from now on - tim reader's blog

Well it’s been over 6 months since this event, and a commentary on it, together with recordings from the concert, are long overdue.
I shall hopefully do the commentary before the New Year, but the easy bit was posting the downloads, and I thought that deserved to be done before Christmas.
So, here are the indvidual tracks [...]

As part of the assessment for my choral conducting diploma with ABCD I was tasked with arranging, typsetting and recording a folksong of my choice.
I chose the Royal Blackbird (sometimes just known as The Blackbird) which is Irish in origin. The first stanza, which I set, is below and the full poem, with *a* version [...]

First we played…
(I wouldn’t bother watching all 2 mins of this!)

Then we got moved on…

Then we got interviewed about it on regional TV…

Didn’t bank on all of that when I set off to play a few piano duets on College Green on Monday morning!
If you want to find out about this fabulous project take a [...]

During the interval of the opening night of the proms last week, a friend got me thinking.
If pressed for my favourite 5 composers, I can state them without hesitation, and they’ve been fairly consistent for a while now.

Rachmaninov
Poulenc
Purcell
Vaughan-Williams
Mozart

(in no particular order)
If pushed, I could happily survive on a diet of those five composers for the [...]

 
In various talks and books, Ken Robinson speaks passionately of how Gillian Lynne, the famous ballerina, might nearly have been diagnosed with something like ADHD (had it been an “available condition” in the 1930s, he quips) was it not for one psychiatrist who saw what she really had: a talent and a desire to dance [...]

I’d be really intrigued to hear from my muso readers what you make of this video of Eric Lewis’s 10-minute piano performance at TED. 
Is it just total guff or is he some kind of visionary?

I’ve just watched the BBC’s new choir-soap All the Small Things on iPlayer. Fortunately I was sort of working at the same time so can’t claim that it’s an hour I’ll never get back… but goodness me.
Predicated on an accurate-enough observation — that choirs are a breeding ground for temptation, hormones, infidelity and betrayal (though [...]

Totally worth catching this session with Elbow performing The Seldom Seen Kid, start to finish, with new arrangements played by the BBC Concert Orchestra and sung by Chantage.
I don’t usually embed videos that will expire (”you can embed this in your blog until 7 Feb”). Task. Silly limitation but I’m putting it here anyway.
Those of [...]

In an otherwise solid and ticket-worthy performance, David Shannon as Valjean in Les Mis marred a couple of his solo numbers with very insipid high notes, many of them falsetto when they are traditionally sung in full chest voice.
I know it’s hard, night after night, 8 performances a week popping out top As and Bs [...]

If you’ve ever doubted the power, might, relevance and influence of Facebook, ponder this.
On Saturday, music lovers across the land began hearing the news that X-factor winner (”Alexandra”) would be releasing her competition-winning rendition of Cohen’s Hallelujah, Cowell and his associated svengali eyeing the coveted Christmas #1 spot.
Uproar.
By Monday morning, tens of thousands of [...]

I was at Nick Park’s 50th birthday party at the weekend, singing with Partsong, a close-harmony group who occasionally land some high profile gigs.
What began as an artistically deflating experience – singing to a hall-full of people talking, anyone more than 10 yards from us unable to hear a note – culminated in a choir-best [...]

As a passionate musician, I love things that remind me why. Often they are the same things — a talk, a book, a film or play — that introduce music to the masses, powerful yet accessible explications of the essence and bare truth of music.
Nick Hornby’s 31 Songs is an example of that. And so [...]

I’m back in the saddle. If the saddle is an organ stool. On Saturday I played the organ at a friend’s wedding – the first time I’ve been allowed near the instrument since the viol de gamba mishap of 2002 – and find I’m not as bad as it as I once thought, and that [...]

My bank holiday was a simple equation. Wedding in Oxford, Edington Festival (in Wiltshire) and evensong at Westminster Abbey = £££ in petrol, countless ales and vocal hooliganism aplenty.
Patrick and Anna

I had the honour of conducting the choir for my long-standing friend and former bass compadre, Paddy Ashcroft. The choir was comprised entirely of his [...]

I’ve yet to make a muxtape but here’s my Favtape: http://favtape.com/lastfm/timboreader
It’s a playlist of my top-rated Last.fm tunes — pretty neat given my contribution was a click of a button.
Muxtape you have a little more control over – uploading mp3s and making your own mix — and it’s something that very much appeals to me, [...]

I rarely think that European music works well in choral evensong and this week’s broadcast from Eton College Chapel is a case in point.
But if choirs are wont to make a ‘theme’ of this (Introit: Reger; Canticles: Praetorius and Schutz; Anthem: Brahms) — I wonder why not commit fully and do German responses (in German?!) [...]

One of the things that struck me about Evensong on Saturday was the slick, no-nonsense approach of the liturgy. The prayers were about 3 minutes long which, heathen as it sounds, I think is ample. But even that aside, everything just generally flowed — no pregnant ‘reflective’ pauses (which have the effect of appearing that [...]

What a strange feeling waking up on a choir trip with no hangover! I feel a bit like I’m cheating.
Another glorious day; those of us of an optimistic disposition are thankful (smug?) we packed shorts and sandals. The coach takes us direct to the cathedral bright and early, in time to start rehearsing at 10. [...]

My first off-shore trip with Exultate Singers and it’s bound to be a cracker.
The theme of the airport wait and flight was the tight-fistedness and no-frills-ness of Ryanair. Having not flown with them before I was somewhat in the dark but only too happy to join in the banter (”you mean you’d like to breathe [...]

I don’t think I’ve seen anything better on the London stage.
Playing at (of all places) Cineworld Haymarket, Kneehigh are keen advertise it as A PLAY and not the 1944 John Lean film. Yet it’s not the original Noel Coward play either but a conflation of the two. So it’s a play of the film of [...]