After France,
six weeks in the UK: 14 workshops and a lot of
travel - as far north as Edinburgh, as far south as
Penzance, in venues ranging from village halls and
arts centres to a barn in the Esk valley and a
medieval church in Norfolk. Because there is such a
thriving choir culture in the UK, a lot of great
singers turned up (some travelled great distances)
to my workshops, including some professional and
highly-experienced performers, like Chris Rowbury,
Maya Waldman, Joanna
Foster, Candy Verney, Jane Harris, Una May, Alice Robin,
Hilary Davies, Bruce Knight, Nick and Fiona
Mills; plus I had the pleasure of running a workshop
for Edinburgh choirs Loud
and Proud and Harmonise
(thanks Karen and Jane). A big thank you to Maya,
Naamah, Clive, Jo Budd, Jo Ludbrook, Emily and Liz,
Jane Schonveld, Alice and Hilary, Alex and Elgiva,
Jane Harris, Kathy and Nick Prater for all your
help. A further big thank you to Steve Hemmens,
Robyn Litchfield, Anne Marie Bostyn and Sara
MacLean. for hospitality.
In beautiful Cheltenham, at Alice Robin's
instigation, I ran a Freeing the song
workshop, a master-class for choir directors and
song leaders, which seemed to go pretty well. It's
the first time I've run a whole day on choir
directing, and typically I sought a lot of input
from the 30-odd participants, and learned a lot
myself.
At the
Barbican we heard the wonderful Le Mystére Des Voix Bulgares, sitting three rows from the front.
Ear-boggling clusters and gorgeous voices. Splendid traditional costumes in the first half, and daggy western recital gowns in the second.
Later, We got to
meet Larry Gordon, Patty Cuyler
and Mollie Stone from Northern
Harmony in the café at Foyles Bookshop in
London for a brief yarn, and we took in their
concert that night: a great mix of shape-note,
modern compositions, early music, Georgian,
Corsican, gospel quartet and South African gospel
sung by an ever-shifting formation of 15 singers.
Sometimes only three would sing, for instance.
Beautiful voices and an obvious love and deep
familiarity with the material and the different
genres.
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