I've kept this pretty quiet until now, but tonight I get back in touch with the music-making side of me that I have missed since I returned from Bulgaria last year. The most generous excuse I have for this hiatus is that I'd reached a certain level of incompetence, and had the good sense to quit while I was ahead. I guess my good sense has deserted me.
Perhaps I should explain my background to anyone who doesn't know about my pretensions as a conductor, and who hasn't guessed them from the title of my blog. I trained as a composer and conductor at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand. Before I left New Zealand in 2002 I was conducting two adult choirs: the Festival Singers of Wellington, and Wanganui's Schola Sacra. On top of that, with MW and a few friends from the Wellington Opera Chorus, I set up a professional vocal ensemble called Cantiamo con Gioia. I worked a little with orchestral ensembles too, creating the Wanganui Sinfonietta, and conducting the odd symphony in Wellington with a mercenary band called the Wellington Classical Players. I even conducted a boys' choir, but you can see how well that went here! [Note: this link is via Yahoo! My friend MXJ thinks I show excessive Google bias.] Every week at rehearsal I could stand up in front of a captive choir or orchestra and inflict Beethoven's Symphony No. 5, Benjamin Britten's Five Flower Songs, or some ridiculous warm-up exercise with no discernable physiological or pedagogical value. Come performance time I could force everyone to sell tickets. Then I could gad about in tails in front of politely applauding audiences. Sometimes we learned a thing or two. Sometimes we made good music. Sometimes we had a really good time.
Now, here in London, it's all going to start again. Nicola told her Danish singing teacher Louisa that I had been a conductor once. Apparently "once" was enough. Now Louisa thinks I can offer some of her less experienced students the opportunity to sing in a choir. Louisa says she has an eclectic mix of lawyers, students, policemen and tomboys who are terrified, but very keen all the same. I'm going to start with some easy pieces that some of you will recognise: a plainchant Intonent Hodie about St Nicolas, the patron saint of travel (my poor charges are about to go on a bit of a journey aren't they?), Henry VIIIth's Passetyme Wythe Goode Companye (I sure hope so—no beheadings here please), Stainer's God So Loved The World, Stravinsky's Ave Maria and Praetorius' round Viva la Musica!. That should be enough for one night.
We rehearse two hours a week from 7:30pm, Thursdays, in St Mary's, Eversholt Street, next to Euston Station. We have a hall to practice in, and we can also use the big, acoustically friendly church. Tonight we will practice for an hour and a half, and then sing our pieces in a mini-concert to ourselves in the church. I can't wait to see the look on their faces when they hear the beautiful music they are making come back to them from the walls of the church. However incompetent I fear I may be, it's exciting to be back making music again.
