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On Saturday I was on Craig Doyle’s show, singing with James McMorrow. My fellow backing singers were Jill Deering and Peter Ryan and I did some tambourine, too. We sang a track from James’s album called ‘This Old Dark Machine’ and, unusually for telly, did it completely live and acoustic.
Here’s a link to the lyrics of the song, on James’s website…
It was a great thrill to be part of the show. It’s recorded on Wednesdays and we were shown to a dressing room (with a nice big box of jelly beans to munch on), and had a lovely runner guy who took our dinner order and got us whatever we wanted. We were all too nice to ask for a while, but then I ventured a request for a Diet Coke (rock’n'roll, eh?). Doubtless the guys were summoning all sorts of debauchery after I left and they got a bit more bold 
Here’s the clip (the song starts at 03m13s…):
Thankfully the TV people taped our bit first, as I had to rush off to play piano for my girls choir at Loreto Senior Primary in Crumlin. They were doing their Spring show and I had two choirs to play for: the 88-strong group that had taken part in the Hallelujah Chorus project (massed school choirs get together each year to do a concert with a full orchestra), and the younger ‘school choir’. The 88 did an Abba medley and the school choir did two songs I’d been working on with them this term – ‘Colors Of The Wind’ from Pocahontas by the amazing Alan Menken (look him up and marvel at his body of work) and ‘The Peanut Vendor’, a Cuban song about a dude who sells peanuts. I got there with minutes to spare before I was meant to be on…I think the poor head teacher was a little emotionally frayed by the whole experience! Of course, I breeze in with not a bother on me 
Here’s the Abba medley:
And here’s ‘The Peanut Vendor’:
In my first year at Edinburgh University I was involved in the student production of Mozart’s opera, ‘The Marriage of Figaro’. The cast sang in English, as I recall (the opera is originally in Italian). It contains some of the most wonderful music and, from my position in the orchestra (I played clarinet), I watched each night as the drama played out. Mozart loved the clarinet – a relatively new invention in his day – and he gives it some lovely melodies.
I knew the guy playing the continuo part, an older student called Gareth Wilson, and he would excitedly point out the sublime, exquisite harmonies with which Mozart tells Da Ponte’s story of class struggle and love. The words ‘sublime’ and ‘exquisite’, if not invented for the purpose of describing Mozart’s art, surely found their calling when he began to write his music.
Don’t take my word for it – go and see this production by Opera Theatre Company!
My other excitement about this particular staging is that my fellow Edinburgh music graduate and fellow Northerner, Emma Morwood (pictured), is playing the lead female role of Susanna. You know those people who just stand out from the crowd and draw people in with their warmth, good-nature, and sense of humour? Emma was one of those at university and she lit up the music faculty
Don’t take my word for it – go and see this production by Opera Theatre Company!
DUBLIN May 7+8, DUNDALK May 11, SLIGO May 13, GALWAY May 15, DERRY May 20, CARLOW May 22, TALLAGHT May 25, THURLES May 28, TRALEE May 30, BRAY June 2
Tickets: €18-€30. Booking fee may apply.
A few weeks ago I did a recording for one of my fellow tenors in New Dublin Voices, jazz pianist Stephen Kenny. He has formed a duo with a Finnish singer called Milla Mamia and they needed a demo so they could advertise. I used my Zoom H4 recorder in my kitchen to make the recordings. Firstly, Milla and Stephen did the song and I took a direct stereo output from my Nord Stage piano. Then, I was able to have Milla listen back to that piano track through headphones and sing into the Zoom’s built-in stereo microphones. I then did some editing to do in Audacity, the final stage of which was adding reverb to Milla’s voice.
Check out their website: midnightbluejazz.com
One of the songs they recorded was ‘The Rainbow Connection’ by Paul Williams and Kenneth Ascher. This song was pipped for a Grammy in 1979, the year Kermit the Frog sang it in The Muppet Movie. It’s been covered by many people since then (check out the list on Wikipedia’s entry for the song) but I couldn’t find one I liked as much as Milla & Stephen’s. Actual tears!
Kermit is, of course, the benchmark I love the attention to detail – the way his hand moves on the chord changes and he strums the correct pattern. Genius puppetry.
My friend Jonny posted this as his facebok status about an hour ago:
POISONED BY MACDONALDS BLUES went to macd’s for a wispa mcflurry now im running to the toilet in a hurry went to macd’s, got me a big mac spent the next day flat on my back went to macd’s for a diet coke outta my way im gonna boke went to macd’s, got me some fries now i feel like im gonna die i aint ever goin back to eat that food although i hear the big tasty is quite good i got those poisoned by macdonalds blues
So I did a wee recording.
I’m writing this while eating a Cadbury’s Dairy Milk. Raising a glass and a half to the taste of world-beating excellence. Please, American Kraft people (and I know you’re reading this blog…), don’t change it. Although I’m still a bigger fan of Quality Street than Roses. Just saying.
Last weekend I was recording with New Dublin Voices – Christmas music – in St Ann’s church on Dawson Street. It’s a lovely church to sing in but it was really cold. We did two sessions (usually three hours between meals in the biz) on both Saturday and Sunday and a rehearsal session on the Friday night, too. Needless to say, by the Sunday I was better prepared, piling on the layers and swapping the shoes-with-a-slight-heel that were recommended to me for singing in for my scruffy-but-comfortable trainers. I also used a music stand both days which saved me having to hold the music the whole time. The recording was produced by Bill Sommerville-Large and he was very good to work with. He guided us through the process and made clear suggestions as to where singers should be positioned. He has a wonderful ear and I’m looking forward to hearing the recordings, which we hope to put out on CD after the summer.
On Sunday, during one of the breaks between takes, I sidled over to the piano and my fingers fell onto a chord – hands centred just either side of middle C, right hand on a 2nd inversion Bb triad, left hand on a 1st inversion Eb triad. It sounded quite beautiful to my ears and over the next few hours I kept slipping back to the keyboard. “That’s the start of my new choral piece!”, I joked to those nearby. There was something cooking, though, and by the time we were packing up, I had a strong sense that this really was a new piece. At home I played it over a number of times, finding another section…
The next day I was in search of a text. I really like the poems of Dennis O’Driscoll but leafing through a volume of his work proved fruitless. Nothing suited the feel of this music. I took myself out to a local café for a cup of tea and grabbed a book on the way – a book of Celtic Verse given to me for my birthday a few years ago. I knew some things about the text I as looking for: it had to have quite short lines and it had to start on the upbeat. I forget the poetry term…<consults Stephen Fry’s excellent book ‘The Ode Less Travelled’>…ah, yes, it’s iambic. Mr Fry also includes a rather nice chocolate reference:
GOLDEN RULE ONE – reading verse can be like eating chocolate, so much more pleasurable when you allow it slowly to melt inside you, so much less rewarding when you snap off big chunks and bolt them whole, all but untasted.
Well, dear reader, I found it. The one. A poem that not only suited my chosen metre but, when I got it home and played it at the piano, seemed to compliment the music beautifully. The piece was finished! I can still hardly believe it. I spent the next day typing it into Sibelius and preparing scores for the choir to sing through it at our rehearsal. Everyone seemed to like it. Here is the poem, by Villiers de L’Isle-Adam (1838-1889):
Confession
Since I have lost the words, the flower
Of youth and the fresh April breeze . . .
Give me thy lips; their perfumed dower
Shall be the whisper of the trees!
Since I have lost the deep sea’s sadness,
Her sobs, her restless surge, her graves . . .
Breathe but a word; its grief or gladness
Shall be the murmur of the waves!
Since in my soul a sombre blossom
Broods, and the suns of yore take flight . . .
O hide me in thy pallid bosom,
And it shall be the calm of night!
My other big task for this week was completing my application for a bursary award from the Arts Council. It would be so great to get it but I’m not going to get my hopes up because only two applicants out of ten have been awarded in the last couple of years. Gathering together the support material made me realise how much stuff I have but also how unclear that is on the website. I plan to do a page with all the recordings I’ve done, with lyrics and a link to a score on Sibelius where possible.
Came across this funny article (via Twitter) about children’s programmes on Nickelodeon Jr. Now, I don’t have kids but I do work with little ones sometimes. The guy who wrote the article rates the shows’ songs and music, too, which I found interesting. His descriptions led me to check out Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! on YouTube…
I liked the slightly unexpected melody in the chorus and the harmonies. There’s an effect on the voice, too, that’s like when you add upper harmonics to an organ sound – a breathy doubling at the octave.
At the end of the article is another treat – Yo Gabba Gabba. He includes a YouTube clip from this show of a song called Party In My Tummy. Now I know catchy and *this* is catchy!
I spent a good (as in a lot and also as in enjoyable) part of yesterday setting a list of proper nouns to music in the grand tradition of Tom Lehrer
and Yakko from Animaniacs.
I was introduced to Eclecticity today by Rowan Manahan, whose witty and informative blog I would recommend to anyone who likes to laugh and has to work for a living.
I sing in a choir and, it being the season, we’ve been singing lots of Christmas music. Yesterday, in fact, we barged on screen during the link after Home and Away on RTÉ two and sang ‘Ding dong merrily on high’, complete with santa hats. You can see it on the website until the end of the month – find ‘Monday 15th December part three’.
And so, via Eclecticity, I’d like to share this song with you, ‘Grown up Christmas list’. It’s performed here by Amy Grant and was written by David Foster and Linda Thompson-Jenner. (If you want an eye-watering biography, look no further than Mr Foster’s: the man is a legend!) This song has been recorded by a few big names, but I think this version is the most honest and touching. One for the virtual stocking…?
This morning I listened to Elbow’s Mercury prize-winning album, The Seldom Seen Kid. It was easily one of the most sustainedly moving listening experiences I’ve had in a long time. About halfway through I was so excited about writing this post that I had to make a conscious effort to keep listening and not start writing. Isn’t that quite typical of our times? Karl Spain jokes about it in relation to our digital photo habits:
CLICK. “Here, give us a look!” Sigh. “Ah, we were happy then…”
One of the thing’s mentioned on Elbow’s rather beautifully designed website about The Seldom Seen Kid is that the album was conceived very much as a whole and not as a collection of tracks. (The shift, much lamented in some circles, towards consuming music in track-sized pieces is not good or bad but it does allow outstanding examples of the album format to shine, as in this case.) This is also evident in the way the album artwork is designed. It takes the form of an illustrated book, the lyrics presented in a string rather than in the more customary line-by-line way.
The experience of clicking through the digital booklet that comes with the (€6.99!) download of the album from iTunes was very pleasurable, the full-screen PDF format rendering the images at glorious LP size and the text at a readable point size. Why, oh why can’t all albums sold on iTunes come with something like this?
Singer Guy Garvey writes all the lyrics and some of his turns of phrase are just gorgeous, like this one from Weather to fly :
So in looking to stray from the line we decided instead we should pull at the thread that was stitching us into this tapestry vile and why wouldn’t you try?
His unaffected voice, which he sends soaring every once in a perfectly judged while, is one of the most emotive in music. The band’s playing on this recording is exquisite and, following the principles of the ‘Turn Me Up!’ movement, is recorded at a lower level to allow a wider dynamic range.
Having sold out their first Dublin date, in the Ambassador on the 27th October, another has been announced for the following night. I saw their very impressive set at Electric Picnic and will certainly be going along to hear this beautiful, deservedly accoladed album played live.
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