Berberis' World

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.

Thursday, 23th February 2012.

“Do one thing every day that scares you.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

“…if possible, please also send an audio/video clip of yourself singing.”

No. It isn’t. Thus I managed to avoided doing the one thing last Thursday that scared me. There wasn’t much I could do to avoid this…

“To Michelle,
GARETH MALONE

SING WHILE YOU WORK

CONGRATULATIONS!

We have had a huge response from people right across the Lewisham Healthcare NHS Trust who want to be part of the workplace choir with Gareth Malone, and we are pleased to invite you to an audition on: Tuesday 28^th February at 10.30am.

Your audition will take place in the former Children’s Surgical Ward, on the second floor of the Women’s and Children’s Wing (Green Zone), University Hospital Lewisham.

You will be auditioned as part of a larger group and the audition session will last around 1 hour. Please arrive 30mins before your time slot to register (i.e. you should arrive at 10.00am for 10.30am audition).

To confirm that you are available to attend your audition time please email lewisham.auditions@twentytwenty.tv by 2pm on Friday 24th February, 2012.”

I did, Eleanor. And it bloody did.

Tuesday, 14th February 2012.

This turned up in my inbox at work today.

All staff: exciting opportunity to sing in new Gareth Malone BBC series

Do you love singing? Have you ever wanted to be in a choir? Whether you just sing in the shower or in public, here’s a chance for you to show off your singing talent and get to know your work colleagues better too, in a new BBC documentary series…

Gareth Malone from the hit series The Choir: Military Wives is filming a new documentary series for BBC2 about choirs in the workplace. We are excited that Lewisham Healthcare NHS Trust is one of four organisations who will feature in the series, being made by Twenty Twenty Television.

The idea is to bring a bit of fun to the work place, give you a chance to get to know colleagues from different parts of the organisation and improve your singing too…

Gareth will be creating a choir from scratch inside Lewisham Healthcare over the next few months and he’s looking for anyone who enjoys singing. You don’t have to have any previous experience; you just need a voice and a love of singing. So, whether you’ve been on stage or just sing in the shower; whether you’re a natural performer or have always felt too shy to perform on your own, Gareth wants to hear from you.

To be considered, all you have to do is fill in the attached application form and send it via email/fax to Twenty Twenty Television no later than Monday 20^th February 2012. If you don’t have access to email or fax, feel free to contact the Trust’s Communications team for help. All the information you provide on this form will be strictly confidential and will not be shared with Lewisham Healthcare without your consent.

Gareth Malone / Twenty Twenty Television will notify all those who have been selected for an audition. Auditions will take place on Monday 27^th February or Tuesday 28^th February. These will take about an hour each.

The formation, rehearsals and performances of the choir will be filmed over the next 3-4 months. You would need to be available for each and every session of a weekly choir rehearsal from around the end of February through to July. (Please note that there will be two rehearsals during the Easter holidays – on 12^th and 13^th April). And, if you’re selected for the choir, you will end up representing Lewisham Healthcare in a contest against three other company choirs from all over Britain, to find out which is the best choir.

The Trust will support all staff who wish to audition and will provide flexible working arrangements to allow all those selected to take part.

We have agreed not to publicise this externally, and it is very important that we keep this information confidential. Please don’t forward this application form internally or externally. No information regarding this series can be made public. This includes chat rooms, online postings, blogs, forums, internal networks and social networking sites including Facebook, Twitter and MySpace.

Good luck!”

Monday, 16th January 2012, Carnegie Hall, 881 7th Ave, New York, NY 10019.

Karl Jenkins: The Peacemakers (World Premier)

Soprano: Antoni Mendezona
Violin: Jorge Avila
Flutes: Kara Deraad Derke

NY Jazz
Soprano Saxophone: Rob Derke
Electric Bass: Carlo de Rosa

Uillenn Pipes: Joseph Mulvanerty

Conductor: Karl Jenkins

The Joke has its own page.

I never imagined, when I was perched on the edge of the stage at the Broadway Theatre in Catford, that – one day – I’d be singing at Carnegie Hall. I’d heard the joke, and the story of Florence Foster Jenkins, but performing there was as likely as having a Xmas No1.

And, to be honest, it was less practice, practice, practice than an unhappy event providing the resources for a happy one.

There was a bit of a nervous moment when, at the airport, I was asked the reason for my trip. I said holiday, and then mentioned that I’d be singing at Carnegie Hall whilst I was there. Did I have a work visa for that?

Um…

New York in winter is cold. Not the sort of cold we get in the UK, which is greatly ameliorated by the Jet Stream. It’s face-numbingly, mouth-freezingly, eye-wateringly cold. It’s buying a woolly hat from the street vendor because you are convinced the skin over your skull will shrivel so much, and so quickly, that your hair will pop out. It’s also – where you can – walking with your back to the wind that blasts you down the street. And coffee in Astro Restaurant on 6th Avenue at every available opportunity.

This was the trip where I first had proper false nails done. I’d always bought the sets from the supermarket/chemist before: the glue was never strong enough, the nails were never the right size/shape, and the end result was short-lasting and unsatisfactory. We found a salon along one of the streets and I decided to take the plunge. One set of crimson talons later, we resumed our wander around the city that never sleeps.

Perhaps this isn’t the place to admit that, apart from The Peacemakers, I’ve not heard any of Karl Jenkins’s music before. For me, it’s in the same genre as David Fanshawe, and the latter’s African Sanctus has made me not want to listen to anything else in that genre. However, even if I don’t really like a particular piece, I will still sing as if it’s the most wonderful music ever written because that’s what I’m on stage for – to look as though I’m enjoying it.

The older I get, the more convinced I am that an experience is better than any possession. How I was able to be in New York may not have been how I would have wished, but I owed it to myself to get something happy from what had been a miserable few months.

A world premiere – World, mind you – in Carnegie Hall! If you’re not enjoying it just for that, you’re doing something wrong.

Wednesday, 29th December 2010, Barbican Hall.

For a concert venue – at least from the performer’s perspective – the Barbican Hall is tiny. With the majority of the 1900+ seats filled, putting 120 singers (members of both the London Philharmonic Choir and the Royal Choral Society) behind a large orchestra (the Royal Philharmonic), the place soon becomes almost uncomfortably hot. As we sat listening to the first 4 movements, I occasionally felt a waft of cool air coming from somewhere above me, but it wasn’t nearly enough.

I only managed to get to the rehearsal on time due to a chance meeting on the escalator at Moorgate, and was hot and bothered by the time I reached the dressing room. The Barbican Centre is perhaps the most magnificent example of why every single building that is erected these days is 99% glass. A thousand psychotic rabbits on crack could not construct anything quite so ridiculously dark and complicatedly un-navigable.

Once we’d worked out the seating arrangements (always a nightmare) and the RPO had tuned up, Christopher Warren-Green came on stage with 3 of the 4 soloists (the bass soloist was missing, having probably taken a wrong staircase and found himself in the Library vault or the boiler room) and proceeded to conduct like a man possessed. Even the soloists had difficulty keeping up with him. He wanted it louder! nastier! uglier! sharper! and I just sat there and looked at him as his hair grew wilder and his arms threatened to fall off.

He was also wildly effusive in his praise of the music – at about 3′ 23″ (timings may vary) into the 4th movement, he demanded that the orchestra quieten down so that the bassoon could be heard playing (I paraphrase here) ‘the most perfect piece of contrapuntal music ever written’. I didn’t care that he might well say the same about every piece he conducts… at that moment, in the face of such passion, I believed him utterly.

In the 2 hours or so thumb-twiddling time before the concert (we weren’t allowed on stage for the first half) I had a long conversation with a couple of choir members about the vagaries of life, the therapeutic nature of singing, the unrelenting pressure of work, and the nightmare of re-auditions; discussion of all but the latter made me feel better. However, I subsumed my fears, ate my ham salad and put on the required ‘long and black’ as well as some not-required make up.

When I auditioned for the LPC, one of my goals – if not my only goal at that point – was to sing Brahms’s Requiem at the Royal Festival Hall. Well, I’ve done that. Everything else has been a wonderful and extremely enjoyable bonus. Having said that, I would definitely miss singing Beethoven’s 9th Symphony every Xmas. For anyone who wants to know why it’s performed at this particular time of year, given that it;s not particularly seasonal, please go here. For anyone who wants to understand anything else about Beethoven, please go here.

However, I doubt that anything I could point you to on the internet would do justice to Maestro Warren-Green’s performance. I don’t think we’ve been directed with such ferocity since the closing moments of Dvorak’s ‘Stabat Mater’ in October. What was truly exhilarating was that Warren-Green sustained his fevered pitch for the entire symphony. It was certainly the quickest last movement I’ve ever sung. Indeed, as the final ‘GOOO-tter-FUNken’ was blasted off stage by an orchestra playing like the place was on fire, an alto in the front row fainted. Luckily, she fell backwards, and not into the horn section. To be honest, even if she had, I don’t think it would have stopped them.