MELTing music

A few months ago I was asked to get involved in a European project called MELT. It is quite an experimental project bringing together musicians from Birmingham, Genoa, Istanbul, Vienna and Sighişoara.

The project has been going for a while now and involves musicians working together to ‘melt’ their cultures and make new music.

For this final leg of the project there was an ambition to bring choirs from different communities of Birmingham together as part of the ‘melting’. Ian Chapman – crazy composer aka Gurdan Thomas is the overall music director from Birmingham and was commissioned to write a MELT choral symphony for our performance on March 18th.

I was then dispatched to teach parts of the symphony to Muslim women’s choir – the Ulfah Collective, the Catholic School choir at English Martyrs in Sparkhill and to my choir Notorious. We also worked with singers from the Zawiya in Birmingham.

We weren’t quite sure how it would all come together – but it did in the end was possibly one of the most moving performances I’ve been involved with for a long time. I need to get some piccies – and I’ll add them to the blog when they arrive!

The project is a credit to Claire Marshall – someone who I’ve worked with for years who is the Birmingham/UK Co-ordinator of MELT.

Sing Up in (da) House!

I’ve been working on one of those jobs that makes my work such a pleasure recently. I was asked by Sing Up – the National Singing Campaign led by Howard Goodall to run their celebration event on 14th March 09. This was exciting enough – but then it transpired that the venue was the Royal Opera House in London.

I don’t just blog work stuff – but this event was one of those special memories worth recording. Yes, it was a logistical challenge (polite term for it!) – 600 performers made up of primary aged children and their teachers and a 2000 strong capacity audience!

But more importantly the spirit of the day was really amazing and the quality of the singing of the young people was stunning. Amazing moments included Howard Goodall turning up and the choir from Lichfield stopping their performance to sing ‘The Lord is my Shepherd’ which is Howard’s theme tune from the Vicar of Dibley! He was mighty chuffed!

The group coming from Sing Up Burton were so impressed that they were singing at the ROH that they had asked their teachers if the red carpet would be out for them! As it happens one of the entrances to the ROH has a red carpet and so they were very impressed with that and they fact that when they went on the backstage tour we’d organised – they got to the see the Royal Box and the Royal Loo (yes there is one!).

Anyway – here are some pics:

 

and on the way home the wonderful Brummie event team that came with me sat in First Class eating takeaway Pizza – classy!

A weekend of singing

Well now I’m back in the UK there has been no time to relax. This weekend started with possibly one of the most surreal gigs that Notorious (my choir) has done since its inception 11 years ago: We were asked to sing at a special service for the Bishop of Birmingham at Lifford Lane tip!

The idea was a good one – the Bishop is trying to encourage people to think about the environment and recycling as we enter the Christmas season. For any of you who know Lifford Lane Recycling Centre you will know that they have a lovely collection of garden gnomes and at this time of year a spectacular display of plastic christmas decorations (all previously dumped by the people of Birmingham I presume!).

Anyway – singing at 9am is not our strong point but we had to put our best voices forward as there were tons of press there including Midlands Today.

Here we are rehearsing at Ruth’s house up the road at 8am – it was probably our earliest rehearsal ever:

and then at the tip in our attractive high vis jackets!

 

Then in the evening Notorious performed Faure’s Requiem in St Paul’s in Hockley – a notable concert for us as I wasn’t conducting – thank you to Ula Weber for holding the fort while I was galavanting around India. It went really well and I got to enjoy just singing for once which was a real treat.

Sunday saw me joining my Ex Cathedra buddies and singing in the Nutcracker with Birmingham Royal Ballet. I’ll be doing about 6 performances of this in December – and it always helps me get into the Christmas spirit! Anyway – we went to the second performance of the day as a family and had a lovely time – I felt tired just watching the ballet dancers – how do they do that?

Passion, Commitment and a Great Day Out

Yesterday I put together a music show for the Jubilee Debt Campaign who were founded 10 years ago when the G8 came to Birmingham. They started through a huge act of protest over world debt when nearly 8000 people joined hands to demand that the chains of debt be broken from the world’s poorest countries.

Ten years on they are celebrating the fact that their protest and campaigning has made a huge difference but that there is still 80% of the debt to be cancelled. There was a big conference in the ICC and I put on the music outside.

Thanks to all those who performed: Khaliq, the Shofar Blowers, Azaad Dhol Group, Steve Yimga, Ulfah Singing Group, The Birmingham City All Stars, Raw Nerve Theatre Company, Soweto Kinch and the Dhol Blasters.

The square built up nicely early on, had a quiet period when lots of people went inside the ICC and then was pack at the end when people came out for the final act.

 

A Journey to Justice

I’ve spent the last few months working with the Jubillee Debt Campaign to help them with some music for their event at the ICC next Sunday (18th May) – Journey to Justice.

The event is designed to:

Celebrate… 10 years since the Birmingham human chain 
Discover… the impact of debt cancellation so far 
Demand… a lasting solution to the debt crisis

All hosted by Adrian Goldberg, editor of www.thestirrer.com. 

Their conference at 2.30pm inside the ICC has some big names coming and video messages from leaders all over the world including Gordon Brown and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

If you are interested in the issues surrounding world debt it is certainly the place to be next Sunday. Tickets for the ICC bit are just £10 and I know that they have sold over 500 already and you can get them here.

My brief for the music was to get music from around the world and there are some great people involved. Between 12.30pm and 5.30pm a programme of celebratory music and other activities is planned for Centenary Square. 

To open the event the square will resonate to the sound of the Jewish Shofar Horn then the celebrations will begin in earnest. Other performers include:

• the Azaad Dhol Group drawn from professional Dhol players and the very best young dhol players in the city
• Ulfah Arts Singing Group – Ulfah Arts is a pioneering arts organisation, which acts as an umbrella to a number of initiatives specialising in faith and the arts.
• Zirak Hamad – talented Birmingham based violinist who came to England in 2002 from Iraqi Kurdistan where he worked as a primary school teacher, festival organiser, broadcaster, television presenter and music critic.
• Raw Nerve Theatre Company perform a short play called ‘The Bigger Issue’. Raw Nerve Theatre Company was founded out of Riverside School of Performing Arts (RSPA) in 2007, after over a decade’s worth of work in and amongst the local community of Birmingham.
• Soweto Kinch – Birmingham’s mulit award winning jazz saxophone musician will give us a taste of music from his acclaimed B19 album.
• The Dhol Blasters fronted by their maestro Gucharan Mall are well known faces in Birmingham and beyond as they perform at all kinds of events including LIVE 8 with UB40.

The square will also include family activities including free facepainting and circus skills activities and information about the Jubilee Debt Campaign and other related organisations.

At 4.45pm there will be an action in the square where people will be invited to stand with giant ‘drop the debt’ lettering and pose for an image that will send a strong message to the politicians about world debt.

Come and join in!

Jubilee Debt Campaign

I had a fascinating meeting yesterday with the nice people from Jubilee Debt Campaign. JDC is the organisation that came out of the ‘human chain’ that was formed when the G7 was in Birmingham in May 1998. It’s all about getting the UK government to change their policy on debt (you can read all about it on their site). They are staging a large event this May (18th) at the ICC  to mark the 10 year anniversary of the original human chain and have asked me to help with some local music during the day in Centenary Square.It is really lovely to be working with people with such belief in their cause. The project should be really special as its inspires support from local community groups, all the faith groups and civic leaders.We are looking to do an ‘action’ at the end of the day with all the delegates from the conference in the ICC and the public in the square…  We have a few ideas – but if anyone wants to make a suggestion – let me know!