beautiful minds

“…just purse your lips and whistle, that’s the thing…”

Leave a comment

I saw ‘West Side Story’ a few weeks ago here in Sydney. I first experienced the show, enthralled, from the orchestra pit in the 2000 Edinburgh University Footlights show. At one point in the Sydney production, members of ‘The Sharks’ exit whistling a tune that I recognised as the British national anthem. I thought that this was a satirical reminder of Australia’s colonial heritage, perhaps to get a laugh from the home audience, but that seemed out of place in the play’s New York setting. I felt I was missing a vital part of the joke. Today I finally got it.

I have just finished reading Christopher Hitchens’ memoir, ‘Hitch-22′. It’s difficult not to be impressed by his remarkable intellect and riveting ability to recount some of the fascinating journeys he’s undertaken, both physical and idealogical. (He recalls Oscar Wilde’s pronouncement that unless one’s map has Utopia marked on it, it is not worth navigating by. Hitchens declares himself unconvinced of the wisdom of this idea now, having seen some of the shipwrecks and prison islands.)

Hitchens describes himself as unmusical, as opposed to some of his good friends, whose ability to discuss music he finds enviable. His observation that it is those friends who possess this faculty who also compose the finest poetry and fiction is intriguing.

I was delighted, then, to find music dominating the first few pages of Hitchens’ 2006 book on Thomas Paine’s ‘Rights of Man’. Doubly satisfying was finding the answer to my West Side Story conundrum, which was of course that the tune I recognised as ‘God Save The Queen’ is taught to every American school child to the words of the hymn ‘My Country, ’tis of thee’.

My Country, ’tis of thee
Sweet land of liberty
Of thee I sing
Land where my fathers died
Land of the Pilgrims’ pride
From every mountainside –
Let freedom ring!

The disparity between the sentiment of those words and the reality faced by many of those who came in search of liberty is what gives The Sharks’ ironic choice of tune its bite.

composers, what I'm up to

Pride, Prejudice, Piano, Perfect

Leave a comment

I found the big music shop in Sydney – Allan’s on Pitt Street. Downstairs: guitars, drums and such (I got three sets of Martin guitar strings for the price of two PLUS a very compressed t-shirt!). Upstairs is sheet music, orchestral instruments, keyboards, and…pianos.

There are pianos everywhere in Sydney – we saw one in David Jones, a big old-style department store, on our first day; there was one in the hotel where we had (amazing) High Tea on Julija’s birthday; there’s even one in the tattoo parlour we pass on our way home every day! Maybe it’s because I had to leave my lovely Nord at home and I’m just hallucinating. Allan’s is a real treat, though. I spotted the music, composed by Dario Marianelli, from Joe Wright’s Pride & Prejudice and asked if I could play through it. They kindly obliged (although they put me on an electric piano…I’ll hopefully work my way up to one of the grands with a bit of practice!) and I happily played through the book.

The main theme – ‘Dawn’ – is lovely, with its threes-against-twos, its chromatic urging, and its full, ruffly arpeggios, all culminating in a marvellously long, decorated trill. *sigh*

songs for children, this freelancing business, what I'm up to

Alice in Wonderland

Leave a comment

Before I left Ireland last week, I took part in a school project in Daingean, County Offaly. It was funded by the Arts Council’s ‘Percent for Art’ scheme, which allows schools that have completed a new building to apply for an artwork to commemorate it. Usually this is a piece of visual art or poetry, but on this occasion it was an hour-long musical work devised by Aingeala de Burca and performed by every single child in the school (191 in total, I believe).

The theme was Alice in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll’s grandson, Charles Dodgson, is buried in the town) and my role was to set the children’s words to music and also to play in the final performance. Aingeala and I have worked together on a number of similar projects over the past few years, but always under the auspices of other organisations. This was particularly exciting, as it was the first time I’d worked with Aingeala on something of her own.

It was interesting, too, coming in towards the end of the process. On a bigger budget project it might have been possible to have me come in to the school with Aingeala to help write the lyrics, but my role was more defined and I got the lyrics fully formed and was charged with composing musical settings of them. The lyrics were very well put together and I only made a few, very small changes in a couple of places. I visited the school once I’d written the songs and had the wonderful experience of auditioning them for the lyricists. They loved them and I think it was a moment of great relief for the teachers, too, as they finally began to see how this was all going to come together. It’s quite a tall order to ask teachers to commit to rehearsing a show while it’s being written!

We had songs about Mike the hedgehog (the royal croquet ball), Heather the flamingo (the royal croquet mallet), decapitation, Alice’s lake of frustrated tears after the ‘eat me drink me’ debacle, and the Mad Hatter’s tea party. There was also a refrain that the whole school sang at intervals throughout the show and lots of other music from the younger classes that Aingeala had done. It was a really wonderful show and a great way to finish up my work schedule. The way we did it made me think that I could easily work on something like that from afar, too…

what I'm up to

Sydney

Leave a comment

I am writing this from Sydney, Jen and I having transplanted ourselves for a year(-ish).

The flights were rather good. I was impressed at pretty much everything that they did for us: one of the by-products of being treated tricked like a Ryanair customer in recent years, I suppose. We flew with Etihad (the ‘h’ is pronounced, so I learned) and [sticks tongue out of side of mouth in concentration] I’ll just chop this bit out of Jen’s facebook post to tell you about that…

Anyhoo, the 7 hours flew – really, no pun intended, I just can’t think of another way to say it. When we landed in Abu Dhabi we got off the plane and into a sauna… Oh, I’m sorry, I meant walked to the airport!! 40 degrees (celsius) at 8:30pm? Crazy heat, we couldn’t believe it, especially considering we left Ireland during a heatwave of 18 degrees!
We only had an hour before boarding the next flight so we went straight to the gate and used the free wifi before the gate opened. Chatting to a nice Australian couple, who live in Bahrain, we learned that this 40 degrees was actually not even the hottest it gets – in the height of summer you can expect 50+ in the UAE. We were glad to be going to the “cold” Sydney winter, of 17 degrees.

The flight from Abu Dhabi to Sydney was 14 hours. As we trundled down the aisle to our seats, Jay wondered if he might ask he air steward if he could move to an emergency exit so he could stretch his legs but as we got to our designated seats, lo and behold, they were at an emergency exit door! The pure joy of that moment soon waned as we realised it was also the space for every Tom, Dick and overweight Harry to stretch in during the 14 hours – thank God for eyemasks!

…

Finally landed in Sydney at 6:30pm, local time (9:30am body clock!) and made our way through customs. On the plane we had to fill in a landing card, asking details about where we were staying, if we were carrying anything illegal in our bags. Thanks to Joanna, who made us watch ‘Border Control’ before we left Ireland, we were suitably paranoid about everything we were carrying, causing me to check ‘yes’ in the ‘carrying prohibited medicines, weapons of any kind or illicit drugs’ box as I had some Ibuprofen in my bag! (hey, they are restricted in Ireland!) The lady at the customs desk just laughed at me when I told her. Welcome to Australia.

Tad was there to greet us, in a winter coat (seriously, 17 degrees out!), and we got a taxi to Surry Hills. Couldn’t see much of the city as we drove through as it was already dark but, as Tad pointed out, it was similar enough to any other city that was only 200 years old – the road signs, layouts and crosswalks are very similar to what you’d see in the States.

Arriving at Tad and Julija’s house was surreal – the familiar paintings (all by Julija’s fair hand), furniture and books was a real treat for us, as it made us feel not too far from home.

We’ve done a bit of exploring – one day we walked down Elizabeth Street into town and to the breathtaking Sydney Opera House, yesterday we walked down Oxford Street to the Centennial Parkland. It’s nice not to have to cram our sightseeing in and to just take time to look around and notice things. I read Alain de Botton’s ‘The Art of Travel’ before we set off and was very impressed by the attractive picture that emerges of a person who travels. One of the characters he talks about is John Ruskin, who advocated drawing as a way of learning to see things, and I bought myself a sketch pad. We’ll see…

composition, forthcoming events, New Dublin Voices and other choral singing, what I'm up to

World premiere

Leave a comment

At the beginning of this year, NDV were recording some Christmas music for a proposed CD release. In between takes I wandered over to the upright piano in St Ann’s church and quietly played some chords – the first comprised two Bb triads in second inversion either side of middle-C, the second was formed by shifting the lower three notes to an Eb triad in first inversion. The effect was lovely to my ears and I expanded the idea a little before we left and then more when I got home.

I have almost entirely reworked the piece since the choir sang through the first draft in February. I listened to a recording of them singing through it and felt it needed to resonate more: it was too chordy, too blocky.

On Saturday – in the very church where it had its genesis – my finished piece, ‘Confession’, will be performed for the very first time…

composers, New Dublin Voices and other choral singing, reviews and reports

The Mornington Singers

Leave a comment

I went to a concert last night by our choral neighbours, The Mornington Singers. They are conducted by the lovely Orla Flanagan and sang in the marvellous Pro-Cathedral in Dublin.

It was my first time in the cathedral (the Catholic one…not sure why it gets the positivity prefix…) and it really is quite nice indeed. Not too over-the-top in terms of gold and such, but there are two domes in the roof and a large area around the altar that lended itself perfectly to the choir’s arched formation. (Note to self: do I mean ‘arced’? Looks wrong.) The building reminded me of St Cecilia’s Hall in Edinburgh, one of the concert rooms built in Georgian times. Of course, the cathedral is bigger and more, well, ‘churchy’, but it did seem to yearn for ancient Greece or Rome in the way that the Georgian architects favoured.

The programme for the evening was titled ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ but, apart from Veljo Tormis’s ‘St John’s Day Songs’, this was less a theme and more an apt description of the evening’s experience.

The concert opened with two pieces by James MacMillan: ‘A Child’s Prayer’ and ‘The Gallant Weaver’. I wondered about opening with the first of these. It does begin with the word “welcome” but it is an intense piece and I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear it straight off. It’s a great sing for the two soprano soloists, whose intertwining lines gracefully float over the sonorous repeated chords of the choir. The middle section flickers with ornamented notes in all parts on the word “joy” and propels the music upward to the final, heart-breaking duet.

composers, links, lyrics and lines I especially admire, what I'm up to

Tonight with Craig Doyle

Leave a comment

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’:

composers, forthcoming events, lyrics and lines I especially admire

The Marriage of Figaro

Leave a comment

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.

composers, links, lyrics and lines I especially admire, togetherness, what I'm up to

The Rainbow Connection

Leave a comment

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.

composition, what I'm up to, workshop leading

Lending me your ears

Leave a comment

Oh, it’s been far too long! Apologies.

I entered the Séan O’Ríada competition that is run by the Cork Choral Festival. Sadly I didn’t win – a guy called Simon MacHale did, and I’m looking forward to hearing his piece next week at the National Chamber Choir’s festival gig. It was great working to the deadline, although I didn’t finish the piece entirely to my satisfaction. There’s one line that I think needs completely reworking and my choir director told me it was hard, so I must think a bit more about it and draft another version.

The rules were that the piece had to be for SATB with a small amount of divisi permitted. The text also had to be Irish, preferably. I found a great poem by James Joyce (whose poetry I didn’t know at all) called ‘I Hear An Army’ and fell in love with it, despite being warned that permission to use Joyce’s work is hard to get. I actually still haven’t heard back from the copyright holder…fingers crossed. I think it comes out of copyright in six years anyway, by which time I *might* be happy with the piece! My composition professor in university, Nigel Osborne, encouraged me to use comtemporary poets’ work but there is something to be said for not having to worry about copyright. Assuming the publisher/poet is nice, though, it’s still nothing to be put off by, really. You’ll probably have to pay a bit to use the text and write emails and talk to people, but that helps one feel like a proper composer. Which is half the battle.

Two videos to finish. I have to return some instruments that I borrowed for some ‘Introduction to Musical Instruments’ sessions I did the other day for some lovely kids in Chapelizod. I brought along my piano (“…but you said it was a keyboard…” “Yes, yes, you’re right, it *is* a keyboard. It sounds like a piano, though, doesn’t it?” “Sort of…”), guitar, clarinet, drum, shaker, some violins, some chime bars, some lovely bass chime bars and we had a marvellous time playing all those and talking about them and all the other, far more interesting things that they thought of that second. Kids are great 🙂

First video is of Conor O’Brien (whose band, Villagers, are about to release their debut album) singing on Jools Holland. I think he’s a very very good performer and songwriter. I saw him play a solo set last summer and I was hooked. Enjoy 🙂

Second video is of the lovely Kristin Chenoweth singing ‘The Girl in 14G’. I was rehearsing this song with Suzanne McDonnell for her recital on Tuesday week. Fun piece and another great performance. Quick gripe: the recital may have to be in the afternoon, not the evening as it has been in previous years. Why? Because of the work-to-rule that the unionised university employees are following. It means that family and friends don’t get to come and the students play to an empty hall. Brilliant.

Anyway, enjoy the song!

performance, teaching, composition & reviews