Day 2 - A Busy day

I now have a free evening, but after a busy day, that's no bad thing.

This morning, Nobiles was still the only ensemble here, so Werner's warm-up was just for them. Werner's warm-up has a lot of stretching, breathing, pummelling and other mutual ice-breakers, but when you consider how much singing they were going to do today, it was probably a good thing they were physically ready for it.

John took them for a session in which the ensemble sang a couple of pieces and he gave them advice and feedback. The first piece they did was the lovely "Ave Verum Corpus" by William Byrd and this was followed by a generally unknown Renaissance piece which Werner told me he found in a secondhand bookshop and, because it was in 5 male-voice parts, he had sent it to Nobiles.

I took over for the second session and their first request was to go through the "Jauchzet dem Herrn" which I composed for them a while ago and which they had included on their new CD.  I think I was able to help them bring out the different voices at the appropriate moments and we were quite pleased with the final sing-through.  We had a brief look at my "Sanctus" (my extra piece for them) and then moved on to the "Rollright Stones" piece I have composed for this masterclass week and learn quite a lot of it. It had been agreed that they could have an hour to themselves in the afternoon, during which they would go through the Rollright music again, and prepare some pieces for their contribution to Saturday's concert.

After a lunch of fish and chips (in honour of the two Englishmen present) the afternoon sessions got underway. There were three hour-long sessions from 3 to 6pm; in the first I was with the Quartet (SSAA - the quartet originally assembled for my "Jubilate" last year, but who now sing together anyway) and we went through the Rollright music and the "Agnus Dei" which I give them as an extra gift.   In the second session I took the Trio Avijo (timed so that they could join us after school) and we covered the Rollright music and a bit of their "Kyrie" extra piece.  John, of course, was working with another group at the same time.

The third session was tutti which meant me working with all three ensembles for the first half of the Rollright piece.  I was pretty pleased with how it all came together and how they all responded to ideas and suggestions.  It's still a bit rough round the edges, but I think it bodes well for the rest of the piece and the final performance on Sunday.  The singers all seem happy with the music and John was kind enough to say that he thought it was a good piece and very enjoyable.

After our early evening meal, Nobiles had decided, quite reasonably, that they had done enough singing for one day, so the only evening session remaining was for the Trio with John, though Nobiles and Werner were going to get together individually for a few voice-coaching things.   That gave me my free evening, so this blog can be typed up early!