In the hothouse – concert march 7
A recital of art songs built around the centrepiece of Wagner's 'Im Treibhaus' - 'In the Hothouse' - all about our relationship with the natural world. Pete McMullin plays the wonderful Steinway piano in Holywell Music Room. Also introducing a recently re-discovered...
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Rockabye
In a dingy Viennese coffee house, the woman behind the bar isn’t just enjoying her playlist on the PA system - she is joining in, her grainy voice (Austrian accent fully Americanised) rising above the whoosh of the milk frother, ‘So rockabye, rockabye…’ I admire her...
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The Shape of You
I’m on holiday in Argentina. A steamy day in Buenos Aires and I spot a beautiful girl wearing headphones and little else shimmying down the street singing ‘I’m in love with the shape of you’. I am struck by the incongruity of the carrot-top Brit Ed Sheeran inveigling...
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Waly way
Like many family members, Michael regards it as his job to encourage his wife's singing with exuberant vocals of his own, in his case out of tune and at a belt. He is paying extra for these singing sessions on top of tens of thousands for 24 hour care at home, and...
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When that I was a little tiny boy
It was her carer's idea: at the day centre she could see that Paula became extraordinarily animated in my singing sessions - clapping and stamping and surging out of her wheelchair with pleasure. The worry was that soon enough her hat-trick of disasters - Alzheimers,...
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Che sara sara
I took ages introducing this Doris Day number into my repertoire - just too schmalzy, in my opinion. But once it was printed out, and I'd slotted in its three chords in the key of A, I felt as though I had always sung it. Since early childhood, I had known its...
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Crear
The lowest period of the year, when all the kids seem to have colds, and people my age have been in bed for weeks with a flu that the vaccine-makers hadn't anticipated. Argh. A young lass in Scotland has died of pneumonia that set in as a result of all these bugs. And...
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Heaven postponed
This evening's concert at the Town Hall is cancelled, due to Storm Emma and associated white-out. What a pity. Pete McMullin and I have been preparing a clutch of brilliant songs by Aaron Copland - settings of Emily Dickinson poems. The ones I had chosen for this...
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Tone deaf
What a superb day of strange and wonderful singing. Two workshops - one for dementia victims no longer able to read lyrics but seriously engaged in Rocking around the Clock - sexy and young and joyful again; the second for more 'able' folk who took such pleasure in...
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Welcome Autumn
Summer seemed so long and luscious - back in july I was the soloist in a super Brazilian concert in Oxford which was such fun and so much appreciated that it is being reprised - this weekend. And next morning I shall rise bright and early to recommence my duties as...
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Rehearsals
Going well for our Brazilian concert next weekend - guests of Headington village where we will perform in their super church - St Andrews.Come along on saturday september 30 at 7.30 to hear me sing Villa Lobos songs and more. Lots of cross- rhythms and sensual...
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Wren - not her real name - has been at one of my daycare groups for a while. She was introduced to me as an artist - 'a rather wonderful artist' - who loved music. Not that I could tell what sort of music - except for some clapping in the warm-ups, she wouldn't sing...
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