Berberis' World

Monday, 18th December 2017, Southwark Cathedral, London SE1 9DA.

Carols for choirs and audience: Once in royal David’s City/Of the Father’s heart begotten/Silent Night/Hark! the herald angels sing/The First Nowell/O come, all ye Faithful

Soloist on Once in royal David’s City: Joe Davies (Bromley Youth Music Trust)

Southwark Cathedral’s full title is, apparently, The Cathedral and Collegiate Church of St Saviour and St Mary Overie. It’s across the road from London Bridge station, and right next to Borough Market, and is spectacular. I’d attended one of these services before, as a member of the congregation. This time, it was at the invitation of the Mayor, Sadiq Khan, who’d invited us and The Metropolitan Police Choir to perform a couple of songs during the concert.

The Met Police Choir is 65-strong group of serving and retired officers and police staff. It was formed in the 1960s as a male voice choir but, in 2016, auditions were opened to men and women, and there were just over half of the choir present this evening. Even with reduced numbers they sounded amazing.

We sang ‘Behold That Star‘ (arr. by the genius that is Bob Chilcott) and ‘Bridge’, and I was genuinely pleased about how well they both went. There was no sign of the collective anxiety that occasionally mars a performance, despite the nervousness which surfaced after the dress rehearsal. The Met Police performed ‘Still, Still, Still‘, by Norman Luboff and it was beautifully done. They also sang ‘We Wish You A Merry Christmas’ (arr. Arthur Warrell) which was completely different in tone but still sounded superb.

Young Joe Davies was note perfect, and seemingly not at all bothered either by the capacity audience or the many cameras which were undoubtedly focussed on him during his solo. And so polite! He came up to us during the reception after the concert and praised our performance, which was lovely of him.

And then there was the descant. There was no way I wasn’t going to sing them – apart from Silent Night and The First Nowell, which I don’t know that well. I’d probably not have been anywhere near as confident without Duffy next to me, and we belted out the lines with gusto. All in all, a great evening in a magnificent venue.

Sunday, 8th December 2013.

Tomorrow afternoon, just outside A&E, I’ll be taking part at the launch of a single, a mash-up of Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Bridge over Troubled Water’ and Cold Play’s ‘Fix You’, which is clumsily titled ‘A Bridge Over You’, and which was recorded at Air Studios in Islington on 3 November.

Saturday, 20th April 2013, St Mary’s Church, Lewisham.

Praise the Lord: Traditional, arr. K Burton
Even Such Is Time: Poem – Sir Walter Raleigh, Music – Bob Chilcott
Total Praise: Music – Richard Smallwood, arr. Dan Ludford-Thomas
For Once In My Life: Miller & Murden, arr. Jon Cohen
Lean On Me: Bill Withers, arr. Jon Cohen
And So It Goes: Words and music – Billy Joel, arr. Bob Chilcott
Accentuate the Positive: Arlen & Miller, arr. Jon Cohen
The Turtle Dove: Traditional, arr. Vaughan Williams
How Can I Keep From Singing?: Music  R Wadsworth Lowry, arr. Jon Cohen
She Moved Through The Fair: Traditional, arr. Peter Hunt
Bridge Over Troubled Water/Fix You:  Simon & Garfunkel/Coldplay, arr. Peter Mitchell
Like A Mighty Stream: Jacobson & Hogan
Come and Go With Me: Traditional, arr. K Burton

The Lewisham & Greenwich NHS Trust Choir

Sopranos: Suzanne Benett, Zoe Davies, Caroline Duffy, Sheena Joseph, Joan Mills, Elem Nnachi, Katie Rogerson, Christine Scarsbrook, Elizabeth Steele
Altos: Antonia Boyce, Caroline Harbord, Petrina Pottinger, Claire Roberts, Caroline Smith, Nora Smith, Sarah Wood
Tenors: Edmund Chaloner, Chidi Ejimofo, Derrick Kiteke, Errol Woodburn
Basses: Simon Fitzgerald, Malcolm Hancock, Aaron Hoyte, Emmet Masterson

The Liam Dunachie Trio

Piano: Liam Dunachie
Double Bass: Andy Robb
Drums: Dave Storey

Musical Director: Peter Mitchell
Artistic Director: Dan Ludford-Thomas

As I’m writing this nearly five years after the actual event, it’s fair to say that I don’t remember much about this concert. However, what I can say – without fear of contradiction – is that the Liam Dunachie Trio would have been amazing, Dan would have been full of energy and inspiration, and someone/several people, at some point, would have forgotten the words +/- the tune of one or more of the songs.

I don’t recall Praise the Lord, The Turtle Dove, or Like A Mighty Stream, probably because we don’t perfom them anymore. I do recall For Once In My Life, but we don’t perform that anymore, either. Come & Go With Me would have involved several key changes at the end (although not as many as I expect), and at least a dozen of the people at this gig have now moved on – including Dan and Pete.

Thursday, 1st March 2012.

Congratulations on being chosen by Gareth for the Lewisham Hospital choir!

We are emailing your line manager with all your rehearsal dates – on the condition they are happy to release you for these, you’re in the choir! If you don’t hear back from us, then please assume everything is OK.

FIRST REHEARSAL
The first choir rehearsal is taking place tomorrow, Friday 2^nd March, 12:00 – 14:30 in the Lessof Auditorium. This is located in the Education Centre at the main Lewisham Hospital site. There will be a 30 minute break in which you can go and grab lunch half way through the rehearsal.

Gareth also has something planned for the choir in the evening and you will need to be available 17:30 – 22:00. You will be given more information about this during tomorrow’s rehearsal. It would be a good idea to have something to eat before your evening with Gareth begins – for those who can make it, there will be sandwiches available at 17:00 in The Lewis Club (at the main hospital site).

REHEARSAL SCHEDULE
Attached is a rehearsal schedule with a few tweaks to the dates. We’ve added the weekly Tuesday rehearsals to this schedule, so these are now all the dates you’ll need to be available for. Please note that most of the Tuesday rehearsals will take place 16:00-18:00. Please have a look and, if you haven’t let us know already, please let us know ASAP if you think you’ll have any problems attending any of these dates/times.

Finally, Gareth has asked if you could come to the rehearsal with the names of some songs that you would like to sing in the choir. These could be anything from personal songs that mean a lot to you, to songs that you think might be appropriate for you to sing as a group.

Many thanks and we look forward to seeing you tomorrow.

Congratulations once again
The Twenty Twenty Team

Tuesday, 28th February 2012.

So, an audition. For a choir. If you’ve been following this blog, you’ll be aware that the last audition I had went very badly, and resulted in me having to leave a choir with whom I had (largely) hugely enjoyed singing.

I say ‘largely’ because there were times when I felt wholly inadequate and thoroughly isolated. There was even one occasion when I allowed myself to be bullied by a couple of stuck-up, sarcastic women who thought they were a cut above the vast majority of the rest of the choir, who were at least polite and friendly.

It was the end of 2008, and we were rehearsing Brahms’ Deutsches Requiem for a concert the following April. Due to ongoing building work at Bishopsgate, we were at Henry Wood Hall, just off Borough High Street, and I’d decided to sit in the front row. Not sure why, but it was probably because I was expecting Steph to turn up and we’d have a giggle. But she didn’t – I don’t remember why – and I ended up next to two people I normally avoided.

I threw myself into the rehearsal, using the glorious music to express the maelstrom of emotion I’d been bottling up since my mum’s death a few months earlier, as well as the unexpectedly hurtful things my brothers had said to me in the months before she’d died. After one particularly loud and cathartic section – Tod, wo ist dein Stachel? Holle, wo ist dein Sieg? – I overheard one of these women say to the other that I was “a bit loud”, in a tone which made it clear she wished I wasn’t. The second said to the first to keep her voice down in case she was overheard.

Instead of responding with a “too late for that”, which might have shut them up, I kept quiet. Unfortunately, in doing so, all my energy disappeared… along with my voice. To add insult to injury, the second woman then quipped that the first’s comment had at least had the desired effect. After the break, feeling thoroughly deflated and even more isolated without my singing partner-in-crime, I returned to my seat (and to this day I still don’t know why the hell I didn’t move to the back of the hall where there were plenty of empty chairs) and left the rehearsal depressed, and angry at myself that I’d allowed someone to make me feel that way.

The point of this tangent is not only to tell what happened but also to try to give some indication of how much my singing and my overall mental health are linked (and I’ll accept that this is a link I may have embroidered since a GP suggested singing as therapy). If I can’t sing, I feel anxious. However, the converse is also true, and it’s that that affects me at auditions… which is why I try to avoid them.

But this particular audition couldn’t be avoided. Given that most people I work with knew I was in both LCS and the LPC, it was assumed by pretty much everyone that I’d apply to be in the hospital choir. Rowena, one of the nurses on the children’s ward, gave my name to the Comms office even before the all users email had gone out and three of the 20/20 film crew were in the office within about an hour. I was going to have to audition or spend the rest of my life trying to explain – mainly to myself – why I’d chickened out. I did manage to convince 20/20 (well, Pete and Charlotte) that there was absolutely no chance of me singing on camera in the seminar room but I knew I’d have to do it eventually. I tried to push the thought to the back of my mind – being incredibly busy helped – but it was going to happen no matter how I felt.

And the day duly dawned. We were auditioned in groups of about 20, and there were 10 groups. My group was the second up and we all gathered in the former Children’s Surgical Ward just before 10am. There were obviously departments where more than one person had been chosen, but I couldn’t see anyone I knew. We were called in and I trailed in at the end, taking a seat at the end of the front row.

Gareth introduced himself and the film crew, and we all did likewise. We warmed up our voices and then were invited to sing the refrain from ‘A Spoonful of Sugar’. Helps the medicine go down. Hospital choir. We all laughed, albeit nervously, and sang along. Then Gareth said for the back two rows only to sing, then the front two rows, the left hand side, right hand side, you four… you two… you.

Which meant me. He decided to start with me simply because I was on the right hand end of the front row. So I had to stand up and sing. In front of 19 other volunteers and a film crew. And Gareth Malone. My knees felt as though they were made of water, and I was sweating and shaking. Having sung the refrain once, and not very confidently, I had to sing it again and again – first quieter, then louder, now in a lower register, now a higher register – as he made notes. Then I had to sing one particular note in a three-note chord. By the time I sat down, I felt as though I’d run a marathon.

And that was that. The rest of the process was a bit of a blur. I remember two people particularly: a consultant sitting in the back row who turned out to be tone-deaf and someone who said “I can’t sing that because I’ve got laryngitis” before launching into ‘Girl from Ipanema’, her laryngitis clearly not a problem with that particular arrangement of words and music.

As to whether or not I was successful in my first audition since being rejected by Neville Creed 372 days – one year and one week – ago, I won’t know until the end of the week.