"I wouldn't insure you!"

Jamie started tonight's rehearsal by torturing us physically. He was unimpressed with our bodily flexibility, hence the quote in the title. There was the evil exercise where you put (and keep) the palms of your hands together and stretch in various directions; tonight this was followed up with an even more sadistic one which involved putting our elbows AND palms together and then stretching. Oh, the pain! I still ache now.

I really didn't enjoy tonight's rehearsal very much - not because of the pain at the start, but for all sorts of other reasons. It was the piano rehearsal for Messiah, with Nicholas Kraemer (NOT "Nick", as he pointed out when Jamie called him that). He was fine, but he made us stand up for a large proportion of the time, and I couldn't see him at all when we were standing, as all the people in front of me were taller. And my aching shoulders ached even more as a result of trying to stand in twisted positions so I could follow the beat. Add to that the fact that my feet, which had just about recovered from Saturday, were soon aching again; and also the fact that Mr Kraemer spoke fairly quietly, so that I couldn't hear what he was saying unless (a) he happened to be facing towards me, and (b) no-one was coughing. (Luckily there wasn't a lot of talking in the altos tonight, thank goodness.) Given all these factors, and the fact that I've had very little sleep this week, AND the fact that I had to miss a United match to be there tonight, I think my foul mood is excusable! And don't get me started on the people near me who seemed unable to sing quieter than mf...

Anyway, I wasn't going to post because I had nothing to say other than to whinge, but a couple of people told me they were disappointed that I keep not blogging till the weekend, so I thought I'd make the effort and at least share a couple of links! Firstly, I'd like to point out that my online choir schedule (link deliberately not given; email me if you don't have it) is still online, as it has been for years, and it does include football fixtures, which I don't think the official one does. (I have offered to supply the info, but haven't been taken up on this.)

(In case non-choir people are wondering why on earth the football fixtures need to be on a choir schedule, it's because of the traffic - if United are at home, people have to allow more time for their journey.)

Only two more things. If you're interested in the Mike Golding/Alex Thomson sailing drama that I mentioned last time, you might like this blog post written by Mike Golding shortly after everything happened. (Mike and Alex are still making their way - slowly, in a badly handicapped boat - to Cape Town.)

And finally - on the day of our last carol concert, it seems there'll be a very large pillow fight in Albert Square that afternoon :p

O holy marmalade

Tonight I did, for the first time, something I've always wanted to do :-) But before I tell you about it, let me get everything else out of the way.

Wednesday's rehearsal produced no Jamieisms, as there was no Jamie. (I don't know why, because I was having vocal coaching when the announcement was made.) It was David instead (which meant we had the lovely Jonathan on the piano - always a pleasure! And he was most amused at our gibbon impression...) and we did almost all of the Mozart C minor Mass. We're not performing it till February, but because it's a big sing and many people haven't done it before, Jamie wanted to start it early so it has time to sink in. I was disappointed that we didn't do my two favourite movements - Qui Tollis and Sanctus (I like them because of the antiphonal effect of the double chorus) - but no doubt we'll get to them soon enough. Also, I couldn't help thinking that a lot of the ladies will end up having to relearn the music we did on Wednesday, because I would put money on Jamie wanting to replace the SSA divisions with the high/middle/low parts we used for Ravel etc. And no, I don't know whether he plans to or not - it just seems to me to make sense.

Other stuff, in no particular order (and mostly nothing to do with choir!): The People's Chorus thing is being released on DVD on 11th December (just after it's on TV).

There's an ice rink in Piccadilly Gardens at the moment. I'm going skating with my family on the afternoon of Messiah day - anyone want to join us (at 3.15)? It'd be amusing if half the choir turned up for the gig with broken legs :p If you want to skate, on that or any other day, you can book online.

I was amused by this news story - Coventry City were playing QPR today, but their coach got stuck in traffic in London, so they abandoned it and all went on the tube! And the best part is that only one of them knew how to get to where they wanted to go, and he didn't even get picked to play :p

I can't understand, though, why a minor thing like that (funny as it is) is in the news, yet the recent huge stories from the world of sailing haven't hit the headlines at all. Last week was the news that Tony Bullimore, who'd been missing for ELEVEN DAYS, had been found safe and well. This would be newsworthy enough even without the fact that he's been missing before. And then there's been HIGH DRAMA in the Velux 5 Oceans Race (formerly the Around Alone race). It has been mentioned on the BBC site, but not unless you happened to look at their sailing page... Some of you might remember that in the Vendee Globe race in 1997 (that's the race that Ellen Macarthur almost won in 2001) not only did Tony Bullimore get rescued when assumed dead (as mentioned above), but Pete Goss became a hero by turning back to rescue a fellow competitor who'd capsized in horrendous weather, at huge risk to himself (the weather was so bad that no-one else could get there in time). Well, a similar thing has happened this week, but I've not seen it on the news at all. Alex Thomson, one of the favourites to win the race, had a disaster when his boat suffered an extreme structural failure and capsized. And Mike Golding, another of our top British sailors, went back to rescue him. The rescue turned out to be extremely difficult and dangerous, but Golding managed it. But now he's had trouble of his own (and that's after his boat was hit by a giant squid a few weeks ago!)... Let's hope he manages to fix it and get back in the race.

Anyway, I've been writing for ages and haven't yet got to tonight's event! It was the Mozart Requiem gig at Bury Parish Church, in which (thanks to the generosity of Dr Liz) I was singing the alto solo. That's the thing I've always wanted to do - sing a proper solo in a proper concert. (Yes, I've sung many things in the past that could be probably described as that, but you know what I mean.) And tonight I did! It was very exciting. I'm pleased it was this piece that I managed to get for my debut, because I know it really, really well (although not so much the solo bits), so I didn't have to spend any time learning the notes. I did have a couple of lessons - and practised quite a lot - in order to get the breathing and tone quality better, because those two things are not my best points! (To clarify - I have singing lessons regularly anyway, but I had two lessons in which we concentrated specifically on the Mozart.)

It was a scratch performance. To the uninitiated, that means it was performed by a group of people who only met for the first time on the day; there's no prior rehearsal. Needless to say, scratch performances are often not very good, but in this case the choir was surprisingly impressive - you'd never guess it was a scratch choir. (It did include two Hallé altos apart from me - Chris Hughes and Margaret Dickinson were there. Lovely to see Margaret, it's been a while!) There was no orchestra, but the accompaniment was played by Ronnie Frost on the organ, so it was pretty good. But my reason for mentioning that it was a scratch performance is that because of this, the conductor (Nick Castell, who was excellent) asked the soloists to sing in all the choruses as well. Advantages of this: 1. It's one of my favourite pieces, so I'd probably have had to try really hard not to sing it all; 2. It meant that I had already sung properly, in front of the audience, before having to sing on my own, which was much less nervewracking; 3. It meant I got a decent warmup (there was nowhere to do that before the concert). Disadvantages of this: 1. I got a bit carried away and sang too enthusiastically in some bits, giving myself a bit of a sore throat in time for my solos; 2. I had to stand up ALL THE WAY THROUGH. Stupidly, I hadn't registered that this would be the case, so I was wearing shoes with heels (low ones, that I wear at work all day, but still). I've been home for two hours now, and my feet are just starting to get their feeling back :p

I must admit, though, it was a really good feeling to remain standing when the whole choir around me sat down. (We were seated as a quartet in the middle of the choir, rather than at the front - there wasn't room for a soloists' row.) I like feeling special :-) So special, in fact, that the two tiny choristers on the front row kept turning round and staring at me (and the other soloists). This was really disconcerting, especially as they did it most often at the points where I was most nervous, i.e. right at the start of the first phrase I sang in each bit. Maggie, bless her, had warned me about all sorts of things related to being a soloist, most of which hadn't occurred to me - but she never mentioned the offputting antics of small children!

Anyway, everything went pretty well. So well, in fact, that the rehearsal finished an hour and a half early, and I don't think anything went wrong in the performance at all. My bit wasn't perfect by any means - the breathing wasn't great (although I can cover that up fairly well), and a couple of high notes were a bit croaky. But on the whole it was OK, and there wasn't anything I did that I was horribly embarrassed about, so I'm encouraged! It might be years before anyone asks me to be a soloist again, but at the moment I'm in a pretty good mood :-)

(Oh, and the title of this post? That's what the Manchester University choir apparently sings for Quam Olim Abrahe :p)

"Like a lovely wheel that potters use... I've forgotten what it's called..."

Quite a few good Jamieisms this week (sorry for the delay in reporting them) - the one in the title was the most amusing, because he really didn't remember the phrase "potter's wheel"! We did the whole of Messiah - well, not every single note, but all of them were at least referred to in passing. Other quotes:

"If the audience goes away saying 'that was jolly nice, wasn't it?' I shall die."

"And suddenly we've got this 3 bar phrase that's like a little island off the coast of Norway."

"We have winners, and they are called tenors!" (this referred to their singing of the word 'astray' in 'All We Like Sheep')

"Since boy man... Betty..." (you probably had to be there!)

"Altos, you should do as you please. (no change there...)" (this referred to the dynamic for 'the glory of the Lord' at the end of 'O Thou That Tellest')

---

So, did anyone watch How Music Works last night? I quite liked it - not as much as Big Bangs, but it was OK. I was slightly put off because I spotted an error early on, and that always distracts me! They played clips of 5 songs and asked what the melodies had in common. Well, I spotted that the first one was pentatonic, and the next three examples confirmed my guess that this was the connection. But then the last example was Sailing, which doesn't fit! The pentatonic scale in C major consists of only the notes C, D, E, G and A. "Sailing" (if sung in C major) includes an F! Look: G A C C... E G A A... A G G F... F E E.

Yes, I know I'm sad :-)

Anyway, some random links to finish. Here's a thing about another reality TV show featuring a choir - sounds excruciating! Here's yet another thing about girls singing in cathedral choirs. You might like this video of a Finnish choir listing things they hate about life (I found it entertaining but a bit too long - and thanks to all the people who have sent it to me, but I'd already seen it!)

The photo at the top shows some of the new Christmas lights in Albert Square - I really like the toys! Here's a slightly clearer version of the same lights:



And here's a rather blurry one that has the Manchester Oasis thingy and the pretty trees and the Bridgewater Hall in the background (wish I had a steadier hand!)



And, finally, I haven't given you any mp3s for a while, so here are a couple. The Joyce Grenfell one is not her best, but may amuse some of you (it's about ladies who sing in choral societies). And the Bulgarian one is one that someone asked me about recently - I said I'd never heard of it, but when I looked it up I realised I had. It's from this album, which I must get a copy of at some point - it sounds intriguing.

Joyful Noise (Joyce Grenfell) (5.8 MB)

Polegnala e Toudora (The Bulgarian Voices) (3.9 MB)

"Some of you have gone too far, and you sound like Jimi Hendrix."

I'm not entirely sure whether he meant Jimi Hendrix's guitar-playing or his singing, but whichever it was, Jamie addressed this comment to the altos during "Lift up your heads" on Wednesday. (For some reason that chorus was cut last year - I'd totally forgotten, but it says so in my score so it must be true!) He also said to the tenors, on the next page, "Bounce your Sunday lunch on top of it." What a delightful mental image :p

There was also something or other about "the whale and the nightingale" which caused the biggest laugh of the night, but annoyingly I couldn't hear exactly what was said because a couple of basses near me were talking (about the music, to be fair, but still). Did anyone catch it?

Other than "Lift up your heads", we also did "Let all the angels" and "The Lord gave the word" (which featured some run practice to the words "scooby dooby doo and scrappy doo" - much easier than the actual words!) I think that means we've now done the whole of Messiah at least once. No time for anything else on Wednesday though (no carols, and still no Mozart) because most of the night was taken up with the AGM.

No dramatic scenes at the AGM, although it did overrun by half an hour, mainly because Jamie talked for ages in his bit. What he had to say was all interesting stuff though, including some very exciting plans for the future which, as usual, he can't give us any details about other than the date! It was my last night as alto rep too, and (much more significantly) Chris Holroyd's last night as chairman. He is a great guy and has put in an unbellievable amount of work for the choir (a lot more than most non-committee members probably realise) over the past few years - quite how he's managed to do that while being a headteacher is beyond me!

I must admit I was slightly taken aback at the news of the new choir website, because that was the first I'd heard of it. I felt a little awkward having to admit this to the many people who came to ask me about it at the break, presuming that I'd had some involvement in it, and they all seemed as surprised as I was at this! It's unfortunate that I was unable to attend the last two committee meetings, at which this was apparently discussed, but as it wasn't mentioned in the minutes, I didn't know I'd missed it so didn't ask anyone! Maybe they thought that if I was too busy to attend the meetings then I'd also be too busy to talk to anyone about my experience of running choir-related websites? Or maybe they thought that since my original choir website is so low-tech and rudimentary (which is true; I'd be the first to admit that) that I wouldn't know anything about putting together a more modern-looking one? Or maybe it just never occurred to them to ask me?

Despite leaving the committee on Wednesday, I did go to one last meeting, on Thursday. This was at the invitation of David, so I could pass on any final bits of alto feedback I'd been given recently. (I didn't stay for the whole meeting though; I left after I'd said my bit.) I was glad of this opportunity, particularly since I'd missed the last two meetings, because I have had a lot of feedback in the last month or two. Most (but not all) of it has been altos who are (like me) sick to the back teeth of being unable to hear what Jamie says because of other altos talking. But my feelings on this matter are well-known (which is maybe why people have come to complain to me about this more than about all other matters combined) so I won't go on about it again right now.

When I was in town for the meeting, I happened to go through Piccadilly Gardens and see the Christmas lights in the trees (picture at top of post). Aren't they lovely? I was quite enchanted. And did you know that Manchester is having a greener Christmas this year? I approve of this. (Oh, and on a similar subject, you know that strange alternative energy thing that was in the middle of Albert Square and has now moved to the front of G-Mex? It seems it's called the Manchester Oasis.)

Another couple of links to finish: firstly, there's a new series starting on Channel 4 next Saturday which sounds quite fun - it's presented by Howard Goodall and is called How Music Works. Not that I'm suggesting that any choir members will need that level of basic music education, but these things are often good for shedding new light on a subject. In particular, his Big Bangs series was excellent - and if you haven't read the accompanying book, I thoroughly recommend it.

And finally - remember the Manchester Passion? Well, it seems that for Christmas 2007 it will get a sequel - the Liverpool Nativity! Get your predictions in now for which songs they'll use...

"Gentlemen, you were rampant!"

This was Jamie telling the men what he thought of their Schoenberg gig. (Here's the Times review and the MEN review - sounds as if they were pretty good, although the MEN, typically, doesn't actually mention them!)

While I'm (almost) on the subject, there's a new Guardian review of our CD (which doesn't really say anything about our bit other than to mention that it is unexpected), and of course last night our Ravel gig (the one with the grunting where we didn't stand up... that sounds quite wrong if you don't know what I'm talking about!) was on Radio 3. I couldn't hear any grunts - see if you can, it's on Listen Again for the next week.

Not much else to say. I'm having one of those weeks, although I think today is the worst day (at least I hope so!) I was up at 4 a.m. today in order to try to do the work I should have done last night but was too tired. (Even so, I didn't finish before I had to leave for work at 7.) Then I had a meeting after school (the second of three this week). I got home, sat down for an hour then had to go out again for a singing lesson. And on getting home after that, I sat down for half an hour before I had to go out to a quiz (I'm in a league, and it started up again tonight). And during the course of the quiz, Man Utd lost (I blame myself). Got home at 10.30 p.m. Still have work to do but am too tired to concentrate - so why am I blogging? Because (a) I felt guilty for not doing so since last week, and (b) I'm waiting for one of my cats to come in :-)

I was almost as tired as this last week - I wasn't going to go to choir, I decided I couldn't make it to Thursday if I didn't go to bed REALLY early on Wednesday. But then I remembered I had to go, because the previous week Alison had volunteered to take home 3 boxes of carol books and only realised days later that she couldn't go the week after. So I'd agreed to take them back. And of course by the time I got there, I'd got my second wind so I thought I may as well stay!

We did a fair bit of Messiah - mainly the middle section (resulting in me having He Trusted In God on the brain for the rest of the week), although I think we had another bash at the runs in For Unto Us, because on page 61 I have a new Jamieism...

Jamie, after several minutes of practising a tiny technical point: "Shall we just do that in situ?"
Choir: *shows no signs of enthusiasm for this plan*
Jamie: "Good, I'm glad you want to!"

We also whizzed through The Wassail Song and Sir Christemas, and this week's new carol (well, in a manner of speaking) was In Dulci Jubilo, which we are doing with the Youth Choir. I seem to have written on one page of it "Like dodgy-looking people at a bus shelter" ... only I can't remember why!

"Eyeline's to Jeremy."

"OK, guys, let's go for a take. Turnover. Roll playback, roll sound."
"Rolling."
"Rolling."
"Sound SPEED!"
"525 take 2."
"End on board B."
"Eyeline's to Jeremy."

---

We heard this many, many times yesterday (well, not the same scene or take each time, but YKWIM!) The only thing we heard more often was variations on "Could I ask the three people on the ends of those rows to move to the empty seats over there?" We were playing the Question Time audience, you see, but they had to keep moving us in order to (a) make the audience look three times as big, by overlaying different shots; (b) vary the background when we're not singing; (c) have us play different roles. I don't think I've ever moved seats so many times in the course of 12 hours. I'd estimate we all moved seats about 50 times. (Often several times in succession just for one particiular shot, because the director was being fussy.)

It was a fun day, although VERY long. We all arrived between 6.45 a.m. and 7.15 a.m., but it was at least 10 a.m. before we actually filmed anything. Before that, there was breakfast, and costume checks, and makeup queues, and RIDICULOUSLY lengthy makeup sessions (no idea why - when I've been on TV before, as a main guest (which hasn't happened for a while, but there have been several occasions!) they seem to have managed to make me look presentable in 10 minutes. So why it took 25 minutes when I was just an extra is beyond me. Oh well.

I won't go through every minute of the day, but we worked really hard - not much time to read my book. We'd expected to mime, but we ended up singing after all (without them recording the sound - that had already been done) because it's easier than miming. Definitely the highlight of the day was when we were supposed to sing to Cookie Bear, so someone went and got the costume and put it in place on stage so we had something to focus on (see picture above)... but then Jeremy (the musical director) was persuaded to put the costume on. You can't really tell from the picture here, but this was the funniest thing EVER. When he started conducting with the bear's arms, several of us were crying so hard with laughter that we were in danger of having to queue up for our makeup to be redone!



It turns out, by the way, that Jeremy is called Jeremy Holland-Smith, and I think I've worked out why he seems so familiar, even though (now I know his name) I'm pretty sure I've never worked with him before. It's because he really reminds me of a lovely guy I know called Ash Johnston, who was my sailing instructor for a while. In particular, both of them have a fantastic smile - did I mention that?

Anyway, we finished for the day a couple of minutes before 7 p.m. - several people were sure we would run over, but I was positive we wouldn't (for the same reason that the orchestra never do) and I was right :-) But we did eventually get to do some scenes with Jon Culshaw as David Dimbleby (see below). He kept bursting out laughing when he heard our lines, which was encouraging! I'm looking forward to seeing the whole thing when it's finished (hopefully I'll have got the tunes out of my head by then) but sadly that's not expected to be till Easter. Hope it's worth the wait :-)

"Sopranos, can you take a quaver out of your bitch in 300?"

When I arrived at the TV studio in Little Hulton (yes, really) this afternoon, I was ushered in through a different door to last night, and this led me through an empty studio that had Narnia in the corner. I was very impressed. You can't really tell from the photo, but all the Christmas trees (and there were a LOT) had snow on them. Very pretty. I couldn't quite work out why anyone was doing Narnia for TV when there's just been a successful film made of it, so I asked, and was told it was actually just for an Argos advert. How disappointing!

We finished the recording today, and there was a bonus - turns out TPTB were so impressed with us yesterday that they want us in another of the operas, so we sight-read (and then recorded) two bits for The Apprentice. One was called "Veni Vidi Gucci" and the other included the line "speccy four-eyed slag, rancid skanky bitch was her nickname at school". Hence the title of this post :-) This section had the altos singing the tune and the sops doing a descant - but the tune started on a top G and went back up there several times. And that's not as bad as the end of Question Time, which had us going up to a top Bb. Ouch. (I apologise to Sheena and the other people who had the misfortune to be sitting in front of me when I tried to do this!)

(The picture below is my view of the conductor. (Did I mention how lovely he is? In particular, he has an amazing smile. I very much enjoyed staring at him!) That's Sheena on the right. (And Tessa and Fanny in front of her.) I don't know the name of the lady on her left, but she shared my delight at today's most significant football result. Go Rooney! (My football results service was very popular today, although not everyone wanted to know how great United were - I was asked about Everton, Liverpool and even Chester.)



Another Jeremyism that amused me was: "A note from Richard, cos I think he's had too many KitKats - more Cookie fanaticism!" (Cookie Bear is a major character in the opera. It was supposed to be Nookie Bear, but apparently Roger deCoursey's people wouldn't allow this!)

I should stop writing, because I need to be at the studio for 7 a.m. and I still have a ton of work to do tonight. (Can you tell I'm procrastinating?) But one final thing: there was quite a bit of enthusiastic discussion, during the tea break today, about Green Wing (also about the Archers, but I don't listen to that so I wasn't interested!) So I thought it was worth pointing people towards James Henry's blog. James is one of the writers of Green Wing, and his blog is one of the best there is. It's been at the top of the list in my sidebar for quite a while, but it's possible that people don't realise who writes it. (Also, he's commented here a couple of times, so clearly he is a man with excellent taste!) There have been several occasions when a post of his has had me literally crying with laughter. A few selections to see if you share my sense of humour: James Henry on fruit, swimming, ninja attack scenes in non-ninja films, restaurant menus, and hotel laundry. Enjoy :-)

"Is it too cheesy, Richard?"

I've kind of broken the first rule of blogging in the past couple of months. Well, there isn't a universally-agreed "first rule of blogging" - try googling that phrase! - but the one that I think of as the first rule is "blog regularly, if you expect people to keep reading". And I feel a bit guilty that I haven't done that. I'm having trouble adjusting to the time demands of my new job (mainly having to leave home at 7 a.m.!) This week has been half term, so you'd think I'd have managed to post on Wednesday night after choir, but I seem to have spent the whole week either asleep or about to fall asleep. I have managed to get some other stuff done too, but nowhere near enough! Still, 2 days left...

Sadly those 2 days aren't free, because I foolishly volunteered for the Question Time Opera project. I keep vowing to myself that I won't commit myself to any more extra things... and then something new and exciting-sounding turns up, and I find myself signing up for it without checking how much time I'm committing to! Oh well. The opera is fun - first session was tonight (see picture above), and I'm glad I signed up.

(For those who don't know, the BBC has commissioned 5 half-hour comic operas from Richard Thomas, who wrote Jerry Springer: The Opera. They are mostly based on TV shows: The Apprentice; Wife Swap; a Monty Pythonesque one; Panorama; and Question Time. The Panorama one is called "Drinking in Nottingham" and ends with a "flood of vomit" and everyone turning into zombies. The Question Time one stars Jon Culshaw as David Dimbleby.)

Tonight we recorded half of the choir bits; the other half will be done tomorrow afternoon, and on Sunday we spend the whole day filming (miming, rather than singing). (The call is for 6.45 a.m.!) There are quite a few Hallé singers involved - no men, because of course tonight clashed with their Schoenberg gig, but tonight we had Tessa, Fliss, Wendy and I representing the altos, and Jackie, Sheena, Zoe, Gen and of course Fanny (who got us all involved in the first place) among the sops. There was a lovely young man called Jeremy running the session - he looks really familiar, but I can't think where I know him from (and I didn't catch his surname). He did a couple of amusing tongue-twister warmups - "Yellow baby buggy bumpers" and "This wrist watch is a Swiss wrist watch" were more than my tongue could cope with!

Anyway, more (no doubt) on the opera after the next sessions, but I just want to report here that my favourite line so far is: "... but this anti-poverty bill will not work, because it is not OUR anti-poverty bill." "What would be different about YOUR anti-poverty bill?" "It would be written in a different font, and would have more words underlined." Although, a close second would be: "We are clapping a bear made out of felt, and a man whose lips are moving slightly."

(Don't expect to see this on TV any time soon, btw - they're not recording the orchestra till January.)

Hmm, just realised I haven't said anything about this week's Hallé rehearsal. I seem to have not written down any Jamieisms, although I do recall being amused a lot of the time. While looking, though, I found what I wrote down last week, which was that Jamie was told off for tutting at the age of 10, and he says this was the most traumatic event of his entire life! Bless! Anyway, we did bits of Messiah, and a couple of carols (The Wassail Song and Sir Christemas - I love that one!). We spent quite a bit of time, again, practising the Messiah runs - Gill and I were thrilled to be able to actually sing most of them in one breath. Jamie's method makes them all seem much easier - clever, that :-)

Most exciting news from Wednesday, though, which I still can't quite believe, is that I got a text from Dr Liz (who was at home being poorly) asking if I could take her place to sing alto solo in a scratch performance of Mozart's Requiem next month! She has had to drop out because it's too close to her exams. I'm very, very excited about this. And scared!

We're on the radio!

Sorry not to have warned you of this, if you'd forgotten, but we're on Radio 3 RIGHT NOW. (If you're reading this too late, catch it on Listen Again later.)

Sorry also for the delay in posting. I didn't have time to write till yesterday, and then Blogger was down... still, it all seems to be working now!

I'm sure I remember writing some Jamieisms in my Messiah score, but I just looked through it and can't find anything (although it's hard to find ANYTHING in there, there's so much scribbling). Never mind. Wednesday's rehearsal was fun, though. I'd expected it to be really boring - I like Messiah, but not the rehearsing of it. But Jamie's brainwave, to make us rediscover it, was to get us to all swap parts, so that the sops and tenors sang each other's parts (at a suitable octave) and so did the altos and basses. This was hugely entertaining, and I'm only sorry we didn't do it all the way through! We did sing through quite a few movements, though, and we also spent some time learning (again, but it's always useful) how to do the runs properly. Oh, and we all discovered our hangman drawing from last year's "His Yoke Is Easy" :p

(Ouch, just listening to the Kodaly performance... the sops and tenors were miles behind the beat on their first entry!)

Jamie also had some serious words to say on the subject of taking preparation seriously, particularly before piano rehearsals. I've already stated my feelings about the piano rehearsal, so it won't surprise you to know that I agree with everything he said. I can understand, though, how some people were upset that he was being so negative after such a successful concert, but (a) maybe they were so shocked that they didn't notice that he DID say it was good, and (b) I think the point is - if it was that good when some people weren't as prepared as they might have been, how great MIGHT it have been?

Anyway, a few links to finish. Here's a great review of last week's concert. Here's a great review of our CD. Here's an interesting site I found the other day while I was looking for something else - it tells you how to pronounce stuff in just about any language, specifically classical musicians' names and titles of works. [EDIT: For all the people searching for "how to pronounce Kodaly" that end up here, this site tells you - specifically, on this page.] And here's the home page for next year's Manchester International Festival - tickets for members go on sale tomorrow for the first few events.

And finally, I realised that when I posted about the gig, I haven't once mentioned my absolute favourite aspect, which was the bottom A from the basses on the last page of the Kodaly. My spine still tingles just thinking about it. And in a couple of minutes I'll hear it again :-)

"The Hallé Choir exploded into joyous, cosmic noise"

said The Guardian, of Saturday's gig. And the Manchester Evening News actually mentioned the choir! So it must have been good. He (Robert Beale, as usual) remembered the Oldham concert, but luckily not the memory aspect - I was worried they were going to draw comparisons. He didn't actually comment on Saturday's Beethoven specifically (other than by implication - he liked it!) but about the Kodaly he said: "This requires much of a choir: not merely learning to sing in Hungarian, but exploring a range of tone and dynamic, from the sweetest mellow concord to six-part writing at full pelt and with a top soprano line consistently high in their range. The Hallé ladies are a mainly youthful gang these days, and they achieved this with splendid tone and effective balance."

I can't decide whether to be pleased we're thought of as youthful or upset at the idea that I'm not one of the youthful ones :p

Talking of reviews, the Times doesn't seem to have made it to Manchester this weekend, making the mistake of staying in London to hear a really bad concert. Ouch! "The Cadogan Hall was sold out, with an audience who were either deaf or in denial." Hee!

Other news: we finally have a broadcast date for the People's Chorus. Saturday 9th December. \o/

Messiah tomorrow. Probably (sadly) no plans to do it from memory. But I live in hope :-)

Why can't men say "Der"?

Well, men obviously can say "der", but why is it that they have to be constantly reminded to say it as "deer", and they do it brilliantly, and then 5 minutes later they're back to "dair"? It's not even as if this instruction has ever changed - it's been the same very time we've EVER done anything in German. (I'm sure there are some men who pronounce it perfectly every time, but they are sadly overshadowed by those who don't.)

The picture at the top, by the way, is Suzanne, who's our new 1st alto whose first concert was last night. In recognition of this, Jamie gave his flowers to her. Sweet eh? (It was Dimitri's first concert as well, but Jamie only had one lot of flowers and he happened to pass Suzanne first!)

The concert (Kodaly and Beethoven, for those who aren't keeping track) went pretty well - the audience seemed to love it. I enjoyed it in the end - it's hard NOT to enjoy performing when spontaneous cheers erupt at the end - but I can't help suspecting how much better it would have been if we'd done the Beethoven from memory. Like many of the choir, the Oldham performance of 1999 is one of my best memories of all my time in the choir. I was SO proud to be in the choir that night. And last night just felt as if the choir had gone backwards - how come the 1999 choir could memorise something but the 2006 choir couldn't? The 2006 choir is SO much better vocally, but there are too many people in it whose general attitude seems to be "I'm not doing that, why should I?"

It's unfortunate, of course, that the Beethoven wasn't rehearsed in the summer as scheduled, so people didn't get as early a start as they needed. Although the Ravel and Kodaly obviously needed much more rehearsal than the Beethoven, I think it would have really helped people to have sung through it once (which would have taken 20 minutes). But it's also unfortunate that Jamie's message, via David Lawrence, that people who'd never sung the piece before and couldn't learn it in time could stand at the back with their copies, was apparently interpreted by most of the choir as "oh, so we don't have to do it from memory then", with the result that Jamie was confronted, at the PIANO REHEARSAL of a piece that we were due to sing from memory, with the sight of at least 80% of the choir with their copies out. (I didn't count how many people it was, but it looked like at least that many to me - does anyone disagree?) And David Lawrence must have told him that when we sang it from memory at the end of the previous rehearsal, there were a significant number of people (not 80%, but quite a few, and by no means just new people) who refused to even try, and stood there with their copies. Faced with all these circumstances, I can understand why Jamie reached the decision he did, although I still don't like it.

Sorry to whinge, but I'm just fed up with life in general at the moment, and although I get like this from time to time, choir is generally the one thing that cheers me up and takes my mind off other problems - so when choir is ADDING to my bad mood, I'm unimpressed. Also, I'd like to point out that although I'm sure lots of you are thinking "it's all very well for her to go on and on about memorising, she already knew it!", the reason I've appeared so confident is that I have put in a LOT of work on the Beethoven in the last few weeks. I did already know it from memory, it's true, but singing the tenor part of it in Todmorden a few months ago really unsettled my knowledge of the alto part, so I've had to put in extra effort to make sure I didn't sing the wrong part by mistake. And then there were changes, for example a couple of bits where the 2nd altos were asked to sing the tenor part, so they needed extra practice because I had the original version so firmly in my head. And then on Wednesday night there were a few details that Mark asked for, which I hadn't been doing, so I spent quite a bit of time on Thursday getting those bits into my head. Thursday was a horrible day anyway, as I've already said, but to get to choir and find that all that work had been wasted was just the last straw. And I don't blame Jamie - I blame the people who caused him to reach that decision because they just couldn't be bothered to try.

Anyway, the anonymous-commenters-who-hate-me will probably only hate me more for saying all that, but I don't really care. (Well, I do, but not enough to delete it.) But I do have some fun things to finish with - Jamieisms from yesterday!

There were a few alto-related ones, not all complimentary - for example, when he was talking about the end, and said "it's not over till....." and then looked at the altos! The cheek! There was also "There's no faffing around, altos!" (this referred to the first entry in the Beethoven, but I'm not sure now why it was so funny!) And of course "Altos, on that extraordinarily altoid moment..." (this referred to our solo "steht")

There was lots of amusement over Jamie's loo-chain-pulling analogy, which concerned the stressing of the crotchets rather than the minims in the main theme. (The sops demonstrated this an octave lower in order to save their voices, and most of them sang a D below middle C before realising what they'd done. Amazing!)

The one that amused me most, though, was: "Now. Your bathroom. Page 40." And that's because I still have no clue what the bathroom had to do with it! It was the start of the big fugue, though - can anyone explain the bathroom link? Unless it's just back to the loo-chain-pulling...

I must go do some work now. But I almost forgot - the M.E.N. gave our CD a 5-star review, although typically they didn't mention the choir. But Graham E says The Hills was played on Radio 3 this afternoon, so at least someone's paying attention!

Imagine yourselves as 3D beasts....

I'm not going to write much tonight, because I'm in SUCH a bad mood - mainly due to something that happened at work today, but not helped by tonight's rehearsal, which was good in parts but mostly just made me crosser. Mainly, as you can probably guess, I'm absolutely furious about the Beethoven-from-memory issue (not so much the decision itself, which is, I suppose, understandable, but the circumstances that led to it). I could write about that at length, and the only reason I don't plan to is because I just don't have the energy. So at least the anonymous-commenters-who-hate-me won't have too much to complain about.

Also, it's my birthday for another 13 minutes :-)

Just wanted to share a couple of things. Firstly, I had to go to Birmingham on Tuesday for an examining board meeting, and in so doing I got back too late to attend what was probably my last committee meeting. But the (Birmingham) meeting was held near Symphony Hall, so I got the chance to pop in and take a photo of one of my favourite paintings (above) which is just inside the front door.

On the train I read a fabulous book, The Lies of Locke Lamora. If you like fantasy, and roguish thieves, I recommend it very highly :-)

Have a listen to this version of Wuthering Heights. I like it a LOT. It's from a recent album by the Puppini Sisters. Great fun!

And finally, I just remembered, tonight, that I meant to dig out my books and write about unusual stuff in Beethoven 9. Well, I've got the books, and I'll write that post tomorrow. Maybe. But only if it's better than today!

Did you miss me?

Sorry to have been AWOL for a while. I've been struggling to fit sufficient work and sleep into my life, and this wasn't helped by being in Wales last weekend for Rachel's wedding (of which more in a moment). I've been playing catch-up ever since, but tonight was thankfully free, so I thought I'd write a bit before falling asleep.

Not much directly choir-related stuff to write, actually. No Jamieisms, because there's been no Jamie - he's in Mexico with his chamber choir, so we've had David Lawrence for the past two weeks. He's done a good job, of which the highlight was undoubtedly on Wednesday when he kept saying the altos were the best. Clearly a very wise man :-) We did actually sing the whole of both the Kodaly and the Beethoven on Wednesday night, the latter entirely from memory. Well, when I say "entirely"... there was a significant minority who refused to even try it, including quite a few people who have been in the choir for many years and certainly sung the work before. I've heard several of these, over the past few months, complaining that they are much too busy to learn things from memory, and anyway they find it really difficult. Well... I have to admit that I don't find it that hard to learn things, but it DOES take me time, and I'm not not busy, IYSWIM. I have a strong suspicion that if some of these people actually tried to do it the way I do, they would find it much easier and quicker - I think some of them have developed a mental block and convinced themselves they will never be able to do it.

My method? Well, it has two main aspects. Both are based on the theory that the only way to learn to sing something from memory IS TO SING IT FROM MEMORY. (I said this to Graham Worden on Wednesday, and he thought it sounded like a Zen koan!) So, what you do is to take EVERY POSSIBLE OPPORTUNITY to try singing the work (all or part of it) from memory. That means you sing along to it in the car on every journey you make, until you know it. But if you know you're not confident enough of the notes to stick to the part with no other singers round you, rely more heavily on the second part of the method, which is to SING FROM MEMORY IN REHEARSALS. Do this even before you know the work well. Just try a line at a time. You'll have the support of people round you, and you can glance down at your score after the line to check what you got right and what you didn't. You'll find that you already know more than you think you do. But I can't imagine how people can ever learn anything without trying this way, yet there were loads of very experienced choir members on Wednesday still looking at their scores throughout. Amazing.

Anyway, Rachel's wedding! This was absolutely fantastic. The picture at the top of this post has Rachel and Laurie just after they'd become Mr & Mrs Cooper, outside Llandudno Town Hall, where the wedding took place last Saturday. Rachel's holding Riley, who's now 13 months old and insisted on being held by his mum all day (her arms were really aching by the evening!) The ceremony started with Riley being held by Laurie's mum, but he made a fuss as soon as he realised he couldn't see his mum, so Laurie's mum moved till he could... still not enough, so in the end Rachel had to take him and hold him through the whole ceremony (she got a big round of applause for doing so!)

The day was gloriously sunny (well, it did rain later, but only when the reception was well under way) and the ceremony was lovely. There was an 11-piece choir consisting of the usual suspects, and we sang Sincerely as Rachel came in (that's an old 50s song that's Rachel's favourite - we sing it in Pleiades, and the version at the wedding was an a cappella version of it). At the end we sang an a cappella version of Love Is All Around as a surprise for Laurie, who loves Wet Wet Wet. I wasn't sure at the time that he'd noticed what we were singing, but Rachel said afterwards that he recognised it from the intro :-)

After the ceremony, we all went up to the top of the Great Orme, where the reception was being held in the ski lodge there. It was necessarily informal, because as part of the invitation there were tickets to use the ski lodge facilities - skiing lessons, tobogganing and sno-tubing. I didn't try skiing, because I tried once before and was REALLY bad at it. But I did the sno-tubing and tobogganing. I was a little disappointed that neither was on actual snow (as usual, I was too hot all day) but both were great fun. Meg and Tom and Bruce and Geoff and I spent half an hour on the sno-tube slope - I suspect we would have stayed longer if every descent hadn't been followed with dragging the tube back to the top of the hill. It was incredibly funny though - not sure why, but I can't remember the last time I laughed that much :-)

We queued up for the toboggan later in the afternoon - huuuuuuuuuge queue (an hour, I think we stood there, but we did have a good chat) and the eventual toboggan run didn't really live up to expectation - it was fun (and you do get to go round twice) but not quite worth an hour's queue! Oh well. In between the sno-tubing and tobogganing, there was a barbecue, and there'd been a huge array of nibbles when we first arrived, and later there was fondue (all three sorts). And cake, of course! So everyone was quite stuffed by the end of the day.

I'd done 5 CDs of background music, at Rachel's request, to be played during the day (the wedding was at noon, so it was a long time till the evening!) but the people behind the bar somehow managed to play one of them three times and some of the others not at all. Never mind. In the evening there were DJs, but I think my music was better :p (plus, as with most DJs, they played their music far too loudly and we couldn't understand a word of whatever they said in between!)

Can't think of much else to say about the wedding, other than that it was fabulous. But Rachel is hoping to come back to choir soon, so she can tell you about it herself :-)

Before I finish, though, a few more pictures!

This is the only one I managed to get with Rachel actually looking at the camera...


This is the Alpine Lodge on top of the Great Orme, where the reception took place.


This was the view from the lodge. After dark this was even prettier, with twinkly lights all round the bay. Lovely. (Note toboggan track in foreground.)


Laurie and Rachel cutting the cake - bit fiddly, because the wedding cake consisted of a huge array of yummy fairy cakes, but they managed!


And, on a non-wedding note, here are some links I've accumulated since I last posted....

Our English Landscapes CD is out at last.

A thing about people who clap too soon.

An ingenious attempt by the Hallé marketing department (presumably) to imply that next week's gig was arranged only after the Beethoven 9 prom was cancelled last month.

I just discovered there's another Beetham Tower! Looks like ours will be finished first though.

An article about the greatness of non-London orchestras. Mentions both Mark and Gianandrea.

Russell Watson has just had brain surgery, and it looks as if he's not out of the woods yet.

The website of next week's tenor soloist, Stefan Margita, wasn't working last time I looked, but it is now. Oddly enough it has no mention of our gig, unless I'm missing something... He's still listed on the Hallé website as taking part, but there's still plenty of time for Mark's curse to kick in!

Gianandrea got a promotion! And there was, eventually, a review of the Ravel gig, although needless to say it doesn't mention the choir. Oh, and talking of reviews, I was a bit disappointed in the MEN review of the Hallé's recent Mahler 5, which was dedicated to John MacMurray. I wasn't at the concert, but Naomi was telling me about it at the weekend and I'm really sorry I missed it. It sounds as if it might have been the best concert the Hallé have ever played. Did any of the rest of you go?

And finally, the two oddest blog searches recently: how do you pronounce the german in Brahms German Requiem, and full-bladder concert. The mind boggles!

"He's got a wedding ring." "He's got a RING."

The subject of this exchange (overheard in the ladies' dressing room) was, of course, the fabulous Gianandrea Noseda, who conducted our concert last night. No idea where he gets all his energy from - I've never seen a conductor move so much! And he did grunt very loudly throughout the performance - he did in the rehearsals, but we wondered whether or not he would in the performance. Amazingly my mum said it wasn't audible from where she was (in the circle). Oh, and she also said that she sat next to someone whose husband was in the choir, who informed her that the choir couldn't follow Gianandrea's beat and couldn't understand a word he said! Speak for yourself, mate :p

(It's true that his beat was very different to Mark's - I was particularly fascinated by the way he used his fingers - but I found it very clear.)

The gig went quite well, although there was a bit of a disaster with the stands and sits, which resulted in us being seated for the central a cappella section. I heard a few people say this made no difference, but I think it did (although not a HUGE difference). The fact that we had already deliberately sung several of the quieter sections seated meant that the audience probably didn't notice anything was amiss, but the whole choir knew, and I think that made a difference psychologically. As I've said before, I've always hated the system of the choir following one person for stands and sits, rather than everyone taking responsibility for it. At least this time the mistake resulted in us sitting for too long rather than standing too long - I'm really glad it was that way round, my feet have been killing me all week!

I missed Wednesday's rehearsal because I was too exhausted to do anything other than sleep when I got home from work. Pathetic, I know, but I don't miss many choir things. But did I miss any good Jamieisms?

I need to go and do some work now (and possibly World of Warcraft - not had time for that all week) but first let me unload some links.

This page on h2g2 is a choral singer's guide to surviving concerts. Not much that's news to most of you, probably, but interesting nonetheless. (If you have time, do look round other parts of h2g2 - it's fascinating!)

This is a classical music quiz that was featured in the Guardian the other day. I only got about half of them right - see if you do any better!

A Scottish choir has found a novel way to get new singers - they're even making a charge for it! I'll be fascinated to see if it works. (You may need to register to read that story, but it's free.)

Most popular search leading people to this blog is still Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink song (there are more requests for that than for everything else combined), but other recent searches that have amused me include: tips conductors choir altos high notes; learn alto part of amen; and singing instructions to sing like Axl Rose :p

And finally, in case you, like me, have always meant to take a picture of the Mark Elder painting that's backstage in the Bridgewater Hall, here it is (I saw Graham taking one yesterday and that reminded me). (Oh, and I almost forgot to say - the picure at the top of this post is one I took last night while walking back to the Bridgewater Hall from Felicini, which is that relatively new restaurant opposite the Palace Theatre. Alison and I had a fabulous meal there last night - I can thoroughly recommend it. They have an outdoor terrace at the back, where you can sit by the canal. Trust me, that's much nicer than it sounds!)

Every time we say goodbye

This was my favourite moment of Thursday night's ladies' sectional, although the whole of it was great fun (the sectionals usually are!) It was when Jamie was pointing out the change from major to minor just before the "Ihr stürzt nieder" bit in Beethoven 9. This reminded him of the song, so he played it on the piano and we all sang along. Lovely :-)

There was also a slightly bizarre rambling Jamieism that started with the phrase "Who was it I was talking to in Singapore? Unruffled Ruffles..." and went on to describe a tablecloth being pulled out from underneath a pile of stuff including Maggie's teacup. It went on to include "Let's get physical!" and "It might not even occur to Mark to ask you to do tablecloths!" Sadly I can't actually remember what all this was trying to illustrate, nor did we ever find out who he was talking to in Singapore!

Other stuff I wrote down: Jamie's impression of a worm drinking rain (this was totally visual, but did amuse me at the time!) Also "Woo hoo! ... Can you write that in?" (there'd been a whole string of complex, very specific instructions to get the sound he wanted... you had to be there...) And finally, advising on how to pronounce "muss", "Moose! ... That's not an accusation."

Also there was news of two recordings - our English landscapes CD (that includes As torrents in summer) is due out very soon (possibly October), and discussions are taking place about the recording of our a cappella concert from earlier this year. At the very least we should be able to hear it ourselves eventually, and there's a possibility that it may get a wider release. Whee!

The day that the rains came down

It took me an hour and a quarter to get to work this morning. It's only 16 miles! Didn't help that I was still in a bad mood from last night, and a couple of annoying things happened during the morning, so by lunchtime I was totally fed up. However, things improved after that, and hopefully tonight's ladies' sectional will be so good that I'll be cheerful tomorrow. (I probably will be anyway, in the knowledge that tomorrow night I don't have to go out again once I get home from work, and I can sleep as long as I like!)

Thanks to all those who left comments and sent supportive emails after my last post. They were very much appreciated. I'm relieved to know I'm not the only alto who disagrees with what was said last night! Anyway, I'm off out in a minute, but I just thought I'd post to say that the updated schedule is now online in the usual place, complete with football fixtures (which I'd previously forgotten to add). Also, a few links:

A fan page for the lovely Dmitri Hvorostovsky, the baritone from the Last NIght of the proms. Wasn't he fabulous? I do hope he comes to sing with us sometime :-)

Another story about Mark's speech (from the Guardian), followed by one from the Independent, followed by an article by someone who disagrees, followed by yesterday's news that all the lobbying seems to have worked.

An interesting story about how many classical music lovers will have tried cannabis, and how hip-hop fans have more sex... (Graham unearthed this one - thanks Graham!) EDIT: the same story reported in the Guardian.

And finally, confirmation that Jamie didn't invent the word Nairn (he used it as an example of pronunciation last night but couldn't remember what it was, so the choir was convinced he'd invented it. But it's a place in Scotland).

Not much of an alto rep

My term of office on the choir committee ends at the AGM, so after that I'll no longer be an alto rep. And tonight I decided that maybe that's just as well, as there are a significant number of altos with whom I disagree on an awful lot of things. Many of them are people I regard as friends, and I hate disagreeing with them, but I do. And I feel even worse when they approach me as an alto rep and ask me to pass on their views, because although of course I will report any views aired to me, I know that I'll also be saying that I disagree with them. (I do tell them that I disagree, of course, which probably doesn't fill them with much confidence in me, but I can't lie.)

Some issues on which I differ from many of the altos (I suspect they're in the minority, but I'm not 100% sure) (I *am* sure that they believe themselves to be in the majority, though):

1. I really enjoyed the Proms in the Park, both times we've done it. I'd be delighted to do it again. Yes, I was slightly irritated to arrive and then find I could have got there much later, but that's not the first time that's happened, and once I was there I enjoyed it, even while waiting.

2. I'm not particularly bothered that we didn't do the Bridgewater Hall 10th anniversary concert.

3. I support Jamie and trust him on artistic decisions. (Yes, of course there are occasions when he does something I don't like, or that I disagree with, but on the really important issues I think he generally gets it right.)

4. I *am* extremely bothered that if he has to put up with many more attacks like tonight's, we'll lose him.

5. I think Jessica is doing an excellent job.

6. I think it is totally unacceptable to talk while the conductor is talking, whether it's Jamie or Gianandrea or Mark.

But, maybe I am alone in these views. Despite that, I do feel a bit bad now that I didn't say anything at the time, but I decided that the people who were upset were SO upset that they wouldn't have wanted to hear what I had to say, and that a better plan would be to speak to Jamie afterwards. Which I did, and he was not at all happy.

(Sorry to non-choir people who won't know what went on at tonight's rehearsal, I don't plan to relive it all.)

One good thing came of tonight, though, which is that United won. And look who scored the first goal :-)

Anyway. Time to sleep.

P.S. Happy birthday to Justin Walker, should he ever read this!

The bride wore blue, Joel sang falsetto, and a deep fat fryer fault caused the race computers to fail

In case you're wondering, the three events of the title are unrelated, other than that they all took place yesterday and I witnessed all of them :-) (I was just trying to work out why I'm so tired, given that I had a good long lie-in today, but yesterday was so busy - I didn't get home till 3 a.m. after having been on the go since just after noon - that I guess just one night's sleep wasn't enough to recover!)

The day started with me having to dash to my mum's to hand over my United season ticket to my brother, so he could go and watch the Tottenham game in my place. He'll also be using my ticket on Wednesday to see United play Celtic in the Champions' League. (Hmm, that reminds me, I haven't told Jessica about football fixtures that clash with choir, although in my defence she hasn't asked... Must do that soon. In the meantime, you may like to note that United are at home on Wednesday night!) I'm particularly annoyed about having to miss the Celtic game, because of course it means I'll miss Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink! Oh well. (Incidentally, I've noticed a few people searching for the Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink mp3 - I wonder if this is what they're looking for?)

Then it was off to Holy Trinity Platt Lane for the choir rehearsal for Meg and Tom's wedding, followed by the wedding itself. This was just lovely. Some reasons why, in no particular order: Meg wore a lovely blue outfit made from some material she'd bought in India a few years ago. They had a London bus (with a ribbon on it!) that took them away from the church afterwards. They had both memorized their vows - very brave, and impressive! There were more than 40 people in the choir that sang during the service, and it sounded fabulous (though I do so say myself). The congregation was also full of singers (I presume the reason they didn't invite everyone to sing in the choir was lack of space - it was rather cramped, and those of us who were late for the rehearsal had to sit on the floor at the back as it was). The hymns and readings were all lovely. The choir solo bits went very well - As Torrents in Summer is of course well known to most of us, but Patrick Hadley's My Beloved Spake (which was the centrepiece of the service) was new to me, and it's gorgeous. And we also did Rutter's The Lord Bless You and Keep You, which several people had thought a bit too cheesy... yet those same people were taken aback to find that that was what moved them to tears! Oh, and the organist was our own Jonathan, who was unexpectedly free when they asked him. He wasn't very happy with the organ, but you'd never know it from his playing :-)







After the wedding there was cake and champagne, and then I set off for Heaton Park for the Proms. On arrival, I was about to try to get changed in the car (they'd told us to arrive in our choir outfits as there would be no changing facilities) when I realised that in the panic to get out of the house on time I'd left my choir frock at home. Argh. So I had to go back for it, but this wasn't a huge problem because we weren't singing till right at the end.

By the time I got back to the park, I was just in time to see Katie Melua start her set. (In this picture you may just be able to make out some of the Youth Choir hanging about right at the side of the stage - several of them were quite obsessive about her, and waited near her dressing room for ages in the hope of meeting her. Don't know whether or not they did.)



Eventually it was time for us to line up to go on. This was somewhat chaotic, because there weren't many Hallé Choir members there (loads were at Tom and Meg's evening reception, and many others just couldn't make it), but there was the whole of the Youth Choir, plus the Hallé Youth *Orchestra* (no idea if they test their singing when they audition them, but anyway). They started off with the main choir in a long row along the back, with the orchestra in two rows in front of us, and the youth choir at the front. But most of the boys in the youth choir and orchestra were taller than most of the Hallé Choir, so there had to be a bit of a reshuffle so we could all see (and be seen!) I ended up in the middle of the 2nd row, next to a trumpeter called Joel, who (as has been mentioned) planned to sing falsetto. He was aided and abetted in this by James, who I recognised (he's in the youth choir) but couldn't work out what was different about him, till I realised that last time I saw him he had a red nose :p

It was very late by the time we got on stage, but the crowd seemed delighted to see us. It was slightly frustrating to be able to hear Mark etc. from London but not see them (and we didn't hear his speech at all, because they turned the feed off at that point while Jamie and Heather Stott rehearsed the crowd). But we had great fun anyway. I don't think we were shown on TV at all, according to people I know who watched it (I sky-plussed it and am just watching the start of the concert as I write this), but never mind. We did get our name mentioned a lot, if only by Heather Stott, and that was the main reason for doing the gig in the first place.

(Oh, and there was a sound technician who was the spitting image of Jay from Jay and Silent Bob, but when I pointed this out to Joel he'd never heard of them. I suppose it is a bit of a cult thing... And before I leave the Proms, did you all remember to watch the prom with Andrew? Wasn't he good?)



Anyway, after the Prom I set off for Southport, to watch a bit of the 24 hour race on the Marine Lake. I love this event - last year I watched for the full 24 hours, and I would have done the same this year if I could. The team from my sailing club did really well last year, finishing 6th, but when I arrived this year (I was about to say "last night" but in fact it was after midnight when I got there) there was much grumbling. They'd started well - they were 1st after the first 2 laps, and still 3rd several hours later. But then there had been a power failure caused by a fault with a deep fat fryer, and this had caused the race computers to go haywire. Normally they publish results every half hour or so during the whole 24 hours (there is a handicap system, so it's not just a case of which boat crosses the line in which order on each lap, they do it on average lap times after the handicaps are taken into account) but the computers were down when I arrived, and no results were published before I left. Some of the Hollingworth Lake sailors were upset because just before the computers went down, the latest results had their boat at 17th, when they'd been 3rd half an hour earlier, and they were positive that this was a mistake, because no-one had passed them - they'd been watching! The final results are now online, so I presume they sorted out the power failure, but Hollingworth Lake appear to have finished in 13th place, which will disappoint them if it's accurate, and infuriate them if they believe it to be incorrect.

Anyway, I really must do some work now - I've been putting it off for hours - but before I do, some links to share:

A story about Kent Nagano's first concert with his new orchestra.

Some news about a Schola Cantorum CD (it's from before Jamie conducted them, but has only just been released).

And finally, there was a query: What national anthem starts on a minor 3rd? Well, the obvious one seems to me to be the USA one (The Star-Spangled Banner), which has a descending minor third between its first two notes (now you see how that search led to this blog!), but there may be others...

"In Russia, everybody has a dog."

Well, I know I said I'd post this last night, but I fell asleep, so here's a quick version before I go to work.

Wednesday night was such fun. It was the piano rehearsal for Daphnis and Chloe with Gianandrea Noseda. I'm told there was quite a bit of swooning from certain members of the alto section when he walked in... He was full of energy and talked VERY quickly, and I should imagine many people couldn't hear a lot of what he said, but luckily I was directly in line with him and got most of it. I'd love to write reams about everything he said, but I haven't time, so I'll just list the main quotes I wrote down that amused us:

"I have to conduct in 4, unfortunately, because it's written in 4, this bloody music!"

"No sex any more. I will behave well." (by this point he'd used sexual metaphors to illustrate just about every point he'd made. Needless to say this continued for the rest of the rehearsal...)

"Kill someone with your voice!"

"I got a leg injury from it!" (this was when he described a game that used to take place at his school (in Italy - a boys' school) when he was 16 or 17 - the game involved them all piling on top of each other with no warning...)

"Lions, they are not insane."

"David, you are a great orchestra."

"[sing it] like if we take drugs." (After he clarified this, Jamie said "Well, if it's a lack of control you need...." - cue mock shock!)

"In Russia everybody has a dog. I asked one of them why. The answer? 'Because we get drunk very often, and forget where we live. The dog shows us the way home!' And in this section the 5/4 bars are just the dog." (This was my favourite thing all night - not so much this quote, as the fact that it turns out that the new bass who started on Monday is Russian! I didn't hear his name when it was announced, because the applause for "we have a new bass!" was still going on. Anyway, he spoke up at the point when the Russian dog story was introduced, and he and Gianandrea conversed in Russian for several minutes, to everyone's delight.)

EDIT: It's been pointed out to me by several people that I haven't included the premature ejaculation analogy (this is how Gianandrea described how to do a big crescendo to ff followed by subito p). I suspect this is because I was laughing so much at the time that I forgot to write it down :p

---

Gianandrea left after we'd sung all of Daphnis, leaving everyone inspired. I love it when that happens - you'd think it might occur at every piano rehearsal, but it doesn't - generally only with Mark Elder, but we can now add Gianandrea to the inspirational list! Anyway, then we had time to do Beethoven 9 - at last! We spent half an hour on it - amazingly, Jamie finished early (some people near me were muttering that he finished late, but as usual they'd forgotten that piano rehearsals are scheduled to end at 9.30).

Nothing really to report on Beethoven, although it was great to sing it, especially as we sang loads of the solo bits just for fun. More work on it is promised next week. Before then, the Proms... we even practised a bit for that! Well, sort of - we ended the warmup by singing "Jerusalem". Always invigorating :-)

You'll have to wait till tonight, but...

... when I get home from work I will report some of Gianandrea Noseda's words concerning sex, death, cannibalism, drug-taking, alcoholism and Russian dogs.

(Last night we had a great time!)

"So much of that is so very nearly right!"

(Dapnhis and Chloe on Monday night, that is, at our first rehearsal since July. We don't normally start back on a Monday, but the piano rehearsal, when we meet Gianandrea Noseda for the first time, is tonight!) (I'm supposed to be asleep, but I couldn't get to sleep due to millions of thoughts spinning round in my head, so I thought I'd try to unload some of the non-work-related ones - might help!)

Bits of the Ravel were indeed very nearly right, although of course it didn't sound as good as it did in July. We did sing all of it (although we spent rather more time on the first bit than the rest) and I think it'll be good on the night of the gig, although how impressed Gianandrea will be when he first hears it is less certain. Hopefully he'll take circumstances into account...

Couple of good Jamieisms to welcome us back, of which the one that got the biggest laugh at the time was this:

Jamie (to tenors): Can you sing it like you've got 5 horns? And you can choose which way they go?
Rest of choir: *boggle*
(tenors sing their line again)
Jamie (defiantly, to rest of choir): Does that sound better?
Rest of choir: *nods*
Jamie: Well, there you are.

There was also: "We could do the whole of Daphnis and Chloe as a Laurel and Hardy film!" (the film in question involved them only having 3 drinks for 4 people, and from Jamie's description I suspect it is Men o'War) (no, I didn't know, I looked it up!)

Bit of a fun exercise involving sliding chords, too, but I suspect you had to be there :-)

Must try to sleep again. But first, some things to point out:

1. Make sure you watch tomorrow's Prom (Thu) because it's the RPO, which, last I heard, featured the fabulous Andrew Nicholson on flute.

2. You'll no doubt be aware that Sunday's Prom was cancelled due to a fire, but did you realise it started in the artists' bar? Not sure why that amuses me so much :p Some people were wondering when was the last time a Prom was cancelled - seems it was in 1980 as a result of the Musicians' Union strike. And although now I've been reminded about the strike, I remember it very clearly (I was at Chet's at the time and it affected lots of the staff), I am ashamed to admit that I'd totally forgotten it happened.

3. The BBC is to follow up its Beethoven and Bach weeks with Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky next year.

4. This blog is the top Google result for .............mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm;pp - what I can't work out is what the searcher actually had in mind!

"Who’s top of the table? It’s not a London band..."

I was about to go to sleep, till I checked my email and found a comment from the fabulous Wendy pointing me towards an article I'd missed (thanks Wendy): the league table of British orchestras. Guess who's top! This is as it should be :-)

Long but good day today. I went to Hebden Bridge with a load of friends (some of whom I hadn't met before, but many of whom were current and past choir members). This was for a joint "hen day" for Meg and Rachel, who both get married in the next few weeks. The plan was to go for a walk and then have lunch, but the rain was so INCREDIBLY heavy that we had lunch first - a very long lunch - in the hope that it would ease off a bit. Well, it did, and we walked up an incredibly steep hill to Heptonstall, and then spent quite a while examining tombstones in the parish church graveyard in an effort to find two graves: that of Sylvia Plath, and one that someone remembered seeing on a previous visit, which allegedly ended with the line "She was a bad wife". We didn't find either, but it's a fabulous place, even in the rain! I recommend it.

Oh, and I'm getting a load of visitors to this site from this page, which is in Russian and appears to be about the lovely Mikhail Petrenko. Can anyone translate the bit where it links here? (it's at the bottom of the page) I'm curious, and the Google translator can cope with many languages, but not Russian :p

(In case you're wondering, the Honda ad searches are finally dying down, to be replaced with an amazing number of searches for either the picture of Eddie Izzard or asking how to pronounce Jesu!)

Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink

Isn't that the best name ever? I just discovered this guy (yes, I know - now - that he's been around for years, I'm not very observant!) He's a Dutch footballer who signed for Celtic last week, and scored on his debut a few days later. What I love is that they use the long version of his name - I heard a bit of the commentary for that game, and that's what made me notice him. And look at his shirt! (EDIT: for those searching for the mp3 of his song, is this what you wanted?)

Yes, I know that's not in any way choir-related, I just wanted to point him out to you :p

(Oh, and while we're on the subject of totally unrelated stuff, have a look at this website, that sells proper sweets like they used to have when I was little!)

Well, actually, I could start my music-related stuff with some links, couldn't I? Firstly, if you're going to London in the near future, try Play. Doesn't that look fun? (If anyone's already tried it, I want a report, please!)

Next, I found this newsletter (from the American Choral Directors' Association) by accident. It takes a while to load, but when it does, you'll see that on page 2 there's a section called "Warming Up Your Altos". Scroll down to read it. I was amused by the idea of the "alpha alto" :p I could understand the advice better if I knew what Julia Child sounded like, though (I've heard the name, but know nothing else about her).

I'm still enjoying the Proms. I think my favourite one so far has to be the Sibelius 5 from last Friday, but that's partly because I love that piece so much. Mind you, I also love Mozart's Requiem, but I was a tiny bit disappointed in the performance because the soprano soloist's tuning seemed less than perfect in several places. Was that just me? (I was surprised, because she's actually one I've heard of before!) (Actually, while we're talking about people singing out of tune, what about Franz Ferdinand? At the Reading/Leeds Festival, that was on TV all weekend. Again, a powerful performance, but the singing was so out of tune! I couldn't believe the commentators didn't, well, comment. And again, a disappointment, because I really like Franz Ferdinand.)

Oh, and The Bells was OK, I guess (although not as good as ours!) I couldn't make out many of the words, although "o kak svonka" stood out for some reason... and no Mikhail! Good to hear the piece again though, I haven't listened to it since we sang it.

Anyway, it occurred to me that there may be some people in the choir who weren't around the last time we sang in the Last Night of the Proms (well, strictly, the Proms in the Park - incidentally, I note that that page still doesn't mention us, although they have added Katie Melua, who was added to the bill ages after we were... but the good news is that it implies that Sky digital viewers can, if they choose, watch just the Manchester prom, uncut!). So I thought they might like to know what happened :-)

It was in 2004, and involved the Hallé rather than the BBC Phil, and was in Cathedral Gardens rather than Heaton Park. The plans changed somewhat after they were first mooted, at least partly because the BBC issued so many tickets that there was no room for a stage to hold both the orchestra and the choir at the same time. So the plan was that the orchestra would play for most of the concert, and then they'd come off and the choir would replace them to lead the crowd in the patriotic stuff. Except for the Fantasia on British Sea Songs, which... well, when we discovered what the plan for THAT was, we decided we'd be amazed if it worked. It had 4 consecutive new folk song arrangements inserted into the middle of it, each of which was to be sung by a different choir. None of these choirs were to be in the same hall - or even the same CITY - as the orchestra which would be accompanying them (i.e. the BBC SO in London). The added bits were "Ar hyd y nos" (All through the night) from Swansea, "The Road to the Isles" from Glasgow, "Danny Boy" from Belfast and "The Rio Grande" from Manchester. (I couldn't work out at first why only Manchester wasn't singing a 'local' song, but later my question became why it was only Manchester that had an actual sea song. I never found out the answer to this.)

We sang through the Rio Grande a couple of times before the day, and it was a fun arrangement. But on the day, guess what! Things didn't go entirely according to plan. We were asked to be onstage from 12.30 to 1.30 pm on the day of the gig, the plan being that at some point during that time, Leonard Slatkin (famous American conductor) would make time during his rehearsal with the BBCSO at the RAH to rehearse The Rio Grande, which is the bit that we were singing live with them via satellite link. Well, at 1.25 the link finally went live. We heard him saying grumpily "why do they need to rehearse it? We sent a CD of us practising it!" (which was true, but live's never *quite* the same...) Then he said "OK. Rio Grande, from the top." Then they started playing the National Anthem, which confused us somewhat. *Then* they went into the Rio Grande, and all was well until about bar 10, when the link died. The choir starts singing in bar 13....

We stood around while various BBC people talked furiously on walkie talkies and headsets, but no more was forthcoming from the speakers. At 1.40 we were told that the orchestra in London had left the hall (as you know, orchestras *never* stay a minute past the scheduled end of rehearsal - their management won't let them as they all go on higher pay rates if they do) and we'd missed our one chance to rehearse with them. So we went to plan B, which was "busk it on the night - and if the link goes, just keep singing and hope we're in the same place as them if/when it comes back". That's live TV for you, folks!

Sad, though, that even the *BBC* couldn't get it right. You'd think they'd had enough practice. You'd think it would be straightforward, but I've been involved in many TV recordings/broadcasts over the years and I can't actually remember a single one where there wasn't some technological mishap! I suspect the problem is insufficient gaffer tape :p However, to be fair to them, it *did* work pretty well on the night. That's the bit they *do* seem to be good at.

(I believe that there were many other non-technical things that went wrong that day, but despite that I really enjoyed it. Sadly, I know that lots of the choir didn't, and people still talk about that gig as an example of one where EVERYTHING went wrong. I must've been lucky.)

EDIT: Updated schedule is now online at the usual location. Email me if you don't have the link.

Mikhail Petrenko fan club

Is there one? There should be! Remember this post about the fabulous young Russian bass soloist who was a last-minute stand-in for The Bells? Well, I watched Saturday's Prom (I've seen much more of the Proms this year than I usually do - the combination of Sky Plus and HDTV means they all get recorded automatically without me having to remember, and they look great!) and it ended with Shostakovich's 13th Symphony. I hadn't realised this involved any singing, given that we didn't sing it in our Shostakovich festival, and I thought we sang everything. But it turned out to involved a male-voice chorus and a bass soloist, and it was Mikhail! (He is obviously making a career of being a stand-in, because he wasn't the published soloist for this Prom, and he'd already been a stand-in for Prom 2.) He was as fabulous as I remembered, and the reviews were mostly great. Personally I wasn't at all impressed with the men in the choir, though - they appeared to be mumbling most of the time, although the sound was OK (not great, just OK). You know how men look when they're being forced to sing something they don't really know? In a foreign language? They looked like that. I was quite surprised when I realised that it was an actual Russian choir who could presumably speak Russian without even having to think about it!

I notice that The Bells is tonight's Prom, featuring the LPC, who sang it with us - let's see how they manage without us! Can't believe they didn't return the invitation! Let's also see if their bass soloist turns up... we may yet see Mikhail again :-)

Other news: orchestral musicians are still having problems with airline security, and sadly there seem to be a lot of stupid people who can't see why. Just read the comments on that article. Unbelievable.

And the football season is fully under way - I was at Old Trafford on Sunday and witnessed United's impressiveness at first hand. I have a season ticket for the first time ever, which I'm very excited about. I'd expected to miss a few matches due to choir, but in fact the first two matches I'll be missing will be due to weddings! The second home game of the season is on 9th September, when Meg and Tom are getting married (not to mention the Last Night of the Proms and the 24-Hour Race at West Lancashire Yacht Club!), and although I can go to the third one, the fourth is on 30th September, when Rachel and Laurie are getting married! Luckily I love weddings, so I don't mind too much having to miss football matches for them, especially when it's such lovely people :-)