My little green friend

Wher­ever I have been this week, I have been fol­lowed by my lit­tle green friend, my trusted com­pan­ion, who scamps along behind me, pro­vid­ing all that the wan­der­ing min­strel needs on its musi­cal adven­tures around the coun­try.  I am not talk­ing about an eco­log­i­cally friendly imp-caddy, indeed no, I am talk­ing about my long-suffering and now rather scuffed suitcase.

In the last week or so, my lit­tle green friend and I have clocked up nearly seven hun­dred miles, firstly tak­ing in a rather splen­did semi-staged per­for­mance of Handel’s Athalia (NOT pro­nounced like the name Nathalia, as I found to my embar­rass­ment) in Hull with the Hull Bach Choir, where I sang the role of Jos­a­beth, who is on the side of good­ies and saves the day from the clutches of the evil Queen Athalia.  www.DigYorkshire.com well and truly dug our ren­di­tion of this little-known but very lovely Han­del ora­to­rio and we got our­selves a nice review: http://www.digyorkshire.com/HighlightDetails.aspx?Article=1148

We trun­dled on to Nor­wich, where, as I went on my pre-performance search for a cup of tea and a piece of cake, my lit­tle green friend acquired a few new scuffs on the cob­bled back-streets of the cathe­dral city.  The Nor­wich School Choral Soci­ety were our delight­ful hosts for two days and we all filled the St Andrew’s Hall with the beau­ti­ful sounds of Haydn’s Missa Sancti Nico­lai and John Rutter’s Requiem. My lit­tle green friend waited loy­ally in my dress­ing room, sat-nav prepped for the dash down the M11 back to Lon­don after the con­cert had finished.

The rea­son we were keen to get home in good time was because of an early start the next morn­ing, off up to north Lon­don, where I am prepar­ing four­teen or so of my young singing pupils for their singing exams next week.  My lit­tle green friend takes on a mag­i­cal qual­ity when (a bit like Mr Benn, but with­out the bowler hat) I change into the role of ‘Miss Goss-She’s-The-Boss– vocal ped­a­gogue’, because it becomes home to all the fun song books that eight year-olds get very excited about.  Once the exam pieces, aural tests and sight-singing have been stud­ied and worked on to the point of exhaus­tion, the treat at the end of the les­son is to open up my lit­tle green suit­case to see what musi­cal delights are inside…

 

 

 

Published on March 13th 2011 in Uncategorized.

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