Ooh aw ah nah ng "zombie uh" ba ya

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anorak alert!

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

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

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

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

Train whistle blowin'

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

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

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

Laufet Brüder, eure Bahn!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Guess what! More mp3s :-)

Daphnis and Chloé choir bits:

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

This seemed more use than posting the whole thing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And you thought obsession was a bad thing!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Santuzza wasn't missed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

Are you the famous Hallé blogger?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What did everyone else think of the day?

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

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

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

Shoop shoop shoop shoop

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Best Choruses In The World ... Ever

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

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

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

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

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

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

Bimm bamm bimm bamm bimm bamm....

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

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

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

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

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

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

Quick PS

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

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

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

Es sungen drei Engel... und neun Hörner

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Independent review of the Fauré.

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

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

"He wants a devout sit!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mahler 3, 5th movement (4.8 MB)

Coconut (Harry Nilsson) (4.5 MB)

Manchester (The Beautiful South) (5.4 MB)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And yet.

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

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

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

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

Welcome the altos into the f-ray

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Letter H of Libera Me

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

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

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

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

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

...

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

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

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

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

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

Other general info about the instrumentation:

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

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

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

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

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

The flutes and clarinets only play in the Pie Jesu.

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

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Anyway, sleep!

I am the Resurrection

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

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

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

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

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

And did you know about Google Latin?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As he faced the sun he cast no shadow

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks, Liz :-)

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

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

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

"Dear Choir,

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

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

Thank you!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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