Oom Pa Pa

I've just got back from a week in Devon at a music summer school. It was very scary at first, because:

1. I'd never been before and was sure everyone else would be miles better than me.

2. It was a 220 mile drive from home so I couldn't just scuttle back easily if it was a disaster.

3. I was going on my own and worried that everyone else would take all their mates with them.

In the event, it was brilliant. There were a few iffy moments but the chance to spend most of a week making and listening to music was fantastic. If I'd wanted to (or had the energy) I could have gone to three concerts every day. In the end, I did:

Big Choir - we did the Chichester Psalms and an amazing, obscure piece called Sephardic Passion by a chap called Noam Sheriff. It was commissioned in 1992 by Placido Domingo to mark the 500th anniversary of the expulsion of the Jews from Toledo. There is a long, incredibly difficult mezzo-soprano solo in the middle of it which sounds like gypsy singing - we didn't hear it till the final rehearsal when a tiny Italian woman stood up in the middle of the choir and delivered it - it was stunning - so powerful.

Jewish traditional music course - with a group called the Burning Bush. We learnt folk songs and ballads and sang with the klezmer orchestra. Very disorganised, but great fun and interesting. I am in love with their clarinettist, who is sadly a. 10 years younger than me, and b. already married, with 3 lovely children (they were staying in the same house as me). If you ever get a chance to hear him (Ben Harlan), take it!

Voice workshop - I hated this but it was good for me. I ended up singing for a very classy voice coach, very badly indeed, but it has made me realise I need to find a teacher here in London (which means finding a new job where I don't have to travel, probably).

Jazz - listening to and singing various things, both in concerts and at the place where I was staying, as one of the other people there was a jazz pianist. Mack the Knife is easier with a bottle of wine in you!

Concerts - the Israel piano trio, Rafael Wallfisch, chamber groups.... all in a medieval hall.....


It was one of the most physically beautiful places I've ever been too - a medieval manor with fantastic gardens including a tiltyard. On Friday, there was a full moon, and I took a breather from the Viennese waltzes that were the late evening entertainment, and went and sat in the gardens in the moonlight. Truly stunning.

I've put a link in case after this gushathon anyone wants to know more.

The head stuff that came out of this was that I became profoundly grateful that I was not good enough at music to have the choice to go professional. This was something troubling one of the nicest (and most talented) people I met there - she had been to sing with a choir in the Vatican and had afterwards been approached by a legendary singing teacher who offered to take her as a pupil - this would mean abandoning plans to become a barrister and going off to Rome for at least a year. It may sound perverse, but I am so bad at decisions that I am very glad not to have to make one like that. I love music, and making music in particular, but I am happy for it to stay as a source of pleasure, not revenue.