Hakuna matata

Oops, it seems to be over four months since I last posted here! Sorry about that! It feels a little as if my life started all over again in March, though, and it's taken a while to get used to things. It's all good, though - things are much better than they were before March!

Needless to say I have lots of links to share with you (and I'm hoping that after this batch I'll be able to update much more often, so there won't be so many - as it is, I've deleted over a hundred links that I saved but are now outdated!) but they can wait another few minutes. Let's have a quick state-of-the-nation bit first :-)

My house was due to be repossessed at the end of February, but I managed to sell it (albeit for a very low price) just before that; the sale didn't actually go through until almost a month later, but the mortgage lender agreed to put the repossession on hold because it was definitely happening. (This seems quite nice of them, but since they hadn't been nice at any other stage I'm pretty sure it was just because they knew they'd get more money out of me overall if I sold the house myself!) I'm now living in a rented 1-bedroom flat, not far from where I lived before, and I have now paid back everyone I owe, and currently have no debts. It's a very nice feeling! It's still weird not being in the house, though - I lived there for over fifteen years, which is longer than I've lived anywhere else in my life, including the house I grew up in.

I don't have a full-time job at the moment, but I do have quite a few things that I'm doing here and there, many of which I'm being paid for! So things are looking up, finally, and I'm very much enjoying the variety of things I'm doing, as well as the fact that I still have lots of free hours in the week. The main good thing that's happened is that Wardle High School (where, some of you will recall, I used to work - it was my first job - and I've done various other things there even when I was working at other schools) asked me to run their school choir from September. As it turned out, I actually started in June, because the guy who's leaving had to leave early. They're a great group of kids, and I've been having a great time working with them. And quite a few other things have also come up at Wardle recently (e.g. playing the piano for exams), and there's a good chance there'll be more.

I also currently have four private pupils: two singers (one of whom also wants to learn music theory properly), a pianist (who again wants to learn music theory as well), and a lady who wants to learn how to use the computer her sons bought her. This last one was indirectly as a result of the Silver Surfers classes I deliver at the local library (the 12th group starts this Monday), but they actually found me by Googling me (which is how they knew I did Silver Surfers!) and I'm still getting commissions (and passive sales) of musical arrangements via my website.

I did have a 'proper job' for a while, actually - in April and May I worked as a Census Collector, and had a great time! I was one of the people who went round knocking on doors to say "according to our records you haven't returned your census form, is there a reason for that?" It was incredibly exhausting - I've never had a job before that involves walking all day! - but very interesting. The vast majority of the people I met were lovely, and I discovered lots of unfamiliar bits of the area near me.

The other thing that's taking up a lot of my time at the moment, though, is unpaid: I've been doing lots of volunteer work for Manchester Pride; mainly faffing with spreadsheets, which I love! The festival is at the end of this month, so the volunteering will end then (until next year). Which reminds me: if you've never seen the Manchester Pride Parade, put it in your diary and come and watch - it's a real spectacle! It's on Saturday 27th August, starting at 1pm outside the Science Museum, then going along Deansgate and right through the city centre to the Gay Village.

It feels like ages since I've done any singing! Let's see... We did the Spring Symphony on 14th May, which I enjoyed much more than I'd expected to. And the reviews were good: the Guardian one didn't mention the choir at all, but a couple of commenters put that right. There was also the MEN and the Telegraph. Oh, and this isn't a review, but it's very interesting: a Guardian article about Sumer is icumen in, which is always a highlight of the Spring Symphony.

The following week saw us doing Mahler 8 in York Minster. I've only seen one review of this, but the occasion was definitely fun, even if it was very different from our last Mahler 8! And then we ended our season in June with a Choral Classics concert, for which again I've only seen one review. I'm still not convinced that Henry V is a choral classic, but it was good to sing it again anyway, along with everything else!

And then there were vocal assessments, which I presume everyone's done by now - I did mine right at the start to get it out of the way (and before I forgot the things I had memorised!) Since then, I've hardly sung at all, other than recording myself for YouTube birthday presents (my most recent one was Circle of Life, which I've had on the brain since, hence my title! As usual I did it in a huge hurry and didn't have time to redo the bits where the mic was overloaded, but never mind... the person I did it for liked it.)

Talking of YouTube, did you all see the finished version of the Virtual Choir 2 video? You may recall that I recorded my bit in January, but it took them till April to mix all the contributions together. Needless to say I couldn't see myself in the finished video, but my name is on the credits, so I'm happy!

I haven't been listening to all the Proms on the radio this year - not enough time - but I've seen all the TV ones. I was a bit baffled by the Glagolitic Mass, because it was only seven years ago that we performed it - and we knew it REALLY well at the time - but I didn't remember any of it. I didn't even recognise most of it, with the exception of a couple of phrases in the middle. This is odd, because it was much longer ago that I last did the Spring Symphony, and I didn't even enjoy that last time, yet I remembered almost all of it. So why did the Glagolitic Mass leave my brain so quickly! I liked that!

Last night I watched Alexander Nevsky - which we did in 2008 - and was relieved to find it all came straight back into my head. And I loved the CBSO performance - I'd forgotten what an exciting piece it is! I'd love to do that again. And as I'm writing this I'm watching the Human Planet prom. I like some bits better than others, but I'm particularly taken with the Mongolian band. Some amazing sounds.

I really enjoyed Prom 9, featuring our favourite orchestra, so I was delighted to see that the BBC Music Magazine was bowled over by it too. And I watched the "historically-informed performance" of Mahler 9 with interest. I knew nothing about HIP until I did an OU course that examined it thoroughly, and I'm fascinated by the arguments for and against it. On the whole I think I'm more against it than for it, but I do think it's a subject worthy of consideration. Classical Iconoclast seems similarly torn, but I was intrigued by the David Hurwitz article from Classics Today, which I discovered via the Classical Iconoclast post. But I have to say that when I watched the performance (having just read that article) it didn't seem that bad. Mind you, I don't know Mahler 9, so it may well be that I would have been more horrified if I remembered ever hearing it before!

Not a Prom, but really good anyway: you'll recall Whit Friday, the brass band contest that I go on about every year? (Next year it's on 1st June, if you want to mark it in your diary now!) Well, this year was as much fun as ever, but there was one really moving thing. Last year, a spectator was killed by one of the band coaches, so this year the Brighouse & Rastrick Band played a hymn as a tribute to him. Really lovely.

Here's a few things I liked from Tom Service at the Guardian: an orchestra that doesn't use a conductor (and, also, look what he says is on his iPod); the classical work he finds the most boring (it's Pictures at an Exhibition, if you can't be bothered reading it!); and he wonders whether there's a British equivalent of Ma Vlast.

More from the Guardian: Gerard McBurney loves Wagner despite everyone telling him not to; Orlando Gough considers what problems opera singers might encounter if they try to sing pop; and lots of pop stars describe their worst ever gigs.

A few things from Stephen Hough's Telegraph blog: a tip for pianists who play chamber music; a discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of playing from memory; some tricks to help pianists play trills; some interesting thoughts about the way the arts are funded in different countries, and why some models are better than others; and a brief thing about The Girl from Ipanema.

(I always think of the same thing when I think of The Girl from Ipanema, and it always makes me grin. Years ago, I saw a stand-up comedian who talked about the song. "It says 'When she moves, it's like a samba'. Have you ever seen a samba? If she walked like that, I'm not surprised each person she passes goes 'Ahhhh!'" It was much funnier the way he told it, mind you...)

I've read a few things now about classical music clubbing, but I haven't tried it, and I doubt I ever will... although that's only because I'm not the clubbing type! But it sounds like a great idea. Londonist talks about a few places in London that do it, and the BBC Music Magazine sent someone to try one of them. And Gabriel Prokofiev (grandson of the famous Prokofiev) is heavily involved in all this - here's a Guardian interview with him (and one of his compositions is being played in tonight's Prom).

This intrigued me (which won't surprise anyone who knows me well!) - a discussion of the first chord of A Hard Day's Night. (If you can't remember exactly what it sounds like, let me refresh your memory.) (The Beatles Bible page seems a bit broken at the moment - none of the images work at the time of writing - but just scroll down to the text.)

Peter Phillips writes in the Spectator about the differences between live and recorded concerts.

I was interested to see this list of the top 30 American music colleges, mainly because there are so many there that I'd never even heard of!

From Classical Music magazine, news that Boosey & Hawkes have launched a scheme in which anyone can look at lots of their newly-published scores online. I presumed, when I heard about this, that it would be stuff no-one's ever heard of, but it's not - have a look at the list!

From Bachtrack, a blog post by one of their staff, who's recently started taking singing lessons and has been surprised by several aspects of the process.

If you get on buses or trains as often as I do, you'll probably be just as irritated as me by kids who play tinny 'music' on their phones. (Apparently this is called 'sodcasting'.) But after reading this BBC News article, I started to consider it in a different light. (It still drives me up the wall though!)

On an Overgrown Path has discovered a miracle cure for coughs in concerts. I haven't got a cough at the moment, though, so I can't test it!

I didn't see anything in the Manchester Festival, which I'm a bit ashamed about, but if I had seen anything, it would probably have been the Damon Albarn opera, Dr Dee. So I was fascinated to learn, from that BBC News article, that he lived at Chet's, and that the burn mark on the table in the Audit Room there was supposedly made by Satan when Dee summoned him. I was told when I started school there, at the age of 10, that the mark was made by the Devil, but I never knew the rest of the story till now!

Something else I never knew: Norman Lebrecht writes in the Telegraph about Mahler's connection with Manchester. (He also suggests that Manchester has been 'overtaken by Birmingham in size and by Liverpool in wit, but it ... has the chance to reassert its intellectual swagger, and rebuild a city of the mind.' I think I quite like that idea.)

On a related note, a Guardian article about how Manchester has turned itself into a brand. (It says that our three main attributes are: "Openness. Inclusivity. And a certain amount of swagger.")

This sort of thing doesn't help, although I'm sure it's not just Manchester: apparently the behaviour of drunk women at the recent Take That concerts was much worse than the behaviour of men at football matches... and most of the ones who were taken to hospital were in their 30s and 40s!

Londonist has a list of interesting but untrue facts about London.

Here's a great article that explains why anyone who accepted the statement that 'two billion people watched the royal wedding' needs to think about this a bit more.

This is very reassuring: you've probably heard of CDC (the Centres for Disease Control in the USA, based in Atlanta)? Well, they have very helpfully given some official advice on how to prepare for a zombie apocalypse.

Also related to CDC is this excellent Wired article which describes the discovery and subsequent history of AIDS. Well worth a read.

Singing uselessly all the night

I really enjoyed the Sea Drift concert, and it went pretty well (there was one point at which it wobbled slightly, I thought, but there was a quick recovery and hopefully not many people noticed). It's on the radio on Tuesday, of course, so see what you think! (I forget exactly where it was I thought it wobbled, but I think it was round about the "lapping everyone close" bit in S/A octaves.)

(Oh, and when you do listen on the radio, note that Lovely Markus Stenz is on In Tune immediately beforehand. What a brilliant bit of programming!)

The only review I've seen for the concert was the Manchester Evening News one, which doesn't go into much detail, but he did seem to like it. As did the audience member who started clapping while the conductor was still lowering his arms. (Tom Service was correct - there should be fines for that sort of thing. There was a very brief grimace on the conductor's face when it happened, but he covered it well.)

EDIT: There's now a Guardian review too.

FURTHER EDIT: Two more, one from Music Web and one from the mighty Manchester Confidential (I don't think they've ever reviewed one of our concerts before - hope they continue!)

Needless to say, I've had bits of Sea Drift on the brain since Thursday, but the rest of the time I can't stop thinking about that poor he-bird! So sad. I looked up the original Walt Whitman poem - it's a part of his Leaves of Grass collection, and the specific part is called by different names in different editions as far as I can see, but it's the section that starts "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking". It has ten sections, and Delius uses sections 2 to 7 inclusive. I actually wanted to know what happened after the end of "Sea Drift", but after reading the poem I'm not entirely sure! I can see why Delius stopped where he did.

Anyway, next up is the Spring Symphony and a Mahler 8 repeat, in quick succession. Also, I'm moving house on Thursday, and everything is going well other than the fact that the automatic packing spell they use in Harry Potter doesn't seem to be working for me! So I'm having to do it manually, and it's VERY tiring. But it'll soon be over. Worse than that is the fact that there isn't currently a phone line in the new flat, and the earliest BT can install one is 8th April. 8th April! Which means more than two weeks with no internet and no Sky. Eek. Luckily there are public internet places these days, and the pub next door does at least show live football, and it's not as if I'll have nothing else to do, so at least the time should pass quickly.

Other news... let's see. Still lots about Japan, obviously. The one I found most interesting was a post I saw just after I posted my last entry and added belatedly, so if you read as soon as I posted you may have missed it: about Japan's functioning in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake. In the same vein, here's another article that advises people NOT to donate money to Japan, and the Disasters Emergency Committee says the same thing. Food for thought.

And more pictures, of course. The BBC News site has a good set of "before and after" pictures. There are also two new sets from The Big Picture: some from last Monday and some from Tuesday.

(On Wednesday, by the way, the Big Picture took a break from Japan and printed some fabulous photos commemorating Discovery's last flight.)

I missed most of Comic Relief on Friday due to being asleep, but I wasn't too upset. However, I would have liked to have seen the mass kazoo performance, so I must watch it online at some point. (It's on Listen Again for five more days.) I do know that they broke the world record, but only just!

You'll have seen the news about the Manchester International Festival lineup, no doubt. I'm a bit sad that there's no chorus in Die Walküre, so we won't be in it directly, but it's still exciting to be peripherally involved! The thing I'd most want to see, though, is the Damon Albarn thing. It looks intriguing, and the Monkey opera was one of the best live shows I've EVER seen. And the fact that Damon's actually in this one is a bonus!

And finally, I wanted to tell you about something I actually saw over a month ago, but forgot to mention here until I was reminded of it the other day while I was in the Molly House watching the BBC News channel with the sound off. It's a clip from See Hear, the BBC's programme for deaf (and Deaf) viewers. I've recorded this ever since I worked at RNID, and some weeks it's more interesting (to me, anyway) than others. But I thought this clip was absolutely fascinating. It's about how they do subtitling for live news reports etc. I think most choral singers will find it as fascinating as I did (may seem odd to say that, but you'll see what I mean!) I had no idea that this is how they do it, and I'm astounded at what's actually involved. Do watch it. The full programme is half an hour, but the bit I want to show you starts at 8:38 and lasts about 10 minutes.

Kimigayo

We're almost at the end of our Sea Drift immersion - the concert is in a few days. I'm looking forward to it, and on the whole I think we know it very well. We ended this week's rehearsal like last week's, by mixing ourselves up so that no-one was next to someone else singing the same part. I suspect there are a few people who don't like it when that happens, but I love it, as do most of my choir friends. Last week I was surrounded by basses and sopranos but couldn't hear any tenors, so it was nice that this week I had tenors on both sides and behind me, with sopranos interspersed. It was lovely. (And I'm glad to report that none of the sopranos near me sang a C in that bar I whinged about last week, although there were still quite a few sops who did! Hopefully they'll fix it before the piano rehearsal. But they all sang beautifully in tune this week, which is more important.)

Most of the other news this week is Japan-related. I texted Sakura (our Japanese 2nd sop) and she says her family is safe, which is good news. (One of my friends has a brother who lives in Japan - but at the other end of the country, I think - and he didn't realise anything had happened until almost 24 hours later!)

You'll no doubt be aware that the BBC Philharmonic were on tour in Japan when the earthquake happened. (That links to the MEN article, which allows comments - I have to admit that the comments flabbergasted me in their ignorance!) They've cancelled the rest of the tour now and are coming home, but their website had already reassured everyone quite quickly that they were all safe, and before then they'd kept in touch via Twitter (which, as usual, was where I'd actually found out about the earthquake in the first place). It was also via the BBC Phil Twitter feed that I learned that Daniel Harding was there too, and he went ahead with his concert on Friday, albeit with a vastly reduced audience, but one of them had walked 4 hours across Tokyo to get there!

As usual, the Big Picture has the best photos: some from Friday itself and some from the aftermath in the next day or two. BoingBoing also has some good photos, although some of them are duplicates of the Big Picture ones. And this Time Out Tokyo blog post, written by staff who were in their office during the earthquake, is fascinating. Be sure to watch the included video of Japanese earthquake-proof skyscrapers behaving as they were designed to - i.e. swaying quite a lot!

EDIT: Just saw this: a great blog post about Japan's functioning in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake. Do read this, it's fascinating. And would never have happened in the UK, I suspect!

A few non-Japan-related links: an interesting Observer article about female composers, which mentions our new composer in residence.

An Observer interview with Antonio Pappano, mainly about Italian music in general, but I was most interested in the stuff about Va pensiero - I could probably sing the whole of that from memory, but I didn't know most of its history.

From BoingBoing, news of two scientists who claim to have found a man who's 'beat-deaf' - i.e. he is is unable to move in time to music.

A great Guardian article in which Graham Johnson (the accompanist) describes his love of Schubert's lieder and how he got to know them.

And finally, this is both very relaxing and very difficult to do: Do nothing for 2 minutes.

Blow to me

A day or two before last week's rehearsal, I finally got round to practising the bit of Sea Drift that I knew I'd never once got right (i.e. the bottom of page 16). So I was quite frustrated when that section was the only bit we didn't do last week. And as a result, I was really hoping we'd start with it this week, as I'd had to practise it again just to ensure it had stuck. But then it occurred to me that there was one downside to rehearsing page 16... which was that we were quite likely to go on to page seventeen, and that page had filled me with increasing rage every time we'd done it. The last entry on that page involves the sopranos coming in on a B flat, and EVERY SINGLE WEEK, for over two months, most of them have come in on a C. I have no idea why this has gone on for so long without them sorting themselves out. I commented to Alison in the car that I felt as if I was this close to just standing up and shouting at them if they did it again. But then we started to wonder what would actually happen if someone actually did that in a rehearsal. We decided that most likely there'd be a brief shocked silence, and then possibly some scattered applause from others who'd been dying to do the same thing. But we weren't sure what would happen next, other than extreme embarrassment :-)

Anyway, of course we did start with page 16. There were widely varying renditions of the alto notes on the bottom line, but after a bit of work the first bar was sorted. I'd found, when I practised it, that the second bar is actually much harder than the first, but it's much harder to hear if that one goes wrong, so maybe everyone was getting it right and it was just me that found it hard. (It's the F sharp. A very unreasonable note to have to sing at that point.) But before we got to the notebashing, we'd read on through page 17, and - sure enough - most of the sops sang a C. Alison turned and grinned at me, but I was very restrained and didn't shout out! (I'd been sitting at the front for the last few rehearsals, having been one of the first to arrive and therefore needing to stake the claim of the 2nds to a few seats on the front row, but when I arrived this week, the 2nd alto seats were occupied by a soprano, a tenor and a bass, sitting there chatting for no apparent reason... so I sat at the back.)

Other than that note, though, the singing was much better this week. We did the a cappella bit, and the 1st sopranos actually managed to stay in tune throughout it for the first time, which made everyone feel extremely optimistic. And even better, we finished the rehearsal with a runthrough of the whole thing, with all the voice parts jumbled up, and they stayed in tune again. (They are all fabulous singers, but they do seem to go flat on every single phrase unless they're reminded not to.) It was a really satisfying end to the rehearsal, and I'm looking forward to the concert (which is next week).

My house sale still isn't sorted, but it's progressing (as is my packing, but that's a bit slower), and the bank seem to have halted the repossession process - although they never actually replied to my letter formally asking them to, which I sent as soon as I had written proof of the sale agreement! Very rude of them, don't you think? I still don't have a moving date, but I expect it to be in the next week or two.

A few links for you. If you use the IMSLP as often as I do, you'll be interested in this New York Times article about it. (I couldn't have done my Secret Spem thing without IMSLP - all the scores came from IMSLP, legally and free of charge.)

Tom Service is unimpressed (as most of us are) at audience members who shout out immediately the piece has ended. And in an unrelated (hopefully!) post, he wonders about the music for the Royal Wedding.

Charlotte Higgins, also in the Guardian, wondered what it would take to create a British orchestra of the stature of the Berlin Philharmonic. She got quite a few replies.

Stephen Hough has another practice tip: this time, how to improve your rhythms.

I last saw my friend Anna Crookes (née Markland) in September, when we were both at a book launch. She'd come straight from a recording session, which she'd thoroughly enjoyed, but she said she'd had to sign a confidentiality agreement and couldn't tell me what she'd been recording, until it was released in March. Well, from what she did say, I think it was this: Striggio's 40-part Mass. (She mentioned that she'd been standing next to the sackbuts, which narrowed it down a bit!) There are reviews in both the Observer and the Guardian.

Here's an exciting idea: three of Manchester's greatest arts institutions are joining forces to put on a musical!

This seems not to have caught the headlines, but Phil Collins has just retired. Turns out his hands are no longer strong enough to play the drums, and that even before that, he had to tape the sticks to his hands! The article doesn't mention why he can no longer sing, though (which I thought he'd done far more than play the drums, in the second half of his career at least). Maybe he just doesn't want to.

I've never heard of this band, but it's always fascinating to hear someone else's reaction to a place you know very well - in this case, BBC Studio 7.

And finally, I already have 7th July in my diary (world premiere of the final Harry Potter film - it's in cinemas on 15th July) but I was thrilled to see we're getting a studio tour opening next year! One day I'll make it to Florida to visit the Wizarding World of Harry Potter (which I'm told is AMAZING), but I'll have to be a lot richer than I am now before trips abroad are an option :-)

Like a motorway of happiness

Look at me, doing a post only a week after my last one! It's mainly a procrastination tactic, I suspect - I should be packing :-)

Not much to say, mind you. House sale still not completed, but the surveyor is coming on Monday morning, and that's the main remaining potential stumbling block. Fingers crossed. Repossession date is a week on Monday, and I haven't had official word that the other side will agree to put it on hold while the sale gets sorted, but I'm told they're likely to (it's certainly in their best interests). Either way, I REALLY need to get on with my packing! Maybe this evening.

Only one bit of singing this week, but it was good because our esteemed boss came to visit us, which always perks everyone up. We sang a bit of Sea Drift and a bit of the Spring Symphony. Both are going well. Although I was distraught that Fanny asked me for songs that include descending perfect fifths, and I couldn't remember a single one! Must memorise my own list (link to side)... Anyway, here's a selection (the fifth in each case is where the hyphen is):

Feel-ings, nothing more than feelings
Wise men - say only fools rush in (“Can’t help falling in love”, Elvis Presley)
Do you love - me (Brian Poole & the Tremoloes)
I love you ba-by (“Can’t take my eyes off you”, Andy Williams)
And - he shall purify (“Messiah”, Handel)
For - unto us a child is born (“Messiah”, Handel)
He - trusted in God (“Messiah”, Handel)

I think "Do you love me" is the one that's most familiar, but if you don't know the song you may disagree!

Just a few links for you. Tom Service, in the Guardian, writes intriguingly about the difference between British and European orchestras. On a related note, Charlotte Higgins, also in the Guardian, writes about what makes the Berlin Phil so special. And Stephen Hough explains very convincingly why Radio 3's recent decision to recommit to live concert broadcasts is such good news.

Winds blow south and winds blow north

Been meaning to do a post for ages, but I seem to be still spending most of my time falling asleep, either on buses or at home! But never mind. House update, for those who have asked: I have accepted an offer on the house, although it's an extremely low one (£17000 below the valuation). But it's the only offer on the table, and since time is running out I didn't have much choice. It will still leave me considerably better off than if the repossession goes ahead. So the only things to worry about now are the survey (it shouldn't be any problem in theory, but you never know), the court costs of the repossession process (which I've been told could be up to £40000, but hopefully most of that will be removed if they don't actually have to repossess), and where to move to. There have been a few places that would have been ideal, but they've all been snapped up quickly, so there's no point in looking seriously until I know when I'll be definitely moving. But rental properties are coming and going all the time, so hopefully there'll be somewhere decent when I can actually do something about it.

Oh, and packing, but I'm having great trouble with that - there's so much of it! Several people have offered to come and help, but the problem is that I need to actually get RID of about half the contents of the house, and there's only me that can decide what to keep and what to throw out. Until I've done that, there's no point anyone else coming round to help. Maybe this weekend I'll make some progress, though - I'm feeling a BIT more motivated and less exhausted.

(As for work, I'm still doing the part-time 3.5-hours-travel-per-day temp job for the NHS in Oldham - the job that was supposed to be for 3 months starting last May - but it will definitely be ending at the start of March. Recently I did apply again for a job at the RNCM - the fourth time I've applied for this particular job in the past couple of years, and the seventh time I've applied to the college overall - but they obviously don't want me!)

Anyway, onto singing. After the usual madness of December, it feels as if there's been hardly any singing this year so far. I've been trying to get my band together for a rehearsal, but have totally failed so far - there isn't/hasn't been a single day in January or February on which everyone was available. So much for trying to record a couple of our newer Christmas songs while they were still ingrained! Not to worry - I'll try again in March.

As for choir, we've been mainly concentrating on Sea Drift by Delius (for which the concert is on 17th March), although this week we also started working on bits of Britten's Spring Symphony (14th May). I've done the Spring Symphony once before, although it was a very long time ago (it was in the Free Trade Hall, so it must have been about 1994/1995) and I don't remember much about it, other than that I obviously didn't like it enough to buy a recording of it. But I think it will be fun to do it again, and I can't wait to hear the children's choir doing their bits.

I've never done Sea Drift before, and when I first tried it I thought it was one of the weirdest pieces I'd ever sung. I actually did a bit of quick research to find out whether Delius was a bit insane. (Answer: not particularly, although he did suffer from syphilis for many years.) But it's definitely grown on me, and there are bits of it that have been stuck in my head for weeks. I'm looking forward to the performance.

Dr Liz came back from Australia last week! Great to see her again. And it feels like much longer ago than last June that we did the Spem in Alium surprise for her. (Those videos are doing quite well on YouTube - if you search for "spem in alium manchester" they're the top results (unsurprisingly!), and even if you just search for "spem in alium" they come up as featured videos (at least they do for me). If you haven't watched them yet, go and look!)

Talking of YouTube, two other videos I want to show you: a promotional video for the wonderful Bournemouth Male Voice Choir (which includes two of my arrangements!) and (thanks to Barbara) an amazing set of improvised piano variations on the Harry Potter theme. I wish I could do stuff like that. I defy you not to watch it with your mouth hanging open in awe.

One bit of singing I did do in early January was Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir, which I mentioned here a while back (and, more recently, I think an email went round to choir members telling them about it). Originally the deadline was the end of December, but he extended it due to people having snow-related problems. That was good, because I still had too much of a cough at the end of December to sing anything (and the earlier part of December was much too busy). So I actually recorded my bit the night before the deadline - not great (I still had a bit of a tickle in my throat and my breathing was even worse than usual) but at least I sang the correct notes, and I think I was in tune. I hope lots of you did it as well. Anyway, in the end he got 2051 videos from 58 different countries - not bad considering he was aiming for 900. (There are some interesting stats here. A few people sang all 8 parts!) Currently his team is busy mixing everything together, and the finished version will be released in April.

Eric Whitacre also caused a bit of controversy when it was thought that he'd said that British choirs are the best... but, as he explains, that's not actually quite what he said!

For the Wagner fans amongst you: tickets are on sale for the Manchester International Festival performance of Die Walküre (which sadly doesn't involve a chorus, I'm reliably informed), and there's a video on that page of Uncle Mark talking about Wagner.

A bit late for this to be topical, but it's still interesting: the Radio 3 blog describes the issues involved in recording the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King's. But I still don't understand why the TV version is different to the radio version - can anyone explain? I can understand why they film the TV one separately, but not why they have different carols!

In the Guardian, Cecilia Bartoli explains the problems faced by mezzo-sopranos. (Try being an alto - there are even more!) Also in the Guardian, Tom Service tells us about a postcard that Elgar sent to Hans Richter in Manchester, and the recent Henley report on music education. He also provides a useful commentary on the Bachtrack performance league tables.

I bet this was a weird experience: via Intermezzo, news of a performance at Covent Garden in which they couldn't move the safety curtain, so the whole cast had to do their stuff on the narrow bit of stage in front of it, and the chorus sang from the stalls!

On an Overgrown Path points us towards a BBC story about a record club in which they have very strict (but reasonable) rules: no talking, no texting, and you have to listen to the whole album in one go.

Also from the BBC: help them with their research by taking the Musicality Test.

Leanne at The Chorister blog hates Bach, particularly the B minor mass! It's one of my favourite pieces, and I think Bach was a genius, but then I've never sung any of his stuff as a soprano...

Stephen Hough has a series of blog posts (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4) discussing different types of recording sessions, in which he describes short patching sessions after live recordings as the most stressful thing he's ever done in his professional life. I must admit that when we've had to do these, I've been desperate to get home so I can rest, rather than particularly stressed, but I can imagine that it's probably a different matter for the soloists, conductor and producer. (The producer he mentions is the fabulous Andrew Keener, who's our regular producer too.)

Here's an interesting piece from the Guardian about the British habit of not caring about getting people's names wrong. It had never occurred to me before reading this that it was a mainly British thing, but I can certainly believe it. I've got used to having my name mispronounced or misspelt, but that doesn't mean it doesn't annoy me EVERY SINGLE TIME.

Also from the Guardian, a great story about a community that decided to protest about their local library being threatened with closure by taking all the books out. Brilliant!

Rands in Repose always does great articles, but I particularly like this one, which describes why it's important to get away from The Noise every so often.

I find that whenever I explain to a new group of my Silver Surfers (my current 12-week course is my tenth!) how internet traffic is conveyed between continents by cables under the sea, they're really surprised, as they'd always assumed (if they'd ever thought about it, which mostly they hadn't) that it went via satellite. So I was delighted that just after I told this to the current group, there was a news story about a cable finally making it to Cuba, which has the western hemisphere's lowest ratio of internet users.

As a temp, the vast majority of my working life over the past few years has been spent typing, and I certainly do lots of typing at home too... so I was a bit put out when a colleague informed me, a few months ago, that I was doing it wrong. If she'd been saying that my wrongness was because I type with only one hand, I would have probably agreed with her (even though I can type faster with one hand than many people can with two! I know it's wrong, but I've never learned properly - I just ended up doing it this way!) But her criticism was that I only use one space after a full stop and I should be using two. I tried to explain to her that the two-spaces rule was very, very outdated and didn't apply to wordprocessing, but she had been taught at secretarial college that two spaces were vital, and she would not be swayed. I wish this Slate article had been published before that argument - it might have convinced her! But I've definitely bookmarked it in case anyone tries to argue with me again about this :-)

Another thing that's worth bookmarking, for any of you who uses Twitter (or just reads it) and is a bit confused about hash tags. I was quite confident about what they were, until I tried to explain it to someone else! But this New Yorker article explains it quite well.

Also useful: Wikipedia's List of Common Misconceptions, and the National History Museum's Postcode Plants Database.

And finally, there was a total lunar eclipse just after I last posted here, but needless to say I didn't see any of it due to an overcast sky. But the Big Picture has some great photos of it.

Six geeeeeeese a-laying

Not for the first time, I find myself trying to type on my laptop while my cat insists on sleeping in my lap. I could move him, yes... but he generally crawls straight back there. And he's so cute!

Last week didn't entirely go according to plan, but it was very great fun. We started at FC United, where we discovered that the other band had cancelled, so we offered to sing some extra songs to help out :-) Oddly enough, although these went down very well, there was a totally different atmosphere to the one in previous years. Usually their request is for two specific football chants ("Pride of All Europe" and "The Twelve Days of Cantona" (both of which we have a cappella arrangements of) plus "Fairytale of New York" (which they love us to sing because it amuses them when posh people sing rude words - no, I have no idea why they think we're posh!) plus a couple of general Christmas songs. So it's usually a set of five songs, of which at least three are quite rowdy, and by the end, we generally end up singing along to the crowd rather than the other way round! But this time, we did a load of extra Christmas (non-football) songs, and they asked for the football ones to be at the end. The unexpected result was that they didn't join in at all, until the very last verse of "The Twelve Days of Cantona". I think the earlier songs put them in a listening mood. I still can't decide whether this was a good thing or a bad thing!

One thing that was definitely good was that as a result of singing for longer in the bar, we weren't carolling outside for as long, so we didn't get as cold as usual (plus it wasn't a very cold day anyway - unlike today! Brrrrr!) I'd managed to almost lose my voice by then, though, as a result of being too enthusiastic with my Slade shouting (i.e. the "IT'S CHRIIIIIIIIIIIIISTMAAAAAAAAAAAAS!!!" bit at the end of Merry Xmas Everybody). And Claire was just recovering from a sore throat, so the fact that we sang the chorus of the Champions' League Anthem three times didn't help her at all, as the soprano part is quite high and very exposed. (You can hear the whole anthem on the official UEFA site.)

We left Gigg Lane just as the match started, by which time we'd sung "The Twelve Days of Cantona" THREE TIMES - it was the best song for getting fans to put money in the collecting tins. (The money wasn't going to us, I hasten to add - it was all in aid of the club's Development Fund, with which they plan to buy their own ground.) Traffic into the city centre was predictably horrendous, but we still got to the City Library (the new one, on Deansgate) in plenty of time for our 4pm performance. The librarians were actually waiting for us at the door, which was very nice, and there was a bigger audience than we've ever had there. It was a really nice gig - we ended up adding an unplanned a cappella carol to the set when our guitarist broke a string and needed a few minutes to fix it, and then (even though we'd gone well over our time as a result of this) they insisted on an encore. Claire wanted to repeat 'O Holy Night' because her husband had arrived late and missed it, and it's his favourite, but I could hardly sing at all by that point, having just done the Slade shouting AGAIN. (I did consider asking someone else to do it, but I do look forward to shouting in a library, and usually no-one else WANTS to do it!) So we went with 'Santa Claus is Coming to Town', because our kazoo player could cover me in that :-) (I think my favourite thing in the whole performance was the kazoo solo in Merry Christmas Everyone (that's the Shakin' Stevens one). We really need to record that with her there!)

(Which reminds me: Radio 3 are hosting a concert for Red Nose Day next year, and every member of the audience will be given a kazoo. Excellent.)

I had a carol service on the Sunday at which I'd agreed to sing, and by Saturday night I was thinking I wouldn't be able to. It wouldn't have been the end of the world, though, because there were several other altos (it was only Saturday when it would have been a real problem if I couldn't sing). But by Sunday afternoon I felt quite a bit better (it helps that I live alone, so I didn't have to talk to anyone other than the cat) and it turned out I could sing OK. But maybe I was incubating something anyway, because on Monday and Tuesday I felt like death warmed up (well, not even warmed up all that much!) I went to work, because I don't get paid if I don't, but on both days I went to bed as soon as I got home and slept for 12 hours (well, interrupted by regular instances of sitting up to blow my nose). By Wednesday I felt a bit better, but that's the day the cough began. I went to choir anyway (although I didn't attempt to actually sing), partly because I wouldn't have been able to sing in the carol concerts if I hadn't, but mainly because I didn't want to miss the return of Jamie!



I felt much better by Saturday, but hadn't actually tried singing until that afternoon. It turned out to be mostly OK, although the annoying tickly cough kept coming back from time to time, most often when I was humming. Once I realised this, I just had a rest in the humming bits, and it was much better. The other strategy was to keep a cough sweet in my mouth throughout the whole of each concert (not the same sweet, obviously!) because if the tickle came, I found that putting a cough sweet in at that point didn't work fast enough to suppress it. The only downside of this is that it's quite hard to sing with a cough sweet in your mouth - if you've never tried it, you may be surprised to hear that the main problem is excess saliva! Particularly in songs with lots of words (The Twelve Days of Christmas caused a bit of dribbling, between you and me...)

The carol concerts have been great fun so far, though (and quite eventful, what with projectile vomiting in the children's choir and someone passing out in the main choir - paramedics had to be called, but thankfully she is fine now). I imagine everyone's highlight is the children's choir singing Santa in Waikiki - with actions and acting and accessories! It is the best thing EVER, and I wish I could have a video of it. (I can't find anything out about the song - which apparently is by Stewart and Albrecht, arranged by Alwyn Green - or any recordings of it -does anyone know anything?) I love our world premiere of On Christmas Night as well, though, and I also really like The Crown of Roses. And of course Sleigh Ride is as fabulous as ever - this year the trombones have bought themselves special red instruments just for the occasion!



Oh, and everyone was in awe of Libby's hat:



(There wasn't a LOT of silliness in the orchestra - the red trombones is about as silly as they got - but I have faith that they'll redress the balance at the last concert tonight!)

And if you haven't seen the FABULOUS sparkly stags in my photo at the top of this post, do go and examine them next time you're in town. They're in front of the new council offices at First Street, and I think they're great. It's POSSIBLE that they're supposed to be reindeer, I suppose, but they are so very like Harry Potter's Patronus charm that I can't believe it's just a coincidence. Here's what they look like in daylight and then from the same angle at night. (They twinkle perfectly, because most of the lights stay on all the time while a few of them go on and off randomly. That's how twinkling should be done. Look, someone even took a video of it!)





The Big Picture doesn't have our stags, but it does have lots of other great Christmas photos.

Carol Ann Duffy introduces a whole load of new poems which may well become the carols of the future. Some of them are very lovely.

Bob Stanley, in the Guardian, has a guide to writing the perfect Christmas pop song. Step 3 is the most important ("Use sleigh bells!")

Hurry down the chimney tonight

Not sure where the last month has gone, but I'm here now! *waves* Actually, I do know where it went. A much-higher-than-usual proportion of it was spent singing, and it feels as if all the rest of the time was spent either on buses, typing letters for psychiatrists, or going to bed early with a hot water bottle in order to warm my feet. Oh, and trying to sell my house. The repossession order has now been given, but because the house was already up for sale (on the advice of the CAB) before the final court date, the judge allowed me three months before the repossession comes into force. So if I can sell the house before 28th February all is (relatively) well - if not, that's when I get evicted. Fingers crossed.

As for singing, it hasn't all been choral, but most of it has. We did the Cherubini Requiem on 11th November, and it went very well - not that that was ever in any doubt, when Lovely Markus was conducting. He gave us an inspiring speech during the warmup before the concert, which I wish I'd recorded, because I can't remember a thing he said now - just that it was inspirational! Also, I will long remember the bit at the start of whichever movement it was (probably the Dies Irae) that had the surprising gong. The image of Lovely Markus standing with one arm pointing upwards until the sound died away will stay with me for quite a while.

(There were a couple of reviews: Manchester Evening News and Music Web. And the Times, but I can't link to that.)

A couple of weeks later, I went to Poole for the weekend, at the invitation of the Bournemouth Male Voice Choir. I've done a few arrangements for them this year, and they were performing a couple of them at a concert at the Lighthouse in Poole, so they asked me to go along and listen. After I agreed to this, they also asked whether I could be persuaded to sing a couple of songs, and I was absolutely thrilled. No-one EVER asks me to sing on my own (well, I can think of one time a few years ago, but on that occasion I was asked to stand in for someone else - I wasn't the first choice) - it's always "Jocelyn, could you sort out a group of singers?" So, with (as always) lots of help from Maggie, I spent weeks preparing. I don't think I've ever practised so much as I have in the past month.

I wasn't nervous until I got there. But when I saw the size of the venue - and heard that 750 tickets had been sold - I was a little freaked out! But then I had a bit of an epiphany. My panicked mind had been screaming "I'VE NEVER SUNG IN SUCH A BIG HALL! OR IN FRONT OF SO MANY PEOPLE!!!" But then it occurred to me that of course I *have* sung in a much bigger hall (many, many times) and in front of considerably more people (many, many times). And the technical skills I use when I'm being a choral singer are more or less the same skills required to sing a solo. So all I had to do was to just sing as I usually do, and ignore the fact that there was no-one standing next to me. (The thing that our ex-choral director used to do, in which he made us spread out until we all had space around us in the performance, REALLY helped with this - I wish we still did that.) This train of thought made all the difference, and my nerves vanished. (I won't say that my performance was spectacularly good, because I'm not - yet! - a spectacularly good singer. But I enjoyed it, and I think it was OK.)

I really enjoyed listening to the rest of the concert, too. It was billed as "A Festival of Male Voices" (I did NOT know that when I agreed to sing, and I felt quite uncomfortable when I found out! But I apologised to the audience for being female, and I think they forgave me.) and consisted of four male voice choirs, who performed separately and together. I was pleased to find that the Bournemouth Male Voice Choir (my hosts) were by far the best (in my opinion), and I loved hearing them sing my arrangements. Here's an interesting thing, too: all the other choirs were a bit out of tune, and I had in fact never in my life heard a male voice choir that didn't sing a bit flat. (Well, apart from occasionally Only Men Aloud.) But Bournemouth were in tune just about all the way through, and I believe that a large part of this was due to the fact that they sang "jumbled up", i.e. people on the same voice part were not all physically grouped together.

(Also, not only were they the only choir that didn't have entirely white hair, one of their tenors - a 16-year-old boy - had BRIGHT BLUE hair, and it looked great!)

The singing didn't stop there. Last weekend was Messiah with Stephen Layton, and I think most of us agreed that it was the best one in years. There were quite a few new ideas, but the main thing that made it so good was that he insisted that people WATCH him, and refused to go on until they did. This broke people out of the autopilot mindset that so often pervades Messiah, and by the time even the SOPRANOS had realised that they couldn't look down at their scores as often as they usually do, it was starting to sound amazing!

It went very well on the night. The only thing that made it not perfect was that the Hallelujah Chorus was spoiled (for me) by the fact that (like so many conductors) he gave the audience a signal to stand, rather than letting them do it if and when they felt like it. I can understand the reason why conductors do this, but the fact remains that it ruins my most favourite moment: when the audience stands up without any prompting, in small non-simultaneous groups all over the hall, it always moves me to tears, and I'm usually still wiping my eyes by the end of the whole work. But when the audience are INSTRUCTED to stand, I remain completely unmoved. Yes, it makes that much difference.

However, he almost made up for spoiling my favourite bit by what he did at the end - a BRILLIANT idea that I can't believe no-one's thought of before. For Messiah, you see, we don't sit in the choir seats - we sit on the actual platform with all the musicians, because it's only a small orchestra. The organist usually sits on the platform too, rather than up on high at the organ console - they have a chamber organ that they wheel in specially. Well, when we started on Sunday there were TWO organs on the platform: the chamber organ, at which the organist was sitting, and another much larger portable organ console, which appeared to be connected somehow to the big full Hall organ. The organist remained at the chamber organ for almost the entire concert, and the audience (if they were paying attention) must have wondered why on earth the large extra console was on stage at all. Their curiosity was only satisfied at the very end. On the LAST PAGE of the Amen Chorus, the organist stopped playing the chamber organ, went over to the full organ console, and played just the very last few bars of the piece with full organ. The effect was AMAZING - I loved it. (Needless to say, those people who believe Messiah should only ever be done with one to a part thought it was awful, but what do they know? Stephen Layton said that he does it with both small forces and large, and since we had a large choir on this occasion, it made sense to him to go for a large sound. I think it was an inspired decision.)

Even more singing this week. On Tuesday I was in Macclesfield with Pleiades for an open mic night at Ronnie's Bar. Unfortunately they'd decided to start an hour later than usual, and we couldn't wait that long, but we asked whether we could sing a couple of songs unplugged to the people in the bar before the event started - since we'd gone all that way specially! - and they agreed. So we did get to sing a bit, at least. Such a pity, though - that's the first time we'd managed to get everyone there at the same time (we'd been before with fewer of us), and I doubt we'll manage it again - people won't want to go all that way for something that might be cancelled or postponed. Oh well.

Tomorrow's a huge day. At lunchtime we (Pleiades again) are singing for FC United, who have been much in the news lately. Sadly they went out of the FA Cup this week, but they did so with their heads held high, in front of a home crowd of 7000 - not bad for a non-league club! (There's another good article about their history here.)

We won't be able to watch the FC United match tomorrow, because just before it starts we will have to stop singing and dash to town for the annual Henry Watson Christmas Music Day. This year it's actually in the new temporary City Library on Deansgate, of course. The musical bits of the day are happening on the first floor (the music library is on the second floor, but there's not much room there) and we're the finale, starting at 4pm. Do come along and listen if you're in town - it's very informal, so you can pop in and out as you choose. I'm very much looking forward to it - particularly the bit where I get to shout!

The following weekend has the choir's series of carol concerts, but I'll try and post again before then. We're VERY pleased that our ex-choral director is coming back to conduct them, though!

Right, I'd better give you some of the links I've got saved, so I can delete some bookmarks.

Alison turned up on Messiah day wearing an all-purple outfit, so I mocked her for obviously being old. This led to the realisation that apparently not everyone knows the poem about old ladies wearing purple, so here it is: Warning, by Jenny Joseph.

I'm sure you've all seen this by now, but in case you haven't: Food Court Choral Flash Mob.

Chris Rowbury (From the Front of the Choir) hates choirs that dress identically. It's a thought-provoking post, and I can't say I really agree with it, but I haven't had time yet to articulate my objections in a comment. I will one day, though, Chris! I'm much more in agreement with another post of his, though: this one is about why people think they can't sing.

Two more practice tips from Stephen Hough: even if you only have a few minutes, you can still do some useful work, and scales and other exercises really can help.

Have you joined Eric Whitacre's virtual choir yet? I keep meaning to but haven't had time yet. A month ago he pointed out that he'd only received 160 videos despite 11000 people downloading the sheet music. Last week he was up to 300 videos, but reminded us that there's only a month left.

As usual, several interesting articles from Tom Service in the Guardian: carrying a cello could keep you out of the UK; several lost Vivaldi manuscripts have been found recently; there's now a prize for orchestral players who contribute most to the team; Alex Ross wrote an article about why modern classical music is unpopular, and Tom responds; he talks to countertenors Andreas Scholl and Philippe Jaroussky (and there's another interview with Jaroussky in the New York Times); Radio 3 is to play nothing but Mozart during the first twelve days of January, and Tom comments on this; and, finally, he brings us good news: twenty new works, lasting twelve minutes each, which have been commissioned for the 2012 Olympics (you see what they did there?)

Also from the Guardian: Leon McCawley writes about Samuel Barber; Stephen Sondheim gives his opinion of other songwriters (I found this INCREDIBLY fascinating, mainly because he has such a low opinion of so many of them!); an intriguing article by Robert Darnton about singing in the streets of 18th-century Paris; and Esther Addley writes about the history of Christmas carols. (A Cappella News, in fact, says that Christmas carolling was started by drunks.)

Cecilia Bartoli performed at the Bridgewater Hall last week - I'm told it was an amazing concert - and Manchester Confidential talked to her beforehand, about castrati and other things. (They also have an article about the difficult times ahead for our orchestra.)

Did you know there was a choir for homeless people in London? Me neither. They're called The Choir With No Name, and you can see them sing here.

Barbara told me about this: The Virtual Piano. It refused to load for me the first few times I tried, but you might be in luck - and it's very clever. There's a piano keyboard on the screen, and you can play it by clicking with the mouse if you like, but you can also use the keyboard. If you start with the number keys at the top of your keyboard (1 to 0) and then move through each row of letters in turn (from Q to M) you will play every note. If you hold the shift key down as well, you sharpen the note. Clever!

Rachel told me about a fabulous busker that she saw recently on Brazenose Street. She didn't recognise the instrument he was playing, but when she investigated she realised it was a Hang Drum. I may have to go and look.

You'll have seen these before, but they're funny, so I'll mention them again: The Twelve Days of Christmas by John Julius Norwich, and The Twelve Days of Christmas by Brian Sibley. They are very similar, and I have no idea which came first.

Here's a clever thing: the Avian Vocalisations Centre at Michigan State University. It is an online resource containing lots of recordings of birdsong.

Animal Aid are begging people not to give goats (or anything similar) for Christmas: here's why.

The Guardian points out that it makes no sense to grit the roads but not the pavements. I couldn't agree more - I haven't fallen over yet this year, but that's mainly because I've given up trying to walk on pavements and am walking in the road instead - it feels safer. The Royal Oldham Hospital deserves many Brownie points for being the only place I've been this month where the pavements have been kept free of ice. Everywhere else is lethal!

They also have a great article about jokes from other countries, and this appeared on the same day as Boing Boing's article on glorious, elaborate, profane insults of the world.

If you, like me, have always wanted to travel to get a really good view of the Northern Lights, here's a guide that explains your options.

The Big Picture has another set of great snow photos, and also an ongoing Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar. Pretty!

NFI

The title of this post has no relevance to anything else in the post - it's just a music industry term which I learned recently from a good friend of mine. I told her I'd listened to her group performing in the Proms but was surprised not to hear her voice, which I can normally distinguish quite easily. She told me she wasn't there that day. "Why?" I asked, surprised. "NFI," she replied.

(If you can't guess what it stands for, I'll tell you at the end of the post!)

It's been a while since I last posted. I've been a bit sidetracked by money-related issues (I was in court for a repossession hearing a couple of weeks ago; currently I'm still in the house, but not for much longer). There's been lots of singing to distract me, though. We had a great time a few weeks ago singing Carmina Burana from scratch with a choir of a thousand - although most of them kept panicking about the huge number of words (however many times Greg told them not to worry about that), and the ones who sat near me said that they didn't sing very much in the performance (when the regular choir members went and sat on the stage). But they had fun anyway, I think. And Greg was an absolute superstar - not only did he lead the whole day, he also conducted the orchestra in Carmina, which must be one of the most difficult pieces there is to conduct, I should imagine, with all its time signature changes.

(We also sang Blest Pair of Sirens that day, but it wasn't the most exciting piece ever, although it was very pleasant. And there was quite a bit of confusion caused by the fact that the extra singers had different copies to the regular singers, and in some places the parts had totally different notes.)

A few days later we did The Planets (with the visiting Houston Symphony Orchestra), and it was possibly the weirdest performance of it I've ever been involved in (and there have been many weird ones before!) We arrived to find loads of headphones on stands in the choir assembly area.




We assumed they must be for us, and were VERY excited. There was a brief letdown when someone official told us they WEREN'T for us, but the someone official turned out to be wrong. However, there weren't quite enough for one pair each, and in any case we soon realised that if we covered both ears, we couldn't hear each other, so it was decided that we'd all just use one ear, which also meant that people could share.



However, all this technology didn't mean that things went flawlessly. The headphones were all connected to an electronic keyboard which was positioned just inside the door to the platform, on which Lovely Jonathan played the choir parts in order to keep us in tune. The plan, we assume, was that the sound of the keyboard would ONLY be audible in the headphones... but Caroline, who ended up with no headphones at all in the performance (some of Choir 1 took the wrong ones, so they had some spare that we couldn't reach, and we didn't have enough), said that she could hear the keyboard quite clearly. Hopefully the sounds didn't carry through the open platform door which was right next to it. Oh, and then we also had the usual TV monitor set up, so that the offstage conductor could see the ONstage conductor. But usually these monitors have the sound turned down (we can hear the sound from the stage just fine when the door is open) - not this one.

Oh well - the audience seemed to love it anyway! BBC Music Magazine described how the concert worked (that piece was written before the Manchester leg of the tour), and there are reviews from the Guardian, Manchester Evening News and MusicWebInternational.

Our next concert is the Cherubini Requiem this Thursday. It's not a piece I knew previously, and it's not particularly exciting, but we DO get to do it with Lovely Markus Stenz, so I'm definitely looking forward to it. He was a BIG hit with the alto section when we last worked with him.

Looking further ahead, I'm sure most choir members are aware by now that Die Walküre is part of next summer's Manchester International Festival... but can anyone confirm or deny whether there's a chorus in it? Dr Liz asked me, and a brief flick through the score suggests there isn't a chorus, but I may well have missed it. (It's a pity if there isn't, especially as our Götterdämmerung won a Gramophone award - one of TWO for our orchestra this year.)

Interesting review at Intermezzo, by the way, of Andris Nelsons' LSO debut. It's interesting mainly because it's the only review of him I'm seen that describes how hard it can be to follow his beat!

Chris Rowbury at From the Front of the Choir always has good posts, but two of my favourites recently have been How to deal with unwanted talking during choir rehearsals without killing anybody, and Song meanings lost in translation.

Here's an interesting precedent to set: when Riccardo Muti was ill and couldn't make it to a gig to conduct the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, they did the gig with no conductor. (Via Intermezzo.)

An intriguing Spectator review of a recent performance of Tristan and Isolde.

Via A Cappella News, a story about a Swiss choir that tried to set a world record last month by singing a cow-calling song. My favourite bit of the story is this: "It is said that it was forbidden to sing the song in the presence of Swiss mercenary soldiers as it made them homesick and unable to fight. The composer Rossini used the melody in his famous William Tell overture." I must investigate and find out which bit of William Tell you can't sing in front of Swiss soldiers! I presume it's the cor anglais tune, but who knows?

Tom Service tells us about a newly-discovered Elgar work - I particularly like his description of our own music director's reaction to it. The story relates to a programme that's on BBC4 this Friday night (and repeated a couple of times over the weekend).

From The Chorister, some very sensible points about How to be a great choir director.

From the Boston Globe via A Cappella News, a great review of a Stile Antico concert. This review makes me REALLY want to hear this choir.

Russell Watson talks about how and why his voice has changed.

Stephen Hough has another practice tip: drum your fingers on the tabletop. (Out of interest, work out whether you start with your thumb or little finger - or some other option! - when you do this. Then ask your friends and family which way they do it. I always assumed everyone did it starting with the thumb, as I do, until my best friend told me about an argument he'd had with his wife about which was more common...)

In case you weren't aware, Maurice Murphy died last week. He's probably the most-heard trumpeter ever, and Tom Service explains why.

Via Intermezzo, an article in the Irish Times in which several professional singers talk about voice care.

Composer James MacMillan writes in the Telegraph about how he wrote a mass for the Pope's recent visit, and a Scottish committee tried to stop it being performed.

From BBC Music Magazine, news that a Preston choral society has a new conductor, and he's commuting every week from ITALY.

The Guardian had a 4-part series of articles covering a visit to Skywalker Ranch, where many things to do with the Star Wars films happened. Part 3 is about the recording studio - very interesting.

Here's a fascinating Guardian interview with Guy Chambers (who wrote many songs with Robbie Williams). Most interesting part (to me, at least): the revelation that Brian May will not allow Queen songs to be performed in any key other than the original, which is why Robbie never sang with Queen (he can't sing as high as Freddie Mercury could).

You remember the pop group Squeeze? (They're how Jools Holland first became famous.) They found a novel solution to the fact that they didn't own the rights to any of their own songs - they recorded them all again.

I'm not quite old enough to remember the famous 1929 recording of Nymphs and Shepherds by the Manchester Children's Choir, but I was told the story when I was at school, and I've seen the plaque in the Henry Watson. Well, Victoria Wood has written a play about the occasion for next year's Manchester International Festival. (More info from the Manchester Evening News.)

I'm sure you'll all be aware of Friday's FA Cup shock, in which FC United of Manchester knocked out Rochdale (several divisions above them). The Guardian has some great photos of the previous round, plus a good article explaining the club's history, and a report on Friday's match. (The draw for the 2nd round was made today, and FC were drawn away to either Brighton or Woking. If they win that match, they're in the 3rd round... which is when the Premier League teams join in! Whee!)

Dr Liz has been singing in Sydney, but didn't have as good an experience as she does at home :-(

Google Street View is now available in some surprising locations, and the Guardian has some great photos of these.

Facebook users may or may not be concerned about the latest breach of privacy.

A fascinating article about life aboard the International Space Station.

This really amused me - a grovelling apology from an Australian newspaper that made a factual error about Star Trek in a story.

Here's a free online game for you to play: Electric Box 2. I was addicted to the iPhone version of this for weeks.

The Big Picture continues to have great sets of photos of all sorts of things, usually consisting mainly of photos you haven't seen anywhere else. Here's their set of photos of the Chilean mine rescue.

And finally, via BBC Music Magazine, something that makes me giggle (and takes me back to my childhood, when I used to love this guy on TV) - scroll down to see Victor Borge playing a piano duet.


(NFI = Not Fucking Invited.)

Oh, oh, oh, totus floreo, iam amore virginali totus ardeo

So sorry about the long hiatus. All sorts of bad things have happened this summer - the burglary was just the beginning, but I will try not to whinge about what's happened since, as I'm sure no-one wants to know - and I haven't been in the mood to write anything. I'm still not, really, but I decided I'd better make an effort to try and catch up with stuff.

We had a whirlwind start to our choral season, with two performances of Mahler 8 in Symphony Hall in our second week back. We still remembered it very well from May, of course, but this was with a different orchestra (the CBSO) and a different conductor (Andris Nelsons), so it did need a lot more rehearsal than it might have if it had been a direct repeat. And because of the concerts being on a Thursday and a Saturday, the schedule (including rehearsals) meant us all being in Birmingham on three consecutive weekday nights and then back again on Saturday. This caused huge logistical problems for most of the choir, so it was impressive how many of us were there. I know a few people took the whole week off work specially, but not everyone could do that, so there were lots of exhausted singers! On top of that, I managed to develop a streaming cold at the start of the week, so I had one of those fun concert experiences in which I kept having to wait for loud bits so I could blow my nose. Very annoying. (I blame the air-conditioning on Tuesday's coach - my nose felt far worse after that.)

I enjoyed both concerts, but I didn't think either of them was as good as the Manchester one. I won't go into the reasons here, but I *will* say what I thought was BETTER in Birmingham, and that was the Mater Gloriosa and the offstage brass. Not their actual performances - they were both great in both locations - but their positioning. I think I've mentioned before that my most abiding memory of the FIRST time I did Mahler 8 in the Bridgewater Hall was of the Mater Gloriosa singing her bit from the very highest possible point in the hall. When we did it in May, she was on the same level as the choir, and it just wasn't the same. But in Birmingham both the Mater Gloriosa and the offstage brass were right up near the roof, and I much preferred it. (I felt sorry for the offstage brass, though. The conductor totally forgot to give them a bow on Thursday night, and they stood there waiting for quite a while before obviously deciding to leave when the bows continued and they still didn't get one - they had vanished before we left the stage. So I didn't really blame them for not waiting at ALL on Saturday!)

The reviews surprised me quite a bit, because all the reviewers seem to have viewed the concerts differently than I did. They're all really good, though. Thanks to Martin for sending me a PDF of the Times review - the Times and Sunday Times both now charge for access to their website, so I can't check it any more. (In fact, there was - in theory - a feature about me in today's Sunday Times, but I haven't seen it yet for exactly this reason! I'm hoping someone will have bought it and will show me sometime. I did tell all my friends it was due to be in, but I haven't heard back from any of them, so maybe they haven't read it either.)

(Oh, and before I forget, I'm live on the radio in a few hours' time - in fact, I'll probably have been on by the time you read this, but you can listen on iPlayer if you're interested. I'm a guest on Woman's Hour (which, being a bit of a tomboy, I've never listened to in my life!), although I can't promise I'll have anything interesting to say!)

Other reviews: Guardian, Financial Times, Birmingham Post, MusicWeb, and (with photos and comments) Intermezzo. Oh, and the finale is (very illegally and nothing to do with me!) on YouTube.

(A couple of recent links about Mahler: a fascinating review of a Norman Lebrecht book about Mahler (from which I learned that Mahler is Beyonce's eighth cousin four times removed), and a great Guardian article about Mahler that stems from one chord.)

We're doing Mahler 8 again next summer, but for now our next two concerts are in a couple of weeks' time: a Carmina Burana scratch day on 9th October, and The Planets (which I think might be sold out) on 12th. I haven't done Carmina for YEARS, so that's great fun, particularly as all of a sudden we're joining in with loads of soprano parts and choir 1 bits that I haven't sung before. Very much looking forward to doing it with the orchestra and a thousand extra singers.

I have many links to share with you, but my favourite is this one from almost two months ago, in which lots of musicians (including our own music director) describe their greatest onstage moments.

Those who sang Eric Whitacre's Sleep earlier this year may be interested to know that he's using that song for his next Virtual Choir project. If you want to join him, the instructions are on his website. Also, here's a review of a concert of his - sounds fabulous, wish I'd been there! And also from his website, but other than that not actually anything to do with him at all, an absolutely fascinating short documentary about the making of 10CC's I'm Not In Love in the days before computers.

Those who took spart in my Surprise Spem project will be fascinated by the idea of a whole CONCERT of 40-part vocal music. I'd had this review for a while, but coincidentally the concert itself was on Radio 3 at the weekend, and you can listen to it until Saturday.

The Proms seem ages ago now, even though I know they only ended a couple of weeks ago. I have to say that there wasn't one this year that really blew me away, although three that I did really enjoy were the Rodgers and Hammerstein night, the Jamie Cullum night and the Monteverdi Vespers. The last night just seemed wrong without the Sea Songs, although I know they did it in the 1910 reenactment. (The Radio 3 blog posted a Last Night post-mortem, and Classical Iconoclast had a post-mortem of the Proms as a whole.) (Classical Iconoclast also has a fascinating article about Parry and Stanford - did you know Parry hated Stanford? I didn't.)

Stephen Hough has another practice tip: make sure you look at the original score. He also has a great post about historically-informed performance. And he asks that age-old question: If I had ten minutes with the Pope, what piano duets would we play?

On an Overgrown Path has an intriguing post about a piece of Elgar history. And here's a different piece of Elgar history: he wrote one of the first football anthems (for Wolves), and someone's recorded it.

Here's a great Telegraph article about Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis.

From A Cappella News: the King's Singers have a new member. (I thought this was interesting not for who he was - I've never heard of him - but for what sort of person they needed.)

A very sad article about the downfall of Scottish Opera, and more on this from Tom Service.

Slightly alarming thing from Ben Goldacre talking about the fact that how female musicians dress affects how their playing is perceived.

There's a composer who thinks that classical music should be amplified, so that people can talk during the concert, and walk in and out as they choose. Tom Service follows this up with Berlioz's instant feedback method.

Classical Iconoclast brings us news that the Elgar Birthplace Museum in Worcester is having a Gerontius exhibition from now until December, and also a great post about the emotional impact of the piece.

Classical scholars may be able to guess what a lithophone is: it's like a xylophone, but made of stone instead of wood. They've made one out of Lake District rocks and got Evelyn Glennie to play it. More details from the University of Leeds, who made it, and the University of Hull, who composed some music for it.

Chris Rowbury's posts (From the Front of the Choir) are always interesting, but I particularly liked this one about conducting gestures. (I wonder whether Andris Nelsons has read it? Doubt it.)

I don't really care whether or not there's a Liberace Museum in Las Vegas, but it turns out that there was and now there isn't, and I was so taken with the photo of it that I had to show you!

Here's a Guardian article about supposedly offensive lines being cut out of songs. I hate this. Although what I hate even more is when they use sonsg for adverts and cut SINGLE BEATS OUT OF BARS just to get the song to fit into the time limit. ARGH.

Talking of irritating, the only thing I really hate about buses is the fact that invariably there is someone who wants to play everyone their favourite music on their phone. The Guardian has a thought-provoking article about this. (I still hate it, though.)

In a similar vein, the BBC has an article about the proliferation of Autotune.

There was a very odd rumour I heard recently (although apparently it's a very old urban legend) that the original Batman theme (you know, the ner-ner-ner-ner-ner-ner-ner-ner one) has its vocal lines actually produced by brass instruments, even though they clearly sing the word "Batman!" The ever-reliable Snopes not only tells us that the rumour is untrue, but digs up some interesting information about how they DID do it.

This is kind of fun, and therapeutic: a musical thingy involving circles crashing into each other. Try it and see!

I doubt this will interest any of you, but just in case: McFly are my very favourite band, and the Guardian recently had an article about them. (Their musical skills are considerable, I promise you.)

A few people have asked me about Dr Liz. I mentioned her blog last time, but if you haven't read it, here are a few notable posts: a description of what she's actually doing, some Australian oddities, and news that she's found a choir and will be singing the Berlioz Te Deum in Sydney Opera House, lucky thing. (That's one of my favourite pieces ever, and the venue's not bad either!)

A bit of Manchester news now: we have a house in the city centre built especially for ducks!

The last of the books have finally left the Central Library - the photo is a bit eerie if you know that room well - but there's news about what it'll be like after the renovations.

Biggest current news in Manchester is the filming of a Hollywood blockbuster (Captain America) that's going in in the Northern Quarter. I went to have a look the other day - it's mainly on Dale Street, near the Piccadilly Station end. There are security staff all over the place, but you can get quite a good view of the set. The actors weren't there when I looked, but they are now. Someone's started a dedicated blog that has loads of photos, if you haven't got time to go and have a look yourself.

Yesterday a load of people went swimming in the Manchester Ship Canal! Sounds slightly insane to me.

Other bits of random stuff: I really like this article by Gia Milinovich, explaining how she started to feel invisible after her husband became extremely famous. (Her husband is Professor Brian Cox.)

If you've never used eBay, or you have but you suspect you're not getting the most out of it, this article will help.

If you use the same password for everything, this article might make you reconsider.

I watched this in fascination for several hours last Sunday: two young men attempted to set a new world record for the longest continuous kiss. They broke the record - they did 32.5 hours, with not a single break. They stood up the whole time - in fact, they danced for lots of it - and their lips were attached continuously, so they had nothing to eat or drink. It was very impressive.

Which links me nicely into my Big Picture selections, because the first one is of a selection of same-sex weddings, and I think these pictures are SO lovely. There's also some spectacular new solar system photos, and some great images from Oktoberfest.

And finally, via Londonist, an Ikea advert which involved a hundred cats being released into the store at night and filmed for a while.