Saturday, December 24, 2005

Well done Joe :-)

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

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

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

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

Shoe photos!

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

Friday, December 23, 2005

No, I'm not up early...

... I'm up late :-)

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

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

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

Monday, December 19, 2005

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Saturday, December 17, 2005

"Altos, I hate you!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sunday, December 11, 2005

We are the dreamers of dreams...

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

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

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

Saturday, December 10, 2005

Fall on your knees - oh, hear the angel voices

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

Some other links:

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wednesday, December 07, 2005

"Tenors, do you do butch?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Monday, December 05, 2005

Have a seat. Rest your feet.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And from Paul:

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

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

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

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

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

Friday, December 02, 2005

Some very sad news.

From Barbara:

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

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

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