by julia | Feb 28, 2019 | Diary, Front Page, Gigs
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....
by julia | Dec 7, 2018 | Diary, Front Page, Singing, Uncategorized
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...
by julia | Dec 7, 2018 | Diary, Front Page, Singing, Uncategorized
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...
by julia | Jun 2, 2018 | Diary, Front Page, Uncategorized
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,...
by julia | Jun 1, 2018 | Diary, Front Page, Singing, Uncategorized
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...
by julia | Mar 17, 2018 | Diary, Front Page, Singing
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...
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