To the Barbican box office, driver, and don't spare the horses

Sheena is, as ever, much more on the ball than me, and has spotted that tickets are now on sale for our Verdi gig at St Paul's Cathedral. Whee!

Warning: no musical content in this post! Mainly astronomy....

Just a couple of quick updates.... things which you may or may not have wanted to know, but I felt the urge to tell you anyway!

1. I had a job interview yesterday - my first one in months of trying, and as a bonus it involves music! It seemed to go OK, but I won't know the result until next week. Please all keep your fingers crossed!

2. The football season starts today, and Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink, this blog's favourite player, has already scored a goal! Sadly he doesn't seem to have his full triple-barrelled surname on his shirt any more, which was my favourite thing about him, but never mind. I was also very amused by a story about the unfortunate Leeds United (ha!), in which they talk to a painter/decorator who "refuses to paint red (Manchester United) and will paint the first layer of white over red for free". Oh, and "The thing that riles him most is that Leeds are to be sponsored by a company called Red Kite this season, and a splash of red has been introduced into the shirt." Hee!

3. The Fastnet yacht race starts tomorrow morning, and the weather forecast for the race route suggests that it might be pretty exciting. I'm quite amazed that there seems to have been no mention of it anywhere, and even Sky Sports (who quite often show sailing) seem to be ignoring it. Bizarre. Anyway, I just wanted to draw people's attention to it. If you want to follow it, try the official site. EDIT: The start has been delayed for 25 hours due to the extreme weather forecast. The race now starts on Monday morning.

4. More relevantly, probably, for most people, is the fact that this weekend is the Perseid meteor maximum. Which I'm sure you all knew (it's been in the news, unlike the Fastnet), but I just wanted to urge you all to go out and have a look at the sky at some point this weekend. I still regularly meet people who tell me they've never seen a meteor (a.k.a. shooting star), which amazes me. I have a theory that it's just because they never look at the sky for more than a few seconds at a time. In my experience, if you stare at the sky for 10 minutes at any time or place (well, assuming it's night-time and not overcast), you're quite likely to see a random meteor, but there are several ways in which you can improve your chances.

The first is to look during a known meteor shower, of which the Perseid shower is the best and most reliable. What's a meteor shower? Well, meteors in general are caused by specks of dust or tiny stones hitting the Earth's atmosphere and burning up. This can obviously happen at any time, because the galaxy is full of dust and small rocks just floating around. Meteors caused by one of these are known as "sporadic". (Oh, and while we're on definitions... the rocks are called "meteoroids" while they are floating in space. When they hit the atmosphere they become either "meteors" or "meteorites". The difference? Meteorites are bigger, so they reach the ground without burning up entirely. Meteors are so small that they totally vanish on the way down.)

However, there are certain places in the Earth's orbit where there are clouds of dust etc., probably caused by comets shedding parts of themselves when they approach the Sun. These clouds of stuff are in specific, predictable places, which means that the Earth always passes through them on the same date each year. For the Perseid meteor shower, the Earth passes through the relevant cloud on about 12th August.

Other ways of seeing more meteors (other than looking THIS WEEKEND):

- Go somewhere dark if you can (or at least darker - e.g. I have street lights near me, but if I go to the bottom of my garden, the lights are hidden by the trees and I can see the sky much better).

- Go out when the moon isn't in the sky, as the moon is so bright that it makes other things much harder to see. Ideally you want your meteor shower to occur during a new moon, and - very helpfully - this year it does!

- If you are wandering round in the dark, don't use a normal torch to stop you falling over - you'll lose your night vision and it will be quite a while before you can see in the dark again. Use a torch with a red bulb (or a normal torch with a piece of red cloth etc. tied over it) - that's what astronomers do.

- Try and look after midnight rather than before. After midnight, your side of the Earth is turning towards the Sun rather than away from it, and that means that anything that's hitting the atmosphere is more likely to do so. (For the same reason, bugs tend to accumulate on a car's front windscreen far more than the rear one.)

If you don't read this till Monday, you've missed the best of the Perseids, but do still go out and look - there are still Perseids around for several days before and after the maximum, so you should still see one or two. Enjoy!

It must ever be that we dwell in our dreaming, and our singing, a little apart...

Just a few links I need to share...

You must read this extremely interesting review of the final concert of the Chester Summer Music Festival. I think you'll feel pleased and proud :-)

In slightly less good musical news, the On An Overgrown Path blog tells us about a really alarming idea called Proms Idol, and the Guardian tells us of ENO's plans for an interactive version of Carmen.

And finally, in non-musical news, Harry Potter fans will find these two interviews with J.K. Rowling VERY interesting: Harry Potter: The Final Chapter and Wild about Harry. Needless to say they are very full of spoilers for book 7! But if you're a fan and you haven't seen this news, you will be excited to discover stuff like what the original last line was (you know how she said for years the last word of the last book would be 'scar' and changed her mind at the last minute?) and lots of information that she could have included in the epilogue and didn't. Also which character she meant to kill and reprieved, and which characters she didn't mean to kill but did! EDIT: And there's even more news in today's interview, and yet more in this webchat. Thanks, as ever, to The Leaky Cauldron for all these updates.

And some very exciting news for Buffy fans (I know there are others apart from me!), who don't expect to get new news these days, seeing as the series ended in 2003... it looks as if Joss Whedon is going to make the long-rumoured Ripper film, which tells the story of Giles before he met Buffy. Whee!

Back to musical news next time, I promise :-)

Save the cheerleader, save the world

I have a T shirt with this phrase on, which some people have asked me about. But soon everyone will know what it means, for tonight Heroes finally arrives on BBC2! It's on at 9 pm, repeated tomorrow (Thu) at 11.20 pm, and again on Sunday at 10.55 pm. It's also featured on the front of this week's Radio Times. I suspect I may have begged you all to watch it when it was on the Sc-Fi Channel, but if you didn't, now's your chance. It's the best TV in years, and my favourite thing since Buffy finished. Don't miss out!

That's my main reason for posting today, but while I'm here I may as well clear a few more links I've been saving. In no particular order....

I had no idea that the Manchester Jazz Festival was on, until I wandered through St Ann's Square yesterday and discovered a fabulous band playing, who turned out to be Tango Siempre. I'll definitely be buying their CD if I ever get a job. (I do have an interview in a couple of weeks for a job I'd really like, so there is finally hope!)

I am now on my second reading of the last Harry Potter book, and I have now seen the most recent film 3 times (no, I can't afford it, but luckily friends insisted on paying for me, because on each occasion they had no-one else to go with). I managed to avoid almost all spoilers beforehand, by staying away from most of the internet. However, those who have read all the books may be interested in the information in this interview, which reveals some minor additional details and some exciting future news from JKR.

I hope you all managed to catch at least some of the Manchester International Festival. I didn't see as much as I would have liked, due to lack of cash, but Alison and I did go to see the Monkey opera, and thoroughly enjoyed it. If you ever get the chance to see it live, do (I'm not sure where it's going, but I think it was due to go to Paris at some point later this year, if it's not already there) - there were things in it that, if I hadn't seen them with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed possible. (Here's a very interesting interview with Damon Albarn about the musical side of it.

Midomi is a website that lets you identify music just by singing it into your computer. In my experience such things usually don't work too well, but this one does! The only restriction is that it can only identify music that's already been added to its database. So it didn't recognise the first few things I tried, but when I checked, they weren't in the database. When I sang something that was in the database, it identified it immediately. I assume it will work better and better as more songs are added. If you're bored, you can add some yourself :-)

I forgot to mention that when I updated my online choir schedule, I noticed two things I hadn't previously known, so maybe others didn't know them either. Both are about the Verdi Requiem gigs - firstly, Mikhail Petrenko (one of our favourite basses) is the bass soloist. And secondly, the London gig is billed as a Royal Gala Performance. Exciting! (Oh, and tickets will be available from the Barbican box office - they don't seem to be on sale yet, though.)

Some guy at Manchester University wants to create an internet choir. (Thanks to ChoralBlog for both this story and the Midomi one.)

Those who remember Kent Nagano (fondly or otherwise - personally I thought he was fabulous) may be interested in this article about his time in Montreal. I like the idea of him gazing down from billboards and bus stops!

And, finally... if you know the song "Torn" by Natalie Imbruglia, yet didn't see the Secret Policeman's Ball last December, you will be very amused indeed by this version of it. I saw it at the time, but was reminded of it again recently, and it wasn't till then that it occurred to me to look it up on YouTube.

Meet Edie!

Edie is Rachel's brand-new daughter, born on 5th July. I met her for the first time yesterday, when Claire and Alison and I popped round during the lunch break of the choir course. Isn't she lovely?

I'm sure I'm not the only one who still feels totally exhausted after the weekend, and I haven't even had to go to work today! It was good, though. Those who couldn't be there missed a lot of stuff, including: Maggie repeating her "Surfing USA" warmup; Maggie leading us in a great version of Abba's "Thank you for the music"; Paul's guinea pig impression; David's face when he arrived on Saturday morning to find Maggie demonstrating the Funky Gibbon exercise with Paul's help; the meaning of the word overdight (no, I didn't know either, I looked it up on my phone because I was curious. So, those who were impressed when the question was asked and I knew the answer - don't be!); Dimitri helping us to perfect our Russian pronunciation (my favourite was when he said "I hear a mixture of sh and sh"...); various group games designed to help people improve their rhythmic skills; lots of brain-twisting activities with chords and Kodaly method hand signals; and of course lots of singing!

All the pieces we did were great, and I hope we do them again. Well, I know we're doing Komm Jesu Komm again at the memorial concert in September, and one of the Vespers (no. 8, the one with the Aida bit) in the carol concerts. (The altos and basses have the tune in Vespers 8, and it was only when the sops and tenors sat down - so that we could be seen - that I noticed exactly how many more 1st altos there were than 2nd! There were almost three times as many!) We did perform everything at the end of the course, and we got an impressive audience of friends and family - about 30-40 people turned up, and they seemed to enjoy it. We warmed up in front of them, which we hadn't been warned about, but we lost all shame years ago :-) We also did the thing where we all sing any note, and then move until we make a chord as if by magic. (I'm always amazed when that works!) That was followed by a demonstration of the "choral chord progression" thing, which I love doing - except that on this occasion it took a while to get going. I think that that's because we were told that our starting chord was Db major, yet I'm fairly sure it was nothing of the sort.

(I was very pleased that such a lot of time this weekend was spent on the choral chords and the Kodaly method stuff, because both of these techniques are invaluable for my method of sight reading. In fact, I thought of a couple more things to add to what I wrote, so I plan to edit it slightly and then turn it into a downloadable or emailable (or printable) document, because I've had quite a few requests for that - although they've all been people from different choirs!)

Two things to finish. Firstly, my online choir schedule now has all the new season stuff on it (and football clashes). It's not Googleable (try and see, if you don't believe me), so you won't be able to find it unless you know the address. Choir members, email me if you want it. I promise it will be kept up to date (as it always has been).

And finally, for those who were curious about Marvin Suggs - here's his Muppaphone!

Will it EVER stop raining?

Well, of the 17 songs that my ex-boss asked me to find for his last ever assembly, he only used 6 of them! This might have been annoying, but I was expecting it - him asking me to produce music that he didn't subsequently use was a weekly feature during the 10 years I worked for him, so it was kind of endearing. Anyway, the school has now closed forever. I spent most of the afternoon in floods of tears - so did most of the rest of the staff (plus many of the kids), to be fair, but I left a year ago and I thought I got all my crying done at the time! It's hard to explain what a special place that school was, though, to anyone who didn't experience it.

To take my mind off it, the first session of the intensive choir weekend was tonight. We didn't sing through all the music, but we did a fair bit of it. Tonight we did O Clap Your Hands (in which the 1st altos go down to a bottom E flat and the 2nd altos are nowhere near as low! What's that about?), one of the Rachmaninov Vespers (the first one), and Faire is the Heaven. It was all very lovely, particularly the yummy chords and key changes in Faire is the Heaven. As usual I felt that the 2nd altos (only 6 of us tonight! Quality rather than quantity, as we always say...) won the sight reading contest, although the rest of the choir did much better than they usually do. Anyone who wants some hints, see my sight reading instructions that I wrote earlier this year :-)

Only one more thing to add: Rachmaninov had big hands!

Just when you thought I'd gone...

... here are some mp3s for your delectation :-)

Faire is the Heaven (Harris)
O Clap Your Hands (Gibbons)
Komm Jesu Komm (Bach) - part 1
Komm Jesu Komm (Bach) - part 2
Komm Jesu Komm (Bach) - part 3
Komm Jesu Komm (Bach) - part 4
Vespers (Rachmaninov) - no. 1
Vespers (Rachmaninov) - no. 3
Vespers (Rachmaninov) - no. 7
Vespers (Rachmaninov) - no. 8

I've spent the last hour or so doing a favour for my ex-boss, which involved (as so many of my favours for him do!) finding a load of songs for him. I always used to do this for his weekly assemblies, but tomorrow the school closes down forever, so it's his last ever assembly. It'll be an emotional occasion. And one of the few benefits of being still unable to get a job is that at least I can attend :-)

Anyway, while faffing around with mp3s, I realised that I hadn't got round to putting mp3s online of this weekend's music, and I had meant to. So, here you are.

(As a matter of fact, I spent an hour this afternoon doing something else (not online) that hopefully lots of people in the choir will find helpful this weekend. I'll be interested to see how many of them notice!)

Thanks again for all the comments and emails in response to my last post. They are much appreciated. As for the future of this blog, I'll make a decision after the weekend. Hopefully I'll be able to keep it going in some form, although it will be necessarily different to how it has been in the past. We'll see.

Quick update

It's been a while since I've written anything here lately, for various reasons. But I thought I'd do a post, if only to list a load of links I've been saving, before they get REALLY out of date....

Here's the Guardian review of The Kingdom. And the Independent review of the Elgar events in Birmingham. And a slightly alarming rumour about them demolishing the Briton's Protection! (scroll down...)

You'll have seen the big row between Sony and Manchester Cathedral, which doesn't yet seem to have been resolved. The strange part about it is that I'd assumed, when the story hit the news, that the game in question must have just been released, but it actually came out in March!

I enjoyed watching the Cardiff Singer of the World, as, no doubt, many of you did too. I'm not sure I would have picked the same winner, although he was very good. I was pleased Elizabeth Watts (the English soprano) won the song prize, and I think I would have given her the main prize too. I'd hoped Maria Isabel Vera (the Chilean mezzo) would win, but I agree with the commentators that she wasn't as impressive in the final as she was in the heat. But my favourite of the whole competition was actually David DQ Lee (the Canadian/Korean countertenor). He won his round but wasn't selected for the final. Normally I hate countertenors - partly on principle (as if there aren't too few alto opportunities out there already, without men taking them!) and partly because I just don't like the sound of any I've heard before. But he was the only competitor that made me sit up and watch him properly, rather than just have the singing on in the background while I was actually concentrating on something else.

This past weekend I have watched an awful lot of Glastonbury on the BBC (official site here). There were lots of bands and singers I really like (and for those who don't know me, I should maybe clarify that I listen to all this sort of music much more than the stuff on Cardiff Singer of the World - although I listen to that too!). I think my favourite performances were from the Arctic Monkeys and the Fratellis. Neither performance was perfect - lots of the Arctic Monkeys' singing was incredibly out of tune, in particular - but both bands made up for their flaws in other ways. I also loved The Who and Shirley Bassey - always great to hear historic songs performed live by the original artists. Hard to believe that Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey are both in their sixties - and Shirley Bassey is seventy. And they all still sound fabulous! Good news for those who worry about losing their voices as they get older.

Other acts I liked: Amy Whitehouse, The Coral, Dirty Pretty Things, the Kaiser Chiefs, the Killers, the Kooks, Lily Allen, and Maximo Park. I was a bit disappointed with Bjork and Rufus Wainwright, though. I do usually like Bjork (I did even before we were in a concert with her - remember that? In Verbier many years ago?), but on this occasion I was unmoved (although the commentators kept saying how great her show was). Maybe Dr Liz can tell us whether or not Bjork was better live - she was there (rather her than me! I like watching from the comfort of my armchair, but the last standing gig I went to, a couple of years ago - Red Hot Chili Peppers, since you ask - was enough to convince me never to go to one again, let alone one with mud!). And Rufus Wainwright was fine for most of the time, but he and his sister absolutely RUINED Hallelujah. He kept playing the wrong chords, and the singing (from both of them) was no better. It sounded as if they hadn't actually rehearsed it. (Rufus Wainwright is one of those people - like Jeff Buckley - who seems to be regarded as a bit of a god by his fans... they seem unable to admit that he could possibly not be perfect.)

Anyway, I need to go and do yet more job hunting. But first... Some of you have already noticed that my unofficial choir website has gone (and there is a note in its place to explain why). I may have to stop this blog too, but I'm not sure yet. If I do keep it going, it will probably be slightly different. I don't want to go into any more detail here, but I appreciate the supportive emails, and I will reply to them all ASAP.

"We don't do diction here... we do words."

A quick post, because I don't have very much to say, plus I'm in the middle of tidying my spare room in an effort to find my CRB certificate. But I thought I'd better write something so that no more people will obligated to send me links to reviews! (I'm very grateful, and please don't stop doing it, because I do miss stuff occasionally - but lots of people have emailed to point these out to me, and I feel a bit guilty because I'd already seen them but just not summoned the energy to post!)

The M.E.N. gives us 4 stars but the only thing they say about the choir is that we were sometimes overpowered by the orchestra. (Graham E says that this was indeed the case.) I suppose we should be grateful that we were mentioned at all - we're not always!

The Times gives 5 stars and says the Hallé sounded like the best orchestra in the world. Sadly this review is of Saturday's concert rather than Sunday's, but still!

Talking of Graham E, he very kindly sent me some proper photos of Mark getting his present - they're on my choir photo page, as are a few pics from the Hilton party on Sunday afternoon. This is the view through the floor, for those who didn't dare stand over the window!



The concert went well, anyway. The bit I've had on the brain ever since is my favourite bit, which is the men's "this is he which sat for alms" on page 130. That just sounded fabulous every single time they did it! Although I also loved the 2nd bass bottom C near the end (this was the point about which we got the only Jamieism of the day (apart from the one in the title): "What I think you need to do is be a little more ambitious pitchwise..." - I don't think he meant the 2nd basses though, they sounded great!)

Oh, and I did get a chance to speak to the lovely Andrew. He told me that he's only back for this weekend - they also asked him to do a recording of L'Après-midi d'un faune, but he wasn't free for that. But he will be playing with them again in the Prom that they're doing. So you can watch him on TV :-)

And finally - if you feel like a water fight this Saturday, Platt Fields is the place to be!

"To all the 59-year-olds... it's all right!"

Well, today was Mark Elder's 60th birthday - and Elgar's 150th. (Annoyingly the BBC news story about the Elgar anniversary doesn't mention us!) There was a banner up inside the Bridgewater Hall auditorium saying "Happy birthday Maestro!" for both of them. Hopefully you can just about make it out on the second of these pictures:





(There are bigger versions on my choir pictures page but the ones in the hall aren't any clearer, I'm afraid! I know lots of other people were taking pictures with proper cameras - if anyone would like to send me any, I'll put them online.)

For those who weren't there: the first photo is of Mark getting his birthday present from the choir, which he said was "Brilliant!" (it was a hand-carved tabletop music stand - he said he could take it all over the world, subject of course to airline luggage restrictions... this, needless to say, prompted a wry chuckle!) He also told us that not only is it a gloriously sunny day (honestly, it was so hot in Manchester today I thought I might faint) but that "The four soloists advertised in the programme ARE ALL HERE!" This is very rare for Mark, he seems to have a curse on soloists, as I'm sure I've mentioned before - invariably one or more of them is ill and has to be replaced. (The second picture is of Mark speaking to the audience - this was an open rehearsal, and an impressive number of people sat through the whole thing. And the third is of Mark presenting 30- and 40-year choir service awards to lots of people.)

A bonus birthday present, which I'm ashamed to admit I didn't notice immediately, was that we have a guest principal flautist - Andrew is back! And I didn't even see him till he waved to me! I didn't get a chance to speak to him - hopefully tomorrow - so I don't know how long he's here. Presumably just for the weekend. But I was amazed that none of the people around me seemed to remember him at all. I mean, he's an old friend of mine (I know him from Chet's) so I'd remember him more, but still! I couldn't actually remember when it was that he left the Hallé for the RPO, but this list of orchestral principal flautists tells me he was with us from 1999 to 2004. (Yes, I know the page says 'flutists' but that word always looks wrong to me, even though I know it's the American version!)

The rehearsal wasn't too bad, I suppose - we almost got all the way through (we were 5 pages from the end when the orchestral manager came on to stop the rehearsal). I have to say I wasn't too inspired by the soloists - the bass was a bit slapdash with his rhythm, the tenor swooped, the soprano pronounced lots of words very strangely (e.g. 'shill' instead of 'shall')... and the alto was fine, but annoyed me by being a mezzo when the part is labelled 'contralto'! (It doesn't take much to annoy me at the moment!) As for the choir, those alto bits are still wrong (although there are slightly fewer people singing the F-when-it's-supposed-to-be-G), and the other sections have their own stumbling blocks. There are too many people who can't sing quietly, and FAR too many people who think that singing quieter automatically means slower (this is a very common choral problem but it drives me UP THE WALL). There are also a lot of people who seem to think that in parts where we've been asked - for very well-explained reasons - to be absolutely still, that it doesn't apply to them, and it won't make any difference if they choose that moment to start flicking through their score. ARGH.

As ever when we do a piece with the orchestra for the first time, I noticed a couple of interesting bits. For example, there are some chords on page 81 that have a square bracket under them for no apparent reason - does anyone know why? I must investigate. And there was a fabulous twiddly bit on the bottom of page 138 - I think it was a horn, but I only became aware of it as it ended. Must listen out tomorrow.

I felt a bit fount-of-all-knowledgey today, actually. At various points during the morning, I was asked: is there a breath on page 28? (answer: there was once, but it was removed); what's a good place to take parents for lunch tomorrow? (answer: there are loads of places, but I suggested Felicini); who had a number one hit with Frankie in 1985? (answer: Sister Sledge); what do I do if I didn't put my name down for the party at Cloud 23? (answer: officially, nothing, because the numbers have already been finalised with the hotel; unofficially... well, I told the person who asked!); and, who writes the Upbeat choir newsletter? (answer: this was the only question I didn't know the answer to, but I later found out that it's actually Tom Parnell - who tells me that the use of the word 'Poulank' was deliberate, and he'd hoped people would understand if they'd read the newsletter!) (I haven't read it myself in quite a while, I must say - ever since that Christmas issue that I mentioned at the time - but maybe I should.)

Unfortunately I seem unable to convince any non-choir people of my usefulness - my job hunting is not going at all well, and the other day I was turned away from a temp agency by the RECEPTIONIST, who told me that because I have no actual office or admin experience (because of course I've never had to do anything administrative in my life, have I?!) there was no point me even trying to get a temp job doing anything administrative. How encouraging. (She didn't even get to the part of my CV where I listed some of the things I can do - apparently my employment history was the only thing that counted.) I do have a few other ideas to try, but I hope one of them works soon, as money is becoming a real issue.

Hope some of you made it to a Whit Friday event. Sadly I didn't - the friends I'd been due to go with cancelled at the last minute, and I didn't want to go on my own. So I stayed home and watched David Beckham. But lots of people seem to be coming here looking for results, so for them: Saddleworth results are here and Tameside results are here.

Oh, and I seem to have made quite a few people very excited indeed by my mention of Alan Rickman - lots of people have arrived here from the Alan Rickman Download Haven, and it sounds as if large numbers of Rickman fans will come to see the Hallé just because of him. So, an excellent marketing decision there :-)

It's Whit Friday today!

So I'm going to start by ignoring choirs and talking about brass bands :-)

EDIT: To all the people coming here looking for Whit Friday 2007 results, Saddleworth results are here and Tameside results are here.

I'm always quite surprised that many musical people who live in Greater Manchester have never heard of the Whit Friday band contests, so today I feel the need to tell people about them. Then, if you're intrigued, you can go and watch tonight! (This is a slightly updated version of an article I wrote for a Mensa music magazine many years ago, but as far I know the details are all still true. (I apologise for the number of exclamation marks. Not sure what I was thinking...)

(I do have a few comments from last night's piano rehearsal of The Kingdom, but I'll get to them at the end of this post.)

The whole Whit Friday thing will make a lot more sense if I explain about brass bands first. Brass bands are commonly perceived as being a typically Northern phenomenon, but, although I was born and raised in Manchester, I knew practically nothing about them until I started work in Rochdale. The whole system is so unique that I find it fascinating.

There are more rules concerning brass bands than those covering all other areas of music put together. The reason for this is that the brass band world is primarily geared towards competition rather than entertainment (many bands do no concerts at all, in fact). The contests, however (invariably taking place on a Sunday, starting at a ridiculously early hour like 8 a.m. and continuing until the bar closes at midnight or so) are very bitter, hard-fought affairs, with the results being discussed for weeks afterwards.

For the purposes of contests, bands are divided into five sections (Championship, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th). There is a fixed number of bands in each section, but I’m not sure what it is (something like 30 in the Championship or “top section” and rather more in the others). At each contest, bands score points according to their placing (so many for a win, 2nd place, etc.) and at the end of the year there are promotions and relegations, just like in football. In addition to the five sections, there is also a Youth Section, which is just as competitive - the only limit is that players must be under 19. (Young players can, of course, play for “section bands” too.)

The actual contests are amazing. I thought someone was pulling my leg when I was told what happens, but I’ve seen it for myself and can assure you that this is all perfectly true! The actual admin stuff for the contest starts several weeks earlier, when the band’s secretary checks that each player’s registration card is in order. These cards have (amongst other things) the player’s photograph and signature, and they are amended at Head Office (wherever that is) if a player is transferred between bands. No-one can be registered with more than one band. At the same time, the secretary will get each player to sign the contest registration form, and this will be sent off so that the band is officially entered. The band will have been practising the test piece for weeks - in each section, there is only one test piece, so if there are 20 entries (common) then the audience will hear the same piece 20 times!

The contest day begins very early for youth and lower section bands (the top section usually starts at a much more reasonable hour). The first thing that happens is the draw, which is often at 8 a.m., so a band may have had to set off at 6 a.m. if they have any distance to travel. At the draw, each band’s manager has to be present while a draw is made for the order of play. When this has been done, the band knows whether it has time to rehearse or whether it has to proceed to registration. The band drawn first also has to play the National Anthem (or “The Queen”, as they call it), so they will find a few minutes to practise it - they don’t get judged on it, in theory, but most conductors are of the opinion that it’s not a good idea to play it badly!

Even when the draw is known, there is not a fixed time at which the band knows it will be playing - they have to guess what time to tell the players to meet. Eventually, though, it will be their turn to “proceed to registration”. This takes place in a backstage room. The contest controllers sit at a desk. One has all the registration cards (which were handed in at the draw) and the other has the contest registration sheet. The players file past, and each one is compared with his/her photo on the card, and then signs the registration sheet (right next to where they signed it the first time). After this signature has been compared with the first signature, and both have been compared with the one on the card, the player is allowed to play - or not, if there are any discrepancies!

Now you may be thinking “this doesn’t sound much like any music I’ve ever taken part in!” - but bear with me! It gets even stranger! When the band, having passed through registration, finally get on stage, they will be announced simply as “Band number 5” (or whatever) and there will be two notice boards on the stage, saying something like “Draw number 5” and “Programme number 9”. Why? Because the adjudicator is not allowed to know which band is which! Before the contest began, he will have been taken to his “box” (and it usually is just that - a box (with sides but no roof) constructed right in the middle of the hall) by a steward who will have ensured that no-one speaks to him (they might tell him the results of the draw!). The adjudicator stays in this box all day - I believe there is a bucket in there in case he needs to relieve himself.

The audience, however, know which band is which, because they’ve all bought a programme, in which the bands are listed in alphabetical order, and they’ve all written down the draw, which is posted outside the contest hall as soon as it’s known. In addition, the audience will quite happily sit through 20 or 30 performances of the same piece - some even take a score with them to follow! Most of these test pieces are especially written for this purpose and are fiendishly difficult (more so in higher sections!)

After all the bands have played, there will be a long, tense wait until the adjudicator blows his whistle for the last time. He will already have used it to let each band know he’s ready for them to start - now he uses it to say he’s ready to be let out of his box. He goes on stage and delivers some general comments, but nothing specific. Then there are lots more speeches in which everyone thanks everyone else. Eventually the contest controller reads out the results - usually only the top 3 or 4 places, and always in reverse order. Often the bands are only separated by one point - I’m not sure how the adjudicators fiddle it to be so close. Finally, everyone goes to the bar to celebrate or drown their sorrows.

A variation on this theme is “entertainment contests”. These mainly involve youth bands - there are very few for section bands. In an entertainment contest, there is no test piece - bands can play whatever they like, and they have a rigidly enforced time limit (penalty points are deducted for each minute they are outside the allotted range). The music is supposed to be “entertaining”, and most of it is - but there are still many conductors who feel that a brass band programme is incomplete if it doesn’t include a march, a hymn tune and a solo feature (usually for the top cornet or euphonium, and often a theme followed by lots of twiddly variations - yawn!). There will be at least one very silly item (e.g. Nellie the Elephant done as a tuba feature, with the players wearing tutus and elephant ears - I kid you not!) and probably something by Andrew Lloyd Webber (The Old Gumbie Cat is a particular favourite).

Entertainment contests have two adjudicators - one for the music and one for the entertainment. At the end the marks from both sections are added together (usually the music is given marks out of 200 and the entertainment out of 100, or a similar ratio). The music adjudicator sits in a box and operates just as he would at a traditional contest. The entertainment adjudicator watches, however. But each band’s compère has strict instructions not to mention the name of the band, or indeed to say anything that could give a clue to which band is playing.

The instrumentation, by the way, is as follows. A standard brass band has only 25 players plus drummers (although there may be more in concerts, particularly for youth bands). These will be: 1 soprano cornet, 9 cornets, 1 flugel horn, 3 tenor horns, 2 baritones, 2 euphoniums, 3 trombones, 4 tubas. There are no trumpets or French horns in a brass band, surprisingly.

Anyway, I’ll finish by telling you about Whit Friday. It’s the Friday after Whit Sunday each year (this year that means it’s today). On this day each year, bands from all over the country (and elsewhere too) converge on the Saddleworth area of Oldham, just to the east of Manchester. More than 100 bands take part, and each of the 20 or so villages involved basically stops work for the day (except the pubs!). Each village runs its own contest, and the prize money is not to be sniffed at! The contest starts at about 4.30 p.m. and runs till 10 or 11 p.m. The bands play on a “first come, first served” basis - sections are irrelevant at this stage. They arrive on coaches, and as each coach arrives, the band’s “runner” (usually the band manager) leaps off while the coach is still moving and races to the registration point. The order of play is determined solely by the order of registration, regardless of where the coach is in the queue - this can make the traffic policeman’s job interesting! It is to the band’s advantage to play as soon as possible, because the sooner they play, the sooner they can leave to go somewhere else and enter another contest. Anyway, depending on how busy the contest is, the players may well have a 30-40 minute wait before they play, which they will spend in the pub.

When it’s their turn to play, the band will get ready to march. Usually trombones are at the front (they need more room) and cornets at the back, with the bass drummer and one or two side drummers in the middle. Some bands also have a mace-bearer at the front. At a signal from the steward, the conductor (or band manager) will tell the band to “take the street”. At this point they line up in perfect order. In theory no-one speaks or moves, because from this moment on they are being judged on their “deportment” - uniform, discipline, straight lines etc. The youth bands are much better at this than the section bands, in my experience - the top bands don’t take it too seriously, because they know that the real money for them is in the music prizes.

Eventually the steward tells the band to march. The mace-bearer, if present, will do a complicated set of actions at this point. Then the bass drum does a two-bar rhythm, after which he is joined by the side drummers for two bars, and the band raise their instruments for the next two bars. Then they start to play, and after a fixed length of time (the first phrase, usually), they all start to march - left foot first. They march along the street, following a child with a sign with the name of the band chalked on it. He leads them to the bandstand or contest field or wherever. As soon as they are reasonably near to it (but still out of earshot) they are given a signal, at which the bass drummer will do a “double tap”, and the band stops playing at the end of the phrase in which this occurs. (If they finish the piece before this signal, they start again at the beginning.) They continue to march until the side drummers do a two-beat roll to stop them. When they are told to leave the street, they are no longer being judged on deportment - they walk to the bandstand and play their contest march (this will be much more difficult than the street march). The adjudicator will be told nothing about them apart from which section they are to be judged under, and he will be somewhere from where he can hear them but not see them (often in an upstairs room of a nearby pub, with the window open but the curtains shut).

After the band has played its contest march, the players race back to the coach and set off for the next village. Ten contests during the course of the night is a reasonable average - many do more, many do less. The results of the contests are available the same night if you wait around till the end, or online or in the local newspaper over the next couple of days.

If you have never experienced Whit Friday, I feel that your life will be incomplete until you have - so tonight is your big chance! There are only two good ways to “do” Whit Friday - either arrange to be on a coach with a band, or pick one spot and stay there all evening. Following a coach in a car doesn’t work very well, because the parking is horrendous and the roads frequently close while a band marches down them. But, assuming you don’t know any bands who’ll let you join them, a good first visit is to go to Uppermill and sit in front of one of the pubs on the High Street. Last year 57 bands went through Uppermill between 5 and 10 p.m., including most of the top section bands. This page gives you an idea of the scale of the thing (and it doesn’t include all the contests). (If you want somewhere a bit quieter than Uppermill, try Friezland - the top section bands don't go there, so it's a bit more laid back, and there are slightly fewer drunken people due to there not being an actual pub there.)

Anyway - I should probably talk about choir, shouldn't I? As previously mentioned, last night was the piano rehearsal for The Kingdom (i.e. with Mark Elder but not the orchestra - we see them on Saturday). It went reasonably well - needless to say there was lots of dragging due to people not watching, and a few bits where the basses seemed to have no clue what notes to sing, but apart from that it was OK, I thought. And we did get through the whole thing and only finished 5 minutes late. Not bad. (Did you know, by the way, that CBSO & C are having a bit of an insane weekend? They're doing Gerontius tonight, The Apostles tomorrow night and The Kingdom on Sunday afternoon! I dread to think when they started rehearsing... or how long it will take them to recover! Nice thing in the M.E.N. about our weekend though.)

Mark, as usual, inspired everyone, including those who weren't entirely convinced about how good the piece is. (Am I the only one that hadn't previously realised that it tells the story of what the apostles got up to after the Ascension? It all makes so much more sense now!) There weren't many classic Markisms though - maybe he's saving them for his birthday. (He did start talking about a recent disturbing Australian film at one point - I thought he said "Jitterbug" but there hasn't been a film called that for many years. EDIT: Apparently it was Jindabyne. THanks, Libby!) I think the best one was when he was telling us about the priest who comes to all the Hallé concerts and sends critiques afterwards: "He has a parish right over the other side of the country. In Yorkshire!" ... This seemed funnier at the time than it does now :p

Oh, and finally - you know I told you about the things the orchestra are doing for the Festival? Well, now they've got Alan Rickman with them for one of them!

"I disagree! I'm talking about the shape of the horn, not the position."

Well, I seem to have not blogged for ages! I think I was distracted by the FA Cup Final - the buildup, then the weekend itself, then the not-being-in-the-mood-to-do-anything-cos-we-lost. I enjoyed the New Wembley experience, though - it's an impressive place, despite the less than impressive result. (The hand-driers, in particular, are amazing! This may seem a bit of an incongruous thing to say, but if you'd experienced their power you'd understand... I suspect they were specially souped up in order to balance the extreme puniness of the WHGS hand-driers...)

Anyway, here are my Wembley pictures. At least I did get to spend the weekend with a couple of friends I haven't seen in far too long, so the weekend wasn't entirely a disappointment!

Choir-related note: On the tube back into central London (which was so full that no-one could move - we were all packed in like sardines), I ended up in a carriage that was 90% full of Chelsea fans, and unsurprisingly they were in very high spirits. I had my Ronaldo shirt on, and they kept shouting "Ronaldo, Ronaldo, give us a song!" And I chickened out - I felt uncomfortable being on my own, totally hemmed in by these men... plus, one of them had an air horn which he kept blasting right by my ear, and I was actually worried that my eardrums might burst. As it was, I developed a massive headache as a result of the noise. But I kept thinking that in some way I was letting down the choir because I was asked to sing and I couldn't. How stupid is that?!

On a more cheerful musical note, I had a rehearsal last night with my band, which was (as ever) great fun. It was even better last night because our flautist, who moved to the USA a couple of years ago, was back for a visit, and all the songs sound much better with flute. The only sad bit was that Rachel was ill and couldn't make it, and that meant that she didn't get to sing California Dreaming (her favourite song) with the actual flute solo in it! Last night did show the extreme power of muscle memory, though - Anne (the flautist) hadn't played her flute since leaving the UK, and lots of the solos are much harder than the California Dreaming one (we make her play all the twiddly bits in the Abba songs - not for beginners!), yet she played everything practically perfectly! She was more surprised about this than anyone, and said that it must be because she worked so hard to learn those solos years ago when she first had to play them.

Anyway, no doubt some of you are wondering what the choir's been up to. Well, we are still learning The Kingdom. There's an awful lot of it! The concert is a week on Sunday; Wednesday this week was the first time we got almost all the way through it (we finished 10 minutes late and still didn't QUITE get to the end), and I think everyone was aware that ideally we would have liked to spend longer on several bits. Some bits are a lot more familiar than others - the tenors' big tune on page 78 ("he who walketh upon the wings of the wind") is the bit I've had on the brain for weeks, although the ladies' bit just after that ("the Lord put forth his hand and touched their mouth") isn't far behind. (Jamie said last week that that bit "shouldn't sound like Flanders and Swann... but it does!")

There are still an awful lot of wrong notes, which I hope people are going to look at before next week. From the alto point of view, lots of people are still getting "what meaneth this?" wrong on pages 85 and 95, and almost all of them are singing an F instead of a G for the first note of page 23. The most amusing alto mistake, though, wasn't either of these - it's from last week's warmup, and I'm still giggling every time I remember. Maggie was doing that exercise with the runny "nooey nooey nooey nooey nee" where we step and clap at the same time. She indicated which way to move first, and most people managed this, but most of the first altos on the front row were going consistently the wrong way, which very much amused those of us behind them. But even funnier was a minute later when we did the contrary motion scale - sops going up, altos going down - and Maggie said "bend your knees when you get to the top note... that means, of course, that you won't all bend at the same time..." Well, the movementally-challenged front row first altos couldn't cope with this at all, and they all bent their knees on the bottom note.

I realise that this may not sound like the most entertaining thing in the world, but you had to be there :p

(By the way, Maggie had told us, just before this, that the alto section solo in the Poulenc was the highlight of the concert for her and had moved her to tears. 'Exquisite' was the other word she used. Nice to be singled out for a change!)

I think many of the altos were probably cursing me this week. Firstly, at the request of another member of the choir, I asked them all to wait behind at the start of the break (even though Jamie had gone on 10 minutes longer than he'd said he would) so that she could come and speak to them about a concert she wanted some singers for - but she then went to have two conversations while they all sat there waiting for her (quite a few, unsurprisingly, refused to wait and went to have their tea anyway). I presume she'd just forgotten she'd asked the altos to wait! But then, Jamie found me and asked me if Judith and I would have a word with the altos and ask the ones who wouldn't stop chattering to please shut up. Great, I thought, they're already cursing me! (It actually wasn't as bad as it sometimes is - there were only three or four people that were talking as far as I could see - but they did indeed talk practically nonstop throughout the first half, and it was certainly distracting me, so I can imagine it must have driven Jamie up the wall.) But the talking was nonexistent in the second half, so it seems to have worked, and hopefully Jamie was happier. (Quite a few people came up to speak to me about this afterwards. A couple of them said "I don't think that was necessary - I certainly wasn't talking, and I couldn't hear anyone else either"... but the majority said "thank goodness something was said, the chatterers are driving me mad!")

Which leads me, somewhat indirectly, onto Jamieisms! The one in the title is my favourite, but it's the whole exchange that amused me. He was explaining to the sops how they should sing a particular note, and ended up saying "sing it from your rhino horn". Pat said, very seriously, "surely you mean a unicorn horn?", and Jamie, equally seriously, said "I disagree! I'm talking about the shape of the horn, not the position." There then followed an explanation of positions and shapes of rhino and unicorn horns and their respective relevance to singing. It was enlightening :-)

Also last week was a bizarre request to "sing as if you're singing to an alien who's just arrived on Earth and you're trying to explain the difference between men and women". It's bizarre because the passage in question (on page 106) bears no relation to any of this! This week's best one was a request to the sops and tenors to sing as if they were Gonzo the Muppet hypnotizing a chicken.... but I also liked "I've always wondered why 'monosyllable' has so many of them."

"Where are we breathing?" "You know what? I was actually hoping 'never'."

Today's choir rehearsal was almost six hours long (note to self: TAKE MORE THAN ONE BOTTLE OF WATER NEXT TIME IT'S THAT LONG) and I went to bed far too late last night due to World of Warcraft, so I'm now so tired I'm about to go to sleep. But I thought I'd do a quick post first, mainly because I did a quick search to try to find more info on the Eddie Izzard sketch Jamie acted out, and was delighted to find a video of the very thing. It's from this DVD and describes Eddie's experience of learning the clarinet, amongst other things. (This came up because Jamie noticed that the 2nd alto part in several bits of The Kingdom is rather like 'musical polyfilla', much like Eddie Izzard's 3rd clarinet parts...)

Other Jamieisms (plus the one in the title):

"Have you thought about that part of your body today? Why not? ... Because it's WEIRD."

"Ladies, what lovely chests you have!" (to protect Jamie, I should clarify that this referred to our chest register voices...)

"Altos, this is where your chests come into their own." (ditto!)

"Sing the end of the phrase loud, but piano."

"Surprise your voice!" (This was to the sops on page 129... it was a bit visual, you had to be there!)

"1st altos and 2nd sops, try singing that phrase as if you have a mini Hulme Bridge inside your mouth and you're singing over the top of it." (this was on page 153 and referred to this bridge)

"When you've got two notes together which are the same pitch, the first of which is correct and the second of which is not... I'm not sure what I can do to help you."

Sleep now. Need to be up tomorrow to get a few more job applications sorted out before I go to see United collect the Premiership trophy :-)

"In cricket, they have a thing called the TFC award.."

"... It's for players who don't score any runs or make any catches or bowl anyone out - who don't, in fact, do anything at all. It means 'Thanks For Coming'. And, tenors, you are tonight's recipients!"

I'm paraphrasing Wednesday night's only Jamieism, because I didn't write down anything other than "TFC award" at the time. But that's more or less what he said. It was a little harsh, I felt, because it's not as if they did nothing... but they did make us shake our heads in disbelief when Jamie was trying to get them to sing one of their lines slowly (in an attempt to get the notes right) and they went hurtling off at almost double the speed he was beating!

We did the middle section of The Kingdom fairly thoroughly, and it sounded much better by the end. Tomorrow we get to spend most of the day on the piece - maybe we'll manage a full runthrough! Should be possible, since we've done enough note-bashing. We'll see.

Lots of people have written to point out that we got a 5-star review in the Guardian for the Poulenc gig! The Manchester Evening News only gave us 4 stars, but at least they MENTIONED the choir, which they don't always! I haven't seen any other reviews. There have been quite a few more for the Cello Festival (The Times; Daily Telegraph; Independent), but none mentioned our contribution. For that matter, neither of the Poulenc reviews mentioned the Satie encore! I suspect some of these reviewers don't actually attend thw concerts :p

And finally, I'm shocked to discover that there are plans afoot to move part of Chet's! It's only Pal, not the old bit, and it's true that it's falling apart... but that's my teenage years they're demolishing!

"Did you get to the pelvis yet?"

This is from the warm-up at Sunday night's Poulenc gig... Jamie went off briefly to speak to the youth choir, and left us in the middle of our stretches. On his return he said "How far did you get? Did you get to the pelvis yet?"

There was also: "Can we have more sound on the fff bar?... Tenors, that doesn't really mean you..."

and, my favourite, "Can you write 'adrenaline' and then cross it out?"

(While I was looking through my score, I noticed a Markism from the other day that I'd missed: "The 1st basses are up anyway, if you'll pardon the phrase!")

The concert went well, although I don't think it was the best we've done it. I was a little frustrated that some people (mainly, but not entirely, a few of the Youth Choir) seemed to have trouble singing ppp and/or watching Mark (I didn't think we were together in lots of places)... but, as I kept telling myself, singing very quietly is one of the hardest things to do, and singing exactly on the beat defeats many choirs. I think it was good enough that most of the audience wont have thought anything was amiss - I'm just being fussy. In fact, I did get a couple of lovely emails from members of other choirs who were in the audience, and I'd love to tell you what they said, but I asked the first emailer for permission to quote him and he said no, so I'd probably better not quote the second one either (that email arrived later, so I didn't ask them both at the same time). But rest assured it would delight you if you could hear what they said :-)

It sounded pretty good on the radio (well, I say radio - radio reception where I live is practically zero, so I listen via Sky) - if you missed it, remember Listen Again....


Oh, and the Radio 3 announcer helpfully told us that Pascal Rogé's encore was indeed by Erik Satie (which Sue Oates recognised immediately - she knows her piano music!) and that it was the fifth of his Gnossiennes. And here's an mp3 of it (sadly a different pianist, but you can't have everything!)

Couple of things to finish. The Manchester Evening News reviews the Cello Festival, but doesn't mention us. And I only just found out that the Hallé are only doing four Proms this year, because theyre playing in the Manchester International Festival - The Ground Beneath Her Feet with Mark, and The Cunning Little Vixen with Kent Nagano! (and the lovely Ed Gardner)

I discovered this while I was looking up Carl Davis's sport-themed concert, because someone's written a Fantasia on Football Songs which is to be performed at it, and he emailed me to ask if I know the origin of the tune "Wem-ber-lee, Wem-ber-lee"... which I don't. Do any of you?

"Sopranos, it's not rocket science...."

"...it's the SAME NOTE YOU JUST SANG. You were totally seduced by Mr Jones on the piano!"

(tonight's best Jamieism, referring to a note near the end of the Poulenc. It was followed by:

"Altos, I have to admit that I was so gobsmacked by what I was hearing on the other side of the choir that I have no idea what you sang.")



Busy night for the choir last night. Orchestral rehearsal for the Poulenc, which went pretty well (seems like ages since we've been in the Bridgewater Hall!) (I'm pleased to report, by the way, that not only are all the 1st altos now singing a G in that place where they used to sing an F sharp, but that the basses are now correctly singing a confident B flat in that place where they used to sing an A flat. I have no idea whether or not the sopranos got their rocket-science C, though - I can't hear them at that point.) Then there was a 2-hour break, during which we all moved to the RNCM, and met again at 10 p.m. to rehearse for our late-night Cello Festival gig. (Am I the only one who's disappointed that there appears to be NO publicity for this in town? There's not even a banner outside the college, unless I've missed it. I know they don't NEED the publicity, since most of it sold out ages ago, but it's a major international event - Mancunians should know about it!)

We were due to go onstage at 10.30 p.m., but I had a feeling it would be much later, and I was right - it was gone 11 p.m. before we went on. We did have a brief rehearsal - without the cellist! - which included the instruction "Maybe don't even breathe. It's too human." After that there was quite a bit of sitting around waiting, but everyone was in a very good humour so it was fine.



I have to say that the highlight of the sitting around was Gladys - we rehearsed in the Opera Theatre, and then sat in the audience seats there while waiting. Anyone who came in to join us (after they'd been back to the changing room, say) had to enter stage right and walk forward across the stage. Gladys was the first to do this, and did an excellent bit of ballet for our entertainment! Sadly I was too slow to get a picture, sorry. But after that, everyone who appeared was greeted with rapturous applause and whooping. Some reacted to this more amusingly than others :p

We did eventually get to perform, and the audience applauded us the whole time we were walking on, which is a first, I think. (I suspect if they'd known how many of us there were, though, they might have stopped sooner!) Svyati was great - it relies so heavily on the men, and they were perfect. (Although, I'm pretty sure one of the basses started his first note on "yo" rather than "oh".... maybe he was thinking about pirates?) Jamie didn't introduce it - I presume he thought the audience would be sufficiently musical that they'd know not to applaud till he lowered his arms, and this turned out to be the case. Hard to tell how much they liked it, but I think they did!

Anyway, Poulenc again tomorrow. Couple of things first, though: firstly, did you know that today is the Hallé's actual 150th birthday? Or that Russell Watson is due to sing the National Anthem at the FA Cup Final? (You'd be forgiven for thinking it's Jon Christos, unless you read that article carefully, but it's not - although he claims he was asked first...) And finally, I think we should get William Eddins as a guest conductor :p

"Gloria - it's a better name than Chardonnay!"

So, tonight there were Markisms rather than Jamieisms, because it was the piano rehearsal for the Poulenc. It went pretty well - in fact we finished really early, so it must've been good! Mark arrived while we were warming up, and as usual a huge grin appeared on his face when we did our tractors - that always amuses him. In fact, he suggested that sometime we should do one of our warmups for the public - he reckons they'd be amazed...

I didn't feel quite as unimportant tonight as I did on Tuesday. I forgot to say at the time, but Tuesday was one of those rehearsals that's really frustrating, because Jamie kept telling *all* the altos off for not doing things that I, and the people round me, were actually doing. This happened so many times that Clare and I started to wonder whether he could actually hear us singing at all! I suppose we *were* heavily outnumbered - in the second half of the rehearsal on Tuesday there were 17 1st altos and only 5 2nds. A few people had left at the break because they weren't doing the Tavener gig, but not many. It's definitely quality rather than quantity in the 2nd alto section these days, but all the quality in the world is no use if Jamie (and therefore presumably everyone else) can't actually hear us!

Anyway, as I said, it was better tonight. Although, we always love Mark's rehearsals anyway! His Chardonnay quote related to a radio play he'd heard in which there was a woman who called her children Wayne and Chardonnay. I'm not entirely sure what made him think of this when trying to explain that he wanted the word "gloria" to sound a bit different, but there you go. Oh, and I was amused that he asked "Why do you sing that quieter?" about the very same bar that caused Jamie to say "It's almost as if the composer wrote 'piano, slightly slower, please'..." :-)

(Mark told us, by the way, that Poulenc's idea of the Gloria is that the words are being sung by "angels poking their tongues out and Benedictine monks playing football" - i.e. slightly irreverent.)

The Markism that got the biggest laugh of the night was actually "It's like first aid, isn't it?" (which referred to Jamie teaching the tenors their notes in the 2nd movement). But I was more amused by "It's a question of finding the music in the coo" ('coo' being the first syllable of 'qui') :-)

I've finally decided what it is that the "Domine fili unigenite" movement reminds me of - it's a song from Oklahoma! called "I cain't say no". I'm not entirely sure why, though - it's not THAT similar...

Now, you'll notice I haven't mentioned my trip to Milan! You may well think that this is because United got hammered, but in fact it's because it occurred to me that I quite often don't get round to mentioning choir stuff till I've written for ages about other stuff, and maybe it puts people off.

Plus, United got hammered :-(

However, apart from the result, it was a great day. I visited the Cathedral and La Scala opera house, both of which were fabulous. But I'd known beforehand that they were there, and had planned to see them. What I didn't know was that the Cow Parade was there! I'm sure most of you will remember it visiting Manchester (in the summer of 2004 - seems much longer ago!), so you will understand how thrilled I was to find it again (not the same cows, of course - they're always specially designed by local artists). Anyway, for those who are interested, I've put my photos online (and they're not ALL of cows!) - go have a look. Hint: if you go for the slideshow option you can see the photos without having to keep clicking, but you'll miss the accompanying text.

I got home at 6.30 on Thursday morning, having got off the plane at 3.30 a.m. (That may seem a slightly long gap, but that's because I got home by public transport, which is not as frequent as I might have liked - but it was much cheaper than getting a cab!) I was quite startled to be met by a row of photographers and reporters when I emerged in the arrivals hall - several of them took photos of me (no idea what papers they were for, though), and I was interviewed by someone from Key 103. This is not because of any special competence on my part - I suspect it's because everyone else put their coats on when they got off the plane, but as usual I was too hot, so I was the only one who was visibly wearing a United shirt :-)

"Put the consonants in... but don't."

Well, I have to be at the airport at 6 a.m. and it's now past midnight, but I'm waiting for one of my cats to come in, so I thought I'd do a quick blog post. If he's not appeared by the time I've finished, he'll be outside till 5.30 a.m. :p

We had a long rehearsal tonight, but it didn't seem that long, because it was in three distinct sections - we started with Poulenc, then John Summers and Geoff Owen came to tell us about plans for next season, then we rehearsed Svyati with Ivan Monighetti. I can't tell you any details of what John and Geoff said, because it's still under an embargo, but I wrote it all down, so I'll post it in a few days when I'm allowed to!

We'd remembered Svyati pretty well, although I still can't do the breathing. Ivan played the last note as a G natural, which is what's printed in our copies AND what's played on the recording I've got. When we did it with Jane, she did a G sharp, and Jamie said that was correct because it was a misprint. I'd love to know who's right! I liked it better with the G natural at first, but now I've got used to the G sharp I think I prefer that...

David Evans told me about a Jamieism from the men's sectional last Thursday. "Gentlemen, present it like you're saying 'There you are. Cottage pie. With broccoli. Don't leave it there, or the pigeons will come and eat it.'" ... I'd love to say that I could tell by the way they sang tonight which bit that referred to, but I couldn't. Maybe it was one of the movements we didn't do tonight :p

(The cat just came in, but I may as well finish now!) David also persuaded me to be a temporary alto rep, standing in for Dr Liz, who's taken a leave of absence till September. I did send a note round the section to see if anyone else wanted to have a go, but no-one did. So I get to not only whinge but also to pass on other people's whinges :-)

All my Jamieisms tonight are from the Poulenc. The consonant one in the title was my favourite, but we also had: "In heaven there are no trains to catch." Oh, and "Mind, body, soul... and goo." But now I must sleep!

"Sopranos, if you're struggling with the concept of a minim, let me tell you: it's got TWO BEATS."

Some mp3s of The Kingdom for you all:

page 1 (no choir)
page 9
page 33
page 47
page 56 (no choir)
page 63
page 76
page 108
page 124
page 139 (no choir)
page 151
page 168
page 179

Sorry for not putting those up earlier, they're quite large so I knew it would take a while. Also, I don't think much of the choir on this recording, so in order to avoid libel suits I won't tell you which choir it is (although they're a lot better these days!) I hadn't heard the recording before I bought the CD, and I can't afford to buy another one. It'll do for those of you who want to learn the notes but are unwilling to spend any money in order to do so.

(I hope we're only performing stuff next year that I already have recordings of, because it'll be a while before I can afford to buy any more CDs myself! I sold my car this week, which will save me quite a bit of regularly outgoing cash, although the cheque I got in return would've been much more help if I hadn't immediately had to spend half of it on a new computer! Eek. Anyway, I haven't run out of money YET, but it won't last much longer. I have various plans to deal with this problem, but none of them have worked yet!)

(Of course, this is the worst possible time, financially, for me to suddenly fly off to Italy for the day, but that's exactly what I'll be doing on Wednesday, for the away leg of Man Utd v AC Milan. I just couldn't resist it - the San Siro Stadium is second only to Cape Horn in my list of places-I've-always-wanted-to-visit. Long story why, but it is. I'm so excited!)

Anyway, back to choir-related news... We did most of the Poulenc on Wednesday, with the Youth Choir. I didn't see Katie, but Becky (and I was right, she is called Becky) was sitting right behind me - in fact she was supposed to be next to me, but as usual there weren't enough chairs for everone to follow the seating plan, so no-one was in quite the right place. I liked the Jamieism in the title, but my favourite one was "It's almost as if the composer wrote 'piano, slightly slower, please'..." (describing the effect of us singing a section where we're very confident except for one awkward bar). (Several people told me about one I missed on Tuesday, which was something about "paintbrushes - not those little ones, but the big fat ones you use on a wall". This was towards the end of the last movement, and was, I'm told, followed by "put the lid on on the paint tin reluctantly". I think I see what he means...)

Actually, the thing that's amused me most in the last few rehearsals has been not a Jamieism at all, but what I think of as the "comedy 1st alto moment". This is on the last page of the 3rd movement, and it's where they're supposed to sing a G but tend to sing an F sharp. The first few times we did it, they ALL sang an F sharp, but now quite a few of them have actually worked out what they SHOULD be doing. And the result is that the note now usually starts as an F sharp with a few Gs audible, followed by a huge sudden crescendo from all the people who know they're correctly singing a G and want to drag the F sharp crowd with them, followed by a dramatic slide as all the F sharp people shift to the G together. Luckily the note is 4 (slow) beats long, and now by the 3rd beat it's correct. This is progress :-)

Very sad news today about the death of Rostropovich (obituary here, and another BBC article about his life here). He was originally scheduled to appear at the RNCM cello festival, but that was cancelled (his appearance, not the festival!) when he became ill. However, I just found out that the guy who seems to be doing Svyati with us, Ivan Monighetti, was Rostropovich's last student! So it seems particularly fitting that we're doing that piece, doesn't it? I imagine it'll be a very moving occasion.

Another cello story in the news - did you hear the one about the eight cellists on the train? And a non-cello story that mentions Mark and the Hallé: free concert tickets for schoolkids. Oh, and talking of Mark, Radio 3's Artist Focus features him next week - every night (Mon-Thu) at 10.30 p.m.

You may have seen the news stories the other day about the fact that there's finally a legal song lyrics website, but I can't say I'm too impressed - the two words I tested it with did not produce the songs I know they're in... It'll be better when they've got ALL the record companies on board, but for now the illegal websites seem more likely to have songs you're actually looking for, even though there will be many errors! (I find Lyrics on Demand better than most, if you're wondering.) Actually, if you really need some accurate lyrics, you may be best just asking me - I have thousands of them on disk!

A more impressive music website I discovered this week is Music Map. Again, it's pop rather than classical, but if you're a pop music fan I think you'll enjoy playing with this.

And finally - want to be part of the world's longest canon? It involves recording yourself singing a bit of Kylie Minogue's "I believe in you" and sending it to the Scala Choir. (You may not have heard of them before, but they're fairly famous online - they do great choral cover versions of pop songs. Have a listen to clips from their latest album if you want to know what they sound like.)

I'm pretty sure the other one is called Becky

I went sailing tonight, as I usually do on Mondays, at Hollingworth Lake. But this time one of the Youth Choir altos was there too! I recognised her immediately - at least I thought it was her, but when she didn't recognise *me* I thought maybe I was mistaken. But when I was dismantling my boat at the end she asked me if I was in the Hallé Choir. I was delighted, because she is one of the only two people in the Youth Choir whose names I always remember (because they've been in since the start), so I was just about to impress her by knowing her name, when my mind went blank! Very annoying. I was determined to remember it, but I didn't get the chance because someone else told me it was Katie while I was still thinking. Oh well. Sorry, Katie, I did know really! (She told me it's her birthday on the day of the Poulenc concert, so when people sing "happy birthday" to her, as I'm sure they will, you'll work out who I'm talking about!)

(I thought there were only two HYC people I knew the names of, but I've just remembered James the Red-Nosed Reindeer as well...)

As a matter of fact, I also went sailing during the Easter holidays, with Soprano Claire - she hadn't done it before, and we had a great time. We didn't capsize, but we did crash into a wall (my fault, I wasn't looking where we were going!) We sang some duets afterwards, and played some piano duets. The previous day I'd also played piano duets, this time with Abi - she's REALLY good (much better than me, whereas I think Claire and I are of a similar standard) so we had a bash at the piano duet arrangement of The Planets that Dr Liz bought me a couple of years ago. Unsurprisingly they're really hard, and I've never managed to get very far with them with anyone else, but Abi and I played more or less the whole thing, although some bits were rather more accurate than others!

And to complete the musical-things-I-did-while-choir-was-on-a-break, last Monday we had a Pleiades rehearsal, but we were a bit depleted, so since it was just Rachel, Alison and I, we sang ALL THE TRIOS THERE ARE. (Well, probably.) Great fun.

Lots of singing yesterday, because we had an all-day Kingdom rehearsal, and it was fabulous! Oddly enough there were no Jamieisms that I noticed, despite Jamie being back (well, unless you count "Wonderful pain!" during the warmup), but we sang most of the piece. And we sang lots of it in long sections of sight-reading, continuing for page after page even if almost everything sounded terrible. I know some people hate it when we do that, but it's SO good for improving sight-reading. And I love it!

Anyway. Ladies' sectional tomorrow, which I also love, but unfortunately I'm going to have to miss it because I'm off to Old Trafford. I've been very good and not missed any other choir things due to football, but this is a Champions' League semi-final so I can't bear to miss that!

(Oh, and ladies might like to note that there's, erm, a football match on tomorrow night. Plan your journey accordingly.)

Finally: Hallelujah Nuns. Can you imagine how much fun that must have been to rehearse? :p

He plays on the left, he plays on the riiiiight

Do you recognise that tune? I've had it on the brain for the last couple of weeks. It's called "Optimistic Voices" and is from a really famous film - but which one? Here's a slightly more complete version (with 3-part harmony), and here's the mp3 from the film soundtrack. Answer at the end of this post :-)

I suppose I should write something about this week's rehearsal, but I don't really have anything to say about it. No Jamieisms because it was Fanny. We spent the whole time on Poulenc, and I now know it a lot better than previously, but I really didn't enjoy the rehearsal at all. I think this was probably more to do with me being in a bad mood than anything else - I know there were lots of people who did enjoy it! You'd think I'd be really cheerful, having not had to go to work, and I must say that's certainly pleasant... no luck on the job-hunting though (although that's not really why I was in a bad mood), and what was particularly frustrating this week was that I found the *perfect* job, but it was in Brighton. I reckon it would be possible to do it from home and only visit Brighton occasionally, but sadly I didn't manage to persuade them of that... (I'm hoping they'll rethink that decision when they find that there's actually no-one else in the country who fits the whole of their person specification! We'll see!)

Anyway, I need to be up to go to an all-day choir rehearsal in a few hours, but I seem to still be awake, and I think I need to write a post about football chants. I've been thinking about this for ages - and yes, it is choir-related... more than you might expect!



This chant is the one that started me thinking about football chants from a choral perspective. It looks quite straightforward, doesn't it? But it amuses me every time I hear it, because the crowd NEVER finishes it in the same key in which they start! They start on roughly the same pitch each time (which in itself is fascinating, but that's not what I've been thinking about) and get through the first half of the tune with no tuning problems. But then it goes up.... and the top note in bar 6 is never anywhere near an octave above the starting note! So at that point the crowd changes key, coming down the scale from the top note they actually reached rather than the correct one, the result being that they finish a tone or two lower than they started. Do have a listen next time United are on TV, it's hilarious! (Well, I suppose it's quite possible that it's only me that's amused by this....)

What's even more fascinating, though, is that there are some songs - with octave ranges - that the crowd CAN sing in tune. And at this point I need to refer you to a whole load of examples (tell you what, if you have no interest in what I'm actually talking about, you could always use these for sight reading practice!)

Manchester United chants, sheet music: page 1, page 2, page 3

(I started by writing out the ones that illustrated my point, but then, being me, I got obsessive about it and decided I needed to write out ALL the current chants. I must say I didn't realise there WERE so many different ones in actual usage until I undertook this task, so that in itself was interesting! There are actually a few more, but I wasn't 100% certain of the words so I need to check before I add them. But all these are not only in current usage, I heard them all at Old Trafford TODAY.) (Well, I suppose strictly it's yesterday now.) (And, actually, I don't think I did hear the Ryan Giggs song, but he only played half the game and wasn't very good! But I included it anyway, because it's the one that started the whole thought process.)

Anyway, as I was saying... I find it fascinating that the crowd has such a problem with the Giggs song, because there are many other songs they sing that have a similar range, yet they stay in tune. And I've come up with a theory about why that should be - I think it might be because the tune starts on its lowest note, AND that note is the tonic. To compare, let's look at the other chants that have a range of roughly an octave. Example 2 (Mourinho) goes down to a low F and up to an E, but it starts on the dominant - a helpful pivot point of C. Example 5 (That boy Ronaldo) starts on its lowest note, but that note in this case is not the tonic but the dominant, so the mind (assuming it knows the tune) has an unconscious pivot point (the B flat) which is higher than the start note. Example 12 (You are my Solskaer) is similar (pivot note being the A).

Example 4 (Que sera sera) starts on the tonic, but in this case it's almost the highest note. It's interesting that in this case the pitch actually doesn't drop noticeably by the end of the tune - how often, in choir, does someone have a descending line in which they have to be reminded not to descend too far? If we were asked to learn "Que sera sera", I'd bet large sums of money that at some stage Jamie would demand that the second note be really high, etc. And this brings me on to my other fascination - descending minor thirds. The interval that gets mentioned more frequently than all the others combined. Just look at how many chants are based on it! Let's see - examples 3 (U-N-I-T-E-D), 6 (there's only one Ronaldo), 7 (Rooney), 8 (come on you Reds), 9 (Red army), 11 (Manchester), 13 (Ole)... Why is it that this interval seems to be the one that crowds latch onto, and seem to like to sing - and don't sing too badly - yet it's the bane of choirs' existence?

Anyway, I don't actually have answers to most of my questions, I just wanted to share with you something that's been on my mind for months! If I refine my theories I'll let you know :-)

To change the subject, I'll finish by sharing a load more links:

I found a couple more pages of choir humour. There's some duplication between the two of them, and some stuff that I already had on my website, but there are a few new bits that I think will amuse you: Rehearsal Police etc., and choir aptitude test etc. (on that second page I particularly like this sight reading test!)

I recently discovered a blog that made me cry with laughter. He's doing this thing called "Venn That Tune" - for example, this is the first one . If you don't find that one funny, there's probably no point you looking at the later ones!

Some great posts on the Singer's Life blog recently. I particularly like the one about the value of fluency in languages, but there's also part 1 and part 2 of a post about vocal warmups. Nothing too startling to those of us familiar with Maggie/Jamie warmups, but it's always useful to hear a similar message from a different person, I think, and I did enjoy the tongue-twisters :-)

Barbara points out that there are midi files on the Cyberbass site for those who need assistance with the Poulenc. I haven't tried any of them myself, but they look useful.

You may well have heard of the service that, if you ring them up and play them a song over the phone, sends you a text telling you what it is. Well, it's called Shazam, and seems very clever. Sadly it doesn't work with classical or live music, but never mind! Again, I haven't tried it - has anyone else?

Very interesting article here about a singer who developed Bell's Palsy and suddenly found that certain consonants were much harder than others.

Even more interestingly, a fabulous interview with Mark in today's Guardian. I won't spoil it by listing highlights here, but it made me raise my eyebrows a couple of times! And, talking of the Bridgewater Hall (well, I almost was...), did any of you spot it making an appearance in the last ever episode of Life on Mars? I don't think we saw the doors or name or anything, but I recognised the wall! And just in case there are any Life on Mars fans who are still trying to work out what happened, here's an interview with the writer that explains lots of stuff.

And finally, you may think that I find all this stuff because I spend too long wilfing... but in fact I hardly ever do that - if I look for something online, I tend to find it fairly quickly, but I often spot other things in the process. Also, I have a large number of sites that I check daily (mostly by RSS), and I often find other things via links from those sites. But I admit that if someone other than my cats was watching me do all this, it WOULD look rather like "wilfing" :p

(Oh, and "Optimistic Voices" is from The Wizard of Oz! It's near the end, when Dorothy is dancing down the road in sight of the Emerald City at last.)