"It's the glove compartment we're after."

"... It must be tidy. Dust-free. With a torch in it... that WORKS."

Jamie was on top form last night! I think this glove compartment quote was probably his best (it referred, if you're wondering, to the fact that many of the notes in the Poulenc are almost right, but that lots of them need tweaking). The one that made people laugh the most, though, was one that I didn't write down (mainly because he said it so fast), but it involved him imagining a conversation between the two sides of a bass's brain. (The gist was as follows... Left side: "That note was wrong!" Right side: "Yes, but we can LEARN from it!") YHTBT :-)

Also to the basses, we had "I love the fact that you disagree with one another. ... None of you are right." (Note to 1st basses: Regarding the phrase in question, if you had at any stage glanced at the alto line, you might have realised that we were singing the exact same notes as you. Might've helped!) And, to the whole choir (I forget why): "I don't want you to look like an ill-fed dog!" But my favourite Jamieism of the night didn't seem to amuse anyone else: "ATB, 2 bars before 8. Let's get some groovy harmonies on." (It was the total seriousness in which he said it that tickled me!)

We spent the whole rehearsal on the Poulenc, which is a really fun piece - I haven't done it before. I was slightly distracted by incoming (silent) texts about the United game in Rome (I'll be at the second leg, on Tuesday - should be exciting!) Thank you to those who asked how my throat was - it's still tickly, but not as bad as last week. This week it gets worse when I lie down, for some reason, which makes sleep difficult, but since I currently don't have to get up, I can cope! Thank you also to the many people who asked how it feels to be FREE! Well, it hasn't really sunk in yet - this week just feels like the first week of any school holiday, i.e. I'm catching up on all the housekeeping stuff that there's never time for in termtime, and I feel totally wiped out and am sleeping a lot. And, of course, playing lots of World of Warcraft. I haven't done much jobhunting yet (other than emailing various people to ask their advice, and scanning lots of relevant websites several times daily), but I have a bit of a breather because I still get paid till the end of April. I must step up my money-seeking efforts in the next few days though. I suspect the reality of the situation will finally sink in on 16th April, when everyone else goes back to school and I don't \o/

Anyway, no choir next week, and no Jamie the week after! (I presume he'll still be recovering from his St Endellion week.) I have various bits of non-choir singing planned in the meantime, but for now I thought I'd share a load of links with you. These have been building up for a while! So, in no particular order....

If you've ever wondered what that music from the Lloyds TSB advert is (you know, with the wordless soprano), the Boosey and Hawkes website has the answer.

I forgot to mention at the time, but there are a few photos from before the Ashton gig on the choir photo page. Not great, and not many, but they'll hopefully give a feel of the occasion to those who weren't there.

You may have seen recent news stories about the uproar in Japan caused by incorrect forecasts about when the cherry blossom will bloom. Here's the current official forecast, and while I'm at it I'd like to recommend that you all read Hokkaido Highway Blues, which is one of those books that you'd probably never consider reading unless someone gave you a copy, but it's absolutely fascinating. Plus, it sheds some light on the cherry blossom story! (I've loved cherry blossom trees ever since I was at school, because there were (and probably still are) a load of them in the grounds, on the side near the Cathedral. At least I think they were cherry blossom... they might have been apple blossom... I just spent half an hour trying to find an online photo of that bit of Chet's, but I failed. I did consider going upstairs to dig out my old photo albums, but that would mean standing up!)

Talking of the Cathedral, when Alison and I passed it last night, it was surrounded by dozens of police officers and police cars. "I wonder why. Perhaps the Queen is there?" I said, and then remembered that she was! Well, not at that moment (probably), but she was certainly there today.

Oh, and while searching for photos of the Chet's grounds, I found a Wikipedia page about the emo/goth/mosher gathering place behind Urbis!

Ever heard of a chord hat? No, me neither. But I was quite intrigued by the concept. Before you watch the video, decide what you think a chord hat ought to be, and see if you were right!

Look at this weird tower they're building in Singapore! If the Beetham Tower was like that, I'm not sure I'd dare walk near it :p

They're repeating the Manchester Passion tomorrow night (Good Friday) at 7 pm on BBC3, so if you didn't see it last year, now's your chance. And then go and vote for it in this Radio Times competition!

Have any of you ever played any of the SingStar games on the PS2? I don't own a PS2 myself, but my friend Lindsey does, and a while ago she introduced me to these games. They're a bit like Donkey Konga, but with mics instead of bongos... You have to sing along to songs, through mics connected to the PS2. But although you do get the lyrics onscreen (like in karaoke), you don't get any sheet music. Instead you get a very precise display of when the tune goes up or down, and how long the notes are, and the game analyses what you sing and determines how close you are to what it thinks is the "correct" version. I beat both Lindsey's young sons quite easily (mainly because several of the songs went lower than they could sing, so they lost loads of points on the pitch), but lost to Lindsey on almost every occasion, because I was singing the songs how I thought they should go, whereas she'd played the game before and knew that following the display was more vital. (Plus she's a fabulous singer!) In a couple of songs it turned out that the part I'd always thought of as the tune was actually considered to be a harmony part, so I lost LOTS of points for singing that part, because the game considered that to be "singing off pitch". Meh. Great fun, though!

I'd always thought the longest concert ever was that Messiaen thing we did a few years ago (or did it just FEEL like the longest?) but it seems not - a new record has been set - 182 hours! That's more than a week!

Especially for Meg - a stripe generator to play with :p

Graham E emailed me about this strange piece of music he heard on Classic FM last week. It turned out to have a strange story behind it. Intriguing. Has anyone heard the CD?

Lots of interesting stuff on this Nikon website about sizes of stuff. Wait for it to load (it can take a while, even with broadband) and then click on everything!

Still the usual searches coming in all the time, but I was amused that there was one for Russian gibbon recently, and then today someone was looking for second tenors are not geeks! This made me giggle, and also caused me to investigate what the person might ACTUALLY have been looking for... which led me to an amusing song! I found the answer here, but since for some reason the author of that blog seems to think it's a good idea to have grey text on a black background, I've pasted the text here. For maximum enjoyment, listen to the mp3 before (or while) reading the lyrics, it's funnier that way!

MANLY MEN'S CHORUS EXTRAVAGANZA, composed by Kurt Knecht. Recording is of the 2002 NY All-State Men's Chorus. (The first few pages of the score are online too.)

We are men and we like to sing
In big block chords and close harmony.
Our songs all sound the same,
And most of them are really lame;
But though we may not always inspire
At least we’re not a women’s choir.

First tenors have the highest voice,
for most of us it’s not by choice
Singing still at twenty-three
Like we missed our puberty,
When our pitch turns sour
We just sing a little louder
Tight underwear’s the key
To singing a high C.

Second tenors are not geeks
We’re just first tenors with poor techniques,
But should you love us any less
Just because we crack when we try to sing an F?
We don’t sing too high and we don’t sing too low
And we’re not as arrogant as the first tenors we know
We want you to love us like the rest
Of the “Pips” and “Garfunkels” who are second best.

Baritones are by far the sexiest.
Feast your ears upon our vocal studliness.
We will sing when we’re just forty-five
With vibratos five miles wide.
If God came down and took our brains away
Then they would sing “la donna mobile.”

We are tired of root progressions,
Walking bass lines, record sessions
Where all we sing is that stupid
“dip di dip dip dah”.
We try so hard with all our mights
To sing so low we shake the lights.
We wish we had voices like
James Earl Jones or Barry White,
But we’re just human, our throats are hurting
And our low singing sounds more like burping,
But we’re the basses we keep singing, ‘cause...

We are men and we like to sing
In big block chords and close harmony.
Our songs all sound the same,
Like bad rewrites of “There is nothing like a dame”
And though our repertoire consists
Of drinking songs and sailor songs
And barbershop quartets,
We thank God every day
From our head down to our toes
That we are not sopranos or altos.
Amen.
(Or tenors).

---

And finally, an mp3 I thought I'd posted ages ago, but it seems I haven't. It's Lux Aurumque by Eric Whitacre. If you haven't heard of it, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. It was only written a few years ago (in 2000, I think), and is hugely popular in the USA, although not that many people over here seem to know it. (It's the last track on this CD.) I'd love us to sing it sometime. (The first part of the score is online here.) The title means Light of Gold, and the music depicts (at least, I'm sure I read this somewhere) heaven at night. It's very lovely. Happy Easter!

"I'm the worm. You are the blackbird. Watch me!"

(This was Jamie's instructrion to the sops in The Music Makers just before Friday's gig. It was preceded by him telling them that they should be "Like a very excited blackbird who hasn't fed for two days and has just seen a worm.")

I haven't sung as much as I would have liked to, in the last week. I've had a sore throat and a tickly cough which has been driving me up the wall. I actually had it before the Ashton gig, and I think it would probably have been sensible, in hindsight, not to sing in that, but I thought I could just about manage. It would probably also have helped if I'd cancelled my singing lesson on Tuesday, and taken some time off work so I wouldn't have to use my voice. But it was my last ever week as a teacher, so I had a huge number of loose ends to tie up. And now I'm free! Just need to work out where to get money from :p

I thought my throat was OK on Wednesday, so I went to the rehearsal (I would have done so even if I'd been ill, because I'd promised Maggie I'd provide her with the 500 Miles CD - and before you ask, it was her idea, not mine! I thought it went down very well - fun, wasn't it?) (For those who weren't there, I should probably explain that Maggie started the warmup by playing the Comic Relief song for us to do our stretches to.) I discovered after about 10 minutes, though, that I couldn't sing without coughing, so I stopped trying, and at the break I moved to sit at the back to listen. It was particularly frustrating because I *love* sight reading, and I missed the chance to do loads of it! Jamie seemed very determined to get to the end of page 123, because he finished almost 10 minutes late in order to do so, naughty man. And now I know that my sight-reading skills aren't actually as vital as people tell me they are, because the altos didn't do too badly without me! I'm a bit more enthused about The Kingdom than I was - there are some good bits. I'm looking forward to learning it.

My throat wasn't much better by Friday, but I was determined to try to make it through the concert, if only because I'd been looking forward to it for so long (singing on the day I stopped being a teacher - yay!) Typically, it was fine in the rehearsal and the first half of the concert, but as soon as the intro to The Music Makers began, the tickliness came back, and I had a really difficult time trying to hold it in until the first loud bit. I made it to the end, but not without various coughing bouts and the consumption of half a packet of Hall's Soothers. Sorry to anyone who was sitting near me and had to put up with the fidgeting.

(Does anyone know, by the way, why a tickly throat always becomes more tickly at moments when one needs to be silent and still? Is it just psychological or is there some other reason?) (And, also - is there anyone who has ever actually tried CAYENNE PEPPER to cure a sore throat? It seems a bit unlikely to me, and I'm not quite brave enough to experiment - but this page of sore throat cures suggests it's the best one!)

The concert went well, I thought, and I loved singing in the Cathedral again - it's one of my favourite buildings, and I haven't sung in there for many years. There were various hassles beforehand - a huge number of people were really, really late, which meant that the seating took absolutely ages, because Jamie arranged people and then had to keep rearranging as more people turned up and had to be accommodated. Unsurprisingly this meant that the actual rehearsal started very late indeed, which resulted in Jamie still rehearsing at gone 7.20 p.m., at which point lots of the audience were in their seats. Maybe he didn't realise. The seating was then messed up even further by at least one person (and possibly more) turning up to sing in the concert but not having been in the rehearsal. I presume this was the cause of poor Lizzy being without a seat. No-one would move for her, so she had to sit in the only seat available, which was next to me on the back row of the 2nd altos - but she's a soprano! We tried to get someone to swap with her so that she was at least on the FRONT row of the altos and hence just behind the sopranos, but the two people in those seats wouldn't swap - I'm not sure why. Maybe they didn't realise why we were asking and thought they wouldn't be able to see if they moved back. But the result was that poor Lizzy had to sing the Bach as a soloist - at least, that's how it must have felt to her, surrounded by 2nd altos. Thankfully, after the Bach we did manage to get one of the altos in front to switch with her - just as well, because in the Rachmaninov the 2nd altos spent most of it humming, so she would have stuck out even more!

Anyway, I don't seem to have any Jamieisms from Wednesday or Friday, apart from the worm/blackbird one. I did have one from the previous week, which I don't think I've quoted: "Otherwise it sounds like a lovely crust with no pie. Gentlemen, you are the pie." (This was in Svyati, and referred to the tenors at the beginning and similar bits. Which they did perfectly on Friday - yay!)

Finally, though, I wanted to mention my favourite moment of last week's rehearsal, because I forgot to do so at the time and only remembered this week. It was in the warmup, when Jamie had us arpeggiating on a chord (I think it was C major, but I could be wrong). That in itself was lovely - I like it when we do that! But then he asked us to all shift up a semitone (continuing to arpeggiate) and then down a tone, and finally back up a semitone. So the resulting chord progression went C - Db - B - C. And when the whole choir shifted from Db to B - mmmmmmmmmmmmm :-)

"Is it from the Queen?"

Just on my way out to tonight's rehearsal of The Kingdom. I put my "I'm blogging this" T-shirt on, and then realised that I haven't blogged about Saturday's concert! Oops!

It went very well. We even got to sit down at one point, to listen to Jonathan's organ solo. And they'd rigged up a camera and monitor so that Jonathan could see Jamie. Poor Maggie still had to sing from a raised pulpit with a canopy, which meant she was very visible and audible but she couldn't actually hear anything else when she was singing! I certainly couldn't tell, though - she sounded great. So did the choir, I thought - the tenors still didn't quite manage to sing their bare fifths in the Tavener (someone kept singing G sharps where there should only have been an E an a B), but apart from that I thought everything was pretty good. And it was a full house, too, which is always great to perform to. Hopefully there'll be even more people to hear the repeat performance in Manchester Cathedral this Friday (starts at 7.45 p.m., tickets available on the door - I think they're £10 each, concessions £6).

I'm sure there must have been some Jamieisms, but I'll look them up later tonight. (I'm particularly looking forward to tonight's rehearsal, because not only do we get to sight-read lots of new Elgar, we also meet the Associate Choir for the first time!) But I do remember the funniest moment, and for once it wasn't from Jamie. We were about to go onstage, and David Evans announced that he had a card to read to us, from a lady (Maggie, it transpired afterwards) who started "To my favourite choir..." to which Bruce said "Is it from the Queen?"

Aggressive Russian Funky Gibbon

From last night's warm-up:

Jamie: Aggressive funky gibbon.
Choir: Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
Jamie: Aggressive RUSSIAN funky gibbon!
Choir: (with a much darker vowel sound) Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

As with so many Jamieisms, you probably had to be there!

I'm on my way back to Ashton shortly for today's rehearsal and concert, but thought I'd do a bit of catch-up blogging first. (We rehearsed on Tuesday night instead of Wednesday this week, but I haven't had the time to blog since - I don't think there was anything fascinating to say, though.) My feet are still aching from last night. There were no seats - no-one had mentioned that this would be the case - so most of us stood up for an hour and three quarters without a break, followed by another three quarters of an hour after the break. Plus, the rehearsal finished almost 10 minutes late, so you can imagine that lots of us were not in the best of moods by the time we left. I must say, though, that the fact that we did the Bach last really helped cheer me up, because it sounded AMAZING in that acoustic :-)

The lack of seats isn't the only problem at the church. Poor Jonathan is having to play from a position behind the choir, which means that he can't see Jamie AT ALL, and (as he pointed out), when he's playing at all loudly, he can't hear anything either... so I guess we'll just have to follow him and hope! I don't think he's very happy about the situation, but unfortunately I also can't see a solution. It's just as well he's so brilliant, because if anyone CAN perform under such adverse circumstances, it'll be him. (The organ's not spectacularly great, either - plus, as Jamie said, when listing its limitations, "It's just not a violin!")

The thing that annoyed me the most last night, though, was that there was a man there - I don't know who he was, but possibly the teacher of our solo cellist. Why did he annoy me? Well, she was playing from the back of the church, at the end of the aisle from Jamie. And this man, for no reason that I can understand, repeatedly stood up and walked up and down the aisle, i.e. along the DIRECT LINE OF SIGHT between the cellist and the conductor. Even if she could see past him, it MUST have been a distraction. And the guy was presumably a professional musician, so why on earth couldn't he realise that? It was immediately obvious to all of us. Argh. And then, to make matters worse, he listened, along with the rest of us, to Jamie's explanation of why it's ABSOLUTELY CRUCIAL that no-one moves a muscle on the last page of the Tavener, and that we need to rehearse that aspect as much as the music. And what did he then do? When we got to the last page a minute later, he chose that moment to get up from his seat and wander across the aisle to sit on the other side. ... Maybe he's just a chronic attention-seeker, but I was shaking my head in disbelief at how ignorant he was.

Anyway, I have no doubt that the concert will be great (assuming Mr Ignorant can keep still, that is!) Jane, the cello soloist, is fabulous (even if she is playing a G sharp instead of a G natural for the last note - I presume it's a deliberate change by Jamie, since she's done that every time and he hasn't commented, but it sounds so wrong!). Maggie, of course, sounds amazing. And I think we sound pretty good ourselves!

"Why WAIT to do that? When you've got THAT in your arsenal?"

This seemed much funnier at the time, mainly because people started to giggle before Jamie got to the end of the word 'arsenal' :p

Ladies' sectional tonight. The quote above referred to the sopranos finally singing the last line of the Bach to Jamie's satisfaction. They fared rather better than us poor 2nd altos, who he compared to "bombers coming over the South Downs" when we did our humming in the Rachmaninov, and a "pneumatic drill" when we got the tune in the Bach! The cheek! (Mind you, I must admitted I was continually irritated by a few people behind me who seem totally unable to maintain the correct German pronunciation despite COUNTLESS reminders. My cheekbones are still aching due to me trying to compensate for them.) (Yes, I know I shouldn't try to compensate, but it's really hard not to!)

We did a bit of Syvati tonight, and a bit of Rachmaninov, and a bit of Bach. And at some point (I think during the Tavener, when he was trying to explain how the E and the F are closer together than a normal semitone), Jamie wanted to know how many of us were string players. It transpired that almost everyone present could play an orchestral instrument (although the brass section was rather under-represented, with only Abi), and Jamie got quite excited at the idea of us forming an orchestra at our weekend course in the summer!

What else was there? Oh, also during the Tavener: "Look at the hieroglyphics above it! ... I know it's not hieroglyphics. I know. That would be little pictures of animals and things." During the Rachmaninov, while explaining how to pronounce the Russian 'd': "Not like Brett Lee - like Shane Warne." (If I'd had Wikipedia to refer to during the rehearsal, that comment would have made a lot more sense!) And finally, during the Bach (probably while explaining how to pronounce 'schöpfer'): "Could you just look at my lips? Just briefly? ... I don't want you staring at them!"

Not much else to say about tonight, other than that (as usual with a sectional) we got lots done and had fun doing it, despite a LOT of people being missing. So, to finish, let's see... I'm sure you've been wondering what our top search terms have been lately, since I haven't mentioned them in ages. Well, there is still a trickle of people looking for the Honda choir advert, but the number one search (that leads to this blog) for ages has been for the Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink Song. Although, in the last couple of weeks there have been a surprising number of people looking for Fall on your knees and hear the angel voices (no, I have no idea why), and also an increasing number in search of the lovely Jeremy Holland-Smith (and I can't say I blame them!)

I'll finish with two funny things I discovered yesterday: some musical jokes (some old, some new), and a 5 minute video clip of Eddie Izzard being amusing about physics and cats. Enjoy!

"It's like the backing vocals from some unfortunate 70s pop hit."

This referred to some noise we produced last night, possibly during the warmup, although I forget exactly what! (I feel a bit guilty that I was at choir last night, given that I was off work ill both yesterday and today. But I felt better by teatime yesterday, and planned to go to work today... until the headaches came back late last night. Better again now, though, so I do plan to go to the ladies' sectional.)

Jamie went on to try to think of an example of a song to illustrate his point, but couldn't. He considered Abba, but dismissed them on the grounds that "they were GOOD!" Judy, who knows that I'm a bit of an authority on cheesy backing vocals, was encouraging me to make some suggestions, but by that point he'd mentioned Abba, and my mind was busily running through all their songs (for yes, I do have them all written out with all the harmony parts - my band sings them!) Most Abba songs don't actually have separate backing vocals, they just have harmony added above and below the tune (e.g. in "Dancing Queen" or "Mamma Mia"). There are a few with 'proper' backing vocals, but I didn't think of them till the moment had passed - e.g. "The Name of the Game" has the "doo doo, doo doo" bit in the middle, and "Voulez Vous" has the "ah ha" bits in the chorus.

And non-Abba 70s pop hits that have distinct backing vocals that aren't just harmonisations of the tune? I was hoping you'd ask :p The following list is by no means exhaustive, but all these songs were top 3 hits in the 70s, and not only do they have 'proper' backing vocals, I have them written out. (I have 5 lever arch files full of backing vocals and guitar chords for songs - my band has a very large repertoire!) Only trouble is... I don't remember singing anything like any of them last night. Can anyone shed any light on what it was that did prompt the 70s comment?

Elvis Presley - The Wonder of You
George Harrison - My Sweet Lord
Elton John - Rocket Man
Donny Osmond - Puppy Love
Osmonds - Crazy Horses
Carpenters - Yesterday once more
Slade - Merry Xmas Everybody
Rubettes - Sugar Baby Love (the backing vocals for this song are primarily "bop showaddy, bop showaddywaddy" - surely the best generic backing vocals in existence!)
Three Degrees - When will I see you again
Mud - Lonely this Christmas
Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel - Make me smile (come up and see me)
Bay City Rollers - Bye bye baby
Darts - Come back my love
John Travolta & Olivia Newton John - Summer Nights
Donna Summer & Barbra Streisand - No more tears (enough is enough)

---

Anyway, if you weren't there, you may be wondering what exactly we DID sing last night, other than cheesily impersonating a forgotten 70s band... Well, we did quite a bit of work on both Svyati and Komm, Jesu, Komm, with the promise of work on Rachmaninov and Elgar in sectionals and in next week's rehearsal. In the Bach, we worked on the start instead of the end for a change, with quite a bit of time being spent on the first two bars... this led up to the most amusing moment of the night (IMHO):

"Right. Bars 1 to 3. WITHOUT STOPPING."

... You probably had to be there :p

Going out now. More later.

"No, no, no - you need some sort of ecstasy, surely?"

Sorry, etc., etc.! (After the next three weeks I will have much more free time and promise to update more often!)

I missed choir last week (i.e. 11 days ago) because I'd been up working for most of the previous night, so by the time I'd been to work as well, I couldn't stay awake any longer. I was almost as tired this week, but I was determined not to miss another rehearsal, and I'm so glad I made it, because it put me in the best mood I've been in for ages. I sat next to Soprano Claire, and we had a whale of a time - we were just buzzing at the end!

I'd got there early for the alto vocal coaching, in which we sang bits of The Music Makers, including singing the last page to each other with our fingers in our ears (a REALLY weird sensation - try it!). Then, in the main rehearsal, we moved onto Bach, with (again) most of the time being spent on the chorale at the end. That produced all this week's Jamieisms: the one in the title, plus "An eternal frisbee right next to God" (I can't remember what that meant!) and "Ladies, can I check your underlay?" (which made us all giggle, which (probably quite rightly) seemed to really irritate Jamie, but it's because we were in a good mood!)

We then sight-read Syvati, which is very lovely although goes on a bit too long. Can't wait to do it with the solo cello. (And the basses sounded magnificent.) And we finished by sight-reading, with very few stops, the whole of the Poulenc Gloria, which we're performing in May. This gave the lovely Jonathan (our pianist for the night) something to do at last. (I see he's updated his website, by the way, but be warned - bits of it crashed my computer!) I've never sung this before, and I really like it - I've just bought the CD (mp3s below). I made loads of mistakes, so Jamie should be very happy. (In my defence, the score is very hard to read, which always seems to be the case with French music for some reason - does anyone know why that is?)

I bought a CD of The Kingdom along with the Poulenc, by the way, and I listened to that yesterday. I've never heard the piece before, and I can't say it grabs me. Mind you, it doesn't help that the choir on the recording is a bit flat in places and I can't make out most of their words. Maybe the piece will inspire me more when we do it properly!

Anyway, two rehearsals for everyone this week, although not all at the same time. I must go and do some work. But first....

Some Poulenc Gloria mp3s:

Poulenc Gloria: Gloria
Poulenc Gloria: Laudamus te
Poulenc Gloria: Domine Deus
Poulenc Gloria: Domine fili unigenite
Poulenc Gloria: Domine Deus, Agnus Dei
Poulenc Gloria: Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris

And, finally, some random links I've accumulated...

You may have heard about this alarm clock, which wakes you up with soothing messages from Stephen Fry. Sadly all the messages are addressed to "sir", but I believe there is a "madam" version coming soon.

I'm sure you were all dying to know how to do harsh death metal vocals. Now you can!

Here's a recent BBC article about why boys don't join choirs.

I recently discovered A Singer's Life - a blog which has a huge amount of interesting stuff on it. I've added it to the sidebar, along with Choralation. Most interesting recent post on the latter was this one about how conductors are largely superfluous. Food for thought!

Oh, and if you're reading this on Sunday, don't forget our Question Time opera is on BBC2 tonight at 10pm :-)

"It's on the edge of what's legal. We should do it sometime!"

This referred to a Schoenberg a cappella piece, Friede auf Erden, which Jamie told us about on Wednesday while going through the German pronunciation for Komm Jesu Komm. I'd never heard of it, but was interested enough to go in search of a recording: here's an mp3 for anyone else who wants to hear it. (It's not very tuneful!)

Talking of mp3s, I did post some for the Bach and Rachmaninov a couple of posts ago, but in light of the discussion about the many radically different versions of the Vespers, you may be interested to know that the one I posted is by a Russian choir, from this album. I bought it a few years ago, and chose it because it's the version recommended by the Rough Guide to Classical Music.

(EDIT: Talking of Russian things, I've belatedly remembered that someone emailed me and asked me to publicise a concert in Northenden on Thursday, by a group of Russian singers. Details here.)

And here are two more mp3s (I do spoil you!): Pearsall's Lay a Garland (which we're not singing, but Jamie mentioned it last week); and Tavener's Svyati, which we are singing, not only in the a cappella gigs but also in the newly-added late night gig at the RNCM as part of the Cello Festival. (And Yo-Yo Ma is in fact in the same concert as us, albeit slightly earlier - and since he's being presented with an award immediately before our bit, I imagine we WILL see him!) (In fact, the list of artists appearing is very impressive. And we're on it!)

I have to admit that my main excitement about seeing Yo-Yo Ma is the fact that he played a central role in my favourite ever episode of The West Wing. I think I will have to rewatch my DVDs in preparation!

Thanks, by the way, to those people who offered me recordings of Svyati and Lay a Garland. And to those who offered recordings of the Bach and Rachmaninov, having not noticed that I'd already put them online! Svyati looks as if it might be entertaining, if a bit too long (especially for the 3rd and 4th bass parts - good luck, guys!) - I love stuff that splits us into millions of parts, and this has every section in 3 parts and the basses in 4. Whee!

I only had a couple more Jamieisms from Wednesday:

"Let's just do the first phrase to a tractor." (the was the chorale at the end of the Bach, which is extremely amusing when sung to silly noises...)

"My spirit's ready for action upstairs. ... Not THAT sort of action!" (this was also during the chorale, when he was telling us what it all meant, but reckoned without our dirty minds!)

(We had an impressive-looking visitor at the rehearsal, by the way, and for those who missed it, it was Andrew Wailes from Melbourne.)

No Jamie next week - don't know where he is - so we'll see Fanny for the first time this year. And coincidentally, the Question Time Opera thing, which several of us sang in thanks to Fanny's invite, now has a broadcast date - it'll be on BBC2 at 10pm on Sunday 11th March. (We also recorded a bit of the soundtrack for the first episode of the series, that's on tomorrow (25th Feb), but you'll only hear us rather than see us on that. Oh, and that's the bit that involved the sopranos being asked to take a quaver out of their bitch!) There's now an official BBC web page about the series, which includes a link to a video feature which features many clips from all the episodes, including ours.

And finally, for those who don't already know: I am really, really, REALLY looking forward to the a cappella gig on 30th March, because 4 hours earlier I will have ceased to be a teacher. FOREVER. Yay! (I can safely say this now because I have officially resigned.)

So, if anyone needs someone to do anything musical (for that's what I'd love to do)... please let me know!

Before I forget....

1. My online choir schedule has now been updated with today's new info. (A gig at 10.30 p.m.! How exciting!)

2. I was about to say that Jamie's Oxford Blues Service is being repeated on Sunday, but I've now realised that it's actually a new thing - an Oxford Blues Matins service, live on Radio 4 at 8.10 a.m.

3. If you can get the Sci-Fi Channel, you MUST watch Heroes, which starts at 10pm on Monday. I've seen 15 episodes of it and it's REALLY good.

"Make more mistakes. Bach's dead. He's not gonna mind."

What a good idea, to put sight-reading hints on the choir website! Wish someone had thought of that before...

(Jamie was giving tips on how to sight-read tonight, and at one point suggested that someone should write them all down and put them on the website for reference. I couldn't decide whether to be smug because I'd already done it, or upset because no-one seemed to know I'd done it! Oh well.)

First post-Mozart rehearsal, and we started on stuff for the a cappella concerts (note to those who can't remember the spelling of that - "two words, two Ps, two Ls"). The Music Makers will form the second half, with Maggie doing the solo and the lovely Jonathan being the orchestra. Also on the programme will be one of Rachmaninov's Vespers, again with a Maggie solo, and my favourite Bach motet, Komm Jesu Komm. I've done that before, but it was a very long time ago - it was the first thing I sang with the Manchester Cathedral Cantata Choir under Stuart Beer, and I can't remember when that was, but it was at least 15 years ago.

Here are some mp3s:

Bach - Komm Jesus Komm, part 1
Bach - Komm Jesus Komm, part 2
Bach - Komm Jesus Komm, part 3
Bach - Komm Jesus Komm, part 4
Rachmaninov - Vespers, no. 2

(I'm assuming everyone has the definitive recording of The Music Makers and therefore won't need mp3s of that!)

Not many Jamieisms (although I liked the one in the title of this post). He did have us doing an amusing warmup which involved the choir split into two halves and then individual pairs, singing "nooey nooey nooey nooey nee" (half a beat apart from each other). Oh, and there was "I'm doing it so loud that the bell's ringing every time but no-one's listening!" (this followed an impression of "the man with the hammer at the fair, and the little thing that gets hit all day", and referred to his downbeats!)

I almost forgot to mention that we spent the whole rehearsal learning Komm Jesu Komm, and it was fabulous, and choir 2 was CLEARLY vastly superior to choir 1 (in terms of sight-reading and following the beat and ACTUALLY COMING IN), yet Jamie failed to acknowledge this fact! We were outraged!

P.S. They're making a Messiah musical!

Spee reet een eet!

JAMIE: Are you still saying 'spiritu'? I don't recommend it. It sounds dull. Say 'spee ree too'.

CHOIR: Spee ree too.

JAMIE: Yes! That's so much better. It's actually got spirit in it.

CHOIR: Spee reet een eet!

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This was the most amusing moment from a REALLY long and tiring - but good - day today. It was the Mozart C minor mass gig with Mark. We were there at 11.30 a.m. this morning, having also rehearsed last night. And of course we had the piano rehearsal with Mark on Wednesday. And I haven't blogged about any of them, due to various nightmarish non-choir-related reasons that I can't go into here - at least, not yet - but those who don't know may be able to guess if they notice that my profile has changed ever so slightly... Sorry, anyway. I should be asleep now but several people asked me today what had happened to the blog, so I thought I'd better at least post the accumulated Jamieisms and Markisms!

The concert went really well, by the way. We got Petrushka in the first half - not really my cup of tea - and then the stage was totally rearranged for the Mozart. (Mark, ever innovative, had the woodwind right at the front, i.e. in front of the strings. Never seen that before!) The soloists were all fabulous, particularly Susan Gritton. (Although we almost scared her away with our tractors... she arrived in the choir assembly area just as we started warming up, and seemed quite startled!) And I must admit I hardly spotted any mistakes from the choir. The 1st altos got their F# right in the middle of Qui Tollis for possibly the first time ever, although the C-G-Eb-Bb bar in the Credo was still a disaster area for the altos as a whole (very few people got the G) and a scary number of people were still double-dotting in the Gratias - I say 'scary' because of the number of times this was mentioned and practised. But apart from these two aspects, I think everything was pretty good. (Well, apart from the alto seating plan, which has been riddled with mistakes for ages now - every time a new one is produced, we have to amend it by swapping seats with each other so that the firsts are actually all sitting with firsts and the seconds are all with seconds. There are quite a few people who have given up hope of ever being put in the right place. At least everyone was ON the plan today, though, which is a big improvement on the last few rehearsals, so maybe there's hope yet!)

Anyway, a few more quotes from the last week:

Jamie: My favourite joke just happens to involve pandas. (Dr Liz went to find out what this joke was, and it was so rubbish I can't even remember!)

Mark: Ma-éstro! (suggesting that this was a word that we might like to practise in addition to 'Deo'!)

Mark: "Sancto-sss - it's a Spanish word originally. ... I'm lying."

A tenor came in early at one point.... Jamie: "Nice!" (nodding a la Fast Show jazz guy)

Jamie: Sometime we'll have to get a video camera in - you'd be surprised what tenses up when you're singing.

Jamie: Have you had sun-dried tomatoes in the last week? (I can't remember why on earth he said this! But it seemed relevant at the time....)

Must sleep now. Word to the wise: if you have your own copy of The Music Makers, you might wish to dig it out and put it in your choir bag....

Technical problems

The server on which the mp3s are hosted is currently inaccessible. I've emailed the friend who administers it, and he's already on the case, so please try again in a few hours if you want some Mozart (it may well be working by the time you read this). EDIT: Working now. EDIT 2: *Really* working now. Honest.

Sibelius FTW!

Brownie points if you know what the title means without looking it up :p

It occurred to me that I haven't yet posted any Mozart mp3s, and today is his birthday. So, here are all the choruses from the C Minor Mass. (I should warn you that on this recording they use Germanic Latin, so some words will sound a bit odd, but the music is OK.)

Kyrie
Gloria
Gratias
Qui tollis
Jesu Christe/Cum sancto spiritu
Credo
Sanctus/Osanna
(Benedictus)/Osanna

And then I went one better and created some extra mp3s... especially for Libby, who said she couldn't practise the runs properly because they're too fast on her CD and she can't play them on the piano. I have no doubt a few others are in the same predicament! Here's the alto part (only) of the Cum Sancto Spiritu, and the 2nd alto part (only) of the Osanna, recorded at various different speeds. (Don't worry, this didn't take NEARLY as long to do as you might imagine!) I think the crotchet = 200 version of the Cum Sancto Spiritu and the crotchet = 80 version of the Osanna are the closest to the probable concert speed, but you never know! (And sorry for not doing any other parts - as I explained in my last post, my score is different to the one most people have, so I couldn't guarantee the notes would be right.)

Cum Sancto Spiritu (alto part only): Crotchet = 80, Crotchet = 120, Crotchet = 160, Crotchet = 200, Crotchet = 240

Osanna (2nd alto part only): Crotchet = 40, Crotchet = 60, Crotchet = 80, Crotchet = 100

Hope someone finds those of use :-)

Oh, and can I just remind you all again that there's football at Old Trafford on Wednesday night, since my efforts to get this information announced and/or added to the schedule have so far come to nothing? I will be dutifully coming to choir and sending my brother to sit in my seat at the match. Incidentally, when I explained to the guy who sits next to me why I won't be there, I found myself trying to defend the Hallé for not paying the choir - he thinks we should get the same rate as the orchestra! I must admit his argument was very convincing :-)

"If I was changing from a natural to a sharp, I'd be more excited about it than you are."

Oops, I seem to have broken the first rule of blogging again! Sorry about that. January has, on the whole, been not just dreich (I use the word in honour of Burns Night!) but pretty horrible in every way. But I won't bore you with why, because choir has successfully managed to cheer me up \o/ And although I didn't make it to the first rehearsal of the year (which is very rare for me, but that was a nightmare week) I have accumulated many Jamieisms from the subsequent ones, so I thought I'd send them your way.

For those not in the choir, I should explain that we're currently rehearsing Mozart's C Minor Mass, which we'll be performing on 11th February. This is a fabulous piece, which I know pretty well, having done it two or three times before, although not for quite a few years. But I'm finding it slightly confusing, because I have the Breitkopf edition, bought the first time I did it. It is a complete version of the mass setting - Mozart didn't finish the C minor mass himself, so the editors of this version have filled in the missing bits with relevant movements from other (lesser-known) Mozart masses. So it's all proper Mozart, and hence wonderful, and that's the version I first performed. However, I've never been able to find a recording of this full version - all the recordings I've ever seen have just the actual C minor mass bits, i.e. the Credo stops after a couple of movements and there's no Agnus Dei. And the other problem - currently much more of an issue - is that we're using a different edition for this performance, and quite a few of the movements have different parts. For example, in the Osanna, the 2nd alto part that I know is almost entirely in the 1st alto line, and some bits of it don't appear at all. The line that everyone else has as the 2nd alto line is the 1st alto line in my copy, apart from a few bars where I've had to write stuff in, because those notes don't appear in any part at all in my copy. It's really offputting. And you're probably wondering why I don't just use a borrowed choir copy... well, I do like to have my own copies of things, because I write loads of stuff in, and it's a big help when I come to do the same work again years later. And, being a bit broke at the moment, I couldn't justify buying a new copy when I already had one. Oh well.

Anyway, Jamieisms! Some of these are from last Wednesday. Some are from the ladies' sectional this Tuesday. And some are from the open rehearsal in Wythenshawe this Wednesday. (I think the one in the title was from then, actually.)

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During a warmup, Jamie was doing facial stretches, along the lines of "Can you look shifty? Can you look amused? Can you look startled?" And when he got to "Can you do The Scream?" I was highly amused that almost half the ladies (for this was at the sectional) actually screamed :p

"Just think of this as foreign music. It was written in a weird place, by a weirdo."

"The microphone's going to be about here. Live relay. Just so you know."

"It's got to sound like music somewhere near the edge of what it's reasonable to ask."

"Altos, this is the reason you come to choir." (This was, sadly, the 1st altos, but referred to the "qui sedes" in bar 38 of Qui Tollis.)

"I'm going to stand on that chair." (This preceded a spell of Jamie in fact standing on several chairs in an effort to listen to individual rows of singers...)

"Tenors, listen to more pop music. I prescribe 20 Hail Marys and an album of popular music. Your rhythm SUCKS."

"It's so funky!"

"It's a little bit like a one-legged sparrow. A sad sight." (This referred to the alto jumpy bit bar at bar 177+ of Cum Sancto Spiritu, and was followed by a demonstration of how one-legged sparrows move...)

"Graffiti yourself over the music." (2nd sops bar 98 of Credo)

"Invisibilium - that well-known town near Chester."

"Can you do those two chords again... but with tremolo?" (This was to David, and was intended to illustrate how bar 50 of the Credo is actually Hammer Horror music!)

"Look slightly evangelical for a moment." (This was accompanied by wild hand gestures, in an effort to get a particular tone quality!)

After several minutes of exercises involving everyone singing repeated chords on a D consonant... "We have a first note!"

And, my personal favourite (which possibly had to be heard to be understood) came in bar 67 of the Credo... "Altos - wohhhh! ... That's not a specific instruction, but you might know what I mean." His grin, a minute later, when we showed that we knew EXACTLY what he meant, was very satisfying :-)

How to sight-read

Hope you've all had the break you hoped for! I spent most of it asleep, and most of the rest of the time playing World of Warcraft, but that suited me just fine :-) I'm back at work on Monday, so no doubt the sleeplessness will return, but for the moment I'm quite mellow. I'm supposed to be doing schoolwork right now, in readiness for Monday, but I seem to have found lots of other more urgent things to do instead, and blogging is one of them!

I'm not sure what made me think of this last night, but a while ago I promised to give you all some tips for improving your sight-reading. So, I've just jotted a few down. Please don't think I'm saying you're all rubbish at it - I'm not! - but it's something I'm pretty good at, so I'm just trying to help the people who say they can't do it at all.

The first thing to say in regard to sight-reading is: Please don’t be one of those people! By which I mean someone that says “I can’t sight-read, I’ll never be able to sight-read, so there’s no point me trying to do anything about it, and in any case even if I did want to, I’m too old and it’ll take too long.” It’s true that getting to the stage of being able to sight-read perfectly will take some time (although probably not as long as you’d expect, if you try hard enough)... but if you think you currently can’t do it at all, then surely any improvement would be a good thing?

Some of these tips are ones you can follow instantly; others require some degree of preparation. Of course, you don't have to follow all the tips - just doing any ONE of them will help. Maybe you could make it a new year's resolution to try a new one each month? :p I should also point out that Jamie regularly gives general sight-reading hints, and they're always good ones - I include some of them here. So, if he gives another one, listen to him!

Hints for improving your sight-reading

1. Sight-read EVERY CHANCE YOU GET, and make as many opportunities to do so as you can. I don't believe it's possible to improve your sight-reading without ACTUALLY SIGHT-READING. A LOT.

2. As part of this, you HAVE to embrace the "loud and wrong" philosophy. By which I mean "sing SOMETHING, even if you're not sure it's right". Only by doing this will you increase the proportion of times when it IS right, because you'll soon realise when you're wrong, and you will automatically start to self-correct. No conductor worth his salt minds hearing wrong notes when people are sight-reading. (In performance is a different matter!) I really can't stress this one enough - until you start doing this, there isn't much point worrying about any other aspect of sight-reading.

3. Sing on the beat, whatever happens - you have to regard watching the conductor as more vital than getting the notes right. Seriously. Now, this may seem a bit odd, but think about it - if lots of people don't sing on the beat, the resulting sound is just a mush, in which no-one can hear the harmony, because there ISN'T any harmony for large parts of the time. And, as you'll see from later hints, being able to hear the harmony and relate your own part to it is key (hee! you see what I did there?) to being able to sing the right notes. Also, if no-one sings on the beat, the rhythm is nonexistent, making it really difficult for people who struggle with rhythms to work out where the notes fit. But now, just imagine for a second a scenario in which half the choir are singing the wrong notes, and half are singing the right notes - but this time everyone is singing ON THE BEAT. Well, first of all, which half are singing the right notes? Probably the confident half! So they'll be louder than the "wrong" half. And because everyone is singing on the beat, two things are now possible: 1. Those (of the "wrong" half) who are listening can now hear the harmony quite clearly, AND they can hear, much more clearly, the people on their own part who ARE singing the right thing. Both of these aspects will help them self-correct. 2. The *conductor* can now hear exactly where the problems are, and can solve them very quickly.

4. When you are given a new piece of music, go through your part BEFORE STARTING TO SING IT. (I'm always amazed that most people seem not to do this!) Go through every page and mark which line you're singing. Look to see where you'll get notes from (see later). Mark VSs (i.e. pages where you have a long rest at the end but sing again at the start of the next page). Put a ring round anything else that you think might be a potential stumbling block - e.g. speed changes, time signature changes, new key signatures, etc. Note: there's almost always time to do this while you're waiting for the rehearsal to start, even if you've only just been given the music. (Because, invariably, the rehearsal starts late when music's being given out!)

5. When you're looking through your line, try to hear the notes in your head - don't hum (or try them out on the piano, if you're near one at the time). If you always rely on external sounds, your inner sight-reading machine won't develop as quickly. (And if you hum during a rehearsal when you're supposed to be being silent, it's incredibly offputting for other people.) You need to develop the skill of pitching a note in your head so that you can come in confidently after a silent bar.

6. When you're actually singing, LOOK AHEAD all the time. Turn pages earlier than you might previously have been used to. You should NEVER still be looking at any page while singing the last note on it - you should have got that note into your short-term memory and turned the page to see what's coming. The only exception to this is when you know (because you've gone through your part and WRITTEN IT IN) that you have a rest on the next page, AND you've been told not to turn. (If you've NOT been told not to turn, I think you should turn anyway, just to keep in the habit.) What about if you've been told not to turn, yet you don't have a rest over the page? Then you have to memorize a bit more of the page leading to the turn, and turn EARLIER.

7. Also while singing, keep looking at the other parts - and the accompaniment - and work out from this where to get your notes from, and how your part fits in with the others. This helps much more than you might expect. For example, often the basses have trouble getting a particular note, yet on many of these occasions the altos - who sit right next to them and invariably get stuff right :p - have just sung the same note. It's obviously harder if the clefs are different - but not impossible, particularly if you make a habit of looking so you get used to it!

8. Try and do everything - don't ignore the words or dynamics just because you're sight-reading. Now, I know lots of people refuse to even try this, and I know it does make things harder in the short-term... but trust me, if you MAKE yourself try this, it really improves your sight-reading, and it does get easier.

Now, all of the above are things that you can do immediately, at the very next rehearsal, with no preparation. They're also all fairly general hints. The last four, though, are specifically about how to sing the right notes, but they may take some work on your own.

9. Be really, really familiar with all keys (major and minor) and know how to recognise what key you're in (not just from the key signature - if the music modulates temporarily but doesn't change key signature, it will really help your sight-reading if you can spot this). By "familiar", I mean: know what key you're in, and know which note of its scale you are singing (e.g. if the key is F Major and you're singing an A, it's the 3rd). This is vital if step 10 is to work. It’s also incredibly helpful for tuning purposes - you will, I’m sure, be aware that, in relation to the 1st note of the scale, 2, 3, 5, 6 and 7 generally need to be tuned higher than you think, and 4 generally needs to be lower. (That’s in a major scale - in a minor scale, 3 and 6 are low as well. Why? Because of the pattern of tones and semitones. Tones need to be wider than you think; semitones need to be smaller than you think.) If you’re familiar with what number in the scale any note is, you’ll automatically be able to sing in tune more often! Now, all this may sound impossible if you've never had theory lessons, but most of you HAVE had theory lessons, and this stuff is easily learned if so. And if not... well, you have something to aim for!

10. Be able to sing any degree of a scale, having heard the tonic chord. So if I played you an F major chord (without telling you what chord it was), and asked you to sing the 3rd of the scale, you could sing an A without necessarily knowing it was an A. The Kodaly sol-fa exercises that Jamie does from time to time (you know, with the hand signals) are brilliant for practising this skill, although, sadly, I get the impression that most people can't see the relevance. But I had a lesson every week on the Kodaly method when I was at school, and I'm pretty sure that's why I can sight-read. Most of you weren't lucky enough to go to the same school as I did, so I'm afraid I've got quite a big headstart on the practice of this skill. The unfortunate part is that it's hard to practise it on your own - you need some way of knowing when you're right and when you're not. There are ways round this, but maybe the best solution, at least temporarily, is to hope that Jamie does more of his hand-signal exercises! Actually, another relevant exercise that he does sometimes - but not as often as I'd like - is the "choral chords" one. You know, where he plays a G major chord and says "sing any note of this G major chord", and then directs us, as a choir, to sing C major, D major etc. In order to do this, you have to (a) know what the three notes in the chord are (you do know that the notes in any chord are the 1st, 3rd and 5th of the scale, right?); (b) know which of them you're singing; (c) know what the three notes in the next chord are; (d) know which one is nearest to the one you're currently singing, and how to get to it. You can see how this will help you practise the skill of being able to sing any degree of any scale, I hope.

11. Step 10 is FAR more help with sight-reading than being able to sing intervals. If you base your sight-reading on being able to accurately sing the interval from one note to the next, as so many people do (including most of the ones who claim not to be able to sight-read very well - funny, that...), you have to do a mental calculation on EVERY NOTE in order to work out the interval to the next one. If you look at the music in terms of what key it's in, though, you notice that many degrees of the scale (e.g. the 1st and the 5th) come up quite often, and they're easy to sing, so you find that you can automatically sing half the page without thinking very much about it. However, occasionally you get a modern atonal piece, and in these cases you have to use step 10, which is to know your intervals. Note that even in an atonal piece, short sections are quite often fairly tonal (i.e. in a key), so if you can work out what key you're in for those few bars, step 10 still applies. But if you have to use the interval method (which is very rare), practice will help. I did a list of these a few years ago - you may find it useful if you haven't seen such a list before.

12. I should probably mention something about how to sing the right rhythms. The thing is that generally people DO sing the right rhythms, I think, but they're less good at singing them in exactly the right place! The solution to this is to ALWAYS relate everything to which beat of the bar it's on... and always KNOW which beat of the bar the music has reached at any given moment! Once you can do these two things without thinking, rhythms become much easier. But never be ashamed of having to write in the beats of the bar (probably not in EVERY bar, but in tricky ones) in order to see more easily how the rhythm fits in with the beats. I also find it useful, in bars with lots of notes or notes in unexpected places, to divide the beats up with vertical lines. (And in pieces like Belshazzar where there are sections with dotted barlines, so that each mini-bar acts as one beat of the maxi-bar, I find it invaluable to (a) make the non-dotted barlines much clearer by extending them; and (b) write the beats in over the mini-bars.) Also, if you have trouble following certain conductors, remember that however the conductor beats, the downbeat is usually clearest, so if you get temporarily lost you know you can join in again on his next downbeat. Oh, and one final tip: If there's a section of music in which the beat is hard to follow (because of offbeat accents or no accents at all etc.), watch the conductor like a hawk (obviously), but also count out the bars with your finger (while watching the conductor - you don't actually need to look at the music to do this, you'll find), tapping on a new bar every time the conductor does a downbeat. I have often needed to do this - the example that springs to mind is the page of Belshazzar leading up to "Then sing, sing aloud", where if you listen to the orchestra you have no idea where the downbeats are. Many times when I've sung this, using my ignore-the-orchestra-and-count-the-bars method, I've been the only one to come in correctly at the bottom of the page :p

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Right. There you are. That was much longer than I intended it to be! Hope you find it useful. And if you're thinking "pfft, what a stupid way to sight-read, I'll stick to how I've always done it thank you very much"... that's fine - this is just the way *I* do it! :-)

Some links to finish. Firstly, I can't believe I totally forgot about that pillow fight in Albert Square! So I didn't see any of it. But if you didn't either, here's a slideshow of photos that some helpful person has put on Flickr.

Here's a Telegraph article about Christmas urban myths - I meant to post it when it was a little more relevant, but it's still interesting!

For some reason the Question Time Opera has hit the news this week. Why now, I have no idea, but it is also mentioned in the current Radio Times (on page 12, if you missed it) as due in "early 2007".

Slightly more alarmingly, the BBC has also announced a new reality show - not satisfied with the whole Sound of Music thing, they're looking for a cast for Joseph! Sacrilege!

Here's a blog post about the top 51 classical music blogs. I haven't looked at many of these, although there are a few I recognise (and they're on my blogroll to the right). If any of you has time on their hands, maybe you could let us all know which are the good ones from the list?

I also found this really useful site called Second Hand Songs, where you can find out which was the original version of a song.

And finally, Musicovery. It's a self-explanatory interactive web radio, and normally such things just annoy me, but this is a pretty good one. If only because of the pretty colours! Enjoy :-)

EDIT: Almost forgot... I notice that the football fixtures are still not on the official choir schedule, so until they are (I've asked!) you might want to keep an eye on my unofficial one, which is up to date AND has the fixtures on. To save you the hassle for now, you may wish to add to your official schedule the fact that these dates clash with football at Old Trafford: Wed 31 Jan, Wed 7 Feb, Sat 10 Feb, Wed 7 Mar. There are currently no clashes with City games. I'll keep checking and let you know when there's an update.

Inflatable horn players, basses in drag, and remembering John MacMurray

All these photos are from tonight. (Again, bigger versions are here.) Sorry they're not very good, especially the ones of Cliff! And the zoomed-in one of the inflatable horn player shows the limitations of digital zoom :p

Last carol concert tonight, and it was the most fun yet. Even I was in a good mood by the end! (I was still ratty at the start, for which I apologise to anyone who spoke to me (particularly poor Sue-Ann, who had to speak to me several times and probably got several undeserved glares!)) There was lots of new silliness. I think the first bit was in Sir Christemas, where the tuba (I think) added a little unscripted chromatic run in the middle. But most of the changes were in the second half. There were rather more Santas (as in full costumed Santas, not just hats) than on previous occasions. But the best one was the horn player (I think it was Dicky - someone please correct me if I'm wrong) who waddled onstage in a huge inflatable Santa suit. (See blurred pictures above.) He could hardly walk, and had particular trouble negotiating the step up to his seat. Then he leaned forward to sort out his music and found he couldn't reach his stand. I've no idea how he managed to play his horn like that, but he did, although the suit was rather more deflated by the end!

We were also quite taken with the various Santa hats worn by the woman on the front desk of the 2nd violins. Yesterday she had a really cute Santa hat - cute because it was only about 3 inches tall! Today she had a normal-sized one, but it flipped from side to side at apparently random intervals (I presume it was battery-operated). Oh, and towards the end, while Gwenan Edwards was about to introduce the next item, the stage manager came on and told her something, and she announced that the timp player had had to go home ill, and could anyone in the audience step in? We knew nothing of this, and at first (before she asked for help from the audience) I think most of us thought it was genuine - I know I did! Needless to say, at this point Father Christmas ran in from the back of the stalls, and wandered across the stage dispensing presents to various people before producing some timp sticks and making a big show of tuning the timps before settling down to play the rest of the concert :-)

I think what most amused most of the choir, though, was Cliff (one of our basses), who came out for the second half dressed as an alto, in a proper Hallé ladies' frock, complete with windsock and huge dangly earrings! No idea whose frock he wore, or whether he actually sang the alto part :p

I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks of John MacMurray every time I hear Sleigh RIde, for it was always him that did the reindeer impression on his trumpet at the end. Tonight all three trumpeters did it together - maybe in memory of him. I like to think so, anyway :-)

Finally, if you've never heard of the NORAD Santa Tracking thing that the U.S. military do every year, and you have kids, you might want to take a look! Hint: if you read this after Christmas, you've missed it.... it starts at 4 a.m. (our time) on Christmas Eve.

Quiz answers

Just realised I haven't posted these yet, so here they are. Anna the Commenter got 36 out of 65, did you beat her?

Also, Muso magazine asked me to mention this survey, and although I usually ignore such requests, this one might amuse some of you and seems harmless enough :-)

And, if you got bored by all the ranting on my last post, you might have not read as far as the pictures. Sorry - I've had some sleep now, so if I find anything new to complain about tonight, I'll try to keep it to myself! Instead I'll focus on those oboes in The Shepherds' Farewell....

Oh, and this is what's going on at G-Mex tonight (and last night), in case you were wondering. Review here.


Christmas lyric quiz answers
25 carols

1. It Came Upon a Midnight Clear:
And man, at war with man, hears not the love song which they bring // O hush the noise, ye men of strife, and hear the angels sing.

2. O Little Town of Bethlehem:
The dark night wakes, the glory breaks, and Christmas comes once more. (Note: this is from a verse that isn't included in "Carols for Choirs" for some reason.)

3. Nativity Carol:
Far away silent he lay // Born today, your homage pay

4. Jingle Bells:
Now the ground is white // Go it while you're young // Take the girls tonight, and sing this sleighing song

5. In dulci jubilo:
O that we were there, O that we were there!

6. Good king Wenceslas:
Fails my heart, I know not how; I can go no longer.

7. Unto us is born a Son:
So he gave the word to slay // And slew the little childer

8. Il est né le divin enfant:
Jouez hautbois, résonnez musettes

9. A merry Christmas:
And we won't go till we've got some, so bring some out here

10. Here we come a-wassailing:
And God bless you, and send you a happy New Year

11. O come all ye faithful:
Sing, choirs of angels, sing in exultation

12. I saw three ships:
And all the bells on earth shall ring on Christmas Day, on Christmas Day

13. Hark the herald angels sing:
Born to raise the sons of earth // Born to give them second birth.

14. We three kings:
Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying // Sealed in the stone-cold tomb

15. Coventry Carol:
Herod, the king, in his raging // Chargèd he hath this day // His men of might, in his own sight // All young children to slay

16. While shepherds watched:
Goodwill henceforth from heaven to men begin and never cease

17. Sir Christèmas:
Who is there that singeth so?

18. Ding dong merrily on high:
May you beautifully rime your evetime song, ye singers

19. O come, o come, Emmanuel:
From the dread caverns of the grave // From nether hell, thy people save.

20. Sussex carol:
All out of darkness we have light // Which made the angels sing this night

21. In the bleak midwinter:
What can I give him, poor as I am? // If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb

22. Silent Night:
Glories stream from heaven afar // Heavenly hosts sing Alleluia

23. Gabriel's Message:
Most highly favoured lady, Gloria!

24. The shepherds' farewell:
God go with you, God protect you // Guide you safely through the wild

25. Past three o'clock:
And a cold frosty morning


... and 40 Christmas songs

1. I believe in Father Christmas (Greg Lake):
They said there’d be snow at Christmas // They said there’d be peace on Earth // Alleluia, Noël, be it Heaven or Hell // The Christmas we get, we deserve.

2. Lonely This Christmas (Mud):
I just break down as I look around and the only things I see // are emptiness and loneliness and an unlit Christmas tree

3. Do they know it's Christmas? (Band Aid):
Where the only water flowing is the bitter sting of tears

4. The Power of Love (Frankie Goes to Hollywood):
I'll protect you from the hooded claw // Keep the vampires from your door

5. Fairytale of New York (Pogues & Kirsty MacColl):
You took my dreams from me when I first found you // I kept them with me, babe // I put them with my own

6. Santa Claus is coming to town (Crystals/Bruce Springsteen/others):
He knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good, for goodness’ sake!

7. Have yourself a merry little Christmas (Judy Garland/others):
Through the years we all will be together, if the fates allow

8: Merry Xmas Everybody (Slade):
Does your granny always tell you that the old songs are the best?

9. Winter Wonderland (Darlene Love/others):
He’ll say “are you married?” - we’ll say “no, man! But you can do the job while you’re in town!”

10. Mary's Boy Child (Harry Belafonte/Boney M):
Trumpets sound and angels sing - listen to what they say // That man will live for evermore because of Christmas Day.

11. Christmas Alphabet (McGuire Sisters/Dickie Valentine/others):
M is for the Mistletoe where everyone is kissed

12. Walking in the air (Aled Jones):
Children gaze open-mouthed, taken by surprise // Nobody down below believes their eyes.

13. Frosty the Snowman (Ronettes/others):
And he only paused a moment when he heard him holler “stop!”

14. Please come home for Christmas (Eagles/Bon Jovi):
Friends and relations send salutations // Sure as the stars shine above

15. All I want for Christmas is my 2 front teeth (Spike Jones/Tiny Tim/others):
It seems so long since I could say “Sister Susie sitting on a thistle!” // Gosh, oh gee - how happy I’d be if I could only whistle!

16. Sleigh Ride (Ronettes/others):
Let’s take that road before us and sing a chorus or two

17. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow (Vaughn Monroe/others):
But if you’ll really hold me tight // All the way home I’ll be warm!

18. Santa Baby (Eartha Kitt/Madonna/Calista Flockhart/others):
Think of all the fun I've missed // Think of all the fellas that I haven't kissed

19. O Holy Night (*N Sync/others):
Fall on your knees // Oh hear the angel voices!

20. I wish it could be Christmas every day (Wizzard):
Oh when the snowman brings the snow // well, he just might like to know // he’s put a great big smile on somebody’s face.

21. Wonderful Christmas Time (Paul McCartney/Tom McRae):
We're here tonight, and that's enough

22. A spaceman came travelling (Chris de Burgh):
This lovely music went trembling through the ground // And many were wakened on hearing that sound

23. All I want for Christmas is you (Mariah Carey):
I don't want a lot for Christmas // There's just one thing I need

24. Christmas Song (aka "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire") (Nat King Cole/others):
Although it’s been said many times, many ways

25. Stop the Cavalry (Jona Lewie):
Wish I was at home for Christmas

26. Cold Cold Christmas (Dana):
Yesterday I saw your Mom and Dad // We bought our cards together

27. Little Saint Nick (Beach Boys):
Run run reindeer // He don't miss no one

28. Rockin' around the Christmas tree (Brenda Lee/Mel Smith & Kim Wilde):
You will get a sentimental feeling when you hear voices singing: "let's be jolly, deck the halls with boughs of holly"

29. The Winter Song (Angel):
Hear the angels join the choir, let them take the music higher

30. Another rock and roll Christmas (Gary Glitter):
You never know, it might snow tonight

31. Last Christmas (Wham):
I thought you were someone to rely on // Me? I guess I was a shoulder to cry on

32. Stay another day (East 17):
Good times we had return to haunt me // Though it's for you, all that I do seems to be wrong.

33. When a child is born (Johnny Mathis):
A silent wish sails the seven seas // The winds of change whisper in the trees // And the walls of doubt crumble tossed and torn,

34. Keeping the dream alive (Freiheit):
The hopes we had were much too high // Way out of reach but we have to try

35. He's the little boy that Santa Claus forgot (Nat King Cole):
I'm so sorry for that laddie // He hasn't got a daddy

36. Christmas (baby please come home) (U2):
They're singing "Deck the Halls" // But it's not like Christmas at all

37. Merry Christmas Everyone (Shakin' Stevens):
Snow is falling, all around me // Children playing, having fun

38. Thank God it's Christmas (Queen):
Oh my love we've lived in troubled days // Oh my friend we have the strangest ways

39. Wombling Merry Christmas (The Wombles):
Open your eyes, look to the skies when you're lonely

40. 2000 miles (Pretenders):
... is very far through the snow

Who is there that singeth so?

Weird, isn't it, how some experiences can cause you to seethe with fury one minute (well, for quite a lot of minutes, actually) and shed tears of joy the next? I was struck by this dichotomy last Sunday, and again tonight. And the thing is, I can't recall any non-singing experience that has ever had the same effect on me. Odd, that.

Somewhat predictably, I spent most of tonight's concert fuming again - so much so, that I made a mental note that I must try to smile tomorrow! Should be easier after some sleep :-) I was irrationally furious with myself because I kept being reminded of things that had made me angry last week and realising that I'd forgotten to list them in my earlier post! I hate my mind at times! The extra fury-causing things, just to set my mind at rest, are: 8. Altos who are still ignoring the rhythmic instructions for the different verses of The Shepherds' Farewell; 9. Basses pronouncing "ver" with a v rather than an f in the Bach; 10. The clapping in Sleigh Ride - by which I mean the general clapping all the way through. We never used to do that, and to me it totally spoils the effect of the surprise claps that I used to love so much. 11. Altos who appear to have either not written in any instructions, or not attended any rehearsals, or just can't be bothered to pay attention, and are therefore singing in the wrong bits of lots of the audience carols (someone near me did this a LOT tonight); 12. (as ever) The behaviour of a few members of the adult choir. I couldn't hear any of the instructions during the warm-up because of people talking near me. Mainly this was the youth choir, but I'm not too surprised that they think it's OK to talk while Jamie is giving instructions, when members of the adult choir are doing exactly that. And then, backstage while Jamie was trying to rehearse the foyer choir, I witnessed two altos having a fairly loud conversation a few feet away, and they actually INCREASED the volume of their speech every time the singing started, presumably so as to be able to hear themselves over the top! I was staggered by their selfishness and rudeness.

I'm sorry to rant (again) but I'm just so sick of all this. I love the actual SINGING in the choir, but I spend almost every rehearsal getting angrier and angrier about all this other stuff, and as a result I can't remember the last time I was in a good mood by the time I got home from choir. Which is sad, because everything ELSE in my life is depressing me at the moment, and choir used to be the one thing that cheered me up. And it still does, every time, but sadly the anger is overshadowing the cheer at the moment.

Anyway, I did promise to list the good stuff, so let me end on a positive note! I'd be interested to hear other people's favourite bits :-)

MY TOP 10 MOMENTS OF THE CAROL CONCERTS

10. "Who is there that singeth so?" from Sir Christemas
9. Jazzy brass bit in Sleigh Ride
8. All the descants - probably O Little Town of Bethlehem is my favourite one, but I love them all
7. The drum fill just before the singing starts in White Christmas
6. The fff bit of the Wassail Song
5. The a cappella verse of O Little Town of Bethlehem
4. The orchestration of the men's verse of Unto Us Is Born A Son
3. Several bits of In Dulci Jubilo - mainly, the bit when both choirs sing together at the top of the second page, and the bit when the men sing a nice A7ish chord to get us to D minor
2. The words (practically all of them) of It Came Upon The Midnight Clear, and the timp roll that emphasises the very last line
1. The 3rd verse of The Shepherds' Farewell, where the oboes have those gorgeous extra bits. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!

P.S. Here's some pictures I surreptitiously took tonight and on Sunday, while we were waiting for the orchestra to come on. There are bigger versions here.

"Not Silent Lee, who sounds like a guy down the pub who never says anything."

Sorry for the long gap between posts, things have got on top of me. Which is probably also part of the reason I was in such a very bad mood on Sunday... I had to do loads of work when I got home from the second concert, and didn't get to bed till about 3 a.m., and the thought of this made me grumpy for most of the day. (Why didn't I do it on Saturday when I was totally free, you may well ask? Because I needed a break!)

I've finally finished for Christmas today, though, so I can go to tonight's concert in a slightly more cheerful frame of mind. Maybe the extra things that were increasing my grumpiness might have fixed themselves - but I doubt it! I was repeatedly filled with fury on Sunday. Main causes: 1. that alto note in "A Merry Christmas"; 2. that alto bar in "White Christmas"; 3. the note in the last line of "It Came Upon The Midnight Clear" (at least there was only one harmony verse this time, so the altos could only get it wrong once each concert); 4. the very many mistakes in the programme; 5. the behaviour of some members of the Youth Choir (bringing cups of water on stage and then leaving the empty cups all over the floor was the least of their sins); 6. the whole mess about the foyer carols; 7. people who quote me in newsletters but plainly don't actually read stuff properly (because several of the "Jamieisms" lifted from here were not actually Jamieisms at all!)

(I'm doubly furious with the first three, because (a) they're wrong EVERY SINGLE YEAR; (b) no conductor or chorus master has ever done anything about them (in fact, a previous chorus master, when I asked him, said "oh, no-one will ever notice"!); (c) when I mention it to people, they invariably say "Oh, I know - but at least I know *I'm* doing it right." NO YOU'RE NOT, I CAN HEAR YOU! So I can only assume people either aren't listening to what's going on, or are listening but not hearing. Argh.)

Anyway, I need to run for a train now, but when I get home I will post again and tell you about the things about the carol concerts that make me really happy. It may surprise you to hear that there are quite a few!

"You are the juicy bone, I am the dog."

I should probably point out that this, tonight's best Jamieism, followed "Sopranos, I'm going to come back to that." :-)

Lots of carols tonight, although very few of them all the way through. We were joined by the HYC, who we've not seen for ages. They still seem to like to sing behind the beat most of the time, but then so do most of the adult choir! And I was unsurprised (but disappointed) that the notes that the altos have got wrong every year in living memory are STILL wrong, and I expect they'll be wrong in the concert, although I'd love it if they weren't. (I'm talking about the infamous note in We Wish You A Merry Christmas (p167, bar 47, first note) and White Christmas (page 4, last bar). Argh! (The singing behind the beat thing was particularly bad tonight. There was an alto near me who was almost a full beat behind, almost all the way through almost every piece. It's really difficult to sing in time when you have that in your ear. (She was by no means the only one, but she was the loudest one near me.))

Other Jamieisms: "Otherwise you sound like the Swedish Station Radio Choir... is there such a thing?"
"Sopranos, you shouldn't all go wrong on the same note! I'm always curious about a soprano section that does that. It seems bizarre. And unlikely."

Oh, and if you are a new member of the choir, and no-one has told you about the following 3 aspects of the carol concerts:

• tinsel and glitter
• silly hats
• clapping in Sleigh Ride

you should probably ask someone!

To change the subject completely, have you all seen this video? It's doing the rounds of the internet, and shows stupid drivers in Manchester city centre (Cross Street, to be specific). It explains why signs have now been put up there saying "no tailgating"!

And finally, some entertainment for you. I did these two Christmas lyrics quizzes a couple of years ago and just found them while I was looking for something else. Test yourself - leave your answers in the comments if you like, or email me if you prefer. I'll post the answers in a few days :-)

25 Christmas carols

1. And man, at war with man, hears not the love song which they bring // O hush the noise, ye men of strife, and hear the angels sing.
2. The dark night wakes, the glory breaks, and Christmas comes once more.
3. Far away silent he lay // Born today, your homage pay
4. Go it while you're young // Take the girls tonight
5. O that we were there, O that we were there!
6. Fails my heart, I know not how; I can go no longer.
7. So he gave the word to slay // And slew the little childer
8. Jouez hautbois, résonnez musettes
9. And we won't go till we've got some, so bring some out here
10. And God bless you, and send you a happy New Year
11. Sing, choirs of angels, sing in exultation
12. And all the bells on earth shall ring on Christmas Day, on Christmas Day
13. Born to raise the sons of earth // Born to give them second birth.
14. Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying // Sealed in the stone-cold tomb
15. His men of might, in his own sight // All young children to slay
16. Goodwill henceforth from heaven to men begin and never cease
17. Who is there that singeth so?
18. May you beautifully rime your evetime song, ye singers
19. From the dread caverns of the grave // From nether hell, thy people save.
20. All out of darkness we have light // Which made the angels sing this night
21. What can I give him, poor as I am? // If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb
22. Glories stream from heaven afar // Heavenly hosts sing Alleluia
23. Most highly favoured lady, Gloria!
24. God go with you, God protect you // Guide you safely through the wild
25. And a cold frosty morning

... and 40 Christmas songs

1. They said there'd be snow at Christmas // They said there'd be peace on Earth // Alleluia, Noël, be it Heaven or Hell // The Christmas we get, we deserve.
2. I just break down as I look around and the only things I see // are emptiness and loneliness and an unlit Christmas tree
3. Where the only water flowing is the bitter sting of tears
4. I'll protect you from the hooded claw // Keep the vampires from your door
5. You took my dreams from me when I first found you // I kept them with me babe. I put them with my own
6. He knows if you've been bad or good, so be good, for goodness' sake!
7. Through the years we all will be together, if the fates allow
8: Does your granny always tell you that the old songs are the best?
9. He'll say "are you married?" - we'll say "no, man! But you can do the job while you're in town!"
10. Trumpets sound and angels sing - listen to what they say // That man will live for evermore because of Christmas Day.
11. M is for the Mistletoe where every one is kissed
12. Children gaze open-mouthed, taken by surprise // Nobody down below believes their eyes.
13. And he only paused a moment when he heard him holler "stop!"
14. Friends and relations send salutations // Sure as the stars shine above
15. It seems so long since I could say "Sister Susie sitting on a thistle!" // Gosh, oh gee - how happy I'd be if I could only whistle!
16. Let's take that road before us and sing a chorus or two
17. But if you'll really hold me tight // All the way home I'll be warm!
18. Think of all the fun I've missed // Think of all the fellas that I haven't kissed
19. Fall on your knees // Oh hear the angel voices!
20. Oh when the snowman brings the snow // well, he just might like to know // he's put a great big smile on somebody's face.
21. We're here tonight, and that's enough
22. This lovely music went trembling through the ground // And many were wakened on hearing that sound
23. I don't want a lot for Christmas // There's just one thing I need
24. Although it's been said many times, many ways
25. Wish I was at home for Christmas
26. Yesterday I saw your Mum and Dad // We bought our cards together
27. Run run reindeer // He don't miss no-one
28. You will get a sentimental feeling when you hear voices singing: "let's be jolly, deck the halls with boughs of holly"
29. Hear the angels join the choir, let them take the music higher.
30. You never know, it might snow tonight
31. I thought you were someone to rely on // Me? I guess I was a shoulder to cry on
32. Good times we had return to haunt me // Though it's for you, all that I do seems to be wrong.
33. A silent wish sails the seven seas // The winds of change whisper in the trees // And the walls of doubt crumble tossed and torn
34. The hopes we had were much too high // Way out of reach but we have to try
35. I'm so sorry for that laddie // He hasn't got a daddy
36. They're singing "Deck the Halls" // But it's not like Christmas at all
37. Snow is falling, all around me // Children playing, having fun
38. Oh my love we've lived in troubled days // Oh my friend we have the strangest ways
39. Open your eyes, look to the skies when you're lonely
40. ... is very far through the snow

EDIT: Answers are here.

"What's after L? K? Thanks."

Here are Fliss and Tessa showing off their new hairdos :-)

The title of this post was a Jamieism from In Dulci Jubilo (on Wednesday), in which Jamie started by saying that everyone was behind the beat (which was true), and dealt with this by making the back row sing on their own (because he said they were the furthest behind). But then he got sidetracked into finding out what different semi-random groups within the choir sounded like. We had each row separately, then everyone whose surname started with a letter between A and L, then... well, that's when the quote above emerged :-)

I was also amused by "From there we have to go to the babes" (the word "babes" appears in the Shepherds' Farewell) and "It should, I think, be a bit more distant... and slightly more inebriated..." (in the Wassail Song). But this might have been just me :p We also did the non-carol-book carol concert pieces - one was the end of Bach's Christmas Oratorio (Herr, wenn die stolzen Feinde). This was totally new, and not that easy, and (as Libby said) it seems a bit silly not to have given it out earlier so that people could look at it. But it did give me the chance to show off my sight-reading, which I always love! And we finished by reading through a truly bizarre "new" carol called "Strike! seraphs, strike your harps of gold" (written in 1850 by someone called John Fawcett). Apparently the musicologist who prepared the edition is coming to talk to us about it next week - should be interesting...

Did you watch the People's Chorus tonight? I didn't see me at all, other than in the distance once, and that was only because I knew where I sat and was looking. But most of the other Hallé people were on loads, especially Dr Liz. That's what I get for volunteering to be a tenor instead of an alto! But then I have been on TV many times before, so it's only fair that everyone else should have a chance. Oddly enough, I *did* see myself, very unexpectedly, in the programme *before* - the 10 Best Choral Masterpieces. Not a bad list - I have no problem with most of them, although there are a few others I might have included that were omitted (no Mozart Requiem or B Minor Mass or Creation, but they include Land of Hope and Glory?!?) But when they got to Gerontius, they showed a large chunk of our prom from last year! And I could see me in the background, behind the tenor soloist. If you missed the programme, it's repeated late on Tuesday night (well, actually 1 a.m. on Wednesday).

Finally, two more pictures - these are some of the angels in Albert Square. Go and have a look, they're lovely! And in the meantime, if you need some Christmas music to get you in the mood, there are various Christmassy mp3s still online, listed in this post from last year.

"TWINS!"

Not really in the mood to blog - I'm totally exhausted, plus my computer repair has turned out to be not quite as straightforward as hoped, which I could really do without. Also, I know there are some people in the choir who are able to take a day off work following a long day like Sunday's, but not only could I not do that, I had a parents' evening yesterday, which meant that I didn't get home till 9 p.m. - and then I had a pile of marking still to do! But never mind all that, let's talk about Messiah.

Having been less than enthusiastic about the whole thing, I actually really enjoyed it in the end, and I think most other people did too. Three highlights for me:

1. For the first time in several years, he DIDN'T MESS WITH "HALLELUJAH". My favourite part of the whole piece has always been the audience standing up at the start of that - it always makes me cry, for some reason - and the last few Messiahs have been spoilt for me by conductors INVITING the audience to stand. That's just not the same! But on Sunday Nicholas Kraemer just let it happen, and it was wonderful :-)

2. Similarly, the cheesy stand in the middle of "Glory to God", which I'd thought was silly, actually worked really well, and felt very powerful - I'd love to know whether or not it came across that way. (I'd also love to know whether or not anyone in the gallery noticed that, as instructed, I sang in their direction almost all the way through.) (They probably just thought "Why has she got her head sticking up in that unnatural manner? ...)

3. Carolyn Sampson, the soprano soloist. All the soloists were pretty good, but she just blew me away. She made it sound so easy! Even "Rejoice Greatly", which seems to me to be one of the most difficult arias there is. Her tone was sublime, and her top notes were effortless. Even her walk to and from her seat was amazing - she seemed to GLIDE. (Like Galadriel walking down the tree when you first see her in The Lord of the Rings. If you've seen it, you'll know exactly what I mean.)

It was all good, though. Although I'm surprised the tenors' heads made it through the door after all the praise heaped on them in the rehearsal. A sample (from Nicholas Kraemer): "It's very rare to have tenors in a chorus this size who sing as well as you do." Which is true - they ARE good - but we wanted compliments too!

An amusing contribution has come my way from Barbara's husband, who very much enjoyed the concert but overheard the following from audience members:

"Those 4 violinists at the back, they haven't played much - what's that all about?"

"Did you notice there are 2 types of women singers?"

"I know you didn't enjoy it but it's the sort of experience you ought to have!"

---

Just one negative thing I want to say, which I hope doesn't get forgotten in the euphoria of how well everything went. We didn't warm up AT ALL. AGAIN. That's two concerts in a row - and they were two BIG sings. A few years ago I wouldn't have been too bothered, but I can really feel the difference now if I've not warmed up properly. I think Jamie should make his mind up - either warm-ups are important, or they're not. I think most people would agree that they are - so can we have some consistency, please? Warm-ups should be done AT THE EXPENSE OF LAST-MINUTE NOTES. I imagine Maggie will be furious when she hears that yet again her work has been undermined.

Is it just me that thinks this?

Anyway, some other stuff to finish:

Here's an interesting Times article about choirs being in the public eye recently.

There was a thing called The Choir on BBC2 last night. If you missed it, I'm sure next week will summarise enough for you to catch up!

And of course, this Saturday is the best TV programme of the year so far - that is, unless they only show the sopranos :p The People's Chorus is on BBC4 at 8 p.m.

Ooh, I almost forgot - "TWINS!" was the most amusing moment of the "warm-up" - when Jamie was trying to get the men more enthusiastic about singing about a child being born unto them. Again, you probably had to be there :p

P.S. United are at home tomorrow, in a huge European game. Be warned!

Gerry the Genius

I met Gerry today. He is the lovely man who is going to fix my iBook (that's my laptop computer, for those who've never heard the term). It died yesterday (the logic board has given up the ghost, it seems) and the repair would be costing £500 if it wasn't for the fact that I took out AppleCare protection, which covers it. So at least there's some good news... Gerry works at the Genius Bar in the new Apple Store in the Arndale Centre. (If you've never been inside an Apple Store, do visit sometime - they're impressive places!)

In the meantime, I have no access to any of my files - or to World of Warcraft! (*sob*) - but I can at least get online - just - by using a PC laptop I've been allocated by school. I say 'just' because it's the SLOWEST MACHINE IN THE WORLD. It takes ten minutes - literally - to open a single program, and opening two things at once is just not an option. Argh.

What do you mean, I haven't mentioned the choir yet? Well, there's really not much to say. Last night was the orchestral rehearsal for Messiah, and it was OK musically (we finished 20 minutes early, always a good sign) but yet again had to stand up for most of it. And no doubt there'll be lots more standing tomorrow. Oh, my poor feet.