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!