"Their Russian's wonderful! What's all the fuss about?"

So, piano rehearsal for both Shostakovich symphonies tonight. I am so totally exhausted as a result of that (not helped by trauma at work, associated lack of sleep, and singing very loudly in a different rehearsal a couple of hours previously) that I wanted to sleep as soon as I got home, but annoyingly I still have lots of stuff whirling round in my head and can't sleep, so I thought I'd write this to offload at least a few thoughts (kind of like an online Pensieve...)

Mark (Elder) seemed impressed with the Russian (the title is a quote from him). He was less impressed at the singing behind the beat, but I was expecting that. Maybe one day everyone will watch all the time, but we're sadly not at that stage yet. Annoyingly, we're also not at the stage where everyone can be professional in rehearsals - I found it particularly difficult to concentrate tonight, as there was a LOT of chatter. Jamie pointed out at one stage: "If you don't talk, your voices will recover sooner..." which is of course true, but unfortunately some people were just determined to be rude. And it was infuriating when a few people started to mutter about the break being later than promised, seemingly oblivious to the fact that if they hadn't talked nonstop throughout the first half of the rehearsal, we would have got through everything on time! Oh well.

We also got our new folders and sashes tonight (the sashes are what's being referred to in the wind socks sign above....) As a public service, here is a photo of a sash pinned correctly:



There was a bit of alarm at the idea that we need to sew stuff before Thursday's concert despite having no time in which to do it, but when I went to investigate, I was told that it's not a problem, they can easily be pinned on, and Pat will bring pins on Thursday for this very purpose. Just as well, because I don't even have any pins, so I was planning to fix mine on with gaffer tape!

Mark was on good form tonight. He told us to watch the violinists' faces when they play the fast, high pizzicato stuff in the triple fugue of the 2nd symphony. (Apparently the violinists at the first performance said this was impossible to play, and begged the 21-year-old Shostakovich to change it to arco!) Mark was also quite taken with the English translation of a couple of lines: "Terrible was the name of our snares" and "Freedom out of oil-covered hands". But the highpoint was his story about having to go and present himself at the American Embassy in order to get permission to work there (apparently everyone has to do that now, and if we ever went on tour there with the choir and orchestra, every member of the choir and orchestra would have to visit the American Embassy first!) I can't tell the story as well as he did, so I will just summarise it as a memento for the people who heard it. 7.25 a.m., freezing cold, 2 other musicians in the queue (who recognised Mark), Mark eventually being interviewed by a 24-and-a half-year-old preppy type guy who found Shostakovich problematic and dissonant and preferred chamber music - Boccherini and Locatelli. "Geminiani's good," said Mark. "You're free to go now," was the response.

Trust me, it was a lot funnier when Mark told it :-)

Anyway, I'm going to try to sleep again now, but I must finish with the night's only significant Jamieism - he got very excited when lots of people sang a G instead of an F on the penultimate page of the 2nd symphony. "Brilliant! Wrong and committed! Thank you!"

Happy birthday Mozart :-)

But first some news that has no connection with Mozart. Barbara points out this Guardian article. For those who aren't registered and can't be bothered, an excerpt:

The BBC plans to mark the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ this Easter with an hour-long live procession through the streets of Manchester featuring pop stars from The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays and featuring songs by The Smiths and New Order. In the programme, called Manchester Passion, a character representing Jesus will sing the legendary Joy Division anthem Love Will Tear Us Apart before dueting his arch-betrayer Judas on the New Order hit Blue Monday, according to senior church sources involved in the production.

Mary Magdelene, the penitent whore of the New Testament, is also getting in on the act: she is being lined up to sing the Buzzcocks hit Ever Fallen in Love (with Someone You Shouldn't have) accompanied by a string band. Former Happy Monday and Celebrity Big Brother winner Bez will play a disciple. The climax of the event sees Jesus sing the Smiths classic song Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now as he is being flayed by Roman soldiers. He will then come face-to-face with his Roman prosecutor Pontius Pilate with the two of them singing a duet of the Oasis hit Wonderwall.

The BBC, which plans to show the event live on BBC3 on Good Friday, insisted the event was inspired by "the way Bach and other composers fused music and the Passion story". The "contemporary retelling" of Jesus' last hours will begin with the messiah - who is yet to be cast - singing the Robbie Williams hit Angels, which will mark his procession into Jerusalem. In this case, Jerusalem will be represented by Manchester's gay and red light area near Canal Street and the Passion scene will pass via Chinatown and St Peter's Square to culminate in Albert Square. The march will be followed by members of the public who will be encouraged to join in the singing of relevant anthems, which include the M People hit Search for a Hero Inside Yourself. ... The event will end with the resurrected Jesus singing an as yet undisclosed song from the top of Manchester's town hall.

Sounds like fun, doesn't it? As Barbara says, "they might even want a world class choir to take part".... EDIT: The BBC dispute some of the details, and I suppose they ought to know...

Anyway, in honour of Mozart's 250th birthday, a couple of mp3s for you: Ronda Alla Turca and the first movement of Symphony no. 25 (aka the Amadeus theme). Not the only Mozart there is, of course, but you've all probably got it all on CD anyway - I've just put these up in case there's someone who has no Mozart CDs and wants to celebrate the anniversary :-)

Sorry for the delay in posting, anyway. I did mean to post last night but Blogger was down. Not a huge amount to say about the rehearsal though. We sang every note of both symphonies, and did a bit on the Russian. I don't think Natalia was too impressed (particularly by the dirty E vowel, which made her sigh and shake her head rather a lot) but unfortunately there wasn't time to do any more work on the linguistic side of the project. Jamie, as usual when time is against us and things aren't going too well, kept amazingly calm and patient. I think everything will be much better with the orchestra, anyway - the trainee accompanists are probably great pianists, but they're nowhere near as good as David at following the beat, with the result that they were frequently several beats behind Jamie. This really didn't help!

I don't seem to have written down many Jamieisms. There was:

"Let those 4 bars be an oasis of vocal good health."

"You're like a mighty beast. Be the beast more often!"

... and that was it! Lots of opportunities for more next week though.

Oh, and Pat showed us the new ladies' sashes, which may even be ready for the first Shostakovich gig. Very exciting - we got the current ones in 1996! There was some concern that they look orange rather than red, but I trust that was just due to the lights. (And to those people who are assuming they're red "to fit in with the Youth Choir", which several people said last night - that's not true. The colour is to fit in with the Hallé brand colours (black, grey, white, red - remember?) and that's why the Youth Choir red was chosen. The Hallé has wanted to replace the turquoise sashes ever since the new branding came in. The colour was a no-brainer - I believe the delay is due to them being unable to agree on the fabric...) Also some concern that it sounds as if we have to sew them ourselves, but maybe Pat saw the looks of horror on the faces of large numbers of the altos (and, I assume, the sopranos too) because she finished her speech with the promise that she would try to make as many as possible herself. She's a star :-)

Oh, and finally - a mystery solved! Remember when I wrote about the last carol concert, I said there was an artist sitting in the side circle and I wondered who it was? I now know the answer! Martin Yule, one of our 1st tenors (and someone who I knew very well by sight but never knew his name until tonight) came over to tell me that it was his son who was the artist, and the painting (I think he said painting, although it might be drawing) is in their living room and he will try to bring it to show us next week! It wasn't a commission or anything, he just loves to draw :-)

Welcome, Honda ad seekers :-)

EDIT (30-04-06): The video files are now back online at a different location. Please let me know if the links don't work; I think I've amended them correctly but it's entirely possible I've made a mistake!

I know I go on a lot (probably too much, but it fascinates me) about searches that have led people here. But the recent mentions of the Honda choir ad have doubled the number of visitors! (Note to self: stop whingeing, or they'll all go away again.)

We're still getting loads of people who've found us by searching for "Hogwarts March for brass band" (and there are now 2 brass bands who have started to rehearse my arrangement, although I haven't heard either of them - both conductors have promised to let me know when they perform it though). Other searches from the past couple of days: "amusing quotes about tenors and basses", and, slightly more oddly, "tenors sounding like sopranos"... But in the past week we've had, in addition to dozens looking for "honda choir advert",

• honda choir rehearsal
• honda noisy choir advert
• honda advert choir
• honda orchestra advert civic (a confused person there, I think!)
• honda advert beatbox
• honda ad singing choir
• civic choir
• civic choir advert
• honda civic choir tv ad download
and last but not least
• toyota advert 60 voice choir (I approve wholeheartly of someone who knows how many are in the choir but not what they're advertising!)

Anyway, if you've seen the ad but not the three "making of" videos, I've put them online too. Well worth a watch. And it struck me that probably most people seeing them would be surprised at what singers can do with their voices. I suspect the composer witnessed one of our warmups and stole all the ideas from there!

Anyway. Download:

Honda choir ad: QuickTime .mov (9.4 MB) or Windows Media video (8.9 MB)

Making of, 1: QuickTime .mov (19.1 MB) or Windows Media video (8.2 MB)

Making of, 2: QuickTime .mov (16.0 MB) or Windows Media video (7.9 MB)

Making of, 3: QuickTime .mov (27.7 MB) or Windows Media video (12.6 MB)

"We can't do the exercise where you bounce on your balls."

... said Maggie, with regret, followed by remorse when she realised what she'd said :p (Balls OF OUR FEET, in case you were wondering. And we couldn't do it because we were at the BBC, on the tiered seating of Studio 7, and bouncing tends to make it seem as if it might collapse.) (The tiered seating, not the BBC....)

More Russian tonight, surprise surprise. Much repetition of the "dirty e vowel", which needless to say I still can't do. (Apparently you have to have the back of your tongue low in the mouth. I think I have an abnormal tongue, because I can't seem to manouevre the back of it at all! Can anyone else?) We did the whole of the 2nd symphony, with the new vocal scores. I was kind of surprised that people were handing in their old scores as they picked up the new ones. I kept mine - I'll hand it in next week - because I had markings in the old score, and I wanted to transfer them. I can only assume that either most other people didn't write anything down last week (or last night), or that they don't mind making the same mistakes twice. (Good grief, I'm insufferably condescending, aren't I? Sorry about that.)

Jamieisms: "Sopranos, can you look gormless for a minute? Some of you look like you're trying to grow beards."

"There is NO y. But Jamie, there's a Y! I know there's a Y...."

And then it was the EGM. And, thank goodness, the subs motion was passed. But I spent the second half of the rehearsal wondering why on earth I bother being on the committee. I tried to answer some questions from some of the altos during the break, but I was totally unsuccessful at this, as whatever I said just seemed to get them even more angry. Afterwards, I was pretty upset, and while mulling over my incompetence I kept thinking back to last Tuesday night, when there was yet another long committee meeting, to discuss the subs proposal (yet again). Yet again I waited right till the end in order to raise a non-subs-related issue that members of the alto section had begged me to raise on their behalf. Yet again this caused me to arrive at the station just after my train left, with the next one an hour later. (We meet once a month as a committee, and I can't remember the last time I didn't just miss the train.) On this occasion I was less than a minute late, and I saw my train's lights in the distance as it sped away. And the next train had an engine failure and was half an hour late. So I spent an hour and a half on Victoria station on one of the coldest nights of the year, and (unsurprisingly) caught a cold which is only just receding. I had to get up an hour early the next morning in order to do my lesson preparations that I'd been too tired to do the night before. And the benefits of me doing all this? Somehow I can't see that there are any.

Anyway, to finish on a more positive note: a couple of people have told me they've had trouble viewing the Honda choir ad on the Honda website, so you can download it here (QuickTime file, 9.4 MB) or here (Windows Media Player file, 8.9 MB but lower quality - try only if the QuickTime file won't play). (I told Jamie about the ad yesterday, by the way - he hadn't seen it, or heard about it. His response, when I described it to him: "I can't believe they didn't ask me to get involved!")

"In the past, we've called this the Dirty E Vowel."

The Dirty E vowel will come to haunt us all over the next few weeks, I fear. It's that "y with an umlaut" Russian vowel that so many of us can't say (well, I can't, at least). We've had loads of Russian coaching over the past few years, but none of it seems to have explained clearly enough (IMHO) exactly how to do this vowel. Oh well. Maybe there'll be an epiphany at some point soon :-)

On my way out in a minute, but was so tired when I got home last night that I thought I'd better post last night's thoughts before I go to tonight's rehearsal - less to do tonight, when I'll be tireder! (Yes, I know that's not actually a word...)

Last night was the first ladies' sectional of the year, when we also met both the RNCM singers (who are augmentintg the choir for this project) and Natalia, the Russian coach. We got a lot done, mainly on the 3rd symphony (which we almost reached the end of) because the 2nd symphony is in the process of having a new score produced, which we will get tonight, and the transliteration is different. I got told off by some of the other 2nd altos for singing all the high notes (including the optional ones)... I don't like singing high, and it's not pleasant for anyone nearby, but if I've got to sing some really high notes, I find it much easier to do so if I stay up there rather than swooping around all over the place. That's my excuse, at least!

Not many Jamieisms. There was something in the warmup about creating mini-pizzas the size of dolls' houses, and keeping them all spinning at different points in mid-air, but I wasn't able to write this down at the time (as I was busy creating said mini-pizzas!) so I don't recall the exact words! There was also "your strength is THERE" (i.e. around your waist) "and you just drop it all"... but that was a bit more visual :p

Actually I think the exchange that amused me most was this one:

JAMIE: We'll go from figure 9.
CHOIR: You mean 99.
JAMIE: What did I say?
CHOIR: 9.
JAMIE: Brilliant.

Not sure why that amused me so - you had to be there!

Anyway. Must leave the house in 4 minutes' time. EGM tonight - I'm hoping the subs thing will be passed without too much fuss, because you really wouldn't believe how much time we've spent working on this, and I honestly believe it's the only way forward. Most of the comments I've had from people have been favourable, but I did just get an email from someone who is very definitely NOT in favour. But then she only found out about it today. I'm not at all sure that it was made clear to people that the EGM was tonight, which concerns me, but maybe it was and I was daydreaming. Anyway, we'll see.

Oh, finally: couple of recent searches I like. Apparently this blog is now 2nd in the worldwide Google rankings if you search for "bottom of shoe images", and (somewhat more surprisingly) "skinny dipping nova scotia"! Google them yourself to see why :p

Text of article about choir ad (from Monday's Guardian)

Singing the praises of the new Honda
What on earth to do next? First Honda UK garnered worldwide acclaim three years ago with Cog, the TV ad in which car parts formed a complex time-and-motion machine. Last year, it followed up with a psychedelic animated diesel engine, Grrr, which landed the car company and its advertising agency Wieden + Kennedy London the industry's highest honour, the film grand prix at the Cannes International Advertising Festival.

On Friday Honda will unveil its follow-up: Choir, the advert launching the new Honda Civic. And if it receives the reaction the company predicts, the race for 2006's most creative advert for will be over before it has begun.

Genuinely different, Choir features a massed group of 60 vocalists "singing" the sounds of a Honda Civic journeying through city streets and the wide open road. The singers thump their chests as wheels bounce over cobbles. Basses growl the deeper rumble of the engine while sopranos sing out its higher whine. At one point a pleasant-looking middle-aged woman opens her mouth to emit the soft squeal of a tyre turning sharply in a concrete car park.

"The hardest sound problem was nothing to do with the Honda," says Steve Sidwell, the composer and arranger who turned the mechanical and electronic cadences of the Civic into a written score. "A pen rolls across the dashboard at one point. That was hard. One of the singers managed to tap the underside of his teeth with his fingers and change the shape of his mouth."

The choir was filmed performing the score in a London car park in late November, after production company Partisan had lovingly shot the car.

"We just have to be a bit different," says Matthew Coombe, Honda UK marketing and communications manager. Honda competes with its rivals Volkswagen and Toyota with about one third of their marketing budgets. It will spend £3.2m on screening Choir and £250,000 on print advertising. The Honda website will be crucial, as many car buyers now browse the internet before they set foot in a showroom.

But then why the heavy investment in a two-minute TV ad? Jonathan Campbell, group account director at Wieden + Kennedy London, says the advert is so long because Honda seeks high-impact and high-involvement advertising and TV is the most efficient way to change people's brand perceptions. But the advert will not be shown that often.

"We do try to do things differently, rather than carpet bombing people with our brand," he says. "We want people talking about our work."
Stephen Brook

EDIT: If you haven't seen the ad yet, you can see it on the Honda website.

“But why Manchester?” asked a predictable London voice.

“But why Manchester?” asked a predictable London voice. Because Manchester got its act together and drew on its resources: two symphony orchestras, a conservatoire, a music school for brilliant kids. That’s why Manchester.

My favourite quote from this Guardian article which I just saw, reporting on the start of the Shostakovich festival. EDIT: Just found another Guardian article published today, this one by Gerard McBurney.

And just as I fired up Blogger to tell you about it, the Honda Civic "Choir" advert (as mentioned by Sheena) appeared on TV! Great fun. (It was on Sky Sports 1 just after United lost to City, but I was cheered up slightly by the ad...)

"But I'm loving it! It's SO WRONG!"

Hellooooo! Sorry to be absent for so long - over Christmas there was nothing urgent to say, and this week has been a bit traumatic. Thanks to the people who emailed to ask if everything was OK when I didn't blog after Wednesday's rehearsal :-)

Anyway, we're back! \o/ And it's Shostakovich all the way. The Shostakovich festival has already started, and our first bit is in less than 3 weeks' time. I was delighted that the first rehearsal was a sitting-next-to-a-different-part one - I love those! Partly because it does seem to reduce the talking, since it splits up the altos (although there was a row of 4 of them that I assume couldn't bear to be parted from each other, since they ignored the instruction to sit separately). But mainly because it's such a good way to make people sight read. And it did work, for the most part, although there were of course a few people who were heard to mutter that they'd never be able to learn the music quickly enough with no-one to follow... THAT'S EXACTLY WHY YOU FIND IT HARD TO LEARN, PEOPLE! I do dream of the day when everyone in the choir will just go for "loud and wrong" and sing on the beat. Maybe it will happen in my lifetime :p

Anyway, there were a few great Jamieisms on Wednesday. (I actually dithered for far longer than I care to admit, before deciding which one should be the title!) Some others:

"I want your musical dirty linen to be displayed in public. NOW."

"If there were Smarties, Meg would get them." (I'd also noticed the mistake Meg pointed out. But since she and Tom have just got engaged, I am more than happy for her to get all the virtual Smarties!)

"Commit to the music. Make it matter. Pretend the lights of someone on the other side of the world are going to go out if you don't sing, or something."

"No-one died in Kent!" (This was after he asked that the stakes be raised from the 'lights out' thing, and then the whole choir managed to count a couple of bars correctly... )

"When you go for the top note, I want you to drop your knees and be at one with the earth."

Oh, and I forgot to say - there is no piano accompaniment for either Shostakovich 2 or 3, so David set some of his accompaniment students (from the RNCM) the task of creating one from the full score, and they did it as a piano duet so as not to have to miss any notes out. Don't think we've ever been accompanied by a piano duet before!

Talking of talented young people (good grief, I feel so old...) I talked to Sam and Andrew (two of the basses who are members of both the HC and the HYC) and Alison tells me that Sam really impressed her with his sight reading. (She wasn't near Andrew, but I'm sure he was just as good.) And there was a new soprano sitting right behind me - I didn't catch her name, but she was doing amazingly well. I was most impressed.

And finally, a few links I've been meaning to post. Firstly, here's a recording of Shostakovich 2 (21.9 MB) that Barbara gave me a while ago. It's a live recording by the BBCSO & C, conducted by Mark Elder. It's only 19 minutes long, and the first choral entry (after the siren!) is at 12 minutes something. If you want just the choral bit at the end, here it is (7.8 MB). (I'll post the 3rd symphony when I get a recording of it.) EDIT: Here's the 3rd symphony (4.0 MB), helpfully supplied by Graham E (thanks, Graham). It's just the choir bit, and starts exactly where our music does.

This (4.0 MB) may interest you if you like the Kaiser Chiefs. If you don't know who the Kaiser Chiefs are, it's quite likely you won't be interested in the recording :p

Here's an interesting thing about hand signs used in jazz. And a Guardian feature which includes bits by both Mark Elder and Ed Gardner. And a weird singing thing that Barbara discovered (you type in some words and it sings them to you!) And a thing that claims it can tell what song you're playing if you just tap out the rhythm on your space bar (it didn't guess the one I tried, so I lost patience, but you may have more luck). Oh, and best of all - an article discovered by Sheena that tells us about an extremely interesting-sounding advert!

Oh, and I've updated the online choir schedule. (Those who don't know the address, please leave a comment or email me.) In particular, anyone who wasn't aware that there are football matches on ALL THREE OF THE NEXT THREE WEDNESDAYS may like to make a mental note...

And, finally finally, I know you've been wondering about my favourite recent searches-that-led-people-here. Well, "Hogwarts March for Brass Band" is still a very popular one (which has resulted in me sending my arrangement to a couple of people, even), but my favourites are "becoming russian" and "orcish translator" :p

Well done Joe :-)

Joe is the Youth Choir guy who was at the centre of the front row in the carol concerts, and he was given the job of sitting everyone down. Which he did perfectly, and it's remiss of me not to have mentioned him before. (Particularly as he had tinsel wrapped round his glasses by the end of the last concert - didn't notice it any earlier...)

Not actually very much to say about the last gig, when I think about it. It was very good - everything stayed in tune, in particular, making both choirs 4 for 4 on that front :-) The orchestra hats were probably at their most numerous - the leader didn't have his tinsel antlers, sadly, though. (He did have some less sparkly antlers in the second half, but they weren't as funny somehow.) The much-anticipated horn section silliness didn't really live up to expectations - they did finally don Santa hats, but only for about 5 seconds (literally) when they stood up and played a line of "Rudolph" in the middle of "Sleigh Ride". And that was it! They probably decided it was pointless trying to compete with the trombone section. Sadly I couldn't see the trombones from where I was sitting, apart from Andy's top half when he stood up, but they got the biggest round of applause when they walked onstage (beating only the cellist dressed as Santa). Andy Berryman, the principal trombonist, wore a black and purple long-haired wig, a cowboy-hat-style Santa hat, a bright yellow suit (like a Hi-De-Hi uniform, for those who remember such things) and a HUGE cleavage. I dread to think what he had on his bottom half... I couldn't see that...

There was an artist in the side circle, though, who was in a perfect position to see. Don't know who he was or what/why he was drawing, but he had a large sketching board in front of him throughout. Hopefully we'll see the results at some point!

Anyway, nothing else to say right now, so I'll wish you all a very merry Christmas and a happy new year. I'll post if anything prompts me to, otherwise see you at the next rehearsal - 11th January! My throat (and those of the basses - see comment on last-but-one post) might just have recovered from the descants by then :p

Shoe photos!

I meant to post when I got in from the gig, but got distracted by World of Warcraft again (my druid just got to level 60! This is a big deal. Trust me.) So yet again I'm just going to sleep, and will post when I wake. But I just wanted to let you know that I did get as far as uploading the photos I took tonight. They're all on the choir photos page. They're not *all* of alto silly shoes... I rather like the one of James the alto as Rudolph :-)

No, I'm not up early...

... I'm up late :-)

Going to sleep in a minute. Gig tonight. Very much looking forward to it, particularly after news from the horn section (see Gen's comment on my last post). Plus there's the ALTO DESCANT again - that is, unless Jamie decides enough is enough and bans it! Oh, and there is a plan for all the altos to wear silly shoes. Not entirely sure I own any, but I will look!

I've tried really hard to persuade people I know to come to one of the carol concerts, but have been unable to get any of my friends to come and see me. Maybe one of them will surprise me tonight, but it's looking unlikely. Oh well.

Anyway, my actual reason for posting is that I discovered another fabulous Christmas song. It's a cover version of the Coventry Carol (by a band called The Smashup) and it amuses me greatly. Note: beware of turning the volume up at the start, it gets louder in the verse.... If you like this, you may also be amused by the Christmas edition of Never Mind The Buzzcocks, which was on the other day but is repeated sometime soon - in the next line round, they had a death metal band playing Christmas songs. I was extremely amused by the performance of Deck the Halls :-)

"The altos are great, everyone else is feeble."

That's more like it, isn't it? And it was of course *us* that Jamie was referring to this time :-)

Loads of stuff to write, which is why I didn't write it last night - I did stay up for quite a while when I got home, though, because I spent a couple of hours online doing all my Christmas shopping. None of this pushing my way through crowds in shops rubbish! All I have to do now is do some sums to work out how to compensate for the huge amount of money I spent last night...

Before I forget, a couple of non-carol-concert-related things... Graham E has found another review of The Music Makers, and Barbara sent me a copy of the page of jokes she was passing round yesterday. Thanks to both of you.

Anyway, the concerts. The overriding theme was of course silly headgear, as always. The silliest hat was possibly Gill and Liz's turkey hat (they both wore it, at different times), but there were lots that made me giggle even more. (More photos here, although sadly not of any of the ones listed below...) Some highlights, hatwise:

• The antlers, with purple and silver streamers, worn by the leader of the orchestra when he came onstage on Sunday night. Well, not so much the antlers themselves as the look on his face... when everyone laughed, he looked serenely around as if to say "What?!?" It was even funnier when he bent his head down to tune his violin and the streamers covered the strings! And then in the middle of one of the pieces, it fell forward and Jamie had to remove it for him (while conducting) :-)

• The Santa hat worn by the leader of the 2nd violins. It moved from side to side! Jerkily! Not sure if it just does that randomly when switched on, or whether she was controlling it, but it fascinated us!

• The Santa hat with bells on the end, worn by one of the cellists. In the middle of one of the pieces, Sharon (the cellist who shares a desk with him) started poking the bell with her bow :-)

• Jamie's Santa hat. He didn't wear one on Saturday. On Sunday afternoon Heather Stott (the presenter) brought one on for him to wear, but we were quite surprised that she did so right in the middle of a tricky bit of Jingle Bells. On Sunday night she brought it on during Sleigh Ride, which made more sense. But I just got an email from Sheena: "Heather told me she had agreed with Jamie that she would go on during the Sleigh Ride and give him the Santa hat to wear - Jamie had instructed her to come in when she heard the sleigh bells and people jangling their keys. However, there were also sleigh bells in Jingle Bells, and when Heather heard them she thought that was her cue and duly went on, unfortunately just when Jamie had a few particularly tricky bars to conduct. Jamie's remark from the podium was 'Is that for me? I'm a bit busy right now.'" Hee!

Something that's normally a hat highlight but wasn't this year - the horns! What's happened? (Gen, can you answer this?) The horns have usually been at the forefront of hat silliness, but none of them wore even a bit of tinsel this year. And they didn't play Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (in the wrong key) in the middle of Sleigh Ride as they usually do. The theory most people are going with is that they got told off for going too far (possibly as a result of the false breasts, a la Gazza, that they had last year...) and have decided to withdraw their Christmas spirit in protest. I hope this turns out not to be true and they're actually saving all their Christmasness for Friday :-)

Some other random things... no Jamieisms (well, except the one in the title, which is clearly the BEST ONE EVER), but a quote I liked from Dr Liz, after Jamie appeared to be enjoying himself far too much in the warmup: "We're just a toy now, aren't we?" I think it was only a minute later, and for the same reason, that Barbara said "He'd make a great Widow Twankey, wouldn't he?"

In the Sunday afternoon concert there was a kid (at least I PRESUME it was a kid) in the audience with a TAMBOURINE. There were also maracas and sleighbells in the same section of the audience, but it was the tambourine that was continually audible (in every piece, not just the audience participication ones!). I'm kind of surprised that someone would allow their kid to bring a tambourine to a classical concert, but I suppose that it's possible that either they didn't know the kid had it, or they hadn't been before and thought it'd be OK. But when they got there and realised that no-one ELSE was playing a tambourine, I'm very surprised the tambourine wasn't stopped and/or confiscated - if not by the parents then by the stewards! I personally found it incredibly distracting, so I don't know how Jamie put up with it.

Better news, though - that note in A Merry Christmas seems to be right! For the first time ever! Well, at least, it may not be correct throughout the alto section - I can't hear that many people, I'm on the back row - but all the people I can hear are certainly singing it correctly. It's kind of sad how pleased this makes me :-) (And in case you were wondering, the Youth Choir altos got that bit right again both times, AND the Youth Choir as a whole stayed in tune throughout both concerts. Yay!)

There *is* a bar in White Christmas that's bugging me, though. It's a bar where the tune goes F# G, yet the alto part goes Eb F. It's just a mess so far - some people are singing F# G, most have realised that they're supposed to be lower than that and are singing a mixture of D, Eb, E, F and F#, hardly anyone is singing Eb F... The mess continues on the next page, because the next note is an F (i.e. the same note we're supposed to have just sung) and it's quite an easy one to get, so it throws people when they realise they've gone wrong but they don't know where. (Overanalyse things? ME?!? OK, I'll stop now...) The *good* news about White Christmas is that the "up north" thing, which we all thought was a bad idea because it just wasn't funny, has actually gone down very well with the audience! Go figure :-)

I was in the group that sang in the foyer after Sunday night's concert, and Jamie was pleased that we actually got the words right (i.e. ringing/singing). Apparently the Saturday night group didn't. The Saturday night altos were blaming the sopranos, unsurprisingly!

And finally... we got a standing ovation for our descants! We sang three of them in the end (Once in Royal, While Shepherds Watched, and of course O Come All Ye Faithful). It was very exhilarating. Jamie didn't appear to notice we were singing... or, more likely, he was thinking "Oh my God! I can't believe they took me seriously! I'd better not look at them, it'll only encourage them!" But we did get a standing ovation :-) There may of course be those who claim that the standing ovation was NOT in fact for the alto descant. But the facts are clear: did the altos sing the descant at the first two concerts? No. Did we get a standing ovation at the first two concerts? No. Q.E.D. :-)

"Altos, I hate you!"

Needless to say this wasn't US... it was the Youth Choir altos that Jamie hated! They were having trouble singing G, C, D, G instead of G, B, C, G, in the "Glory to thee" bit of the Rachmaninov thingy they're doing (Hymn to the Cherubim). I know what the notes were because they got the same thing wrong - and consequently rehearsed it several times - in Wednesday's rehearsal... The good news is that they got it right in the concert tonight! In fact the Youth Choir sounded about a hundred times better in the concert than they did in either of the rehearsals. Their unaccompanied bits were all perfectly in tune, and they sounded great. Still a few bits where hardly any of them were watching - so frustrating to glance across and see all their heads down, when I know how fantastic they sound when they DO look up!

(BTW, can someone please explain to me why it is that, when I've just sung lots of lovely tunes in a concert, the thing I've had on the brain for the last 4 hours has been those very 4 bars... of the alto part of a piece I'm not even singing in?!? I hate my mind!)

The "adult choir" altos were of course just about perfect in every way :p Jamie did use the phrase "We have a winner!" about us TWICE... this referred to the fact that we were the only section who watched him in A Spotless Rose. It's difficult being the best all the time, but we cope somehow :p

Oh, also in A Spotless Rose during the rehearsal, we got Jamie's impression of an X Factor contestant, which... well, it's hard to describe. But it was very amusing! (It came about, since you ask, because the Youth Choir boys were trying to put in a "cheesy rit" at the end of their solo, and he accused them of wanting to sing it like an X Factor contestant...)

I took a few photos tonight. Most are not great, because I only had my phone camera and it has no flash, but I've put them online anyway. I do like the second one of the front of the Bridgewater Hall though. Have they had the lights in the shape of a Christmas tree before and I've just not noticed? I only noticed it this time when we did Messiah a couple of weeks ago - and even then, I don't think I would've noticed if I hadn't approached from Starbucks (it doesn't look as tree-like unless you approach at that angle).

Oh, and talking of lights, have you seen the lights projected onto the ground (and the Pebble) outside the hall? Very pretty! Have they had those before?

I suppose I should probably mention the concert :-) It went very well. Surprisingly short, too, which isn't at all a bad thing! Sleigh Ride was as great as ever (although not many people got the 5th and 6th claps!), and there was a great orchestral arrangement of Jingle Bells that I don't think we've heard before. It featured a lot of slapstick (the instrument, not the comedy), and the slapstick solo in turn featured some amusing shouting from other members of the orchestra! The Youth Choir, as previously mentioned, were great, and I think the highlight of our bit was probably Stille Nacht, which was very lovely indeed. All the audience participation bits went according to plan without anyone forgetting which verse they were in or singing wrong notes (yes, even White Christmas, which we hadn't rehearsed at all until today!), and the Bach bits were spiced up by Gareth's fabulous trumpeting. Oh, and several of the sopranos had flashing fairy lights on their folders, which looked rather good!

A couple of non-concert-related things: firstly, Graham E points out that the Telegraph have reviewed our Music Makers CD, and they seem to like it. And secondly, I know I keep going on about searches that lead people here, but they amuse me so! A recent one was for "tasto solo", which made me feel kind of useful, especially as I think my explanation was much clearer than any of the others that Google throws up! But the most recent one of all was the one that amused me most - it seems that this blog is the number one Google result for "frustrated second altos" :-) But we won't be frustrated tomorrow night, because we are ALLOWED TO SING THE DESCANT! (Did I mention that....?)

"Bells RING. They do not SING. That's what the ANGELS do."

*yawn* Such a long day, and my feet are killing me. It was my band's concert at school this afternoon, which involved standing (and singing) for 2 hours... followed by an almost-3-hour rehearsal tonight. We didn't stand for much of it, but I really felt it when we did! I'm so tired I planned to go to sleep as soon as I got in, but my cats had other plans :-) So I thought I might as well do a quick post while I'm waiting for them to come home.

Not much to say, really. It was the piano rehearsal for the carol concerts, and Jamie seemed pretty stressed, poor thing. So much to do in so little time, though, which is not really anyone's fault - it's so soon after Messiah, and Messiah was so soon after The Bells, and I think everyone will agree that there's no way we could have spared any of the Bells rehearsal time! Still, it might've helped if people had watched more. I think it's that age-old problem of people being unfamiliar with the music, so they bury their heads in their copies. It's amazing how many people have been singing for decades and still don't seem to realise that sight reading in a group doesn't really work if no-one watches the conductor... apart from anything else, the people who don't know it will pick it up much quicker if everyone sings on the beat, because that way all the harmony is clearer.

The Hallé Youth Choir were with us tonight - they're singing some stuff with us and some stuff on their own. They didn't sound quite as good tonight as they usually do, but they do usually sound fabulous on the night, so let's hope that happens again. They did seem to have a particular problem staying in tune - I've noticed this before with the youth choir, but it was worse tonight. (I was alarmed to notice, btw, that a recent search that led someone to this blog was "altos singing flat"! The cheek!)

Jamie was on good form in the warmup, as ever - he had us singing Jingle Bells, very fast, to "zzz", which was quite amusing, but not as much so as Ding Dong Merrily On High to tractor noises...

I told the new altos about tinsel and glitter. Emma asked if tiaras might be appropriate - I told her that in the encores anything goes, so I look forward to seeing what she produces :p

Oh, a couple of notes from the music: I live in hope that this will be the year that the altos sing A Merry Christmas correctly. The first note of bar 47 is a D, not an E flat as everyone always sings. I have never witnessed a performance of this - by ANY choir - in which this is correct. (I mentioned it to one of our previous chorus masters, and his response was "oh, no-one will ever notice that!" - which, while probably true, was hardly conducive to raising standards!)

And students of harmony, please examine bar 25 of A spotless rose. If you wrote that in a harmony exercise, you would get zero marks. HOW many consecutive fifths and octaves are in that bar? Quite a lot! Just goes to show that the rules of harmony can be broken by a composer who knows his stuff :-)

I'll finish with the best news I heard all night - the altos have been given permission to sing the descant of O Come All Ye Faithful on the Sunday and Friday night concerts! I am delighted - it's by far the best descant of all of them, and for some reason it doesn't feel like I'm singing high when I'm blasting out a descant. People sitting in front of me, be warned :-)

We are the dreamers of dreams...

Quick post. The ever-vigilant Graham E sends this excerpt of a bit of Radio 3's CD review, in which they discuss our Music Makers CD as one of their picks of the year. (The excerpt is a WMA file and is 7.7 MB... if you can't open it, let me know and I'll ask Graham to send the mp3 (which is even bigger, hence him choosing WMA instead.)) (Or if you want to listen online, go to Radio 3's Listen Again page, select "CD review", and fast forward to about 1h 10m.) (I believe it was Jackie that spotted it - thanks to both of you!)

If you can't be bothered to listen, here's a summary: They really like the recording and say it made them re-evaluate the music. However, apart from that, they say very little about the actual performance, and don't comment on the choir at all :-(

Other news: I had an email from Cath M, which I don't think she'll mind me quoting. (Many of you will be aware that her husband Graham - see, I told you all the men in the choir are called Graham! - has been in hospital. Lots of people have asked how he is, so now I know the answer I thought it would be easiest just to post it here.) "Graham is doing well. He's very perky (as usual) but has got a v. sore bum so sitting is still very difficult. He's going for his post op appointment tomorrow where we will also find out the biopsy results. We already know he will probably need more chemo. It's a case of fingers crossed! We hope to return to the choir in January if he is able to sit for a good while but Maggie's exercises will be out!! Hope the carol concerts go well. (Graham took a recording of the Bells into hospital on his MP3 player!!)"

Fall on your knees - oh, hear the angel voices

A few random things I keep meaning to mention. But first, Graham E points out this review, which isn't actually a review of Messiah but does mention it.

Some other links:

Posters advertising our Shostakovich festival have appeared on bus stops all across the city. So you might want to bookmark the official website.

This site might be useful to those of you who are bored with the generic Nokia ringtone.

This site analyses the appeal - or lack of - of a whole load of Christmas songs. Some of you may find it amusing. I did :-) (Warning: there is a small amount of bad language; avoid if this offends you.)

The title of this post is from one of my favourite Christmas songs. I will give you a moment to try to remember which one! But while you do, I feel the need to share the fact that my two favourite verses of any Christmas carol are the following:

Verse 3 of "It came upon a midnight clear":

But with the woes of sin and strife the world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel strain have rolled two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not the love song which they bring;
O hush the noise, ye men of strife and hear the angels sing.

and verse 4 (usually omitted, and not even printed in Carols for Choirs) of "O little town of Bethlehem":

Where children pure and happy pray to the blessed child,
where misery cries out to thee, son of the mother mild;
where charity stands watching and faith holds wide the door,
The dark night wakes, the glory breaks, and Christmas comes once more.

And talking of nice Christmas music, I have put a few mp3s online for you to listen to. These are all songs that you either won't have heard at all, or will have totally forgotten about. But I really like them. (Note: there are many other Christmas songs I like just as much, but you hear those all over the place!)

Cold Cold Christmas (Dana) (3.8 MB) (A bit twee, some would say, but I've always liked this song.)

O Holy Night (N Sync version, featuring Justin Timberlake) (4.1 MB) (These guys are REALLY good close harmony singers - I first realised this when I saw them perform the American national anthem live. It was extremely impressive.) (This is the song that the title of the post is taken from, btw!)

Pirate Christmas Carol (2.5 MB) (I can't remember where I found this - it was doing the rounds of the internet a couple of years ago. I don't think I ever knew who sang it.)

Santa Claus is coming to town (Bruce Springsteen version) (6.2 MB) (This is a live recording. It's not the best one I've heard - I've been looking for that for years... it's one where he asks all his band, in the intro, whether they've been good or not - that amused me! But even without that intro, I love this - the change from 4/4 to 12/8 is irresistible, and there's a great sax solo, and one of the band keeps going "ho ho ho!" in the background!)

The Winter Song (Angel) (4.3 MB) (I remember this song being played all the time on the radio one year - possibly 1978 - but it was never a hit. I really love the "hear the angels join the choir" bit. Yes, this DOES appear to be becoming a bit of a theme, doesn't it?)

Wonderful Christmas Time (Tom McRae version) (5.7 MB) (This is great for those of you who, like me, might not always be at their happiest at Christmas. I love the musical aspects of Christmas - can you tell?! - but the rest of it... well, not so much.)

And finally: here is an mp3 of Leroy Anderson's Sleigh Ride (3.6 MB), for those choir members who want to practise the clapping! (Yes, I'm so incredibly sad and obsessive that I did in fact practise this one year. What? I like to get things right!) The first clap is at 1:12 into the track... there are 7 altogether. The others will be left as an exercise for the reader :p

"Tenors, do you do butch?"

Jamie was stuck in Holland tonight (long story) so we had Fanny. Nice to see her again - it's been a while - and it meant I could finally complete my photo sheets for the noticeboard :-)

We discovered the programme for the carol concerts. The first of these huge, probably-sold-out-months-ago concerts (of which there are 4) is a week on Saturday, and tonight was the first rehearsal. This being the case, it's probably a wise decision on Jamie's part to have chosen mainly stuff we've sung before, and none of it amazingly difficult notewise (although of course singing apparently simple stuff really well is a skill in itself). I knew this, yet I must admit I was still a little disappointed when I saw the list. However, it does have Sleigh Ride, which is the most important one! Which reminds me - I need to speak to the new altos about tinsel and glitter (and clapping in Sleigh Ride). Must remember to do that next week.

We spent a large part of the rehearsal on a couple of movements of Bach's Christmas Oratorio, which were not the most exciting thing ever, but I'm sure they'll grow on me, because, well, Bach! There was also a brief foray into the Sussex Carol (which we've done lots of times but is still fun) and A Spotless Rose (which will be very lovely). (I'm pretty sure Graham Worth did the bass solo last time we did this, and it was fabulous - mind you, I could listen to Graham sing all day! But the youth choir boys are doing that part this year, which will be interesting.)

Talking of men sounding fabulous, I must say that my favourite moment of the night was the bit in Stille Nacht when the men went into 4 part harmony, just after the start. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm. A glorious sound, it was! Made up for our disappointment of a few minutes earlier... It's Jamie's own arrangement of Stille Nacht, and it's scored for ATB only - no sopranos. We were thrilled to notice this. "What a good idea!" we thought. "The sopranos get the tune in every single piece we do at Christmas - well, in fact EVER - so it's about time there was a piece where they didn't sing! And this makes so much sense - if we had all the sops on the A1 line and all the altos on the A2 line, the thing would never balance, with the men divided throughout, so that can't be the plan... How lovely it'll be to sing something with just lower voices!"

So you can guess what the plan turned out to be :p Oh well.

Anyway, I should probably explain the title of this post. It related to something in the Bach chorale. Fanny asked the altos to sing it in a more butch manner. So we did.

Fanny: That, I like. Tenors, do you do butch?
Choir, after hearing them sing their phrase: No!
Fanny: That was quite butch. It was a bit too butch, actually.

Is this the time to mention that it seems (as a result of a search today that led someone here) that this blog is the number one search result for "choir porn star"... but only if you search on MSN? (There's a reason Google's the most popular search engine, you know!) As ever, I'd really love to know what the person was ACTUALLY looking for!

Have a seat. Rest your feet.

Well, I was planning to go straight to sleep when I got home tonight, and write this tomorrow, but it's all whizzing round in my head, so I thought I'd better write it down so I can get to sleep!

The title of this post is not a quote, although I wish it was. Wanting to sit down - and being unable to - was a bit of a theme of the evening. On two separate occasions during the first half of the concert, the men on the front row (who lead our sitting and standing) didn't sit when they should have, resulting in us having to stand up for considerable amounts of time. Grrr. I must admit, I've always hated the sitting/standing system in this choir. Every other choir I've been in, if the conductor wants us to sit at a particular bar number, it's everyone's responsibility to do just that, so we all sit together. But in the Hallé, the tradition is that one person (in the middle of the front row) is responsible for the stands and sits, and everyone else follows him (it's usually a him). The reason I detest this system (quite apart from it causing situations like tonight's, if he makes a mistake) is that I think it looks awful - a kind of double Mexican wave ensues. It's a pretty fast wave, sure, but it's by no means all the choir standing up simultaneously. I'll be very amazed if this system is ever changed, though (and yes, I will be attempting to see that it is, although I'm not holding out much hope).

Anyway, opinions of tonight's Messiah gig seem to vary greatly. My mum loved it, and she was in the audience, so that's the main thing. And quite a few choir members seemed to think it all went pretty well. My opinion? The second half was great. The first half was adequate (in that there were no wrong notes or anything like that) but it was by no means great. And this is very frustrating, because it was great in rehearsal. I felt really sorry for Paul Daniel, because he was so clear about what he wanted (whether or not we agreed with him), and he was delighted when we did everything he asked in rehearsal, but he must have been disappointed that it didn't appear in the concert (at least in the first half). To be fair, Paul did grin all the way through, and appeared to be really pleased, but I do wonder how much of that was just showmanship. Personally I was in a foul mood when I came offstage for the interval, and I hear Jamie was too. Can't say I blame him. All that hard work, wasted!

My theory as to why I, personally, didn't sing very well in the first half (I have no idea what other people might chalk their own performances up to): I couldn't concentrate properly on the music because of things winding me up. And after a while this became a bit of a vicious circle, because I was annoyed with myself for getting so annoyed over such minor things. Argh - I hate my mind! What was winding me up, you ask? Let's see... Sore feet due to not sitting down when we should have (see above). Anticipation of whether or not the men would sit down at the next possible place, so that the rest of us could. Annoyance with myself for not singing as well as I know I can. Annoyance with others for totally ignoring markings that we'd rehearsed at length. Full bladder caused by having no time to go to the toilet before the concert, due to the assembly time being shifted 15 minutes earlier (I am sure the powers that be don't realise what a difference to a tightly-planned day 15 minutes can make, if we are only given a few hours' notice of the change). Annoyance that we stood around in the wings for over 10 minutes waiting to go on, after having been sent down in such a hurry that I barely had time to get changed, let alone go to the toilet. Residual annoyance towards certain people who I was annoyed with this morning because they kept talking during the rehearsal. ... I'm sure I could come up with more, but those are the main ones!

All went swimmingly in the second half, though, so at least I left the hall in a much better mood. I was almost convinced by the pp start to Hallelujah, but unfortunately he made things worse by inviting the audience to stand. I can see why he did, but my favourite thing in the whole piece is the way the audience stand up at that point! It's not the same if they're directed! Sorry, Paul, I loved everything else you did (I didn't even mind the grunting, although that distracted a few people!), but I like my Hallelujah traditional.

A few other things, not all from the actual concert:

I noticed that the figured bass (and probably therefore the tasto solo stuff) is not printed in the newest editions of the score. So that post will have been totally confusing to lots of people!

The soloists were all pretty good (we liked the bass best, I think, particularly in Why do the nations when Paul had to put in "a bit of a pause for a Pavarotti moment"), although I'm not a fan of counter-tenors, personally. It's the principle of the thing I object to - there are so few alto solos as it is, it seems particularly unfair to give them to a man! There was a bit of confusion over this particular counter-tenor, too - we thought it was due to be Michael Chance, but the guy who turned up looked really, really young, and we didn't think Michael Chance was that young. So I googled him and found that he's 50. This was baffling, until Alison pointed out that the counter-tenor we got was not in fact Michael Chance!

A couple of quotes. Firstly, from Jamie, during the warmup:

"and your attitude... which is one of fun... and sheep..."

"Please don't squeak. We have a no squeaking policy in this choir."

And from Paul:

"Surprise the rest of the choir with your crescendos. You should be thinking 'bloody hell, what was that from the sopranos?' "
[Rest of choir: "We always think that!"]

"Don't sing Hallelujah like it's frothy cream. Sing it like it's... a rapier... wait, you can't eat a rapier... Chilli! As if you've just eaten a chilli!"

"You know, I only found out last night that in The Lord Gave the Word, the original had no preachers. It was the women who were doing all the chattering."

(The chattering was really annoying me this morning. It's bad enough during a normal rehearsal, but to do it during the conductor's orchestral rehearsal seems incredibly unprofessional to me. Unfortunately there are a few people - mainly altos, sadly - who seem oblivious to the fact that most people want to hear what the conductor says (even if it's not directed at them specifically). I often glance round to see if I'm getting unjustly annoyed with these people, but no - they are the only ones talking.)

Finally... a few more recent amusing searches! I was pleased that someone found us by searching for "gerontius hard g or soft". And I was extremely amused to discover that, due to this post, this blog is now the number one Google search result for "discordant noise"! But the most baffling one was the person who got here by searching for "I'll put you over my knee"... turned out to be because of Maggie that they found us :p

Some very sad news.

From Barbara:

"Very sad to inform you that Ian Benton died very suddenly last night - apparently he had a twisted bowel. Because the death was so sudden there has to be an inquest so no arrangements can be made yet. He [former Halle bass] and Megan [former Halle soprano] had two little boys."

I remember Ian very fondly - he joined the choir roughly when I did, and we often used to talk (particularly about football - he was a Man City fan). My deepest sympathies to his family and friends.

(I have just looked through all my photos to see if I have one that he's on, and I don't. If anyone does, could they please send it to me? Thanks.)

Tasto solo

Above: During the break at tonight's rehearsal. Paul Daniel is standing, talking to the oboe player.

(SKIP THE NEXT PARAGRAPH IF YOU ARE NOT IN THE MOOD TO BE EDUCATED!)

This phrase appears lots of times in the accompaniment to Messiah, and I wondered for years what it meant. Last year I finally got round to looking it up: Tasto solo (in the accompaniment) means bass alone, with no chords (e.g. at the start of He Trusted In God on page 115). It's not immediately obvious why the composer needs to write it, because every time you see it, it appears that only the bass part is playing anyway. However, you may not all be aware that in baroque music, the keyboard players would be expected to add harmonies to the written bass part, following shorthand provided by the composer. This is called "figured bass", and you can see examples of this shorthand throughout Messiah (well, you can in my edition, anyway - I presume you can in most of them) - for example, in the first line of the first aria, Comfort Ye. There are figures 6, 4, 3 and 6 under the bass part. The keyboard player wouldn't just play on those notes, though, he'd play on all of them. If there are no figures, it implies a root position chord; 6 means first inversion, etc. This method allowed the composer to specifiy exactly what harmony he wanted, with very little effort. So "tasto solo" means the keyboard player would play no chords at all - just the bass line - rather than assuming that no figures means root position chords.

I include the above because I figured (figured! hee! d'you see what I did there? :p ) that if I'd been curious about that, maybe someone else is too :-)

Oh, and I must just tell you a joke I heard today, which I like a lot!

A drummer goes into a library. "Have you got any drumsticks?" he asks the librarian. "This is a LIBRARY!" says the librarian. "Oh, I'm sorry," says the drummer. "Have you got any drumsticks?" he whispers.

*giggle*

Anyway, tonight was the orchestral rehearsal for Messiah. Went pretty well - Paul Daniel seemed very pleased (at least, he smiled a LOT and kept saying how fabulous we sounded. We decided we will be happy to have him back sometime :p ) We were a bit concerned at first, though, because when we arrived he was lying on his back on the floor, with one leg elevated. We never did find out why! Another surprise was the arrangement of the orchestra. The VIOLAS are at the front! Never seen that before. (The traditional arrangement for an orchestra has 1st violins on the conductor's left, with 2nd violins behind them; cellos on his right, with double basses behind them; and violas in the middle, right in front of the conductor. Mark Elder prefers to have the 2nd violins on his right and the cellos where the 2nds normally are, with the double basses separated from all the other strings, at the back of the platform behind the brass.) Tonight the 1st and 2nd violins were in their traditional places on the conductor's left, and (as is usual with baroque music) the harpsichord and chamber organ were in the centre of the platform, with the oboes, trumpets, bassoon and timps at the back. But the cellos, rather than being at the front of the platform, were clustered near the keyboard instruments with the double basses nearby, and the violas were at the front, to the conductor's right. Hands up who else noticed this! Right, you can have ten brownie points.

Another odd thing was that the orchestral parts were all headed The Messiah (not Messiah). I strongly suspect they deliberately chose that edition just to wind me up :p

As for the rehearsal itself, I was delighted to find that I can actually do all the runs without running out of breath. Never managed that before. I think it's because I never actually understood how to do them before this year! (i.e. with no h anywhere) Gone are the days of the "comedy ff" such as the one at the top of page 63 on "a son is given". (You know what I mean - there are loads of bars like that, that come at the end of a long run. All too often the choir runs out of steam during the run, so that by the end only half of them are singing... then in the next bar, after everyone's breathed, it's suddenly deafeningly loud. Comedy ff. Amused me every time!)

(Actually I was doing pretty well even before we got to the runs - I was impressing the people next to me by reading the mind of the conductor. For example, guessing which movement he was going to do next (that's actually pretty easy to do, if you know which movements the trumpets play in) and guessing which bar he was talking about, when we had different bar numbers to the orchestra... Good grief, I'm such a showoff, aren't I? I must stop that!)

One thing I do like about Paul Daniel's interpretation is that it's generally quite a bit faster than usual. Adds to the excitement - and also means we get more sleep on Sunday night! Messiah is a long gig - the latest time I remember leaving the stage (after a 7.30 start) was 10.20 pm. (That was in 2003, when we did it, unusually, with no cuts.) But the usual finish time is about 10.10. Anyone want to bet on 10pm for this year?

Not many amusing quotes tonight, I'm afraid. There was one Jamieism, when he was giving notes from last night: "Pretend it was written by Shostakovich, that bar. Middle period Shostakovich. Be really nasty." (that was to the sops in He Trusted In God.) I must admit I very much enjoyed singing that movement tonight, actually, because I saw that I'd written "Lucius Malfoy impression" and decided to try singing it like him. I think it worked pretty well! Imagine his voice when he says "Enjoy yourself, won't you? While you can." (That's a quote from the new film.) I also enjoyed it because it's a fugue, and I always find it exciting waiting to come in with the alto entry. It's kind of like running a relay (not that I've done that for about 30 years, but you know what I mean!) Generally the basses start, then the tenors, and by the time it's our turn I'm usually quite excited. (No, it doesn't take much!)

I'm not entirely sure why I'm writing an essay-length post for the second night running, when what I really need to do is try to sleep. (For that matter, I'm not entirely sure why I found it so difficult to summon the motivation to write actual essays when I was supposed to, when I have no trouble producing that amount of writing about trivial stuff! Oh well.) But I've started so I'll finish, as they say.

Yet another thing about He Trusted In God... there was a great soprano solo in it tonight :p Well, actually it sounded like more than one soprano, plus possibly one or two tenors and basses... all people who weren't watching at the end, and sang straight on instead of observing the general pause! Needless to say there were no altos who fell into this trap :-)

Paul Daniel almost called us mezzos tonight, until we growled at him. He then pointed out that "mezzo" and "alto" are both male words in Italian (they end in "o"). So we pointed out that "soprano" is too :-) (This seemed much funnier at the time!)

I was amused to see, on page 86 at the start of His Yoke Is Bloomin' Difficult, a drawing of a man apparently hanging himself. I was even more amused to glance around me and see that everyone else had a similar drawing. This is from last night, when Paul insisted we draw a picture of ourselves with string holding the tops of our heads high. Sadly we are all terrible artists and found it impossible to draw this without making it look like a hanged man!

I was delighted to find that I can still remember all the last few choruses from memory - yes, even Amen! And while singing the last page of the Amen Chorus it occurred to me that I mentioned dominant pedals yesterday, yet didn't point out that there's a great example of one on that page. Strictly it starts in bar 147 when the basses reach the A and hold it for several bars, although you could claim that it actually starts the bar before, with the long alto A. Both have the same effect, though - a dominant pedal is a kind of aural clue that we're reaching the end of the movement (once you know what they sound like you'll be amazed how many pieces have one). Listen to that long A and you'll see what I mean, I think. I have a thing about dominant pedals - I like them a lot. (Also Neapolitan 6ths and chord iii, but I'll explain those another time!)

In (almost) totally unrelated news, this is an interesting news story about how singing affects the brain. I've had that link for over a week and kept forgetting to post it!

Finally, I was interested to see that a few people found this blog today by searching for "hogwarts march brass band score", which is of course the music I planned to write out on Saturday (but didn't actually do till Monday night, due to getting distracted by World of Warcraft...) If you've seen the film and are wondering which bit of music I mean, it's what the brass band plays at the start and end of the 3rd task, and it looks like this (that's the first page of an 11-page score that took me several hours to produce!)

Now, His Yoke... *choir mutters* ... is EASY!

Piano rehearsal for Messiah tonight. (Explanation of what a piano rehearsal is is in this post for those who don't know.) Anyway, we met Paul Daniel (who I'm quite impressed to find has a Wikipedia entry). I'm still not totally convinced by his dynamic alterations (especially the last one, which we only found out about tonight: starting the Hallelujah Chorus quietly! My favourite thing in the whole piece, ruined! That's even worse than the year the conductor decided to ask the basses to start He Trusted In God quietly. Oh, the muttering that ensued!) but I'm not quite as totally against them as I was. This is partly because he knew exactly what he wanted, and explained why he wanrted these things, and was extremely clear throughout... and partly because he seems like a really great guy. I liked him a lot. (The title of this post is from him - more Paul Daniel quotes in a minute!)

I'd had a really bad day at work which culminated in me totally losing my temper for the first time in years, and screaming - literally, and at length - at a hall full of kids. I don't recommend it. By the time I got to choir my voice was still raw and I couldn't speak above a whisper without coughing, so I wasn't expecting to sing very much, if at all. But Jamie's warmup somehow managed to cure it. Still couldn't sing as loudly as I usually can, but I could sing without coughing. Clever, that!

Not much scope for Jamieisms, as he only did the warmup, but we did get "Can you do a polar bear coming out for a swim in the morning?" (which was a face-stretching exercise), and also at one point when he was being a bit of a human beatbox, I was reminded of that amazing guy Shlomo, who was on Later with Jools a couple of weeks ago. Did you see him? I was very impressed. No idea how he does what he does.

Anyway, Paul Daniel stuff. My favourite:

PD: Are you called mezzos or altos?
Altos: [in unintentionally butch yet horrified voices] Altos!
PD: Not contraltos?
Altos: [even more horrified] No!

(I must say he went up even more in my estimation for asking. I don't think I can recall any other conductor ever asking, and non-altos may not realise how much most of us hate being called those other words... I can even forgive him for calling it The Messiah!)

A similar one which may not amuse non-altos as much as it did us:

PD: You copy them, don't you? [referring to a soprano phrase that we echo]
Altos: Yes.
PD: Can you do it better?
Altos: [amused that this is even being questioned] Yes!

A bit of a visual one, but still:

"Everyone's eyebrows go up in semiquavers, don't they? Mine do. *demonstrates* It's a Handelian reflex."

Oh, and I personally very much enjoyed his Lucius Malfoy impression in "He trusted in God" (when he was demonstrating the utter withering scorn required). And then there was the "HEH-HEH heh" exercise (practising accenting semiquavers) which made him grin hugely for several minutes :-)

And the last one: "Men use their 6-packs!" This was his suggestion for articulating semiquavers. I mention it not because the phrase itself is particularly amusing but because of the hurt looks many of the basses gave us when we laughed at the very thought :p

Looking through my score, I noticed a couple of old scribblings that I can't resist including. (Well, as Sylvia pointed out, there are so many scribblings on my Messiah score that it's hard to work out which ones to follow. For example, there's a bar I've dubbed "The Bar Of Many Dynamics", on page 71. It has, crossed out: p, pp, mf, p, f, ff, mf. This year's marking is p, so there's another p with a ring round it. Many, many bars of my Messiah score are like that, and that's not including the ones that have extra non-dynamic instructions!) But the two I treasure are these:

From Nicholas Cleobury, who conducted it one year: "Aren't the altos intelligent?"

From Jamie, the first year he rehearsed it with us, on page 13 at the words "And all...": "You know, the bloke what wrote it!"

Think about it :-)

*giggle*

And finally, I've not mentioned searches for a while, but there have been some good ones lately. I'm quite impressed that someone found this blog by searching for "jocelyn sings" (and I'd love to know who it was!) I also like that someone searched for "a Dominant pedal is a" (presumably looking for a definition) and this blog was the only result... However, I think my favourite is the person who searched for "jack sparrow byronic" and discovered that all three of those words appeared on a choir blog :-)

Busy busy busy.

I've just updated the online choir schedule to match the new one Naomi handed out the other day. We now know our commitments up to June 2007! Any choir members who don't have the link (which we deliberately don't post online), email me.

Already done today:

- Bought all my Christmas cards, and 7 2006 calendars. (If you're wondering why I need 7 - and no, none of them are for other people - it's a long story I won't bore you with!)

Still to do today:

- Write out the music for the Hogwarts March (from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) for brass band - that's a favour for a colleague.
- Write out chords for choral version of Jingle Bells so my guitarist can play it to accompany us at my band's Christmas gig for the kids at my school.
- Work out a good set list order for gig (my favourite ever set list was the year we segued from Away in a Manger (a cappella) to Song 2 by Blur, with full band) (that's the one that goes "WOO HOO!" a lot) (They're in the same key. Hence the segue :p )
- Give my friend Owain a guided tour of some of the tougher areas of Azeroth.
- Update school website.
- Work out stage positions for each scene of the school Christmas show.
- Catch up with online faffing :-)

I just like to look at sheep.

What, you don't think I'd witness Jamie saying that and not use it as the title, do you? :p

(I should probably point out that he claimed he actually said "I'd just like to look at the Sheep" (i.e. All We Like Sheep). But we heard what we heard!)

Two rehearsals in two days (and I have another one tomorrow, with my pop group). I had a great time on Monday night, too, playing piano duets with Dr Liz, but because I had loads of work that also had to be done that night, it meant an extremely late bedtime, with the result that by the time I got back from last night's sectional I was so tired I went straight to sleep. Which is pretty rare for me - I'm very much a night owl!

All of that means that this post covers two rehearsals. Last night was the sop/alt sectional - not a huge attendance, but we got a lot done. Most of the Jamieisms listed below are from last night. Tonight was a MUCH bigger attendance, because it was our first ever open rehearsal, and there was a pretty full room. Maybe not quite double our usual number, but there were lots there.

All of tonight's rehearsal, and most of last night's, was on Messiah. And I must admit that I'm finding it slightly frustrating. We're having Paul Daniel conducting it this year. That in itself is pretty exciting, because he's quite famous (conducted the Last Night of the Proms a couple of months ago). And he is obviously keen to make this performance individual, which I applaud. But one of the main ways in which he's doing this is by making lots of bits quiet (often with big crescendos shortly afterwards, but still). And I remain unconvinced that this is an improvement. Maybe I will change my mind on the day, but so far it's just frustrating. I mean, one of the few bits of the Amen Chorus I actually really like is just not the same when it's quiet!

Talking of the Amen Chorus, that's my other frustration. We learned that (and Hallelujah, and Since By Man Came Death) from memory last year, and although it was a lot of hard work at the busiest part of the year, it was an AMAZING feeling to put the copies down and leave them there. It's somewhat frustrating to have done all that work and not put it to permanent use - yes, I want to do that bit (and possibly more) from memory EVERY year now! But it doesn't look as if we will. At least, no-one's mentioned it yet, and that would be shorter notice even than we had last time...

Other news, unrelated to Messiah: We learned tonight that Naomi, our fabulous choral administrator, has been promoted (well done to her) and Cathy (the current choir secretary) will take on her job (on a professional basis) for the next 3 months, after which a permanent appointment will be made. Difficult shoes to fill! It'll be very weird not having Naomi there all the time.

Anyway, the Jamieisms! They started in the warmup yesterday, when he told us that he'd been talking to a rock climber who mentioned that he does an exercise in which he shakes his hands downwards vigorously, in order to make them grip rocks more easily (apparently). Jamie, when demonstrating this, turned it into what he described as a "funky dance", and suggested that it could be the dance of the "Hallé chicks". Oddly enough there were no immediate takers...

There was also the bit where he was talking about how hard singing is, and suggested "Prepare in your cars!" This was a bit visual, but imagine him gripping an imaginary steering wheel and tensing up every part of his body. ... Maybe you had to be there!

Then there was "If I was your harshest critic...", which was followed by wry giggles, and (my personal favourite) the bit when the sops sang something exactly how he'd asked them to, and he laughed delightedly to himself, and we all laughed delightedly at his laughter (you know when someone sounds so happy you just have to join in?), and he said, sounding honestly bewildered, "I don't know what you're laughing at!" and, when various people tried to tell him, "What, me?"

Well, it made me smile :-)

Some other stuff I scribbled down:

(after spending a few minutes practising the runs to "scooby dooby doobie" etc.) "Make up the words. ... We've had 3 *months* of making up the words! \o/"

"Dots are the enemy."

"Imagine you've got a wasp stuck in your trousers."

(after demonstrating, with hand gestures, how to sing the word "tidings") "The dings are the tablecloth that you pull away and leave all the crockery."

"Don't go all beige - white with a hint of apple - on me. It's bright blue! But a soft blue!"

"Oh yeah. Messiah. Whatever." (a la Vicky Pollard)

(after making an ffffff noise (I mean the f sound, not a very loud noise!) "I've never seen Silence of the Lambs, but is that the noise he makes?"

"Tenors, don't sing 'stripes' in that mock Cockney accent I know you love."

"No camp crescendo in that bar. ... Tenors!"

Oh, and a final thought from last night - Jamie was amused at the idea of the choir producing a DVD - with a commentary! I can just picture it. Not sure how many non-choir people would understand a word of it, though :p

From Wester Ross to Nova Scotia

Well, the Proclaimers were great. Anyone who knows their music but hasn't seen them live, do try to get a ticket next time they come; anyone who doesn't know their music should buy their greatest hits CD immediately. (At which point you'll realise you actually DO know quite a few of their songs really well!)

Anyway, I missed choir due to seeing them, and felt slightly twitchy about this all night. But I have been very helpfully kept informed of Jamieisms etc. by three separate people - Liz L (as promised), Dr Liz, and Alison, who also scribbled down all the markings for me. Silly me, thinking there wouldn't be many changes! Anyway, because I'm in a hurry I'm just going to copy and paste what they wrote (with slight edits) - don't think they'll mind.... Thank you, ladies, for doing this!

Alison:

Quote of the evening was "Sing laaaaaht (light) - otherwise you end up like Wallace smelling some Stinking Bishop!"

Dr Liz:

Was on the look out for quotes. Didn't get many.

Started with "Behold the Lamb of God", worked through to "Let us break
thier bonds".

Interval is going to be after "Let all the Angels of God". Ooh! that's
new and a nice D major end.

Cutting the King of Chlorine. (i.e. "Lift up your heads")

Directed to the altos (can't remember why, you're obviously far
quicker that I am) "and you end up looking like Wallace smelling
stinking bishop". (jamieism, obviously!)

At one point he told the tenors to have more gay abandon, which they
then produced!


Liz L:

It seems that whilst everyone knows Messiah backwards, singing it forwards all together is slightly more tricky!!!!!

Anyway, a couple of good Jamie-isms tonight:

"There were people visibly moved.... jumped out of their seats" (reviewing the 2nd Movement of The Bells)

"It's like the feeling you get just before you go skinny-dipping" (encouraging the sopranos to 'go for it')

"You need to fit with the altos.... ... ... for once!" (to sops on bottom of page 92)

Encouraging the altos to make that "lovely alto fizz" accompanied by little fizzy handmovements (well it made me smile!)

{You need to be] "like ever-ready batteries rather than duracell... or whichever one has the rabbit" (encouraging us all not to give up & sing to the end of the phrase)

"It's like Wallace smelling some 'stinking bishop'" (which apparently makes more sense if you've seen the Wallace & Gromit film)

"It sounds a bit like someone clambering up a rock-face........ twice!"

The last (and personally my 2nd favourite of the evening) :
"at least I do it loudly in front of you all" (after making a mistake)

My favourite wasn't necessarily a Jamie-ism, but it was funny!

A few of us were stood outside the rehearsal room in the break and Jamie invited us to join the rehearsal again by saying (accompanied by 'Gangsta rap' hand movements and a thick Mancunian accent)

"come on... let's sing some tunes... some tunes from da Messiah"

(maybe you just had to be there!!!!!!!!!!!)

......................................................................................................

Well, I haven't seen the Wallace and Gromit film either, so could someone please explain to me what on earth that quote is all about?!?

"Lift up your heads" seems on odd one to miss out. I'll be interested to hear the reasons why. I'm not too distraught over it, though. Not like the year we did Messiah with Nicholas McGegan (I'm pretty sure it was him, anyway) and he cut the CHOIR for large parts. (i.e. we only joined in for a few bars in "For unto us" etc.; the soloists sang the rest.) I did an OU course a few years after that, that explained why he probably wanted to do it that way. But at the time, no-one explained the reasons to the choir, and in fact they didn't even TELL us until we met the conductor at the piano rehearsal, a few days before the concert. I'm sure I wasn't the only person who spent the whole concert feeling grumpy and betrayed.

Oh, and a pet peeve I feel the need to share, because this annoys me almost as much as people saying "Gerontius" with a J at the start. The name of the piece is Messiah. Not The Messiah. (Look at your copy if you don't believe me!) I mention this just in case there were people who didn't know - I live to educate :p

Anyway, two final things. Firstly, I took 16 kids to see the new Harry Potter film yesterday, and it's GREAT. Definitely the best of the four so far. And also, I have a new favourite word: kadigan. Read and be enlightened :-)

The Times: "This was a concert with bells on."

Not seen any other reviews of Saturday yet (and I have looked) but the Times liked it!

EDIT: Graham E sends a link to the M.E.N. review.

EDIT 2: The Independent didn't seem to like it. And they said we lacked Russian timbre! The cheek!

"Well, we'd go anywhere to sing with Mark."

That's what one of the LPC told my tenor friend Graham W, when asked why so many of them had made the effort to come up to Manchester to sing The Bells with us. Nice, eh? I'm glad they did, though, because it was great to have so many singers. And they were really good, too. Particularly a bass sitting behind me whose Russian was so perfect that I thought he must be Russian.

Talking of Russian basses, someone who we're all agreed is headed for superstardom is tonight's bass soloist, whose name I now know. It's Mikhail Petrenko. (The soprano was Tatiana Pavlovskaya - how great a name is that?!? She was fabulous too, as was John Daszak the tenor, but Mikhail had a lot more to do in the concert so we noticed him more.) When Mikhail walked - well, strode would be more accurate - onto the stage for his first item (Shostakovich's Ten Songs of the Fool from King Lear, which amused everyone by basically being a set of variations on "Jingle Bells" with dramatic arm gestures and despotic laughter), I realised that that's how all male soloists should walk onto the stage. Wow. Of course, the open-necked white shirt (no jacket) (with the collar up) helped the image. Kind of Byronic. Ish. (Oh, and btw, googling him reveals that he's 30 this year. Which surprises me, as I thought he was much younger, but I'm really bad at judging age!)

Needless to say, the crowd loved him :-)

The concert, since you ask, when pretty well. I wasn't too impressed with the Glinka or the Borodin - instantly forgettable for me, I'm afraid - but the Shostakovich songs were great fun, and then there was The Bells. Most of the bits that had often been wrong were right. There was one bit where it nearly fell apart due to people not watching, but as ever the 2nd altos stuck to their guns and dragged everyone back onto the beat. (At least, that was MY perception. Other sections may disagree :p ) There was a bit of bad feeling at the warmup, though, when it was announced that we would be warming up at 6.30 instead of 7.00 as the schedule says. I suspect, remembering the pattern from previous two-choirs gigs, that it was always intended that the warmup should be at 6.30 and Jamie assumed that's what the schedule said. But the fact is that the schedule didn't say that, and lots of people had made plans which were awkward to alter at such short notice.

A couple of interesting things in the programme (there's always something that they don't bother to tell us till we read it in the programme!) Firstly, and amusingly, apparently the 3rd movement is supposed to be "a terrifying depiction of a panic-stricken crowd". How appropriate :p And, also, "The choral writing in this movement is so difficult that in later life the composer introduced some simplifications." Uh huh.

Only two quotes to report, other than the LPC one. A bass (who I won't name, because we need all the basses we can get, so it would be a pity if one was murdered) said, just as I walked past him, "Sopranos aren't renowned for having brains. Oops! Don't quote me!"

And the other is the only Jamieism of the day, but it's a great one. This was during the warmup: "Can I ask you to imitate a small furry animal that's chewing something very tasty and doesn't want any of his family to know about it?"

Other news: The triangle player turns out not to be a work experience boy, he's actually 21 and will be playing with the Hallé for the next 5 weeks. I suspect I added to his pressure by mentioning to one of his percussionist colleagues how very impressed we all were with his concentration, and that we were watching his every move :p

And I was very amused by Alison having water stuck in her ear (we went swimming in the afternoon) and trying all sorts of contortions and head shaking to dislodge it. Dr Liz suggested that she should hop around with her head on one side, but that didn't work (I suggested she probably needed to do it for much longer, but she didn't fall for that!). Anyone got any brilliant remedies in case this happens to any of us in the future?

I'll leave you with some photos. The first one is the window of the Dutch Pancake House, who really should be ashamed of themselves. The tree was just pretty. [EDIT: Photos now removed, sorry.] I also took some other photos during the interval (half the singers were missing - it was much more crowded by the time we went on!), and they're up on the choir photos page (I had to remove a few of the Belshazzar ones to fit them on, but most of the Belshazzar ones are still there too, in case you didn't see them at the time.) BIt blurred, sorry, but I don't have a steady hand! I thought some people might like them anyway. And it was a bit of luck being able to take them from the balcony - I took the first one and realised I could only get a decent impression of the numbers was to go up there. Now, I do know the code for the door, because I've been up there for committee meetings. But I'd just decided that it would be wrong to abuse that just to go and take a picture, when Naomi called down that I should bring up some of the ladies who were queuing for the toilets, so that they could use the ones upstairs too and help speed things up. So I went up there and took a couple of photos while I was waiting for them. Pity I managed to get them so blurry!

And finally - "Bravo, darling!" That's for Liz L, who is convinced that Mark was probably saying that to people in the corridor after the gig. (He certainly didn't say that in my hearing, but he was thanking all the choir members who passed him and saying repeatedly how fabulous it was.) Liz has very kindly offered to write down any and all Jamieisms from Wednesday's rehearsal, for I will be unable to attend. I never miss a rehearsal if I can help it, but I'm off to see the Proclaimers, and that's the only night they're in town. I don't really mind missing one rehearsal on Messiah, because I'd imagine the markings will be very similar to last year's - but I'm distraught at missing Jamieisms! You must all write down all the ones you notice, just in case there are some that Liz can't hear :-)

More Russian basses, please!

No quotes tonight. And not much to say. It was the orchestral rehearsal for The Bells. Mark had promised us last night that he wouldn't need us for the full three and a quarter hours, and it was looking as if he might go back on his word, but he did let us out 15 minutes early in the end.

Things didn't go too badly overall. True, there were a lot of places where we weren't together at all, because of people not watching (at one point most of the people behind me, not realising Mark was slowing down, reached the end of a section THREE BARS ahead of those of us who didn't have our heads buried in our copies!) But the notes were all more or less right, and the words weren't bad either. And the thing sounds very lovely indeed with the orchestra, particularly in the last movement. Wish I had someone coming to the concert who actually knows me, but my friends always seem to have better things to do when I ask them :-(

We were quite taken with the triangle player, who we'd never seen before. He was the first member of the orchestra to be in his seat, and sat there practising intently while the rest of the players wandered onto the stage. Dr Liz was convinced he was there on a work experience placement, but I don't think he was that young! Could be wrong though....

Talking of the orchestra, there were 4 people I was at school with on the platform tonight, which I think is a record. John the horn bumper and Sharon the cellist have been members of the orchestra for a while, but I was delighted to see Richard back leading the 2nd violins as he did in Gerontius, as he was actually in the same class as me. The others were a couple of years younger, as was John the tenor soloist.

John Daszak is the only originally-booked soloist who actually turned up, and he sang as fabulously as ever. But the two replacements were just as good - a young soprano and bass, both from St Petersburg (didn't catch their names). Neither of them looked particularly Russian, but they sounded it - especially the bass! He didn't sing till the last movement, and we hadn't noticed him till then. But when we reached his solo, he ambled onto the stage, tall and skinny and very casual in jeans. And then he opened his mouth. Wow! I think several of us melted on the spot. He had the most amazing sound, and fantastic diction (I could understand every word) - and oh, so very Russian. I'm really looking forward to seeing what reception he gets on Saturday!