August 2024: Musical Blog – A month off.
Categories: Composery Life
August 1st
It’s a month off because The Bridge Singers and Swarland Voices are having no rehearsals during August. I’m going to attempt a musical blog for the first time in over a year. Let’s see. Today, I’ve made this video using a recording from The Bridge Singers’ concert in May of O The Bonny Fisher Lad. This is a Northumbrian folk song arranged by me. I’ve messed with it a bit by changing the lengths of some of the bars. I first did this to this particular song, when I worked at the high school in Alnwick – the original version was for choir with ceilidh band and we took it on our trip to Canada. The images on this video are all of the area around Bamburgh in Northumberland, as mentioned in the lyrics to the song.
August 2nd
On Wednesday (31st July) Swarland Voices had their final rehearsal before our summer break. We recorded most of the very merry rehearsal including our version of Unsquare Dance by Dave Brubeck. It’s one of my arrangements that’s available on SheetMusicPlus. Have a look by clicking here!
August 3rd
Last day of work for a while, singing at a wedding in Brinkburn with The Bridge Singers. We had a very merry time indeed singing our hymns and “Are You Ready For Love?” with Marc the organist. We took advantage of being in the beauty and the resonance by singing a few songs to ourselves after everyone from the wedding had gone to party with the brass players. The last one was “Run For Home” and here’s the ending of it with Judy giving rapturous applause at the end!
August 4th
Travelling day today, so …. August 4th was always a big day when I worked at St. John Vianney’s School in Australia. This was our school song and helps me remember the happiest teaching job I ever did have.
August 5th
We spent the rainy, windy morning in Laugharne with my splendid brother – a bit of Dylan Thomas, a bit of castle, a bit of coffee and walnut cake (at Poon’s Street Food on Market Street – brilliant place). We then went off to other excellent sights in Pembrokeshire, but here’s a bit of Laugharne with The Bridge Singers performing a bit of Eli Jenkins’ Prayer (words from Under Milkwood by Dylan Thomas) at last year’s St. David’s Day concert.
August 6th
A botanical day in the National Botanic Garden of Wales in Carmarthenshire and also Colby Woodland Garden in Pembrokeshire. We do love a planty day out. I did learn several new botanical words and things from Jamie (PhD Botany) today too.
August 8th
St. David’s in the mist and rain: communing with Thomas Tomkins in the cathedral; messing about with Michael and Jamie in the Bishop’s Palace and on the coast. This has to one of my favourite ever cathedrals, I might add.
August 9th
A day on the Pembrokeshire Coastal Path. On the recommendation of my brother we went from Freshwater West to Angle along the exceedingly spectacular coast, then back to the car along some quiet roads and a field footpath or two.
August 10th
We drove home…only 10 hours including some holiday-related hold-ups on the M6. No energy or time for new things so here’s another of The Bridge Singers’ Welsh selection from March 1st 2023: David Of The White Rock. Looking at the video again, I see that I now recognise the locations of all of Michael’s photos from having been there myself this last week!
August 11th
My excellent friend Val Hunting has a podcast series called “Rad People I Know”. It appears that I am one of the rad people she knows, and a couple of years ago we had a zoom chat-and-laugh under the guise of her recording an episode for the series. In July this year, she released what turned out to be two episodes. We laugh a lot. We talk a lot. There’s music. Have a listen:
Dr. Cheryl Camm – Classical Composer and Nearly Daily Leaper Pt. 1
Dr. Cheryl Camm – Classical Composer and Nearly Daily Leaper Pt. 2
August 12th
My Youtube Channel, seapieparcel went over 99,000 views today. This is a thrill. Thank you for listening and watching. If you want to see and hear what’s on there, do click on this link below and make yourself part of the next 1000!
August 13th
I’ve made a video today using The Bridge Singers’ recording of my arrangement of the Lindisfarne song “Run For Home” from our north-eat themed concert in May, and some pictures of the north-east, specifically the areas around our patch of Northumberland, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Lindisfarne itself.
You can purchase my arrangement of this song from sheetmusicplus, and you can find my other arrangements there too: https://www.sheetmusicplus.com/search?Ntt=%22Cheryl+Camm%22
August 14th
I went to Wallington with Mum and we had a splendid morning. The last time I was there was with The Bridge Singers who were entertaining folk at a fundraiser event for Northumberland National Park Mountain Rescue. Here’s a melding together of those two occasions.
August 15th
I’ve been fiddling with this very website today and discovering all sorts of things I’d temporarily forgotten I’d done, such as this excellent set of activities about Vivaldi’s Four Seasons!
August 16th
During the night someone in New Zealand (someone I don’t know, I might add, which is always thrilling because it means they’ve come to the music because of its own merits and not because of me) has purchased scores of this. Hurrah!
August 17th
I was told by one of our choir members that the Whittingham Show was on today, so I’ve extracted a minute of The Bridge Singers’ performance of Whittingham Fair from our May 2024 concert to accompany these photos of this morning’s rather glorious sunrise. I was up in Swarland along the hedgerows. You can see the sea sometimes too. I spent the rest of the day picking peas!
August 18th
“Sunday. Sunday morning.
I always went fishing with my Dad on Calder Water…”
I never did, if truth be told, but we did go looking at grebes, and greblets, as he called them.
August 19th
I’ve been doing all manner of website things today including new photos for the homepage and a new blog which is now awaiting news from elsewhere. While I’ve been rootling through my recordings to find stuff suitable for that, I found this recording by The Bridge Singers of my arrangement of Paul Sion’s Kathy’s Song which we performed in 2016 in the Magical Glass Concert, and again during 2019 as part of our autumn-themed repertoire (it has a lot of drizzle in it!). I thought I may as well make a new video, which I was at it! This recording is from 2019 and the images are all a bit drizzly to suit the lyrics.
August 20th
Yesterday and today, the sun and then the moon have behaved in very balloon-like ways. Yesterday there was mist and so the sun gradually emerged orangely through the haze. Today there was cloud, so the full moon slowly submerged through the haze. It reminded me of my Golden Rain Baby song: “The sun is shining – looks like a yellow balloon. Washing your face with the warmth of its rays. Golden Rain baby…”
August 21st
Today there’s been Alnwick with Mum and rehearsing with Rock Festival Choir with my Ave Maria, as ever, on the cusp of brilliance and disaster. but I also earned a teensy bit of money with sales from sheetmusicplus of this arrangement. Cool news.
August 22nd
Today we came on a bus and two trains to Dundee. We strolled about in the afternoon and noticed red things, then had a rest until tomorrow.
23rd August
We went from Dundee to Edinburgh today to sing in a lunchtime concert with Rock Festival Choir as part of the Edinburgh Fringe. Part of the programme was my Ave Maria. I recorded the concert from behind the choir. I hardly took any photos, as I found the whole day very stressful indeed. Anyway, here are a few, with some screenshots from videos by our pal Claire who was in the audience. The music is the last minute of Ave Maria with the clapping. My tambourining was described to me as “a bit assertive” by one of my colleagues. My apologies – I was going for joyous!
August 24th
Today we walked up to Dundee Law then on to the Botanic Gardens as we like to. Lots of bananas on show in the glasshouses and lots of Australian and New Zealand plants to make us happy. The music here is the end of Banana Fanfare 1. There are two of them naturally.
August 25th
Yesterday when we walked up to Dundee Law, we saw these two golden spires up ahead and then down behind us, so we resolved to go and find what they belonged to this morning before the rain arrived and before heading to the V&A for some indoor activity. They turned out to belong to the catholic church, Our Lady Of Victories, so I took some closer-up pictures too, then later, post-V&A, I put them together in the order I took them (so, yesterday’s distant ones first, then today’s close-ups). Because it turned out to be a Mary church, it gives me the excuse to accompany them with another segment of Friday’s Edinburgh performance of my Ave Maria by Rock Festival Choir.
26th August
While I’ve been away, I’ve also in spare moments, been putting this video together of Gary Steward’s song “Darling Daddy” He wrote it for The Bridge Singers in 2018, I made an arrangement of it, the choir performed it then, and it’s been part of our north-east selection this year too. This recording is from our May 2024 concert, and the images in the video are all of Alnwick. I heard from Gary today that he’s happy with the video, so I now can share…
August 27/28th
We’ve done lots of walking on this holiday, and in recent days we ventured along some of this beautiful coastline – on Monday we caught the train to Monifieth and walked back to Dundee via Broughty Ferry and the castle and harbour there. On Wednesday, we caught the train to Arbroath, explored the Abbey, then walked to Carnoustie then the train home. On Tuesday it was raining so we explored the HMS Discovery Museum and the Verdant Works Jute Museum in Dundee, then walked all the way across the Tay Bridge and back in the evening, once the weather cleared up. Lots of photos were taken and here’s a selection of the boaty things we’ve seen on these explorations.
August 28th
We always produce a Review Of The Year video during The Bridge Singers’ summer break, and today’s the day this year’s was finished. There are six clips of us singing and lots of photos of us doing our thing from Autumn 2023 right up to the end of July 2024.
August 29th
I finished a video of Gary Steward’s song Footsteps using his photos and recording he’d chosen of The Bridge Singers performing it in Brinkburn in 2022.
August 30th
A misty morning with sun and moon in attendance. Later, in the evening, The Bridge Singers had a rehearsal for tomorrow’s concert in Longframlington. We’ll be singing this one…Bonny At Morn.
31st August
Concert night with The Bridge Singers performing at a soiree for the Longframlington Flower Festival in St. Mary’s Church there. We sang a whole range of songs as ever, including Right, Said Fred. Here’s the last minute of that with some pictures of the evening from me and Claire.
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