A Cappella

NoteOrious in action
On Sunday, a collection of arrangers from BABS, LABBS and Sweet Adelines Region 31 gathered in Birmingham for a day of honing their craft. This one of the events under the mantle of Barbershop In Harmony, and is exactly the kind of thing it’s worth collaborating over – arranging is something of a minority interest in each organisation, but between us we have a viable community of people to exchange ideas.

For this occasion, we had kind permission from Joe Liles to use a song he wrote for the Woodshedder’s Folio as a set piece for everyone to work on in advance. We had eight versions submitted in advance for workshopping, and working through these took up the bulk of the day’s activities.

There are comments going back nearly 100 years in the literature on choral music about differences in vocal sound between British and American choirs. Back in 1914, Henry Coward was making the following comments:

There is no doubt that, generally speaking, the English choral singer favours a backward voice-production (p. 39).

Of course one must always be careful to avoid excess of nasality, or more harm than good will result; but I must say that, except in two cases in the United States, where the people have an excess of nasality in speaking, I never yet heard a choir go beyond the limits of good tone in the way of nasal resonance, whereas one often hears excess of throatiness in England (p. 44).

Venue Cymru, LlandudnoThis weekend saw the 2010 LABBS Convention in Llandudno. The chorus contest was exceedingly closely-fought, with only 13 points in total (out of a possible 1800) separating first and third places. The quartet contest was clearer-cut for the outright winner (last year’s bronze medallists, Miss-Demeanour), but it was hard to predict who was going to pick up the bronze medal.

(On a personal note, I was pleased to see the three competing choruses I had coached during September come away with prizes. Amersham A Cappella landed gold medals, Green Street Blues picked up bronze, and Bristol Fashion received the Peter Caller award to celebrate their scores moving from ‘division 2’ level up into ‘division 1’.)

Vale Connection ChorusI spent last Saturday working with Vale Connection chorus in Evesham on my arrangement of ‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun’. Some of the singers had attended the education day back in 2009 that it was originally arranged for, but for others it was new territory. It’s one of those songs where the title sets the tone for the performance style, and it’s almost impossible to avoid having a good time with it (not that I’ve really attempted to).

Two things stood out for me from the day’s activities.

Performing at the showcase evening
This week saw the Great British Barbershop Boys unleashed on an unsuspecting universe. The quartet formerly known as Monkey Magic has been signed by Sony and rebranded. Their album, Christmas Time, is due out on December 6, but the advance publicity has started, and with a vengeance. The first press release went out on Tuesday, and within two days had appeared in one form or another in around 170 UK newspapers, whilst television coverage included an interview on daybreak and a mention on ITV Central News.

Thursday night saw a showcase event in London where the quartet sang a five-song set, and promotional copies of the album were handed out. I was invited along as one of their arrangers for the album, and it was lovely actually to see them in person after the rather manic time over the summer getting the music ready to record in a very short timescale.

Warming up on Saturday morning
I spent the weekend with my friends in Amersham A Cappella at their annual retreat. I was one of three coaches for the weekend, along with Nancy Kelsall and Sandra Lea-Riley of Eu4ia fame, and I found the team approach an interesting change from my regular coaching experience.

It’s been some years since I did much team coaching, and I found this weekend went significantly more smoothly than that previous experience. I’m sure being more experienced helped, as did a more equal relationship within the team (rather than being the junior partner – which is one of those problems that self-corrects over time of course). But most important was working from established relationships - Nancy and Sandra are already well accustomed to working together, and we’ve known each other a good long while too. I first worked with Eu4ia back in 2005, and we’ve spent enough time discussing ideas about music and performance together in the intervening years to have a pretty good idea of each other’s philosophies.

Earlier this week I received an email that asked:

How do you identify which part drives the key change?

I thought I’d reply publicly, since my correspondent might not be the only person who has ever wanted to know about this. And it’s one of those questions that at one level has a simple general answer, and at another opens more complex questions.

Coast to Coast in warm-up modeCoast to Coast, the national chorus of LABBS, invited me to coach them on Sunday as part of their retreat weekend. The chorus comprises singers from across the country, and meets once a month, usually on a Sunday. Many of its members sing with small choruses, and find that Coast to Coast offers them not only the chance to sing in a larger group, but provides a wider networking opportunity to exchange ideas and advice to take back to their home clubs.

The chorus had spent the Saturday on big-picture questions such as planning the group’s development and exploring their understanding of the music. Their new director, Linda Blackett, has identified as a medium-term goal to work on musicianship, and having the extra day together gave them the chance to do activities that focused on the skills of the singers and not just preparing for their next performance – a nice bit of work on production capacity, not just production.