the wonderful effect of certain things I remember Jamie working on (e.g. the men's "tremble" in "Nobody Knows");

3. the fact that when the whole choir was singing the men sounded much fewer in number than the ladies (which they are, but it's not usually so apparent; I'm usually surprised to discover that the altos can hardly be heard on recordings despite our numbers, but on this occasion we were easily drowning the men);

4. the fact that individual voices could occasionally be discerned (I'm pretty sure I heard myself in a couple of places, which is not good)

5. the loud breaths (I'm particularly bad at this);

and of course

6. the famous BFBABTEIGW... I cringed at the start of "By and By" when I heard it clearly being sung incorrectly, but it got gradually better until by the end it sounded more or less right \o/

The rest of the rehearsal was pretty fast-moving. We did quite a few short excerpts of the Elgar, and it felt quite different because Jamie got us to sit mixed up rather than in sections (I think this was inspired by Gillian's comment that the four sections didn't sound entirely together rhythmically on the recording). Always entertaining! I sat between two 2nd sops (Lizzy and Renate), which was nice, as I can't always hear the 2nd sops at all, never mind louder than the 1sts!

Finished off with 15 minutes skimming through the Mascagni, since it'll be ages since we have a chance to do it again, and then the performance will be nearly upon us! Gill was recording bits of this (she does this often when she wants to go away and learn the notes); I was a little alarmed to realise she'd recorded me doing the screechy bit where we sing the sop part, and made her promise never to play it back to me :p

Anyway, next week is an intense Elgar week: piano rehearsal with Mark on Tuesday, orchestral rehearsal Wednesday, gig on Thursday. Very much looking forward to all three occasions. (Wish I could persuade anyone I know to go to the gig but it's unlikely - my mum's usually the only good bet, and she's away. Pity - it's never quite the same if there's no-one you know in the audience.)

Ooh, I nearly forgot tonight's favourite Jamieism: I think it was when he explaining how he wanted the "c" in "music makers" to be produced. "Throw it forward", he said. "As if you're ten-pin bowling. No, actually, it's more like boules."

"If someone has to move their tongue, so be it!"

... said Jamie tonight, when trying to get the altos to all produce the same vowel sound on the "ma-" of "music makers". Ten minutes later, when he'd managed to not only do that but also get the tenors, basses and finally the sopranos to copy it, he was delighted with the result. I think it was at that point that he grinned widely and said "it's like having a new toy to play with!" Then he pointed out "That's ONE NOTE." Our planned perfect recording could be a while away at this rate :p

No more Tippett - just Elgar and Mascagni tonight (with a seating change in between the two because the ladies and the gentlemen are both divided into three equal parts for most of the Mascagni, so seating the sops and altos separately doesn't really make sense). Oh, and we sang Happy Birthday to Naomi :-) We finally did the end bit of The Music Makers, which I was pleased about because I'd only done it once, the first day we sight read it (the one rehearsal I missed, to go and see United, was the one when they did lots of work on that bit). Most of the time on the Mascagni was spent clarifying who's singing which part and when, but we did have a quick go at the bit from "a casa" to the end, mainly concentrating on the Italian. Much hilarity when everyone realised what "la giostra" sounds like if you pronounce it correctly... not helped by a tenor muttering something about "thinking outside the box" :p

We finished by singing once through the end of the Easter Hymn, but not before Jamie had said some lovely things about Saturday's gig. There are also some good reviews - 5 stars from both the Times and the Guardian, although the latter didn't actually mention the choir! The Manchester Evening News only gave 3 stars, but gets brownie points for being the only one to mention the Spirituals (which I think they liked!) Pity it looks as though the radio broadcast won't include them, according to the new Radio Times at least. Hopefully the BBC will keep them in reserve to broadcast another time, because we're pretty sure they did record them - there were mics for the soloists, and they weren't in anything else, you see.

Oh, and tonight's rehearsal was a bit of an eventful one for me for non-singing reasons; I'd been volunteered, along with Ken, to report back to the choir on a recent meeting the committee had with some Hallé management types. First time I'd spoken to the whole choir, as far as I can remember. It seemed to go fairly well, and lots of people came up to me afterwards to congratulate me for explaining things clearly, which was nice of them - it seems that there is some other use for skills learned teaching in a special school :-)

Bad news, I'm afraid

We finally found out what happened to the little bird with the broken wing. (It was in the programme notes.) It got captured by the hawk! Now, it was not clearly stated that it actually died, but we think it's quite likely :-(

Apart from that, though, a good time was had by all tonight. It was a long day - we rehearsed from 3.30 (and some of us had been in a choir committee meeting from 1.30 till then) and came offstage for the last time at about 10.05. Didn't get much rehearsal with the orchestra, but then it wasn't really needed; we warmed up and rehearsed a few bits backstage, then went onto the platform and sang through the spirituals during the orchestra break, then listened to the whole of the Ritual Dances (so we knew where to come in) and joined in at the end. The piece is a lot more exciting with full orchestra, as usual.

I actually remembered to bring my camera today, due to realising that there have been no new pictures on the choir website since last September. Didn't get any really great ones, but the ones I did get are now online. Also, I'd totally forgotten that the concert was being recorded by Radio 3, until I got onstage and saw all the mics. Apparently it'll be broadcast on Tuesday 8th March.

First half started (after Mark's usual entertaining speech) with Leonora no. 1, which I don't think I've ever heard before. Pleasant but not that inspiring, IMHO. Then it was time for the Ritual Dances. They were more fun than I'd expected (I particularly liked the impressive clarinet duet). The piece was very descriptive - we could clearly hear where the little bird with the broken wing got caught by the hawk :-( We only joined in right at the end; not our best performance of the piece, but nothing went disastrously wrong. Our first note felt pretty good, though. And at least the audience seemed to like it (surprisingly so!).

I was delighted, during the interval, to talk to Richard (one of our newer tenors) and learn that he joined the choir because of my website! I feel I should get some sort of cash prize for enlisting a tenor, albeit unwittingly :p

Second half was less fun than the first, as it mostly consisted of Tippett's Triple Concerto. This is one of his later works and has far less concordant harmony than the Ritual Dances. There were two bits I did quite like - the last note (no, not just because it was the last note!) and the bit in the middle when all the Indonesian percussion started to play. Apart from that I couldn't engage with it at all and found myself struggling to stay awake. I did better than some others - one person said she hated it so much she wanted to run from the hall screaming! It was impressively played, though, and again the audience seemed unaccountably enthusiastic. Some of them actually cheered! We decided they were either Tippett's family or part of the Mark Elder fan club.

The last item in the main concert was Leonora no. 3; bits of it seemed familiar, but most of it was new to me. Again, pleasant enough, and rather more interesting than no. 1. I particularly liked the unexpected offstage trumpet; Gill and I tried to decide what it is about an offstage trumpet that is so spinetingling, and didn't reach a conclusive answer, but agreed that we love it :-)

After the bows we went offstage and came straight back on again (for some reason) for the spirituals. We were delighted to see how many of the audience had stayed for this "post-concert event"; the stalls were full (although admittedly this seemed to be because they were sending the circle people down there as well) so the hall looked pleasantly crowded. The lighting was much more atmospheric than we usually have - the stage was in total darkness, as was the auditorium; only the choir seats were illuminated. When Jamie came on we could hardly see him, as he was wearing all black, but when he reached the podium he got an impressive spotlight. Unfortunately his face was still not lit, which was not ideal from a conducting point of view (he uses his face a lot!) but we managed. The performance went pretty well; the soloists were great, and the choir stayed in tune. And more importantly, the BFBABTEIGW sounded more or less right from where I was standing! \o/ The radio broadcast will be very telling...

P.S. Sylvia pointed out to me tonight that people could only post comments to this blog if they got a Blogger account (which is free, but a bit of a hassle). So I've found that setting and changed it. Post away, Sylvia!

"Then you sing about carnal doo-dahs...”

I went home on my own tonight (Alison was poorly) but had a huge grin on my face for most of the time. This was for 3 main reasons. The most immediate was something Daphne said to me as we were all leaving the rehearsal, but the grin would've been there anyway as a result of Mark Elder - I'm not sure what it is about him that's so inspirational, but he manages it every single time. More of that in a second. But first, the third reason (and you'd better sit down before reading any further): the BFBABTEIGW is now almost right! It got better each time we did it, and by the last time I could hear more right versions around me than wrong ones. I think this is probably due to Clare - I suddenly heard (the second or third time we did it) the correct version being sung very clearly by one person behind me, and I turned to see who it was, and it was Clare, who appeared to be as irritated as me. Now she usually gets things right, so I'm sure she was singing it right all along, but maybe she just decided to sing louder in order to banish the wrong version. Whatever, I'm very grateful to her. There's a good chance it'll be right on the night now, and it would've spoiled the performance for me if it'd been wrong.

As for the rest of the rehearsal, it was unexpectedly wide-ranging. We'd expected to just do the Ritual Dances with Mark, with maybe a sing through the Spirituals if he finished early. But we also did Elgar and Mascagni. (The Mascagni was just a sing-through so that we'd heard it at least once with all the parts together - it's going to be great fun, from the sound of it. The tenors sounded as if they were getting properly into the spirit of the drinking song... Bruce, in particular, was plainly having a fabulous time!) The Elgar was unintended, I think, but when Mark finished everything he wanted to do on the Tippett, there was half an hour left, and he asked if we had anything else we could entertain him with, so we sang straight through the first half of the Elgar. Mark appeared to like it; he was mouthing the tenor part throughout (not because they were at fault, I hasten to add, he was just joining in!)

We spent almost an hour on the Spirituals before Mark turned up, and they're now much better. I've already mentioned the BFBABTEIGW. (Which, by the way, I listened to on two different recordings today. The Sixteen managed to get that bar right, but the LSO Chorus didn't, despite having an accompanying orchestra playing the right notes!) The key changes between some of the movements were still being problematic, particularly from Go Down Moses to By and By, so Jamie rehearsed that one a lot so as to get the muscle memory to kick in. Oh, and what Daphne said to me (that caused me to go home grinning) was that some of the sopranos had come up with a theory that the reason the choir is finding that particular segue difficult to pitch is that By and By starts with just choir 1 singing... i.e. the 2nd altos aren't. And, more specifically, that means that I'm not singing, and, according to Daphne, I am "known as a note-getter". Now, I'm not convinced I have anywhere near as much influence as they're implying, but it's nice to know they think that :-)

We had a chance to do a quick revision of the Ritual Dances and the aforementioned whizz through Cavalleria Rusticana before Mark turned up at 8.30 to run through the Ritual Dances. All went fine. He's looking forward to the weekend - apparently "all the London critics are coming" to the Tippett festival. Oh, and he supplied my favourite quote of the night: “This is, to my certain knowledge, the only opera libretto containing the word ‘sperm’ ... “

"Reduced to notebashing! Oh, the shame!"

I expected to do just Tippett tonight, with the gig being on Saturday and the piano rehearsal tomorrow, but we started with the Elgar. Spent some time on the middle bit. (We might have got further if certain sections of the choir had actually written "enlisTID" and "resisTID" in their copies when it was first mentioned... I really hope that doesn't have to be mentioned again!) I was slightly distracted by wondering what I meant by "bb", which I seem to have written in several places in my score. It was a while before I realised it stood for "big breath". (Most of my abbreviations are ones I've been writing for years, such as LTYT, HTYT, FTYT, STYT, IO, IM, IB, IT, IS, SN; people who've sat near me will know what some of those stand for! But "bb" was a new one.) (Oh, and also I like the bit on p. 54 where everyone's holding a long loud Eb and in the middle of it the altos go up the octave. "Such a great idea! And it's probably a misprint!" was Jamie's comment.)

Distraction of a different kind after the break, when a lovely beanie-clad guy came and sat next to David to page-turn for the Ritual Dances, while Naomi was taking someone to catch a tram. Couldn't work out who on earth he was, but very much enjoyed looking at him ;-) We did wonder (with a certain degree of hopefulness!) whether he was going to be involved in the promised "perpetual copulation" :p (we'd been given a synopsis of the plot of The Midsummer Marriage which mentioned this; Gill, typically, spotted the interesting bit immediately... but we were disappointed when we realised that it didn't mention the fate of the little bird! We're worried!)

Turned out that the mysterious yummy guy was the tenor soloist for the spirituals - I didn't recognise him due to the beanie, which I'm pretty sure he wasn't wearing last time. Great voice though. (Well, all four of them are great. The bass was missing tonight because he was singing elsewhere, but we'll see him soon enough, I guess.) The spirituals were mostly OK, but they need to be better by Saturday; today's falling-apart-at-the-seams bit was the link between the first two movements (G major to C minor - shouldn't be that hard, but (a) it took many people by surprise, and (b) it relies on the MEN to start on the right note!), but hopefully that will be OK next time, after Jamie rehearsed it pretty thoroughly. I've given up on the BFBABTEIGW. It'll just have to be wrong on the night - I've tried my best. "Nobody Knows" is mostly correct now, though, so at least some progress has been made!

Tomorrow night: same time, same place, different conductor - it's the Tippett piano rehearsal with Mark. He's usually pretty good at inspiring the choir to make that extra effort that gets the performance from "good" to "great" - let's hope this time is no different.

"There's no blood YET..."

Soprano and alto sectional tonight. Spent it being introduced to Cavalleria Rusticana, which we're doing with Mark in April. Jamie told us the story. Apparently the tenor "interrupts the overture to sing a love song... to the WRONG GIRL!" Of course he dies in the end. This led me to wonder whether the eternal shortage of tenors is in fact caused by this tendency of theirs to get themselves killed by jealous rivals. Maybe that's a possible topic to investigate for my OU project this year :-)

The music's not that hard - or at least it wasn't when we were sight reading it without the words! There's one ridiculously high bit (goes up to a top Ab!) (well, strictly the alto part doesn't, but since it's identical to the soprano part except for a few random notes put down the octave, most of us are just singing the soprano part - it's actually easier to stay up there once we've made it) but it's actually not that bad... without the words. (I can sing as high as you like, as long as it's loud and I can use random vowels!) But sooner or later we had to put the words in. I actually love singing in Italian once the words have sunk in, but it's hard to learn in, despite the fact that it's "all vowels, except for the consonants" (a typical Jamieism!)

There were a few good Jamieisms tonight. Mind you, we'd got the giggles during the warmup (which not only featured the notorious "red leather yellow leather lavender leather" exercise" but also a new one, even more evil, to the increasingly rapidly repeated words "kit kat kit kat"). But I was amused by "the words 'rocket science' spring to mind" when the poor guy was trying to explain to some of the slower members of the choir that a particular note needed to be held for an extra bar. (Seemed perfectly clear to me, but maybe I could hear better then people further back.) And then there was the bit where he said "I'll get some hiking boots and send them to you as an email attachment so that you can use them for the GUILT TRIP you'll be taking!" (I forget what the guilty party was supposed to be feeling guilty about, although it was probably not stopping the sound in a double consonant...)

Concert week next week. That means choir stuff on Wednesday, Thursday and most of Saturday. Promises to be exhausting, particularly as I'm also out on Monday, Tuesday, Friday and Sunday. Ouch. Oh well, it's usually fun :-)

Note to self: Write stuff other than Jamieisms next time!

"Gosh, this is fun!"

... said Jamie, while we were trying to get the Ritual Dances into our heads. It's really not that hard (although also not in the LEAST tuneful), and after spending the first half of the rehearsal on it, I think most people are quite a bit more comfortable with the thought of performing it next week.

(Jamie's comments progressed from "It goes up, you know THAT much!" - while trying to get the tenors and 2nd sops to actually have a go at the bar they couldn't do - to "You know what? That sounds remarkably close to what I've got printed on my page! Aren't you clever?")

Much hilarity after the break, when we switched to the spirituals. We started with the middle bit of "Nobody Knows"... for a while, no-one (even the altos!) could sing the "O" of "O brothers" to Jamie's satisfaction; he claimed we were all starting from above or below the correct pitch. Then he got the idea that this might be because of the way he'd brought us in, so he experimented with various hand gestures that might improve matters, but this led to "Maybe you need to stand at an angle..."

The bar everyone's getting wrong in "Nobody Knows"... well, not everyone is, but an awful lot still are. I think people have started to realise; at one point when Jamie was waiting to start "Go Down Moses", several altos behind me could be heard humming said bar (some more accurately than others!) As for GDM, I'm again disappointed that lots of people who couldn't do it last week seem not to have looked at it since. Mind you, I'm not much better myself - I can sing the notes and rhythm with perfect accuracy, but I keep meaning to see if I can do anything about my breathing problems in those very long phrases, and I haven't had time yet.

The change to "By and By" wasn't much better than last week, until it had been practised a few times. (I'm not entirely sure why it's so hard for the sops to get an E from an F, particularly when they've sung an E the previous note (admittedly in a different octave, but still).) And yes, *that* bar is still mostly wrong, although there are a few people singing it right now.

We finished with the wonderful "Deep River", during which Gill and I realised how hard we were finding it to sing the "Oh Chillun" arpeggio - Jamie was getting everyone to do the revving motorbike effect on it, but one of the revs is just on the break in our voices and hence harder. Must give that some thought.

"Let my people ... HAVE A go AT SIGHT READING!"

We finally did Go Down Moses! \o/ I was delighted. Particularly because I had a vocal coaching session during part of tonight's rehearsal, so I was sure he'd choose that moment to go Way Down in Egypt Land. But as it turned out I just missed a bit of The Music Makers, which occupied the first half of the rehearsal. (And it was only the first half of the piece, so I didn't even miss doing the end bit that I missed due to football.)

Go Down Moses started the second half. Unfortunately it wasn't very good. And I think it would be fair to say that most of the rest of the choir don't like it as much as I do. But I was rather irritated that a good many people obviously hadn't so much as glanced at it since the time we sight-read through it about 6 weeks ago, despite the fact that it was clearly very different from the Child of our Time version, and somewhat more difficult. Now I didn't seriously expect that everyone would have taken it home and practised it, but it was fairly apparent that many people hadn't even bothered to mark which line they should be singing. Bit rubbish IMHO. And it didn't give a very good impression to the 4 soloists (from the RNCM), who turned up to run through all the spirituals just when we were showing that we can't do Go Down Moses very well. However, it did get better, and I'm sure it'll be fine on the night.

(Brief hilarity when we got to the end of GDM for about the fifth time and Jamie went straight into By and By. Which, to be fair, he had said ages ago was the plan. But the noises that emerged when the choir tried to go from F minor to A major without warning were... well, kind of like the other bits of Child of our Time, IYSWIM :-)

One bit of good news concerning the BFBABTEIGW, though. Most people are still getting it wrong, but Gill, bless her, who was sitting next to me, got it right tonight, which made it much easier for me to do the same. (Usually I can stick to the correct line even if everyone around me is singing it wrong, but with this particular note I can't for some reason.) Ditto for Nobody Knows. So there's hope! (The thing is, Gill does actually know when she gets something wrong, and can correct it. There are some people who are seemingly oblivious, so it's very hard to get them to change something.)

"But, Jamie, what happened to the little bird with the broken wing?"

Seems like ages since last week's gig. Tonight was back to normal. Much praise and thanks from Jamie though, and apparently we made nearly £50,000. And, it seems, the BBC Phil were impressed :-)

We started with The Music Makers. Seems like ages since I sang it, due to going to the match last week. It's sounding pretty good. Progress was made on page 62, where the basses are now singing in the same key as everyone else :p I was also reminded that I meant to listen to my other Elgar recordings - I want to hear which bits are quoted. (Jamie pointed out the bit on page 69 that's the big tune from the 1st Symphony. I didn't think I'd heard the 1st Symphony, but that tune is very familiar, so maybe I have. And that reminded me that I've not heard the 2nd Symphony for years - I studied it in depth on an OU music course, and have played it, but I don't think I've heard it since.)

At the end of page 69 I appear to have written "WORD!", which amuses me each time we get to that point. It's actually shorthand for "think about the placement of the vowel sound while singing this word, and at the same time sing it as if you're DOING it" (the word is "cry"). But still. As for page 78 to the end, I think I've only sung it once, and that was ages ago. Apparently they spent a lot of time on it last week, so I've had a look through to check I can sing it, and transferred markings. Not too hard, but I hope we do it soon.

We did the Spirituals. Well, three of them. And guess what? The BFBABTEIGW? Everyone's still getting it wrong. Ditto for Nobody Knows. And we STILL didn't do Go Down Moses!

Oh, but I nearly forgot - we did do one thing that we'd been expecting to do long before now. The "other" Tippett, i.e. the Ritual Dances. The concert's on 26th February, yet this is the first time we looked at it. (I sang through it with the CD when I got home from work today, just in case today was the day - it's not too hard, and there's hardly any of it.) Jamie introduced it, though, by telling us the story of the opera they're taken from ("The Midsummer Marriage"). He's very good at this - one of the best rehearsals EVER was the one a couple of years ago when he introduced Iolanthe to us. That was also a good rehearsal because he managed to create an amazing new sound during the warm-up - one that still had everyone talking about it after the rehearsal, several hours later - but it's not often I've laughed as hard as I did during Jamie's telling of the Iolanthe story :p

Well, tonight it went something like this...

JAMIE: There's a hare being chased by a fox.

CHOIR: Awww!

JAMIE: But the hare gets away!

CHOIR: Hurray!

JAMIE: And then there's a fish being chased by an otter.

CHOIR: Awww!

JAMIE: And the fish gets slightly injured.

CHOIR: *outraged*

JAMIE: But it gets away!

CHOIR: Hurray! Hurray!

JAMIE: And then there's a little bird with a broken wing.

CHOIR: Awwwwwwwwwwwww!

JAMIE: And it gets chased by a hawk!

CHOIR: *beside themselves with worry*

JAMIE: But at that point the story suddenly switches to another part.

[cut: further explanation of story, plus an hour's rehearsal of the music]

JAMIE: So. Let's leave that piece for tonight. Any questions?

CHOIR: What happened to the little bird with the broken wing?

WOW!!!!!!!!

Concerts like tonight's are the reason we don't mind giving up all our free time to sing in the choir :-)

So, tsunami appeal gig at the Bridgewater Hall. I managed to learn the Russian lyrics for the Rachmaninov on the train (I'd stuck it on the iPod and played it repeatedly in the car to and from work today, which helped a lot) but arrived at the Hall to find that most people were panicking about it. They felt a bit better about it, I think, after we rehearsed it and it was fine.

Backstage was even more crowded than usual, what with not only both choirs being there but a whole extra orchestra... I was looking forward to seeing how they fitted them all on the stage at once. Turns out I was correct in my belief that the Hallé and the BBC Phil had never played together before. So that in itself was very exciting, but the evening was amazing for so many other reasons. The hall was totally sold out, and even the returns were snapped up immediately (I know, I asked at the box office on behalf of a friend). Frustratingly there were a few empty seats despite this - I guess some people thought they'd be doing their bit for the appeal by just buying a ticket, but I wish they'd put their money in a bucket instead so some more people could've experienced tonight.

The first half was the Hallé alone. We didn't go onstage till the Youth Choir vacated the seats - it was a huge thrill walking on. (Normally when we go on, it's 5 minutes before the start of the concert; half the audience are still in the bar and the other half are chatting and not paying attention to the stage. Tonight we walked on with a full silent hall actually looking at us. BIG difference.) We sang the Brahms - which went very well - and then got to sit and watch a fabulous young Ukrainian pianist play the Rach Pag Variations. He was so theatrical about it that most of us sat there grinning gormlessly throughout :-)

After the interval the BBC Phil took the stage. It's years since I've seen them play, and it was oddly weird to sit in the choir seats looking down on an orchestra that wasn't the Hallé. They are of course both great orchestras, rightly world-renowned, but I've often heard people claim that the BBC Phil are better than the Hallé. I've always wanted to defend the Hallé (because they're MY orchestra!) but have felt unable to due to not having heard the BBC Phil recently enough to compare them. But after hearing both on the same night, I have to say I thought the Hallé just edged ahead \o/

The BBC Phil played the Ruslan and Ludmilla overture (which I know quite well) and Capriccio Espagnol (which I don't). In fact I hadn't even realised the latter was a multi-movement work - there's one tune I'd heard, but the rest was totally unfamiliar, so that was interesting. And then it was our turn again, to sing the Ave Maria a cappella. But first there was a considerable kerfuffle as the stage was rearranged to accommodate TWO large orchestras at once :-) This took a while, and when the players all came back on there were still a few empty seats - but unlike with the audience, this was a GOOD thing, as it meant that even more players would be appearing for the finale! As it was, they were extremely squashed - much more so on the cello side than the violin side, for some reason - but when they started to play, the sound was... well, "not squashed" would be putting it mildly. Wow!

Before that, though, we got our big moment - yes, we'd already sung the Brahms in the first half, but that was with the orchestra. MUCH bigger deal to sing a cappella - and, remember, from memory! And not only that - the Hallé Orchestra have heard us frequently and recently, but the BBC Phil hadn't for years (and we know they think we're rubbish, because they invite choirs from all over the place to sing with them rather than ask a choir that is based in the SAME HALL as them...) So it was kind of an extra challenge to sing well in front of them. And I think we did - they seemed impressed, at any rate :-)

After that, our participation was over, but we got to sit there and witness the bit everyone had been waiting for - both orchestras playing together. They started with several of the Enigma Variations, ending with Nimrod. We'd all been wondering who would conduct the combined orchestras - Mark Elder (Hallé prinicpal conductor) or Sir Edward Downes (BBC Phil ditto). General consensus was that Mark would certainly conduct the Enigma, as he's an Elgar specialist (he's partway through recording the entire Elgar catalogue with the Hallé) and therefore Sir Edward would conduct the finale (Jupiter from The Planets). Mark did indeed come on to conduct the Elgar, so I wasn't surprised to see that although the players were all sitting in pairs (one from each orchestra) the BBC Phil players had taken the "upper" seats (BBC Phil string players were sitting nearer to the audience, wind players sitting nearer to the centre, etc.). I figured that when the BBC Phil guy was conducting, the Hallé would have the top seats. Seemed fair enough.

Well, the sound was predictably fabulous - so rich, especially the strings. (When they got to Nimrod, a woman sitting near the choir began to sob uncontrollably - although she seemed to be smiling - and had to be hugged throughout.) But then it was the finale. Before the conductor came on, though, there was what someone described as "a bit of a do-si-do" as the entire orchestra stood up and every player swapped places with their neighbour. It was unintentionally hilarious, particularly as most people hadn't expected it :-) Then, when they were all seated, the rest of the wind and brass came on - that weren't needed in the Elgar - and filled the remaining seats. The excitement level went up a notch at this point. The example of the trumpets may illustrate why - occasionally the Hallé (and, presumably, the BBC Phil) will do a piece (usually Mahler) that requires more than three trumpets, but the extra ones would be hired specially for the occasion to supplement the three permanent trumpeters. But tonight we had six "permanent" trumpeters. It does make a difference, believe me.

And then the conductor came on, and we were all surprised (but delighted) that it was Mark again - and, needless to say, he gave an inspirational speech, and we love it when he does that :-) We love it even more when he conducts Jupiter, because he conducts the middle bit (the "I vow to thee, my country" tune) with just his eyebrows. Seriously. I'd seen him do it once before, and I have to admit I thought he was having a heart attack. (I've heard them play Jupiter loads of times, but usually from offstage where I've been standing waiting to sing in Neptune. But on this one occasion, we were out of town and the local choir was singing that bit, so we got to watch.) He conducted the rest of it as normal, but when it got to that bit he lowered his arms and shut his eyes. I thought he'd been taken ill and was amazed that the orchestra continued playing. Only when he raised his baton again at the climax did I realise it was intentional. And since then I've been dying to see him do it again!

Well, he did just the same, and it was even more impressive this time because he was risking it with an orchestra that not only had he never conducted before today, but (more crucially) hadn't played together before today. (It says a lot for the musicianship of both sets of players that it worked.) But even that wasn't the best bit. I was watching the trumpets throughout. This was because it had occurred to me, as they took their places, how impressive the sound of all six playing at once would be. (I tend to notice the trumpets more than the rest of the orchestra because I'm invariably sitting right behind them.) So I was eagerly awaiting the moment when this happened. But this had clearly been carefully planned - by a GENIUS (probably Mark, but it might not have been) - because although at any given moment four of them might be playing, it was never the same four, and the only point when all six (and, indeed, the entire orchestra) played AT THE SAME TIME was the very last line of the piece - the last six notes. And... WOW. It felt as if the sound doubled in volume. And it hadn't exactly been quiet before that! I suspect it will be a while before I hear a sound as impressive as that again.

At the end of the concert (i.e. a few seconds after this amazing outburst) there was a standing ovation. Now, we do get a few people standing from time to time - I'd estimate that on our best nights ever there've been maybe a quarter of the audience on their feet. And that's rare - it's usually a handful, if any. But tonight EVERYONE stood up. Within a minute or two. I've never experienced anything like it. And although I think it was probably mainly due to those last six bars, in which my only role was to sit there and grin, it was great to have been a part of the event as a whole :-)

NOW they tell us!

Didn't go to choir tonight - I had a ticket for United v Chelsea (great game apart from the result, but that's another story). Just before setting off for the game I opened this morning's mail and found a letter from Naomi confirming arrangements for tomorrow (tsunami gig) including the fact that we are now doing the Rachmaninov Ave Maria as well as the Brahms. Not a problem in itself. But I got a text from Alison during the game informing me that we're doing it FROM MEMORY! Great. Would've been good to know this last week. Or even IN THE LETTER THAT WAS ONLY SENT YESTERDAY. If it'd been mentioned in the letter, I could've stuck it on my iPod and learned it while queuing for a tram. As it is I don't know when I'll be able to learn it. Falling asleep now, and during the day at work isn't an option (there's never a spare minute in a special school). So on the train tomorrow is the only chance I'll have - I just hope it'll stick quickly.

"Otherwise we'll only hear the sopranos, and that can only be a bad thing..."

Alto sectional tonight. Got a lot done as usual, but it was slightly frustrating because (a) I pointed out the bar-from-By-And-By-that-everyone-is-getting-wrong to Jamie, but he didn't rehearse it, just drew people's attention to it. (I only realised tonight that there's a misprint in one of its appearances - felt a bit stupid not to have examined it more closely before, given the amount of time it's been annoying me!) So I'm pretty sure the problem will still exist next time we rehearse it. Oh well. Oh, and (b) we STILL didn't do "Go Down Moses" :-(

Many amusing moments though, although as usual you probably had to be there... The above quote is from Jamie (although I'm sure he'll deny it!) and was uttered on page 21 of "The Music Makers" (I write these things in my score so that they may amuse me for longer :p). He also invented a word - he told us to "singerate" a long F, and the scary part is that we all knew exactly what he meant...

His phrase of the night was "the loudest... you've ever sung" - on page 12 it was "the loudest Bb you've ever sung", followed by "the loudest D you've ever sung" on page 26 and "the loudest C you've ever sung" on page 23 - and there were more! Oh, and it became apparent when we got onto the Spirituals that the BFBABTEIGW isn't the only one TEIGW... the repeated phrase in "Nobody Knows" is all over the place. Not sure what everyone's singing for the 3rd note, but it's not a C!

Tsunami appeal gig update

So it seems that this concert, which was only put together last week, is completely sold out, and it sold like no other event the Bridgewater Hall has ever staged - the box office apparently had queues eight or nine deep at every window all weekend. They've sold so many tickets that they're not even having both choirs onstage throughout - the youth choir are going on first, and then processing off after singing their bit, so that the adult choir can sit in the same seats. (They do usually sell the unused choir seats for popular concerts, but they don't make the choirs share seats...)

I'm a bit disappointed with our contribution - at the request of Mark (Elder), we're doing the 4th movement of the Brahms German Requiem. The work as a whole is of course wonderful, but that is my least favourite movement from it by a long way. Oh well. (We wanted to do the Ave Maria from the Rach Vespers but Mark preferred the Brahms. Also, one or more of the Tippett spirituals would have been lovely if we'd had time to get them really good. I'd love to know how the management would've reacted to us doing "Deep River" :p ) Still, we do get to see most of the concert, including the Hallé and the BBC Phil playing together on the same stage for the first time ever (I think).

Tonight's rehearsal was fun - Jamie is back from wherever he was last week. Spent most of the time on the Elgar, again - we are all so looking forward to performing and recording this piece; it's so wonderful, yet hardly any of the choir knew it (including me). Of course there's the usual Catch 22 of recording an unfamiliar piece - of course you want a CD to listen to while you're learning it, despite knowing it's a waste of money ultimately because you're going to record the definitive version!

Also did "By and By" again - not much better than last week, and the altos are still all getting the repeated notes wrong on "I'm gonna lay down". Grrr. Hopefully tomorrow's sectional will sort that though. And I was most amused by Jamie demonstrating how he wants the word "load" to be sung. Apparently it involves an elbow movement (like Nigel's James Brown Random 9ths... long story...) and a feeling of extreme heaviness, although my amusement was mainly due to being reminded of Hoggy doing his Sam impression from ROTK ("I could 'elp you carry it, Mr Frodo! Share the looooad!")

Still no "Go Down Moses", sadly, but we did get a run through "Deep River", and we finished with one sing through of the Brahms, which will be fine. Oh, and we got unexpected expenses from the Hanley gig, and United finally beat Exeter :-)

So, this seemed like a good idea a couple of hours ago...

We had a very entertaining rehearsal tonight. Well, they're usually entertaining, but there's not always as much giggling and, well, smut as there was tonight :-)

It started during the warmup, when Maggie (vocal coach) seemed unable to say anything that didn't make everyone smirk. Of course I can't remember any of it now (well, there may have been a mention of going down on the altos and basses, but the rot had set in long before that!)

Spent most of the rehearsal on the middle bit of The Music Makers (Elgar). Some tricky stuff, but it'll be fine after a few goes at it. Nice to have quotations from Enigma and Gerontius (the piece was written in 1912, after both of those), but unfortunately the "our souls" section will never again be sung with a straight face after Fanny (standing in for Jamie) said "Now, speaking of the basses... Our Souls". It took a while before one half of the choir realised why the other half was giggling... Yes, we are easily amused :-)

Then onto a quick look at two of the Tippett spirituals (Steal Away and By and By). They're not my favourites of the five (I like Go Down Moses best, particularly after we discovered last week that the 2nd altos have several good bits that we don't have in the Child Of Our Time version) but of course all five are lovely. It was all complicated by the tiny printing and the confusion caused by the German words and alternative rhythms, and the fact that most people apparently hadn't bothered to go through and mark which line they were on, despite getting lost last week. But some progress was made, notably by the sopranos and basses, who are now actually singing the verse bits in By and By. (It took several goes before they could be heard.)

Finished with a sing-through of the Elgar with Maggie singing the alto solo part. It was great, although sadly we ran out of time and didn't get to the end. Came out to discover that United hadn't managed to beat Chelsea, but at least they hadn't embarrassed themselves as they did on Saturday. And I forget at what point in the rehearsal it occurred to me that it would be fun to have a choir blog, but it did :-)

(The choir website is here. Must update that sometime.)