If Shakespeare had never lived, as David Jenkins informs us on Timeout.com, Milton would be the national poet, leaving Britain a “thoroughly Protestant nation and more rebellious to boot”. So now we have someone to blame for all the traffic disruption in London caused by the Pope’s visit. Damn you Shakespeare! But on the plus side, Shakespeare has contributed hugely to Britain’s cultural milieu by giving us a reason to visit Stratford-on-Avon, the phrase “blinking idiot”, and (most importantly) a reason for Oriana to get together and sing in St Martin-in-the-Fields on October 14th. We will be singing settings of Shakespeare songs from many and varied composers, and trying hard not to feel like blinking idiots as we “cookoo”, “bubble bubble” and “miao” through them.
We were cookooing and miaoing a lot on Wednesday as we were practicing Applebaum’s versions of the “Witches Song” from MacBeth and “Spring” from Love’s Labours Lost. Those of you who read the blog fervently every week (and apologies for the lack of blog last week by the way – I was having “technical difficulties”) will remember that last time we were practicing Mäntyjärvi’s version of the “Witches Song”. So I was musing a lot this week, in the quiet moments when David-the-Conductor was busy yelling at the other sections of the choir, which of these settings Shakespeare himself would prefer. Do you suppose he’d be swayed by Mäntyjärvi’s blend of Finnish folk and traditional choral sound, or would he prefer Applebaum’s “strongly tonal, though tinged with a jazz sensibility” style of music? Given Shakespeare’s modernist rock-star bent I was leaning very much towards the latter. But then I read Applebaum’s website, where he describes his music in a slightly smug manner as “somewhat challenging for amateurs to learn”. This distinctly put me off him, so I began trying to make a case for Mäntyjärvi. There aren’t many connections between Shakespeare and Finland but what the hell, I can easily make some up. Did you know Shakespeare was half Finnish? Fact!* This is why Hamlet was set in Elsinore, which is almost in Finland (if you ignore Denmark, Sweden and the Baltic Sea – and who among us doesn’t?). And Ophelia was a moomin as well. So the case is clear; Shakespeare would have enjoyed Mäntyjärvi’s Finnish-inflected “Witches Song” the most. Take that Applebaum and your complicated music for amateurs!
You can of course judge for yourself by coming along on October 14th – I believe we will even have score cards for you!
*Not true at all.
Friday, 17 September 2010
Friday, 3 September 2010
New Season - read all about it! Oh, you can't.
It is a season of mystery and endless possibility! You may have noticed that as yet we have no details of our new season on the website. “But why?” I hear you cry, in your eagerness to get booking tickets for our performances. Because once again Oriana is in negotiations to perform at some interesting and currently secret events! “What could they be, pray tell!” I hear you plead. But we cannot. For we are sworn to secrecy. And even if we weren’t, negotiations are ongoing so the programme isn’t completely finalised. And even if it was, our webmaster has left the choir and we’ve just discovered no-one else knows how to update the season schedule. Ooops.
But anyway, take it from me, we have some corking events coming up this season. And first up is our Shakespeare themed concert at St Martin in the Fields on October 14. We started work on some of the more complicated pieces on Wednesday night, including Four Shakespeare Songs by Mantyjarvi. These are my favourite pieces on the programme, with really exciting dissonant clashes. But we were struggling against the natural desire to resolve them into consonance. “No no no!” David-the-Conductor kept shouting. “It’s all sounding too nice!” We managed to nasty it up a bit by the end, but we all definitely need to work on our vicious streak for next week. Weirdly, the bit we struggled with the most was stamping our feet at the end of the Witches Song. You’d think one nice clean unison stamp wouldn’t require much skill, but we were rubbish at it! It sounded like someone had knocked over the kitchen cabinet. “No, no, it’s one, two, and STAMP on three” instructed David-the-Pianist (David-the-Conductor having been briefly whisked off to a top secret meeting). We all carefully watched him beat the time, but counting to three still proved beyond us on the first attempt. It wasn’t long before we’d managed to nail it though. “One, two, STAMP!” we proudly demonstrated. What progress! Next week we’ll move on to “Heads, shoulders, knees and toes”.
But anyway, take it from me, we have some corking events coming up this season. And first up is our Shakespeare themed concert at St Martin in the Fields on October 14. We started work on some of the more complicated pieces on Wednesday night, including Four Shakespeare Songs by Mantyjarvi. These are my favourite pieces on the programme, with really exciting dissonant clashes. But we were struggling against the natural desire to resolve them into consonance. “No no no!” David-the-Conductor kept shouting. “It’s all sounding too nice!” We managed to nasty it up a bit by the end, but we all definitely need to work on our vicious streak for next week. Weirdly, the bit we struggled with the most was stamping our feet at the end of the Witches Song. You’d think one nice clean unison stamp wouldn’t require much skill, but we were rubbish at it! It sounded like someone had knocked over the kitchen cabinet. “No, no, it’s one, two, and STAMP on three” instructed David-the-Pianist (David-the-Conductor having been briefly whisked off to a top secret meeting). We all carefully watched him beat the time, but counting to three still proved beyond us on the first attempt. It wasn’t long before we’d managed to nail it though. “One, two, STAMP!” we proudly demonstrated. What progress! Next week we’ll move on to “Heads, shoulders, knees and toes”.
Saturday, 3 July 2010
Last Night of the Season
After a long year we have finally arrived at the Last Night of the Season. Sadly we didn’t finish with Land of Hope and Glory and Jerusalem, but we did imbibe enough wine to make the last night of the Proms look like a nun’s day out. I had two glasses of prosecco at the break and giggled like a 5-year-old through the entire second half. It wasn’t my fault though, the altos were making me laugh. And the tenors. And basses.
We had lots to celebrate though, so the wine was totally appropriate. It’s been a season packed with concerts, two successful tours, a huge variety of music, and venues ranging from Abbey Road studios to the O2 arena. Along the way we’ve made new friends, discovered new music, fallen in love with some pieces (Martin Mass – superb!) and developed trenchant hatred for others (No 5 in Gardner’s A Burns Sequence - I can’t even say the title for the violent shuddering it induces, but it rhymes with “Oh Missel and I’ll Thumb to Ye”). What a great season, let’s hope next year will be even better!
As every minute of rehearsal time counts in Oriana, we spent this final rehearsal running through the music for the first concert of next season. This will be a repeat of a concert we did a year ago, themed on Shakespeare, so those of us who’ve been in the choir for a while already know the music pretty well. I was delighted to have another go at the Mantyjarvi “Lullaby”, which I just love, and also Vaughan Williams’ Three Shakespeare Songs. The low point was a revisitation of the composer I love to hate – yes, good old Gardner again! I’m only just getting over the horror of A Burns Sequence, but you’ll be delighted to know he wrote A Shakespeare Sequence as well. His Shakespeare songs are for female voice only, and as always with Gardner I really like some and can’t stand the others. We really struggled with O Mistress Mine during last year’s concert, and we made an absolute dogs breakfast of it again on Wednesday night. “That’ll need some work” said David-the-Conductor, with impressive understatement. I’ll happily give it some work, with a hatchet. The men rescued us by entertaining us with a lovely version of a Washburn song (sorry, I’ve forgotten which one, it was late and I was too busy giggling to take notes). And we finished with Appelbaum’s Witches Blues (meow!), a rousing chorus to send us off for the summer.
As there won’t be any choral activity now until September the blog is hereby suspended so it can go on virtual holiday to a cyber-beach. We’ll be back in the first week of September, so thanks for reading these past few months, and hope to see you in the autumn!
We had lots to celebrate though, so the wine was totally appropriate. It’s been a season packed with concerts, two successful tours, a huge variety of music, and venues ranging from Abbey Road studios to the O2 arena. Along the way we’ve made new friends, discovered new music, fallen in love with some pieces (Martin Mass – superb!) and developed trenchant hatred for others (No 5 in Gardner’s A Burns Sequence - I can’t even say the title for the violent shuddering it induces, but it rhymes with “Oh Missel and I’ll Thumb to Ye”). What a great season, let’s hope next year will be even better!
As every minute of rehearsal time counts in Oriana, we spent this final rehearsal running through the music for the first concert of next season. This will be a repeat of a concert we did a year ago, themed on Shakespeare, so those of us who’ve been in the choir for a while already know the music pretty well. I was delighted to have another go at the Mantyjarvi “Lullaby”, which I just love, and also Vaughan Williams’ Three Shakespeare Songs. The low point was a revisitation of the composer I love to hate – yes, good old Gardner again! I’m only just getting over the horror of A Burns Sequence, but you’ll be delighted to know he wrote A Shakespeare Sequence as well. His Shakespeare songs are for female voice only, and as always with Gardner I really like some and can’t stand the others. We really struggled with O Mistress Mine during last year’s concert, and we made an absolute dogs breakfast of it again on Wednesday night. “That’ll need some work” said David-the-Conductor, with impressive understatement. I’ll happily give it some work, with a hatchet. The men rescued us by entertaining us with a lovely version of a Washburn song (sorry, I’ve forgotten which one, it was late and I was too busy giggling to take notes). And we finished with Appelbaum’s Witches Blues (meow!), a rousing chorus to send us off for the summer.
As there won’t be any choral activity now until September the blog is hereby suspended so it can go on virtual holiday to a cyber-beach. We’ll be back in the first week of September, so thanks for reading these past few months, and hope to see you in the autumn!
Saturday, 26 June 2010
End of season concert success
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!
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, 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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