An exciting meeting...but nothing to do with Rudsambee

Morning blog fans,
Well as I was not present at Wednesday's rehearsal due to a jolly jaunt down to the capital, I can't tell you anything about the rehearsal other than (by the tone of an email from Ol) we still have work to do on the Carver!


Therefore I will tell you an exciting story from my trip (Chris, hallowed editor, has warned me not to put up rubbish about the life of Dr C [Chris says: not too much, anyway] but I will break that promise just once today). Getting on a train at King's Cross and a tall man walked past me with dark glasses. Now it is a fact universally acknowledged that a tall man in dark glasses must be a celeb of some kind or someone pretending to be a celeb a la me outside Tiffany's jewelers in NY this year. Shock horror but it was only the wonderful Julian Barratt aka Howard Moon of Mighty Boosh fame. Now, as Rach and Natalie will know (after a long rambling conversation), I am a bit of a fan. Cue very excited sharp intake of breath - but he got on the first class coach while I dragged myself down to busy coach E.


And I thought that was the end of it. However, I could not listen to John Wetton's greatest hits in peace knowing that comedy legend was on the train heading to York for a show. So, I made my way to dining coach (after finding £1.45 for a cuppa), smiled nicely at Geordie coffee man... and to cut a long story short, I ended up being dragged through first class by three excited National Express workers (who BTW had no idea who he was) so I could be introduced. Much embarrassment from yours truly! However, Mr Barratt was lovely and very sweet, considering I had just interrupted his quiet prep time. He signed his (very groovy) autograph (see here for the scary photo) and was so nice that he went up in my estimation.





One thing I did notice: he really does have very small eyes (one for the Boosh fans there). Anyways, this is turning into a rambling blog about me. Promise we will be back to normal service next week.


Enjoy the week
CSW


ps specially for Claire, here's some antique Barratt:

Auf Wiedersehen Thomas

A very quick update to wish our resident Deutsche bass Tom a fond farewell as he moves across to Amsterdam. It has been great to have Tom sing with us and we'll miss him lots and lots [Chris says: although we still have three foreign cycling Basses in the choir and they're probably quite interchangeable ;) ]. We had a nice farewell meal at Vittoria's (I turned up in time for ice-cream - yey!) and discussed such highbrow topics as Scrabble in Chinese, the potent mix of cameras and olive oil and the fact that Jen bet on a football match at 25-1 (actually this was a misunderstanding by Sebastian, but it made us laugh).

Anyways, "may the road rise to meet you" Tom.

CSW

"Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat, please to put a penny in the old man's hat..."

Ah, my favourite things about Christmas... eating chocolate for breakfast, falling asleep after dinner with my paper hat over my face, rubbish telly... and starting to sing about snow and sledges in September. As anyone in a choir will know, the festive season always begins early for us singers. By the time you actually get to Christmas Day you never want to hear another carol again and as for that song by Slade (you know the one), well, I wouldn't want to describe the sort of emotions that dredges up. However at this early stage in proceedings songs discussing the pros and cons of knitwear and woolly scarves are still very welcome.

We began a jollyAbbie Betinis Christmas piece tonight, Run, Toboggan, Run which has some extremo tough bits particularly for the poor altos. We sops have a pretty easy time of it except that we are responsible for bringing the choir back to the original key after a wee musical dalliance elsewhere. It is, as usual with Betinis it seems, a good, challenging, pretty jazzy sort of piece.

We also looked at the Arvo Part piece again (the one that sounds like Ollie is telling us to "Bog off" - man I love singing in wacky languages!). He reckons this will be a good piece to start a concert with. All I can say is hang on to your hats dear audience and prepare to be bombarded with sound! All the best prog bands begin their concerts with a bombastic classical piece by Wagner or Britten... this is the Rudsambee equivalent.

Once again, in the absence of the piece itself, here's a fascinating insight into the mind of Part. And Bjork.



Anyways, highlight of our evening was a visit from Rach and Isabel. Now I don't know much about newborn babies (Rach filled us in on a couple of things I had never even thought about... eating hair and the like!) but generally IMHO babies look like old men or those troll dolls we had when we were kids [Chris says: Please stop accusing me of having Troll hair, everyone!]. Isabel however is beautiful - genuinely, not just saying that. Welcome to your first rehearsal wee one- we look forward with anticipation to future rendition of, say, Envoi?

That's all for now folks. Hope readers have a happy week and all.

CSw

'Cheesy Wotsits Are All I'll Eat'

The title of the post was the central task of our warm up tonight. Don't ask! Suffice to say it was a musical triumph... as always. It was sung to the tune of 'Viva La Musica', a wee song taught to me by my old music teacher Mr 'Wacko Jacko' Towers. We also made animal noises... classic Rudsambee weirdness.



Anyway, we spent a considerable amount of time on a jolly Russian-stylee piece by our newest friend Arvo Pärt. It isn't in two different keys this time at least but it is in, well, Russian. A tough language to sing in especially at breakneck speed. This piece has one of the most difficult page turns I have ever seen. In fact so difficult that currently we are singing it avec a large fermata (man that sounds like something you might eat as a side in a Mexican restaurant) at present to give us time to collect ourselves. We'll gradually speed up I'm sure.

We did a wee bit of work on our new Gaelic pieces. Ol had once again typed up the phonetic notes. This time though one line starts (apparently though I'm sure our friends on Skye or South Uist or wherever would challenge this) 'U rine'... seriously! Ol hadn't noticed his slip and Douglas went as far as to say that it was a good job there was a 'wee gap' between 'U' and 'rine'. Brilliant!

And finally, congratulations to Rach and Jake who now have little Isabella Mary in the family. She was born this morning I think and weighed 7.12 (I think) which is, as Christopher put it, nearly the same size as Rach! Congrats to the Kings; we'll look forward to her joining our altos soon.

And on that note, I'll sign off. Chris introduced me to Imogen Heap's new version of 'Hide and Seek' called, originally and profoundly enough 'Hide and Seek 2' (well if it's good enough for Playstation and Spiderman) which has a brilliant background electric axe playing. It left me wondering whether choir funds would stretch to a limited edition Knopfler Fender Strat.

And with that final dream, I bid you goodnight (did you notice I did the 'and finally' three times there- this is a trick that all lecturers and vicars learn early on... there is always the hope you are going to bloomin' finish soon).

CSW

Carv-ing out the music

Good morning blog fans. Well, last night a slightly smaller group of us met to bash through this Robert Carver piece, O Bone Jesu. As mentioned before we are singing this at the National Library of Scotland in October. It is pretty tough and the two Claires had particular challenges as we changed parts. Sight reading is a frightening thing but not half as frightening as the notes Claire 2 has to hit as a tenor. Blimey! Jen and Claire 2 can sing LOW. Us sops gave it a go and couldn't get anywhere close even after sharing a packet of Mentoes which made Jen slurp the low notes. Sorry to the rest of our little group who didn't get a sweetie btw - I ran out half way round and we all had to chew quietly like you did when you were a kid trying to eat Hubba Bubba in assembly.




Anyways, suffice to say we sounded brilliant. Well... that might be a wee bit of an over-statement but it sounded like music, which is a start. We sang through it backwards (not actually backwards silly... oh you know what I mean!) and almost got to the bit we actually knew. It is a piece you have to count through - tough for a person like me who can barely recite my three times table. Stop counting and you'll crash and burn. So it is a little like standing on the edge of a large cliff. Certainly not a relaxing musical experience.




By now Ol and Helen should be winging their way to Iceland. We wish them a happy, chilled out trip. Oh... and no news of Rach and the baby yet. Love and hugs deary should you be reading this. Also hugs to Alison who is taking a wee break courtesy of the NHS. We will miss you while you are away.




Apparently Jimi Hendrix's burned guitar from that 1967(?) concert where he set his Strat alight is going on sale for squillions of pounds today. Perhaps we could auction off Ol's baton... or Chris' tambourine (as bought hastily from Blackwells and played at St Giles)... or that wee green wooden frog that has come in handy on a number of percussive occasions... or an original bottle of Slivovice from our Czech tour... OK, so maybe not. But when the album comes out surely such objects will soar in value!




Since almost nobody has recorded O Bone Jesu (let alone put it on YouTube!) here's Eric Whitacre's Cloudburst, which we're making an early start on for the spring (different version now, at Susan's recommendation):






Enjoy this jolly day folks
CSW