Our final concert of the season took place last night, and a very good time was had by all! Except possibly the cellist we hired. If you were at the concert you may have had some problems spotting the cellist, but I promise you he was there. He was supposed to be playing continuo for the Monteverdi, along with our usual rehearsal accompanist David-the-Pianist on fake harpsichord. But during the afternoon rehearsal we realised the choir weren’t able to hear the accompanying instruments, so we were struggling to remain in tune with them. We’re usually pretty good at keeping the pitch up during concerts, but we decided on balance that it would just be too excruciating for the audience if we got it wrong, and at the 11th hour David-the-Conductor cut the continuo altogether. David-the-Pianist, who is used to the choir’s freewheeling nature, accepted this with aplomb and joined the bass section instead. The cellist however didn’t feel able to sing, so he ended up (I kid you not) playing the wobbleboard during “Cloudburst”. We must be the only choir in the world that hires professional cellists to play percussion.
The concert went really pretty well. The first half was excellent – the Monteverdi was glorious, When David Heard was magical (even though we ran out of time to practice it, so some of the newer members of the choir were miming!) and we finished with Whitacre’s “Cloudburst” which has to be the most fun piece to perform. Which is lucky, as we had to do it all over again at the end of the concert for recording purposes. David-the-Conductor explained to the audience that we were redoing it because of some technical difficulties with the recording equipment. I have a sneaking suspicion that he had smoothly substituted the term “technical difficulties” for “the damn choir were all over the shop”, but I may just be being paranoid. Certainly we got a passage wrong that we have never got wrong before, but from outside I think it just sounded like extra dissonance – and lets face it, you can never have too much of that in 20th century music. So actually, we improved on the original. The audience was lucky to witness it!
The second half was our Monteverdi and Lauridsen Madrigals Mash-up, which went pretty well - although we were definitely all breathing palpable sighs of relief whenever we turned to the Lauridsen pieces, which we know much better. And we finished with Whitacre’s “Leonardo Dreams” which is another really fun piece. The concert was the first time that we’d ever managed to sing the piece all the way through, and to our delight it went really well. We then did a quick encore of a few “Animal Crackers”, got “Cloudburst” wrong again, and made a sharp exit to the pub. Phew – I think we got away with it!
Saturday 26 June 2010
Saturday 19 June 2010
Monteverdi Madrigal Madness
I was ill this week and had to give up very early on Wednesday’s rehearsal, which makes it a bit hard to blog about it, but I will hazard a guess at what happened. The choir will have concentrated on the Monteverdi madrigals, and Whitacre’s Leonardo Dreams of his Flying Machine, which are the pieces we’ve rehearsed least. David-the-Conductor will have regularly shouted that we’re not rolling our “r”s enough, and every time another 2 people will have joined in. At the interval there were probably chocolate chip cookies and Penguins with the tea (that may be wishful thinking about the Penguins). When rehearsing Leonardo there was probably some confusion about who would play the finger bells, and an uneasiness while everyone tried not to get picked for the “machine gun” solo at the beginning (my spies have actually informed me that Angela-the-Alto handsomely stepped into the breach and did a marvellous job. Well done Angela!) If this turns out to be broadly correct I clearly don’t need to go to rehearsal any more, I can just simulate it at home.
Monteverdi is definitely a good bet for the main music rehearsed though, as we’ve rehearsed them least. The madrigals are not only stunning pieces of music, but also very important in music history. Monteverdi was a driving force behind the change from Renaissance to Baroque styles, and his collections of Madrigals delineate the change superbly. In fact the fourth and fifth books were the centre of quite some controversy, as Giovanni Artusi (whom I envisage as a sort of medieval Mary Whitehouse) attacked the fourth book as an example of this dreadful new-fangled “modern” music that everyone was being seduced by. He appealed for a return to the traditional principles of Rennaissance. Monteverdi responded in the introduction to his fifth book, in kind of a fence-sitting way. He advocated having a “prima prattica” of following the Renaissance style, but simultaneously having a “seconda prattica” of more modern composition, also known as having your cake and eating it. This indecisiveness is reflected in his love madrigals. They go something like this:
Oh my love, Clarissa, you are buried in a tomb
I will never forget you
I will despair by your tomb for ever and ever
But also, I will try and move on with my life as well
We have to look to the future after all
But of course my heart will remain with you forever, oh sweet Clarissa
Actually can I call you Clarry from now on as Clarissa’s a bit old-fashioned
Hey Nonny No
[NB this may not be a completely faithful translation]
But Monteverdi’s simultaneous backward and forward looking means his music is a wonderful blend of the best of traditional renaissance and newer baroque styles. And we’re combining some of his most stunning madrigals in this concert with works by Lauridsen and Whitacre, who, 400 years after Monteverdi, have gone back to his Renaissance tradition to blend it with their own brand of modern music. It’s such an exciting, passionate mix of music, and I don’t think the choir have ever looked forward to a concert more. Next Friday is going to be a corker!
Monteverdi is definitely a good bet for the main music rehearsed though, as we’ve rehearsed them least. The madrigals are not only stunning pieces of music, but also very important in music history. Monteverdi was a driving force behind the change from Renaissance to Baroque styles, and his collections of Madrigals delineate the change superbly. In fact the fourth and fifth books were the centre of quite some controversy, as Giovanni Artusi (whom I envisage as a sort of medieval Mary Whitehouse) attacked the fourth book as an example of this dreadful new-fangled “modern” music that everyone was being seduced by. He appealed for a return to the traditional principles of Rennaissance. Monteverdi responded in the introduction to his fifth book, in kind of a fence-sitting way. He advocated having a “prima prattica” of following the Renaissance style, but simultaneously having a “seconda prattica” of more modern composition, also known as having your cake and eating it. This indecisiveness is reflected in his love madrigals. They go something like this:
Oh my love, Clarissa, you are buried in a tomb
I will never forget you
I will despair by your tomb for ever and ever
But also, I will try and move on with my life as well
We have to look to the future after all
But of course my heart will remain with you forever, oh sweet Clarissa
Actually can I call you Clarry from now on as Clarissa’s a bit old-fashioned
Hey Nonny No
[NB this may not be a completely faithful translation]
But Monteverdi’s simultaneous backward and forward looking means his music is a wonderful blend of the best of traditional renaissance and newer baroque styles. And we’re combining some of his most stunning madrigals in this concert with works by Lauridsen and Whitacre, who, 400 years after Monteverdi, have gone back to his Renaissance tradition to blend it with their own brand of modern music. It’s such an exciting, passionate mix of music, and I don’t think the choir have ever looked forward to a concert more. Next Friday is going to be a corker!
Tuesday 8 June 2010
A glare of publicity
After the jollies of our tour to Spain last week, we were back into serious business this weekend just gone, with a gig at a charity gala at Hampton Court Palace, in aid of Marie Curie Cancer Care and the Raisa Gorbachev Foundation. I was hoping aloud last week that we might get some good celeb spots, and we certainly weren’t disappointed. We got glared at by a veritable panoply of stars! I don’t think they were actually intending to glare – I think they were either trying to look sultry and interesting or were just being distracted from their conversations by the brilliance of our music. And the music was indeed brilliant. We performed a wide variety of difficult pieces in the non-existent acoustic of the garden, and did a superb job of the lot of them, so we were very proud of ourselves.
The gala was sponsored and hosted by Evgeny Lebedev, the owner of Stud House, in the grounds of Hampton Court. We were singing in the garden, and then briefly in the marquee as the guests were coming in to dinner. Unfortunately the traffic was so bad on the way to Stud House that we were very late arriving and had to hussle through our sound check in the marquee. While we were trying to work out the practicalities of squashing us all in front of the small stage, a band arrived on the stage behind us, and we looked around to see Simon le Bon patiently waiting for us to finish. I nearly fell over. When I was 12 I used to love him! He was most gracious about us hijacking his soundcheck though, and didn’t glare at us at all, so now I love him even more.
So who was glaring? Well, Alan Rickman apparently glared quite intensely at us for a while although I completely missed it, which is annoying as I would have loved to have been glowered at by him! I was however glared at directly by David Walliams, so that makes up for it a little. Sophie Ellis-Bextor also looked grumpily in our general direction, although she might just have been wondering whether you could put a dance beat under Whitacre’s “Sleep” (I think that would work).
The non-glarers grabbed our attention more though. Mikhail Gorbachev didn’t wince once at our rusty Russian during Rachmaninov’s Vespers, and there’s a very fine line with Russian between getting it right and sounding like Lloyd Grossman, so his forbearance was appreciated! Hugh Grant came up and laughed openly at us when, dressed in our English black tie finest, we broke into Mike Brewer’s arrangement of a Zulu Freedom Song. And everyone’s favourite celeb, Vanessa Redgrave, came and listened with enthusiasm for a while and actually wandered into the alto section at one point to see what music we were singing. She was kind and appreciative and lovely in every way, and is reputed to have said “This is a real choir”! Vanessa, a free ticket for you to our next concert at Southwark if you want to see what we can REALLY do.
So another weekend of excellent performance is over, and excitingly we actually have a weekend off this coming weekend, so the blog will be back to its usual end-of-the-week timeslot next week.
The gala was sponsored and hosted by Evgeny Lebedev, the owner of Stud House, in the grounds of Hampton Court. We were singing in the garden, and then briefly in the marquee as the guests were coming in to dinner. Unfortunately the traffic was so bad on the way to Stud House that we were very late arriving and had to hussle through our sound check in the marquee. While we were trying to work out the practicalities of squashing us all in front of the small stage, a band arrived on the stage behind us, and we looked around to see Simon le Bon patiently waiting for us to finish. I nearly fell over. When I was 12 I used to love him! He was most gracious about us hijacking his soundcheck though, and didn’t glare at us at all, so now I love him even more.
So who was glaring? Well, Alan Rickman apparently glared quite intensely at us for a while although I completely missed it, which is annoying as I would have loved to have been glowered at by him! I was however glared at directly by David Walliams, so that makes up for it a little. Sophie Ellis-Bextor also looked grumpily in our general direction, although she might just have been wondering whether you could put a dance beat under Whitacre’s “Sleep” (I think that would work).
The non-glarers grabbed our attention more though. Mikhail Gorbachev didn’t wince once at our rusty Russian during Rachmaninov’s Vespers, and there’s a very fine line with Russian between getting it right and sounding like Lloyd Grossman, so his forbearance was appreciated! Hugh Grant came up and laughed openly at us when, dressed in our English black tie finest, we broke into Mike Brewer’s arrangement of a Zulu Freedom Song. And everyone’s favourite celeb, Vanessa Redgrave, came and listened with enthusiasm for a while and actually wandered into the alto section at one point to see what music we were singing. She was kind and appreciative and lovely in every way, and is reputed to have said “This is a real choir”! Vanessa, a free ticket for you to our next concert at Southwark if you want to see what we can REALLY do.
So another weekend of excellent performance is over, and excitingly we actually have a weekend off this coming weekend, so the blog will be back to its usual end-of-the-week timeslot next week.
Wednesday 2 June 2010
Tapas in the sun
The choir tour to Madrid is over, and the majority of the choir and hopefully most of the percussion instruments have wended their weary way back to the UK. I think we managed to smuggle almost all of the handbells out through UK customs, despite their apparent "offensive weapon" status, but I'm sad to tell you that high “E” bell didn’t make it. Even as we speak High E is probably being interrogated by MI6’s specialist musical division. Happily Low E stepped into the breach and we were able to perform Whitacre’s Cloudburst as planned.
We did two concerts, the first in Segovia’s San Juan church which was an atmospheric old church with a fantastic acoustic. The concert was magical, and we came out on a real high. The second concert was in Madrid’s San Sebastian, which was a slightly odd design. The altar was right in the middle of the cruciform, so we had to draw up the choir in front of the altar, toe-to-toe with the audience. This meant we were directly under the massive dome, which amplified our sound with a long reverb, and we’re a pretty loud choir anyway. After the first number the audience got up as one and shuffled into the back rows, except for one cheerful and possibly deaf couple who remained determinedly smiling in the first row for the duration.
The musical highs of the tour were "Cloudburst", which was fantastic fun, and "When David Heard" which was atmospheric and stunning - and in tune! I’m already really looking forward to singing them both again in our Southwark Cathedral concert. Non-musical highlights were too many and varied to enumerate, but I’ll have a go. Singing a couple of promotional songs in the bandstand in Segovia’s central square was fantastic, especially as we irritated a raucous hen party by comprehensively drowning them out. We had two excellent group evening meals, the second in the famous Botin restaurant, where we confused the local troubadours who came to entertain us by forcing them to listen to our drunken rendition of “Calabash Trees” by Bob Chilcott. Dancing to Abba in a perfectly Oriana-sized bar on the last night was great too; and after we got kicked out I was privileged to witness the eminently respectable Andrew-the-new-tenor climbing into a wheelie bin and careering down the slope to the hotel in an attempt to emulate skate-boarding glory. That was definitely my personal highlight!
What a great tour, but now we’re back, and straight into the next challenge. We’re singing at Hampton Court on Saturday at a massive event in aid of Marie Curie Cancer Care and the Raisa Gorbachev Foundation. Hopefully I’ll have lots of good celeb-spots for next week’s blog!
We did two concerts, the first in Segovia’s San Juan church which was an atmospheric old church with a fantastic acoustic. The concert was magical, and we came out on a real high. The second concert was in Madrid’s San Sebastian, which was a slightly odd design. The altar was right in the middle of the cruciform, so we had to draw up the choir in front of the altar, toe-to-toe with the audience. This meant we were directly under the massive dome, which amplified our sound with a long reverb, and we’re a pretty loud choir anyway. After the first number the audience got up as one and shuffled into the back rows, except for one cheerful and possibly deaf couple who remained determinedly smiling in the first row for the duration.
The musical highs of the tour were "Cloudburst", which was fantastic fun, and "When David Heard" which was atmospheric and stunning - and in tune! I’m already really looking forward to singing them both again in our Southwark Cathedral concert. Non-musical highlights were too many and varied to enumerate, but I’ll have a go. Singing a couple of promotional songs in the bandstand in Segovia’s central square was fantastic, especially as we irritated a raucous hen party by comprehensively drowning them out. We had two excellent group evening meals, the second in the famous Botin restaurant, where we confused the local troubadours who came to entertain us by forcing them to listen to our drunken rendition of “Calabash Trees” by Bob Chilcott. Dancing to Abba in a perfectly Oriana-sized bar on the last night was great too; and after we got kicked out I was privileged to witness the eminently respectable Andrew-the-new-tenor climbing into a wheelie bin and careering down the slope to the hotel in an attempt to emulate skate-boarding glory. That was definitely my personal highlight!
What a great tour, but now we’re back, and straight into the next challenge. We’re singing at Hampton Court on Saturday at a massive event in aid of Marie Curie Cancer Care and the Raisa Gorbachev Foundation. Hopefully I’ll have lots of good celeb-spots for next week’s blog!
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