"Eyeline's to Jeremy."

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

---

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

"Is it too cheesy, Richard?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We're on the radio!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The Hallé Choir exploded into joyous, cosmic noise"

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

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

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

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

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

Why can't men say "Der"?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Imagine yourselves as 3D beasts....

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

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

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

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

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

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

Did you miss me?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Before I finish, though, a few more pictures!

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


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


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


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


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

Our English Landscapes CD is out at last.

A thing about people who clap too soon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Every time we say goodbye

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

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

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

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

The day that the rains came down

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not much of an alto rep

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

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

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

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

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

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

5. I think Jessica is doing an excellent job.

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

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

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

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

Anyway. Time to sleep.

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

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

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

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

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







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

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



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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

"In Russia, everybody has a dog."

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

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

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

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

"Kill someone with your voice!"

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

"Lions, they are not insane."

"David, you are a great orchestra."

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

(Last night we had a great time!)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mikhail Petrenko fan club

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

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

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

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

Pete to win!

I'm still ridiculously addicted to Big Brother, but thank goodness it finishes this Friday, so I can have music on in the background instead of housemates arguing. It's weird that I like BB so much, because I detest all the other reality shows... go figure...

Anyway, this is just a quick post to alert you to two new music-related blogs I just discovered. The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra have just started a joint blog, with posts so far by a cellist and a trumpeter. Example: "Towards the end we were required to “whisper in any order in random rhythm ‘ss’ ‘k’ ‘f’ and tongue click”. Being a loud-mouthed brass-player type, this is what I’ve been waiting my whole playing career for!! We were also asked to make wind noises, an instruction I think the trombones took a bit too literally." And there's also a very entertaining blog by a harpist, called Twang Twang Twang. I particularly liked the Joyce Grenfell harpist sketch :-)

I've added both those blogs to my sidebar (i.e. that list over there to the right of my page) so you can keep an eye on them. (They both have RSS feeds, if you're au fait with all that. So does this blog, for that matter, if you hadn't noticed.)

Oh, and also, in case you missed it, orchestral musicians are having big problems as a result of the new air travel rules.

Art thou troubled? Music will calm thee.

I've been in a foul mood for most of the last week. But then yesterday I had a singing lesson, and now I'm in a good mood :-) (Just to be clear, it wasn't so much the lesson that cheered me up, it was the hours of singing I thought I'd better do beforehand!) So if you're fed up for whatever reason, do try going and having a warble. All the things I've been fed up about lately are still exactly as they were, but today they seem less end-of-the-world-ish. So, yay!

I was going to post the other day to tell you that I was in Forsyth's and noticed that someone has actually published the sheet music for the Honda advert, and Forsyth's have it on sale at £3.95. I was very good and didn't buy it ("when would you ever use it?" I hear you ask, but that's not stopped me buying stuff in the past!) but go and have a look if you're curious.

As a result of singing-lesson-induced enthusiasm, I spent ages last night sorting out sheet music and CDs and iTunes playlists. And in the process I discovered that there are several songs I'd really like to have a recording of, but can't find one (there were a lot more than these, but I found quite a lot on the iTMS) - so if you have any of these you could send me an mp3 of, or let me know of a CD to buy, I'd love to know! A Hymn to the Virgin - Rubbra; A Lullaby - Hamilton Harty; A slumber song of the Madonna - Michael Head; Perduta ho la pace - Verdi; Silver - Armstrong Gibbs; Song to the Seals - Granville Bantock; Why am I always the bridesmaid? (music hall song)

To change the subject, a few links to point out: using music to predict when volcanoes will erupt; a review of Paris Hilton's new album which amused me greatly ("She sings like a woman who has heard of something called singing, can't be sure of exactly what it might entail, but is fairly certain you do something a bit like this."); and news that Katie Melua will be joining us at the Proms in the Park next month.

And finally, it occurs to me that I still have several "great choral moments" to share, so this seems as good a time as any to bring out another one! Well, two. Neither of which is strictly choral, but they're both choir-related...

The first is one that I was reminded of while sorting music yesterday. I found a song by Menotti, and this reminded me of the time - MANY years ago (not sure how many, but it was in the Free Trade Hall) - when we did Amahl and the Night Visitors. Actually, it must have been not long after I joined the choir (which was in 1993), because it was while I was sitting on the front row (John Currie used to put all the new people on the front row, which delighted me but thoroughly annoyed some of the older members who believed you should start at the back and move forward only every few years!). Why do I remember that? Well, this was a semi-staged performance, and the lead characters were in costume and acted as well as sang. And at one point during the gig, several members of the choir from the front row, including me and Ian Benton, had to go out to the front and give someone something (I think we were shepherds giving our gifts to the baby Jesus or something - it's a nativity story, in case you didn't know).

Anyway, that wasn't the moment I remembered. The Great Moment is one that probably won't mean much to anyone who wasn't there, but to those who were... Let me take you back. We REALLY didn't like this work while we were rehearsing it. There was very little to sing, and what there was seemed a waste of time. So we weren't looking forward to the performance at all. But on the night, I'm sure I wasn't the only one who got totally swept up by the thing. Amahl is a little crippled boy, you see, and the kid they had playing him (from the Manchester Boys' Choir, I think, although I could be wrong) was BRILLIANT. And at the end, when he was miraculously cured... well, there were more than just audible sniffs at the moment when he threw his crutches away and walked without them. I, personally, was in floods of tears, and it wasn't just me. As I remember it, most of the women in the choir were in a similar state, and the men were trying to cover up their own emotions by mocking the weeping women :p

Heh, that took longer to explain than I expected! I could leave the second Great Choral Moment for another time. But it could be ages before I have this much energy again, so here goes :-)

This one is much more recent (November 2004) and involves several current choir members, but I'm not sure whether any of them found it as funny as I did! I'm paraphrasing a post I wrote for my LJ at the time, so this will be more thorough than might otherwise be the case.

Jackie H is friends with a tenor soloist (Martin Toal) who had sung a few national anthems at major sports fixtures, and he'd asked her to arrange a group of singers (mainly Sotto Voce) to be the backing choir when he sang at the Tri-Nations rugby league final (Great Britain v Australia) at Elland Road in Leeds. We were asked to prepare standard Last Night of the Proms stuff (Land of Hope & Glory, Rule Britannia, Jerusalem) in addition to the English and Australian national anthems. We had to learn the latter from memory (we already knew all the rest) - it has somewhat odd words which we found hard to get right.

The Great Moment happened before we'd sung a note. We arrived at 2.30 as instructed. We said we were the singers. We were ushered to a very impressive dressing room - well, it was two adjoining rooms. The men announced that they'd have the room with the TV in (typical!). But then the ground staff guy who'd shown us in said "no, the men will have to go elsewhere, only girls allowed in here". Well, we were even more impressed at this. Until, a few minutes later, the guy came back and admitted he'd meant "only Girls Aloud in here"... he was somewhat embarrassed that he'd thought we were Girls Aloud (there were 8 women, of which I was, I think, the youngest...)

That was the Moment (which still cracks me up every time I think of it - I was mistaken for one of Girls Aloud!) but I should probably tell the rest of the story in case anyone is curious...

That was the first I knew Girls Aloud were singing too - I don't think the rest of the choir hadn't heard of them, but I was very excited by this news. Even more so when we were shown to our actual dressing room, which turned out to be shared with about 20 soldiers (Paras, in fact) (in desert uniform, which they'd been asked to wear because they'd all been to Iraq) and the cheerleaders (who wore England rugby kits, but they'd all rolled up their shorts at the waist so that they were really short). So everyone had some eye candy :p

There was lots of sitting around, interspersed with a brief rehearsal, then at 5.50 we were led into the players' tunnel. (The kickoff was 6.15.) This was the first we saw of Girls Aloud, who were performing on the pitch. The ground was packed, the players were out warming up behind Girls Aloud, and there were TV cameras EVERYWHERE. Then everything happened in a rush - the players all suddenly came off and went back into their changing rooms, and we were told to get into position on the pitch sharpish, because things were 2 mins behind schedule. So we dashed onto the pitch as Girls Aloud dashed off, and it was straight into Land of Hope & Glory. So exciting standing there during the long instrumental intro, waiting to sing - the atmosphere was fantastic.

We had to skip Rule Brit and Jerusalem due to time running out, but then they brought the players out, and wow! Loads of fireworks let off. Confetti shot into the air above the entrance. The soldiers fired their guns (I don't know what they were, but there were two and they were huge. We thought they looked like howitzers, but none of us was sure. They banged very loudly, anyway.) 1812 overture played over the PA (the loud bit with cannons). The players came and lined up right in front of us, the Great Britain team to our left and the Australian team to our right, and two soldiers stood in front of us on the red carpet holding the Tri-Nations trophy. The Aussie team looked just... well, BIGGER than the GB team. But all the players looked fierce.

We sang both the anthems - amazingly I remembered all the words to the Aussie one, although there was some creativity going on in the bass section behind me... - and then nearly tripped over a cameraman in trying to get off the pitch. We'd been warned to move as soon as the last anthem finished, because kickoff would be seconds later, and they weren't wrong - the red carpet was rolled up and whisked away before half the choir was even off the podium, and as I entered the players' tunnel the hooter for the start of the match went off and nearly deafened me.

That was the end of our involvement. We were home in time to see the second half. Of course, it all ended in tears - Great Britain got slaughtered. I suspect I cursed them. Martin Toal (the tenor soloist) lost his lucky charm status as a result - until that day, England (or Great Britain) had never lost a match at which he sang the national anthem, apparently.

More Great Choral Moments another time. Until then, keep singing :-)

"Is this heaven?" "No, it's Iowa."

Well, there were supposed to be quite a few choir people coming to my house tonight, but one by one they all cancelled, so I have a huge pile of sausage rolls to eat on my own. Luckily I adore sausage rolls! I should really have continued with the tidying, but instead I spent the last couple of hours watching Field of Dreams, which is one of the best films there is - I've seen it loads of times and it still makes me cry. (In a good way.) (If you've never seen it, go and buy the DVD immediately!)

Just thought I'd post a few links I've collected over the past few weeks.

Sting's next album will be "an album of 16th-century music performed entirely on ... voice and lute, there are a few four part harmonies that I sing and it's all music from the 16th century." I'm looking forward to this - Sting is one of my all-time heroes (along with Nelson, David Beckham, Clark Kent and others...)

A list of tongue twisters. Some of these are even more difficult than Jamie's "red leather, yellow leather, lavender leather" exercise!

Something called the Amen break, which I'd never heard of before. (Here's an mp3 of it.)

A list of all the musical genres there are, allegedly.

Some theories about why opera singers are fat.

A list of band name origins. (I like the Pretenders one - I never knew that!)

A thing about what classical performers wear (mentions Mark Elder).

William Byrd's theory about why everyone should learn to sing.

And finally, a really fascinating one that I could stare at for hours: a constantly-changing display of what's playing on American radio stations right now. No idea how it works but it's very cool!

"Find your own monkey!"

This was not a Jamieism, but a Maggieism. (When we did the Funky Gibbon exercise - the monkey noises - she demonstrated, and the whole choir did it at the same pitch she had, hence her request!)

The problem with being lazy (and not getting round to doing a choir blog post until a couple of days after the rehearsal) is that I can't remember what all the Jamieisms referred to. For example, "I love your buckets! Soft, but with a monkey underneath!" ... I think the buckets were buckets of cold water that we were supposed to be throwing, but I forget what the effect was supposed to be. The monkey is the one previously referred to, though :p

Then there was "Can you sing with horns? C# hornèd people! Sharper horns! Scary horns!" This definitely involved Jamie with imaginary antlers growing out of his head, as opposed to imaginary pigtails (it was a bit visual...) And at some point I wrote down "Pete impression!!!" I know this refers to Pete from Big Brother, and that Jamie reminded me of him at one point (which is kind of freaky, if you know who Pete is), but not why!

It was a really, really, really long rehearsal, by the way. (Just wanted to point that out to those who weren't there.) It was the last one of the season, of course, and there was a social thingy planned for afterwards, and Jamie had been asked (and agreed) to finish early to accommodate this. But what he didn't mention at the start (or indeed at any stage) was that in his mind, finishing early also implied transferring the break from the middle to the end. So we went from 6.45 to 8.45 with no break, on one of the hottest evenings EVER. And we only realised gradually, when he started a new movement at 8.10, that he had no intention of having a break. Of course, Jamie, being Jamie, was just as full of energy at the end as at the start (and he stood up throughout), but the rest of us were like the Wicked Witch of the West at the end of the Wizard of Oz. ("I'm melting, I'm melting!") I understand the need to not lose any rehearsal time, Jamie, but I think you need to take psychology into account at times. We did get through every note of the Ravel, lots of them several times (and still no Beethoven, despite many requests), but by the end most people had switched off, and even those who did write stuff down as instructed probably won't remember everything we did on Wednesday. Oh well. It did sound pretty good though!

I forgot to mention the start of the rehearsal, where Maggie did an exercise that turned into "Summer Holiday" (as usual it took me AGES to recognise this) and once we all got singing we couldn't stop, and Jamie ran in and thumped out the piano part. A nice start :-) Oh, and blond Jonathan! He definitely looked much blonder than he did last week. Or was it just me that thought that?

Going back to Beethoven 9 just before I finish, a couple of things. Someone asked recently whether I could put an mp3 of it online, and I pointed out that I did so a month ago, when I posted all the famous choruses. But to save you all looking back, here's the link again. And today I've added a text file of the lyrics, for those who know the tunes but need to brush up on the words.

Nearer the time, I must write about some interesting Beethoven 9 analyses. There are some fascinating musical details that I bet you've never noticed even if you've sung the work loads of times (I hadn't noticed any of them before I learned about them in an OU course I did). There's also a very well-respected academic who has a whole theory about B9 viewed in feminist terms. And then there's the theory about how it's all based on stuff to do with horses.... (yes, Mary, I did save that email!)

"Sit on your hands until you feel something hard."

(Was it just me that thought this was rather rude? :p It was actually Jamie describing how to find your "sitting bones"...)

It's been a long week. I had a big Pleiades gig at my school last Thursday, and then on Sunday we were singing again at my best friend's wedding. (Which went very well, but was very draining, vocally AND emotionally.) And then yesterday was my last day in the job I've been in for the last ten years. And then choir! Two rehearsals in two days. I didn't post after the first one because I was dying from exhaustion AND heat exhaustion (bear in mind that I've been too hot EVERY SINGLE TIME we've rehearsed at WHGS, including the occasions when everyone else has been trying to decide whether to wear one coat or two - so imagine how hot I felt this week!). But in any case I hadn't got much to say yesterday. We did most of the Psalmus Hungaricus (of which more in a moment). The only Jamieism of note was at the end: "If you sing sharp here, I will be so... mesmerised!"

Tonight was back to Ravel. Very low attendance - when we shuffled forward to fill the gaps, the whole choir didn't even fill the front two rows. But we did get a lot of useful work done. (Frustrating to know that we'll have to do most of it again, because although I'd love to believe that all the absentees will ask about markings they've missed, somehow I doubt it!) Actually the most useful thing I learned tonight was how to breathe in quietly. That's something I'm really bad at, and if I've ever been told before in exactly the way Jamie told us tonight, I've forgotten. So, for those who missed it: The cause of noisy intake of breath is unretracted vocal cords, i.e. throat not open enough. So anything that will retract the vocal cords and open the throat will help silent breathing. Three easy ways to do this:

1. Yawn.
2. Laugh quietly.
3. Look surprised!

(Note: you don't have to do all three!)

(Further note: misspelling of "vocal cords" is one of my biggest pet hates. Whenever I see "vocal CHORDS" I want to scream and throw things. Not good for the voice!)

Anyway. We also did an exercise in which we had to hum like a Belisha beacon - this was notable for the fact that Jamie hadn't previously known the term "Belisha beacon". Bless! Oh, and at some point (possibly the start of page 9 of the Ravel) we spent quite a while acquainting people with how a diminished 7th chord works. For those who missed it, the point was that a diminished 7th chord is made up of minor thirds stacked on top of each other, so that if every part moves up or down by a minor third, you still have the same chord. There are only three DIFFERENT diminished chords, and they sound the same whatever order the notes are in:

1. C - Eb - F# - A
2. C# - E - G - Bb
3. D - F - Ab - B

As you will see, every note in the chromatic scale is in one of those three chords. (And those tenors who were confused at being asked to sing Eb in the first bar of page 9, just for the exercise - hopefully now you can see why!)

Sorry to go on, you know I love stuff like this :-)

Couple more Jamieisms. One that made everyone giggle, although I'm still not sure whether or not we were all thinking of the same thing (!), was "Never push - pull! It's much more fun!" Then there was "Don't be soubrettish. More horn!" which confused some people, who may wish to know what a soubrette is! And finally, Jamie was amused that someone heard him playing the piano before the rehearsal, and asked him "Was that you playing the jazz?" to which he was delighted to be able to reply "No, it was just Ravel!"

And finally: some more (hopefully useful) downloads for you. Firstly, mp3 clips of Psalmus Hungaricus.

Beginning, up to figure 4
Figure 4, to 8th bar of figure 7
8th bar of figure 7, up to figure 11
Figure 11 to figure 16
Figure 16 to figure 20
Figure 20 to figure 25
Figure 25 to figure 31
Figure 31, to 4 before figure 40
4 before figure 40, to the end

And another sheet of extra cues, like the one I did for Daphnis. (Not quite as vital as for Daphnis, but if you're like me and want to know what's going on in the gaps, you might find it useful.) The full-size one is here, and the small version is here. As I said last time, the small version will fit on your screen whatever settings you have, but it's very fuzzy. Your best bet is to save the large version (by right-clicking the link, as if you were saving an mp3), and then open the saved version. Most printers should be set up to automatically shrink it to fit on one page, while keeping the quality.

After quite a few people asked for paper copies of the Daphnis cues, I photocopied a pile of them and asked Jessica if I could put them out for people to take, last week. She said it'd be fine and that she'd mention it to Jamie when he arrived (he wasn't there yet). By half-time the pile had vanished, and I assumed they must have all been taken, but then Jessica told me that Jamie wanted to check them before they were distributed, and would put them out this week if they were OK. But they haven't reappeared, so I don't know whether there's a mistake (which would be good to know, given how many people already have one!), or whether he's just forgotten, or whether he's actually decided this is information he doesn't want the choir to have for some reason... Who knows? Maybe I'll pluck up the courage to ask him at some point. Or maybe he'll produce the pile next week. Let's see.