May Fade-Ins

May 31st
Today I’m making a new learning video for my song about Alexander The Great, “Alexander’s Army”. I composed it for Denise’s Year 7 class a few years ago. They loved it. I don’t know if anyone else has ever done it, but if not, then I think it’s time they jolly well did! This photo is from Jamie’s Big Adventure (from Nepal to Rome on a bus) and was taken in Pakistan – one of the places Alexander the Great went to on his epic battling journey.

 

May 30th
Today has been about Saturday stuff, included in which has been practising and memorizing for our outings with Rock Festival Choir this coming week. I can’t use that music here as it’s not old enough and not by me, but I can use a bit of Vivaldi’s Magnificat from a previous concert. It’s a bit of alt solo with lively interjections, and the picture is again of St. Marie’s Cathedral in Sheffield. I was quite taken with it, I must say – it’s the roof over the altar.

 

May 29th
Today I have been once again in Sheffield with Mum. We went to see the new, vibrant, hilarious production of Pride and Prejudice at The Crucible. The music for this is a perfect juxtaposition of harpsichordy, folkdancy, stringy, minimalisty, 17th-century, 21st-century rhythmic tunefulness and mood-creating and is by my old friend Richard Taylor . We spent many a long hour together laughing and tittering, as we mastered the intricacies of the composerly arts at the Royal Northern College of Music in the 1980s. I haven’t seen him for years but so happy to hear that he’s been keeping up his brilliance in my absence! Go and see/hear for yourselves! Next door to The Crucible is St. Marie’s Cathedral, scene of last night’s King’s Singers perfection. What you’re hearing is the chimes at 11 o’clock today in a rainy Sheffield and what you’re seeing is the sun on the pews through the windows a bit later on.

May 28th
What you’re hearing is Silviu Cobeanu, the Concerts Manager at St. Marie’s Cathedral in Sheffield, welcoming visitors and regulars alike, reminding us to switch off our phones and telling us all where the exits and toilets are. This in preparation for the King’s Singers concert last evening. Oh my! How marvellous marvellous marvellous it was. Pater Noster stuff in the first half and some close harmony items in the second. You can imagine my delight at the beginning to find Purcell, Gibbons, Stravinsky and Schutz (sorry, can’t find the umlaut on this computer) all in the same programme, but then Billy Joel as an encore – many of my all-time favourites. In spite of all this extreme delight, my pick of the crop was Onnis on Inimene by Cyrillus Creek – dramatic, startling, exquisite, and a brilliant name for a composer, with excellent initials, I thought. I loved it all. The most wonderful thing was the last chord in every piece, such precision and completely relaxing, plumptious settling on the chord was wondrously divine. Get the idea!

27th May
I went for a stomp to Amble today from Warkworth and back. It’s the Amble Puffin Festival this week, and quite a transformation down at the waterfront since I was last there a few months ago. It is the black-headed gull season down there too, as you can see and hear. I also met up with my Twitter friend Hannah from Bookhappy​ and it turns out we have similar views on music/arts education for children! If you also want to be my Twitter friend: @seapieparcel

 

May 26th
Research day. This is a bit of one of my Winter Wear songs, “Dancing Stream” to tide us all over until something new comes along.

 

May 25th
Early morning dawn walk this morning which included this exquisite blackbird song, and what’s more the blackbird sat still long enough for me to take its portrait, albeit quite a distance away for my little camera. I also watched a dipper on a rock in the river and had a chat with Jeff the paper “boy”.

 

May 24th
Today I am concerning myself with sport on the radio rather than any musical endeavour. I have been listening to Heinrich Schütz on Composer-Of-The-Week though on and off, and finding his music very emotional and inspiring, if that counts. This picture is of “The Journey” by Fenwick Lawson and is one of yesterday’s River Wear pics. What you’re hearing is some of my “Aves Beati Cuthberti” which fits perfectly with this sculpture of Cuthbert’s monk-friends carrying his coffin to its final resting place in Durham Cathedral.

 

May 23rd
Today. Early waking-up. Mini-ing to Morpeth. Training to Chester-Le-Street. Walking to Durham along the Weardale Way. Communing with the spirit of Godric at Finchale on the way. River Wear sparkling in the summeriness. Ducklings learning to swim and dive and scoot across the surface like stones skimming. Revoltingly scummy lunching. Durham Cathedral: beaming, organing (you hear a mash-up of it), Cuthberting, being loved by me all over again. Buying postcards of organ and Cuthbert cause we’re not allowed to take photos. Cake-ing. Training to Morpeth. Provisions-shopping amongst annoying others pfaffing pfaffily with their trolleys. Home. Relaxing.

 

May 22nd
Today I have been doing some marketing. This song is my most popular and I think is the most likely to earn my fortune! It’s been performed all over the world. These are the choirs I know about: Woodford House School; New Zealand Secondary Students’ Choir; Concentus, Queensland University; Norwich Cathedral Girls’ Choir; Barock, OGHS/OBHS, Dunedin; Alnwick and District Choral Society; Hexham Abbey Choir; Southern Consort of Voices, Dunedin; Bailiffgate Singers; Rock Festival Choir, Northumberland; Duchess’ Community High School Choirs, Alnwick; Bel Canto, Christchurch; University of Wisconsin Womens’ Chorus; Cantrices, Christchurch; Norwich High School for Girls; Toronto Childrens’ Chorus; Knox Church Choir, Dunedin; Saints Alive, St. Cuthbert’s College, Auckland… but I know for sure that there are more. A few of them have also recorded it for me – so here are some edited highlights!

 

May 21st
Today I have time to spare, which is nice after a few days of busy-ness, and so I am on time with my fade-in, but have not produced anything new. This is a photo of one of the plasters in the current exhibition in Gallery 3 at the Hepworth in Wakefield – a picture I took post workshops on Sunday. I like pictures of hands….and feet for that matter. The song is one I wrote for a class of 4-5 year olds a few years ago. There are actions too in real life!

 

May 20th
Here’s another snippet from the Year 6 song “Look Back” with me and them in almost perfect harmony. The lyrics you hear are based on their ideas, and centre around sheep. The picture is of 6C looking back.
Look back! Look! Look back to the camp with the smelly round huts. Look back!
Look back! Look! Look back! We’re on a train. There’ll be a sword fight in Leeds.
Look back! Look! Look back to years and years and years and years of nativity plays.
Look back through our St. Michael’s years!
Look back to laughs and smiles and tears!
Look back! Look! Look back! But it’s sad: I only ever was a sheep!

 

May 19th
Well it’s the 20th, but I did record this yesterday in miniscule instalments and have spent today fiddling with it. It is for my lovely Year 6 classes to help them learn their leavers’ assembly song. It has a barnyard scene before the middle eight, followed by solos.

 

May 18th
This is what happens when you spend three quarters of an hour singing with a Year 2 class, they learn five tricky songs with new vocabulary, actions, complex rhythms, wide-ranging melodies, remain in a cheery mood throughout, eliminate unpleasant singing tones, and then you get out the recording machine to gather some evidence of their efforts and they decide to “turn”. The main shouty culprit here is ironically called Jamie, who had been one of the most tuneful earlier. Ah me. After I left them, I caught a train and this 91111 engine “For The Fallen” was at the rear end of it. That’s twice in less than a week that I’ve been part of the same train as what is truly the most beautiful engine. I’ll do a proper tribute to it one day soon, but the best pictures would be wasted on this dreadful rendition of the Rhinoceros Rumba.

 

May 17th
I spent yesterday being very enthusiastic indeed in my workshops at the Hepworth in Wakefield. It was properly brilliant, but wore me properly out, and so I only manage to post this properly this 18th May morning after splendid sleeping. Someone else thought I was enthusiastic too. What you’re hearing is our “majestic triangle” section with Leslie on the beast itself.

 

May 16th
Today, on the advice of Lorna, we went north and found the Flodden Trail, and trailed along it reliving the scrimmishing and the boggy ground and the billhooks and the longbows. Here we are at the start of our battle. It’s a windy day, and the skylarks were revelling in it. I also have been working on the backing track for my Year 6 classes’ leavers’ assembly song, “Look Back.” That’s what you’re hearing.

 

May 15th
Dawn chorus.

 

May 14th
I was inspired yesterday by some photos from my friend Richard who’s currently on holiday in Jordan. This little tortoise fellow made an appearance and reminded me of a song I wrote in Australia for another friend’s class in Brisbane, Mrs Pledger. I have spent much of today singing with Lionheart Harmony in practice and then performance for an attentive, if small audience at Abbeyfields in Alnwick. We interrupted their bingo. Boo.

 

May 13th
Today there’s been much of the usual post-Wakefield Wednesdayitis getting back into the thought processes required for composery creativity and out of those required for dealing with excitable children – a lot of which also involves creativity of course, but still, a different mentality is called for. Thoughts now turn to this evening when we have been invited out for dinner by my lovely friends at Bailiffgate Singers who are having a night off from rehearsals. Here they are at our last concert together singing an arrangement I made for them of the song from the Durham coalfields, Rap He Te Bank. What you see is this morning’s sunrise at Coquet Island. The sun is out of shot to the left, but the moon was glowing serenely. There was also an owl having a last gliding hunt for snacks before bedtime.

 

May 12th
Oh today! What an afternoon it’s been, centred around the composing of rainforest music with hyperactive children. The second group thought that the sound of gentle rain could be simulated by screaming shriekily and banging their pencil pots on the desk with great force. While I was dealing with this, I noticed the PE teacher bringing the first rainforest music class back in 20 minutes early due to their raucous and unfriendly attempts at outdoor games. However, yesterday, an entirely different ambience was created with much jollity in the Zebra ZigZag (no children’s faces allowed, of course).

 

May 11th
Off to Wakefield today for much singing with SATS-ravaged children, and then to Worksop As a result, there may not be much time later for video-making. So, here’s one I made yesterday for my “Winter Wear” blog. The buttony button is being worn in this picture by Arran Bell, and the song was premiered by him and his Year 3 class. Four Pence A Day.

 

May 10th
Today I’ve been writing another blog, I’ve made a delicious fish pie, and have been composing a toastscape inspired by my friend Penny.

 

May 9th
Morning off visiting Seaton Delaval Hall and what might be my favourite staircase. It’s not the staircase I wrote this song about (that one’s at Warkworth Castle), but as it’s my only staircase song, then I think it would do nicely. It’s called “Up and Down The Buttery Stairs” and is all about the Medieval chores of a castle butler rushing to and fro the buttery.

 

May 8th
Breaking out from tiresome election results news, I strode cheerily forth into the frosty sunrise this morning, along with some very tuneful reed warblers (that’s what you’re mostly hearing), a curlew, a parcel of sea pie, a barn owl, a deer, and some reed buntings. I could also hear stonechats, but didn’t see them. I considered this a good result.

 

May 7th
I wrote this song one day in the 1990s while driving in the countryside from Taieri Mouth Primary School to Kavanagh College in Dunedin. They were learning about the Antarctic and this song is about Oates, Captain Scott’s unfortunate colleague. It has nothing to do with anything about today, nor has it anything to do with this picture which is from yesterday’s trip to Bowes Museum – it’s the fish in the mechanical swan’s glass river.
The somewhat heroic and mournful lyrics are:
Will I live or will I die, my friend? I have to leave you now.
Will I live or die?
I will go outside, my friends. I may be gone some time.
Will I live or die?
If we go on like this, then we’ll all surely perish in the storm.
I’ll say goodbye to you, my mother,
for they have mothers too.
They may live, I must die.

 

May 6th
Today I have spent the day with my beautiful sister Frances at The Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle. After delicious burgers in the restaurant, we were fascinated by several of the exhibitions, especially the Gerald-Scarfe-on-Margaret-Thatcher room, and reacquainted ourselves with the white rhinoceros, the ceramic cabbages, the clocks, the staircase with the mirrors and various other old favourites. We also frolicked in the front garden with the self-timer on the camera and assembled with many others for the 32-second mechanical swan display at 2pm. What you see is the scene in the gallery just beforehand. What you hear is the gentleman on the left introducing it to us, then the sound of it moving its neck and head, catching a fish, then stopping. One of the seated ladies stood up during the fish catching and was reprimanded severely by a man in the back row. We love the swan, just like the Queen’s Mum did. Incidentally, driving back north through the Wear Valley and outback Northumberland was stunningly, spring-ly beautiful.

 

May 5th
Today I’ve been to Wakefield and sung with the stressed-out Year 6 children (it’s SATs next week). We did their leavers’ song to make them feel proud, the Peanut Vendor to make them laugh, and the Zebra Zigzag to release some tension. Then I’ve been out with Lesley May singing with a local group in the village and making some new friends and contacts, and putting some faces to names. It seems they were doing the same. Four different people exclaimed “Oh so you’re the Cheryl!” adding variously the descriptors “mysterious” “composer” “conductor” “we’ve all heard about” “hiding in the village”. Here are some children singing in a reconstruction of “St. Cuthbert’s Re-interment Procession at Durham Cathedral” with Aves Beati Cuthberti.

 

May 4th
I’m writing a blog today. I’m already nearly done and to illustrate it I have created a little video, which is so much like a fade-in that it can in fact be today’s fade-in. It’s part of my song “Dancing Stream” which was composed for the Winter Wear project, but then not included when we realised that everything we had planned lasted about three hours! It was later premiered in SATB choir form by the Rock Festival Choir, and also exists in a version for choir and orchestra.

 

May 3rd
Today there’s been a lot of emphasis on musical rivers. Here’s the beginning of a song I composed, (in fact I was commissioned to compose) about the river right outside my window, the Coquet. There are ducklings on the Coquet today too. Here’s one. The words you hear are:
There’s no stream so lovely as the Coquet,
As she flows from Cheviot to the sea.
Let’s rest with the honest brethren of the rod and the line,
And the pleasures of angling in the Coquet.

 

May 2nd
A day off today with visits to British artists in the Spanish Civil War at the Laing Gallery in Newcastle and Jason Rhoades at the Baltic in Gateshead. One of the pieces in the Rhoades exhibition was made of lots of very shiny scaffolding poles and was crying out to be struck with a variety of implements, but alas I was not allowed to do this nor was I allowed to take its photograph. So instead, here is a picture of the Baltic and some music that was discussed on several occasions in the café there. It’s from “Newcastle View” – my collaboration with photographer Jonathan Bradley.

To see the entire Newcastle View project: Go to Newcastle View

 

May 1st
Well I made it yesterday, but am posting it today due to running out of time before the Alnwick Playhouse Community Choir concert last night in Warkworth where we met up with lots of friends from Rock Festival Choir, Lionheart Harmony and Bailiffgate Singers for happy chatting and the like. There were lots of “single” men in the audience and lots of women in the choir, we noticed, so a friendly crowd. Meanwhile, back at home, I sorted out an arrangement of this song about throwing a stick into a river and all the river bits it flows past. It was composed several years ago for a musical river project I did about the Coquet. This picture is of that river with the sunrise burning a glow onto the riverside trees.

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