Chester

Poscimur sang in Chester on August 10/11.  
M came along, and we took the train up on Friday evening.  We had a nice meal at a pub along a canal and had a stroll through the center of town.  The town is full of cute half-timbered houses and they have the most fantastic shopping streets.  The shops are on two tiers, one is street level and another up a short flight of stairs to a covered gallery walkway, great for rainy England I'm sure!  We had fantastic weather though.  On Saturday we took a walk along the medieval walls, which go right around the center of town.  Beautiful vistas all around. I had to rehearse and sing in the afternoon, so Magnus went on a 2-hour guided walking tour of Secret Chester.  They were shown places which your average Joe doesn't have access to. The choir was singing wonderful music this weekend - Faire is the Heaven, by Harris; The Te Deum by Stanford; The Tomkins Responses; Mags and Nuncs by John Ireland and Stanford; the Mass setting by Harwood; Cantate Domino by Pitoni; My soul, There is a Country by Parry; Never weather beaten sail by Campion; Turn thy face from my sin by Attwood and A Litany by William Walton.  After the Evensong on Saturday we ate at a fantastic Grill restaurant and had an early night.  Sunday morning I was busy singing, but we met for lunch and went to a new Italian shop and restaurant. The food was good and Magnus stocked up on some pasta, wine and cheese!  Then more singing and off back to London...

Floods and Church Music

So, this was an interesting weekend. It didn't turn out at all like I thought it would. The choir Poscimur was meant to sing at Tewkesbury Abbey on Saturday and Sunday, so M and I made plans to travel to Gloucester (nearby), do some sight-seeing and meet some friends who live nearby. We rented a car from 6pm. The first inkling of trouble was when it took us 2 hours to get out of London. The traffic was horrific! Then we decided to stop at the first service area once we got on the motorway and it was closed due to flooding! Continuing on our merry way, we ran into more traffic on the way to Gloucester because of flooding. It had rained buckets earlier in the day, but wasn't raining any longer. A few weeks ago there was flooding in Northern England and there had been a lot of rain the last 2 weeks, but I didn't realize it was so bad! M was incredulous, he just couldn't believe it. After more than 6 hours on the road, we finally arrived at our hotel only to realize that we'd left our suitcase standing in front of the car rental office! Luckily I had my robes for the choir, but no music! oops!

The next morning, we were having breakfast, and I get a call from a choir member saying that due to the flooding the choir wouldn't be singing in Tewkesbury. Gracious! The Abbey was surrounded by water, but largely not flooded. The whole town was cut off from civilization! There is a photo

It's really too bad, I was supposed to sing a duet with one of the veteran members because the other soprano who normally sings the part couldn't make it.

So, we decided to stay in the area and do more sight-seeing than we'd anticipated, have dinner with those friends. We went shopping for supplies, some clothes and toiletries and some other stuff we needed(we got the shopping bug and they were having sales!). We had lunch (Gloucestershire Chicken - chicken topped with bacon and smothered in cheese and baked in the oven -mmmm) in the Dick Wittington pub. We went to the tourist office to find out what we could do, but it really wasn't much! The area is very beautiful (the Cotswolds are nearby) and anything outdoorsy really wasn't an option. Unfortunately, we saw just about everything there was to see in Gloucester by late afternoon. The historic docks were nice and the cathedral is gorgeous, but that's about it.

We drove to Cheltenham and thought about staying there overnight, but it sort of reminded us of Baden Baden, kind of a rich and boring spa town. I got a text message from a church music director in London asking if I could sing for him on Sunday (the next day) and that prompted us to head home!

All went well until shortly before Oxford, at Eynsham, where the road was flooded out. We tried an alternate route, but everything around the village was flooded. We tried a more significant detour only to discover that the bridge over the river was under water. So we turned around and were considering an even larger detour when we found ourselves in Witney, which was just experiencing major flooding. So we talked to a policewoman, who gave us a number to call, so we could find out if there were any roads NOT flooded that would take us back to London. They told us the road by Eynsham was no longer listed as closed, so we decided to check it out. Indeed, the traffic was no longer backed up, but the road was still covered in water! The crazy thing is that there were vehicles crossing the road, driving very slowly, but crossing! And not just trucks and 4x4's! So we decided to risk it. It was pretty scary - the water was flowing across the road at a good clip. I could feel the car lift a bit, when cars passed us going to the opposite way. It was pretty freaky.

We got home around 23:00 and went straight to bed. I had to get up kind of early to go to that church to sing. It went well. I was augmenting the sopranos because they were singing a motet by a Mexican renaissance composer which had 3 soprano parts. The organist asked me to sing again next week. They're doing the Howells Mass and an Anthem by Parry. Should be fun! Thank goodness there is now some movement on the performing front. It's just choral, church stuff at the moment, but better than nothing! And now I'm meeting more people. Exactly what I need!

Poscimur

So, I joined a choir here in the UK. It's quite a unique choir in that they subsitute for cathedral choirs all over the country. Only a small group of people in London rehearse on a regular basis and the full choir only rehearses together at the venue on the day of the event. My "debut" was this past weekend (the bank holiday weekend) at Ely Cathedral. Magnus and I went together, but I'm afraid it was a bit of a bore for Magnus. The weather was dreadful (cold and rainy) and I was either in rehearsal or singing in a service most of Saturday and Sunday. But the cathedral is gorgeous and the singing was good. The town of Ely is also quite cute, but I didn't get to see much of it. We had a great meal at the Boathouse along the river but due to the weather we couldn't sit outside which would've been much nicer. Unfortunately, there wasn't much time outside of rehearsal and singing to get to know the other choristers. But that will come with time. The one exception was Paul, who sings alto, who was great fun and knows a ton about Early Music. In fact, he studied Medieval Latin with Peter Dronke at Cambridge, who was one of Sequentia's foremost consultants and translator.

The choir sang Evensong on Saturday, Eucharist and another Evensong on Sunday, so it was quite a marathon. Good for me though! We sang a number of things unfamiliar to me. Only the Gibbons Short service was something I had sung before.

My next gig with them will be in Tewkesbury (in Gloucestershire) and I'll be singing the duet from Mendelssohn's "I waited for the Lord" with one of the other sopranos and the choir.