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!

The Best of Britten

On Sunday I went to see a brilliant concert by Ex Cathedra. It was great for lots of reasons:

1) I wasn’t singing in it (so I got to listen!)

2) It was a programme entirely made of up of some of my favourite music by Benjamin Britten (my fave composer)

3) Ex Cathedra sang really well

4) Town Hall works really well for this kind of music

 

The concert opened with A Ceremony of Carols – a great piece just for SSA and Harp. The Ex Cathedra women folk (and a few male altos) were joined by a host of young singers from the Ex Cathedra Academy of Vocal Music. What an opportunity for those young singers! I remember doing just that as a young singer alongside Ex Cathedra in Coventry Cathedral – if the memory of that performance lasts with them like it did me – it will prove to be a lifelong inspiration.

A Boy was Born was great too and the gallery singers did a great job in a difficult role. Anyone who criticises Britten for not writing complex symphonies should listen to this piece and try to work out how he came up with such amazing textures!

Finally - St Nicolas – and yes I was crying when the pickled boys came back to life! [if you don't know the piece - go and see it!]

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?

The power of singing

I’ve had a tough day – people going back on promises – general high level stress from running a major music festival in 14 days time.

But is all back in perspective ‘cos I’ve done some singing tonight.

For those of you who don’t know – I conduct a choir called Notorious. I conducted choirs since I was 16 (a long time ago!) and now Notorious, the choir I started when I was 23, has been going 10 years.

It is a balancing act having two kids, full time job and MD of a choir – but I hang onto Notorious because it is truly good for me. On lots of levels…

Conducting Notorious and singing with Ex Cathedra (when I can – have not sung with them since Christmas – hope to go back next year) – these are the two things I do when I don’t think about work, I remember to breathe and I have a thoroughly good time!

The power is proved again by a few case studies from Notorious. There are half a dozen members of the choir left from when we first started (in fact we started with about 9 people so that is not bad going – there are about 35 members now). Those founding members have got married, had kids, got bigger more demanding jobs – and still Notorious is really important to them.

Another large group have been with us at least 5 years and come back time and time again. Many of those now have full on careers and demanding home lives etc but still they make time for our weekly rehearsals.

Why – because they feel the same way as me – there is no replacement for truly uplifting singing – the physical act and the bonding it engenders.

Speaking of bonding – did you know that Notorious can boast a role in four marriages?! Yup – Stu and Kat, Liz and Ian, Mike and Richard and most recently Jon and Rach have all tied the knot – they met in choir and their romances blossomed through our choir’s all important social life. We’ve sung at all those weddings and emotional it was (in my Yoda voice)!

So however ‘busy’ I get – I’ll never be too busy for singing. In our house we sing to go up the stairs, put toys away, sit on the potty (sorry) and almost everything.

Tonight I got the audience singing an African song and it was magic to see their frightened faces (at the suggestion they had to sing) turn to joy as they realised that a good sing is good for the soul….

So sing in the shower, sing in the car (even when everyone is looking at you) and parp it out like your life depends on it – and watch your insides smile…

fa la la la la…..