London Oriana becomes London Owliana at the BBC Electric Proms

How can I possibly do justice to our appearance with Robert Plant and the Band of Joy at the Electric Proms last night? It was brill! They were fantastic and it was a privilege to be able to join them for a couple of numbers in the encore. The culmination of a pretty hectic week of rehearsals almost every night, artistic tension, laughter, tears, and a really rather nice fish pie in the BBC canteen.

The tension mostly derived from some last minute cuts to what we were doing. David-the-Conductor had as usual put together an impressive and ambitious arrangement of three pieces that we’d been asked to look at – Satan Your Kingdom Must Come Down, Twelve Gates to the City, and I Bid You Goodnight. But in rehearsals on Thursday with the band, it was decided that Satan had to come in the main set rather than the encore, and we would pretty much have had to do a synchronised pole vault on and off the stage in order to join in. So regretfully our accompanying parts to Satan had to be dropped, which was a real shame. In addition, once we’d run through the other two, the feeling was that some of the words the choir was singing were clashing a little bit with the band’s lyrics, so we also had to drop a few bars here and there, and also some lyrics in favour of oooohs and ahhhhs. Now, you might think we couldn’t get the lyrics wrong with oooohs and ahhhhhhhs, but let me tell you, you’d be wrong! There were many occasions when half the choir was ooohing while the other half was ahhhing, and we’d all grown so used to coming in strongly with “Twelve gates!” that every single one of us ended up singing “Tw-ooooooh” at least once. It was like the Owl Chorus. There was also the added complication that some bars were dropped or truncated, so we were suddenly coming in on different notes to what we’d learned. And on top of all that, we found at sound-check on Friday that we were all individually miked, and standing further apart between rows than we were expecting. So we couldn’t hear much of ourselves, the rest of the choir or even the band, and we were picking up the pitch once it had resounded off the walls, which is not the most reliable way to stay in tune. The soundcheck was therefore a little tense. “Aaaaa—oooooooh”, sang Emma next to me, a minor third too high. “Tw-ooooo” I warbled back at her, at least a semitone flat. We exchanged panicked glances while David-the-Conductor glowered and Robert Plant somehow managed to maintain a zen-like calm. It was not a high point of our day.

This could have been upsetting for a lesser choir, but happily we are the Oriana, and if there’s one thing we’re used to, it’s pulling off a performance when we’re not completely familiar with the pieces! At least I remembered rehearsing these numbers, and I haven’t always been able to say that in a concert. So we maintained our equanimity with some hastily planned semaphore signals on the part of David-the-Conductor so that we knew when to ooooh and when to ahhhhh. And of course, once the concert had kicked off and we heard how amazing Robert and the band were sounding, we were riding high on adrenalin and bopping like teenagers in the wings. Come the encore we filed on to a cheerful and raucous crowd who were clearly really enjoying themselves and welcomed us with warmth and appreciation. We had a lot to live up to, but I feel like we did the band credit. We ran through Twelve Gates first, and our inner backing singers burst through, oooohing and aaaahing like we’d been born to it. Not a tw-ooooooo in sight. And then came I Bid You Goodnight, in a stunning a capella arrangement. The Band of Joy sang first, and then we joined in with some gorgeous harmonies. It felt sublime, and by the reaction we had from the crowd, it sounded as stunning as it felt. It was a truly amazing experience, and I really hope we’ll get to sing with Robert again soon. And as an added bonus, a few of us walked into Jo Wiley in the corridor afterwards, and she said the performance was something special – praise indeed from someone that hears an awful lot of music.

So in the spirit of last night’s concert, I’m going to write the rest of the blog without words.

Ooooooooh
Aaaaaaaaaaah
Tw-oooooooooooo
Good night!

From Shakespeare to Robert Plant

“I want to congratulate you on a fantastic concert last week” said David-the-conductor at rehearsal this week. “It was nice to do a concert where you all actually knew the music”. What can we say? It’s true. We do a lot of concerts, and it’s rare that we have enough rehearsal time to learn all the music to the same depth, so Oriana concerts are always an exciting mix of bliss and terror. Last week the bliss was firmly in charge, but really we were cheating because it was a repeat of a concert that we’d already sung in 2009. The terror is ready to get its own back though. In our heightened levels of confidence, we’ve decided to really challenge ourselves by learning all the pieces for our performance next week by heart. Oriana is going ELECTRIC, baby, and how could we possibly get in touch with our inner rock gods if we’re all clutching black ring-binders stuffed full of sheet music? So we’re dumping our folders – rock on! Next thing you know we’ll be drinking shandy and penning fake skull-and-crossbones tattoos on each others arms. Oriana – London’s most dangerous choir!

So it’s the Electric Proms next Friday and as I mentioned a couple of weeks back, we will be appearing on stage for a couple of numbers with the lovely Robert Plant and his Band of Joy. That’s their name, not just my description. I wonder how joyous they are in real life? I’m expecting big grins and happiness galore next week, or I’ll sue for false advertising. But even if they’re actually a bit dour, we’re still going to have loads of fun singing lustily away at the back. We had a go through two of the pieces we’re singing at rehearsal this week, and they’re both very interesting and completely different to each other in style. There are a couple of solo bits in one of the songs, and we had our usual moment of looking really hard at the floor when David-the-Conductor asked for volunteers. But it turns out David has a new strategy to manage this. Fiona-the-choir-chair foolishly smoothed back her hair, only to discover she’d inadvertently volunteered for a solo by raising her hand above shoulder level. Yikes. From now on I’m keeping my hands in my pockets at all times and turning pages with my nose.

Sops, shall I compare thee to the alto section? Thou art much shriller, and more numerous

It was our Shakespeare concert this week, and a good time was had by all in the choir and hopefully all in the audience too. There really was some fabulous music on the programme, and we felt like we did most of it justice. After last week’s soloist despair for the Gardner, the sops did all end up singing the O Mistress Mine solo in unison, which was a relief. The Gardner Shakespeare Sequence is definitely a piece to make us all long for safety in numbers, and luckily that wasn’t a problem for the sops as there are simply loads of us. (In fact the biggest challenge of the night was fitting us all on the stage. Second-row-Emma-and-Kath were actually singing from the wings for a while). But generally the Gardner went much better than some of us had been fearing. Under the Greenwood Tree I remember being a particular shambles when we last performed it, but this time we got it bang on. Lots of the other pieces really came together too. Applebaum’s Witches Blues was good enough that we were in danger of enjoying it too much – we were belting it out like a big band in the afternoon rehearsal, until David-the-Conductor pointed out that were singing about birth-strangl’d babes so perhaps the big grins and jazz hands weren’t so appropriate. Hopefully we nastied it up enough for the concert. The Vaughan Williams and the Mäntyjärvi were probably the most challenging pieces on the programme, but from the stage it felt like we got the spirit of them, if possibly not quite all of the notes. All in all we were pretty happy with how it went, and I confess to being even more happy that there’s no more Gardner on the programme for the rest of the year. We’re on Gardning leave.

So I have decided to START A RUMOUR that Jaakko Mäntyjärvi was in the audience. If you are in the choir or were at the concert, I urge you to join me in spreading this to those who don’t read the blog. Please say “oh yes, I saw him, he was the tallish shortish oldish youngish guy with lightish darkish hair sitting in the front near the back”. I was actually sure I’d spotted him in the audience for a while, but before you put too much faith in that assertion, bear in mind that I don’t know what he looks like and I also saw Stacey from EastEnders and my dead grandfather. But there was definitely someone there who looked a bit Finnish, so that’s good enough evidence for me.

Going solo

As I predicted on last week’s blog, we were subjected to an extreme Gardning session this week, as John Gardner’s Shakespeare Sequence took up a goodly part of the Wednesday rehearsal. And as usual with Gardner, carnage reigned for a while, but harmony finally prevailed. The source of much of the angst was O Mistress Mine, which contains a suggested soprano solo. Personally I find singing solos very very scary indeed. In fact, one of the joys of being in a choir is that I get to hide among the crowd and make music in a team. There’s no “I” in choir! Oh. Anyway, last time we sang this piece no-one was brave enough to volunteer for the solo, which has some tricky rhythms, so we all sang it together. This time, David-the-Conductor asked me if I’d have a bash at it, but when I looked at the music I discovered that last time I’d not only crossed out an entire page in huge heavy pencil, but also written in capital letters at the top “STOP SINGING! YOU’LL F*** IT UP!” This was not a good sign. So when it came time to rehearse this piece, I did what any wimp would do and asked to be let off. David-the-conductor fixed us all with his beadiest eye and asked for another volunteer. We all looked at the floor and shuffled our feet. It would be fair to say that David-the-Conductor was not impressed with our lack of heroism, and he expressed this loudly and clearly for quite some time before a few brave souls finally threw themselves on their swords and gave it a go. I would like to publicly thank those who stood up in our hour of need and saved the face, and the nerves, of the entire section. We in the Sops salute you!

The scary Gardner notwithstanding, it is shaping up to be a seriously fantastic concert and I enjoyed choir this week more than I have for a long time. Which is good, because we got a double dose. On Thursday we had our first rehearsal for another exciting performance only two weeks after the Shakespeare concert. I’m proud to say that for the first time, Oriana have sold out the Roundhouse! Well, I suppose technically, it’s Robert Plant that’s sold out the Roundhouse. But we know secretly that Oriana is the real draw. Yes indeed, we are once again lucky enough to be joining Robert Plant onstage, and this time it’s for the BBC Electric Proms, which we’re really looking forward to. We sang with Robert earlier this year at Abbey Road Studios, and it was a fantastic experience. David-the-Conductor has been working night and day on some new arrangements and we had our first sing-through last night at the BBC studios in Maida Vale. We have to sing from memory, so there’s lots of hard work to do between now and the performance. But one of the pieces is so catchy that I’ve been singing it all morning and will definitely know it by heart by the time of the concert. As will all my work colleagues, the people on my train in the morning and the lady in the porridge stand at Marylebone station.

How low can you go?

Another week, another few hours rehearsing lovely Shakespeare music. I’m actually starting to feel a bit antsy. I’m not used to Oriana rehearsing music for only one concert at a time. Last year we had so many concerts and request performances packed into our schedule that we were rehearsing for several simultaneously, which was fun but a bit tense. So we’ve learned from the experience and have been all about forward-planning this term, building extra rehearsals into the schedule to allow us to rehearse concerts separately. I’m a bit worried that this means we’ll lose that enjoyable frisson of panic on the day of a concert, when we find a piece in the back of our folders that we haven’t rehearsed (like we did at last year’s Christmas concert). And there won’t be any chance that, come the performance, everyone will suddenly turn to a piece that I haven’t got, leaving me to mime with a strangled grin (last year’s Christmas concert again. That was an exciting concert!). It’s a brave but sensible new world.

It’s good to have the time to work on this Shakespeare programme though, as a lot of the music is pretty hard, with some gorgeous but tough dissonances. And of course, when you’re concentrating on trying to get the harmonies and rhythms right, pitch is the first thing to go. We were sliding like trombones on Wednesday. David-the-Conductor struggled between tactful encouragement and extreme exasperation as we plumbed the depths of our vocal ranges. The sops were giving the altos a run for their money with good strong chest voices, and the Basses were grumbling like drains. David-the-pianist joined in to correct us every time we dropped too far for comfort, and we all did sucking-a-lemon faces each time, but after the tenth occasion it just got dispiriting. Eventually, though, we got to a stage where we were getting the harmonies right, and it was starting to sound magical. “Yes!” shouted David-the-Conductor. “Lovely!” David-the-pianist’s fingers did some frantic flexing on the keyboard, but he managed to restrain himself from joining in, so we may even have been approximately in tune. So it’s starting to feel as though the programme’s coming together, and still three more rehearsals to go. I venture to say this bodes well, but I might just have jinxed us by saying that – we’ve got the Gardner still to rehearse after all. I can feel my tension headache building already.

A little Vaughan Williams

The comment on last week’s blog from the delightful Mr Mantyjarvi, whose music I’d been blithely discussing, has had three effects on me. Firstly, now that I know he is so knowledgeable about Moomins I am an even bigger fan than I already was. Secondly, I’ve realised – perhaps belatedly – that people might actually read the blog. Which leads me to thirdly, feeling very guilty about being so frivolously rude about Bob Applebaum last week. I do actually really like his “Witches Song”, which is lucky as worked quite a lot on it at this week’s rehearsal. We were trying to nail the scrunchy jazz chords, and it’s starting to sound luscious. Unfortunately, I went to a singing lesson during rehearsal, and while my back was turned the dastardly soprano section volunteered me to hit the tricky solo note at the very end. And I thought they were my friends! I am now applying for a transfer to the Altos, but in the meantime I’m going to get that note if it kills me. I’m doing it for the reputation of amateur singers everywhere!

So let’s talk about a composer that is in no position to sue me if he doesn’t like what I write in the blog – Vaughan Williams and his Three Shakespeare Songs. They’re simply gorgeous pieces, and we’re determined to do them justice in the concert. But they’re also very testing. “Full Fathom Five” is full of cross rhythms which are very difficult not to rush, “The Cloud Capp’d Towers” is an exercise in struggling to keep the pitch up, and “Over Hill Over Dale” is all about unexpected entries and working to stay together. After wrestling with them for a while, it felt as though they were designed to test us in the areas where we’re most likely to trip up. And as it turns out, they were written to do exactly that. Vaughan Williams wrote them for a choir competition festival at the request of Armstrong Gibbs, another Oriana favourite. Initially Vaughan Williams wasn’t enthusiastic about the idea, but then Armstrong Gibbs was taken ill with the flu, and while he was in bed a package arrived bearing the Three Shakespeare Songs and a dedication that he could do with them whatever he pleased. Which is a nice story, but it did rather make me wonder why Vaughan Williams would go to such trouble just because his friend had the flu. Do you suppose he was always so inspired by illness? Perhaps all his pieces were written in reaction to friends’ mild ailments. “A Seasick Symphony”? “Fantasia on the Theme of Tonsilitis”? “Gangrenesleeves?” The mind boggles!

To Miao or not to Miao, that is the question

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.