Take her wrap, fellas; find her an empty lap, fellas

Alison and I are singing at a funeral tomorrow morning (a relative of a friend of hers). We are doing two songs: I Passed By Your Window (which I'd never previously heard of) and, would you believe, Hello Dolly. I've created duet versions and backing tracks for both of them (it's in a crematorium, so there's no piano or organ, so the backing has to be on CD). I'm just hoping that it will be widely known that these two songs are what the family has requested - I've never sung to an audience that's gazing at me in horror, but I imagine it's rather offputting!

I thoroughly enjoyed the concert we did at St Patrick's Church on Saturday. And what a pity we're not doing "We'll Gather Lilacs" or "The Bare Necessities" at the second a cappella concert - I suspect it will be a similar type of audience, and the audience on Saturday LOVED those two songs. I suppose I can understand why they've been dropped, though. I'm a bit more baffled at the fact that Bruckner's Ave Maria has also gone, despite the fact that it sounds fabulous in a church acoustic... yet "The Lamb" (which I have grown to detest over the years) is still in! *boggle*

Actually, there were three things that will particularly stay in my mind from Saturday: the sight of half the audience mouthing the words to "We'll Gather Lilacs"; the lady on the balcony who was dancing during "The Bare Necessities"; and the audience member who told me afterwards that I was a "model chorister" during "The Bare Necessities" \o/ I'm very smug about that!

Now, I'm not entirely sure how I've managed to accumulate 100000000 relevant links in the last week, but I have (well, almost that many!) so I'd better get on with sharing them. (In case you're a recent arrival here, I should explain that the links I share are of three types, and I tend to list them in this order: (a) music-related stories that interested me; (b) Manchester-related stories that interested me; (c) stories that interested me but that aren't related to music OR Manchester, but I thought you might not have seen them mentioned anywhere else.)

The Mahler in Manchester series has reached its halfway point: Mahler 5 was last Thursday, and the reviews are good, although a bit inconsistent: five stars from the Guardian, four from the Times, only three from the Telegraph. EDIT: And, belatedly, four from the Independent. But four stars from the MEN, and The Classical Source don't rate performances, but they seemed to like it!

Talking of reviews, I learned from this one that the William Byrd Singers have a new conductor that people in my choir know well.

Oliver Condy writes about early morning practice.

Via ChoralNet, news of a choir that only performs new works, and restricts this even further to Connecticut composers!

VHK's Singing has some interesting points to make about the increasing tendency for anthems in cathedral services to be thought of as separate from the liturgy rather than part of it.

I found this site while I was searching for the sheet music and/or lyrics of "I Passed By Your Window": My Mother's Sheet Music. (I didn't find either - at least, not free - so I ended up writing them out myself anyway!)

Philip Langridge died the other day, and this inspired the Guardian to write an editorial about English tenors.

A fascinating post from Allen H Simon on ChoralNet about a concert he's doing this weekend featuring misattributed works. What I found most intriguing was his description of how the singers treated the music differently when they knew it wasn't really by Bach etc!

BBC 6 Music has been arguing about who the best (non-classical) guitarists are. They have a poll in which you can vote.

Nigel Kennedy is running a Polish festival on the South Bank at the end of May. (I hadn't realised he lives in Poland these days.) The most intriguing event (to me) is a screening of the 1973 England v Poland football match, accompanied by Kennedy and Polish jazz musicians, playing a semi-improvised score.

Great short piece from the Guardian about bands who sing in minority languages.

Lots of discussion this week about a lecture given by Alec Ross to the Royal Philharmonic Society on Monday night. The subject: whether or not it's OK to applaud in non-traditional places. Tom Service and Intermezzo and Classical Iconoclast like what he said. The Times asked several influential people to comment before the lecture took place, but the exact subject matter turned out to be more specific than they'd imagined.

I enjoyed the first episode of the new BBC series A Band for Britain, in which Sue Perkins tries to help Dinnington Colliery Brass Band get new players. If you missed it, you can see it on iPlayer via that link.

Chris Rowbury wonders what rehearsals are for, exactly.

A fascinating article in the Spectator which explores the job of orchestra leader, specifically in an opera orchestra.

Tom Service reminds us that Elgar will soon vanish from our £20 notes.

Some news that involves both music AND Manchester: I've been warning you for a while that Manchester Central Library (including the Henry Watson Music Library) will close soon while the whole building is renovated over the course of three years. Well, I was in there the other day - the first time since the new year - and bits of it have already closed. The Henry Watson is still open, but only for the next three weeks - it closes at 8pm on 1st April. So, if there's some music you desperately need from there, get it ASAP! Full details (including specific dates and FAQ) about the Central Library closure are here, and specific information for users of the Henry Watson are here. (And if you're one of the surprising number of people who have never been inside the Central Library, do go and visit before the end of March, because it won't be there - at least in its current form - after that. The Social Sciences library (on the first floor) is one of my favourite rooms in any building anywhere, and I'm praying they don't change the basic structure of it. If you've never seen it, I beg you to.)

Here's a great feature about female Mancunian role models. One of them sigs in our choir :-)

Manchester Confidential tells us that the Beetham Tower is still whistling, even though it was supposed to be fixed recently. I've still never heard it!

Mancubist tells us that there is currently an exhibition about Manchester's past and present music venues - on platform 12 at Piccadilly Station. I hadn't realised that was an exhibition space, but there you go!

I'm sure you'll have read that the Lowry wants 1000 volunteers to be photographed naked. Sadly the dates involved are 1st and 2nd May, which is our Mahler 8 weekend. Otherwise I have no doubt our whole choir would be there :p

More Metrolink chaos this summer, this time on the Bury line.

Doctor Who is travelling round the UK on a tourbus! He'll be in Salford on 31st March, and there'll be a big-screen event in Manchester after that. I'm hoping I'll eventually get over the fact that he's not David Tennant any more, but it'll take a while!

This intrigued me: via BoingBoing, an article about an international argument over exit signs.

There are millions of online personality quizzes, most of them extremely stupid, but if you like that sort of thing, this one is a bit better than the majority: the HTML colour personality test.

And finally, I was telling Caroline about both these sites recently and realised that I don't think I've mentioned them here: Failblog and Learn From My Fail. They may or may not amuse you :-)