A Cappella

Bournemouth at the end of October/start of November was astonishingly warm and balmy - you can see why it is a traditional British holiday town. Of course I wasted nearly all the great weather huddled inside the Bournemouth International Centre listening to people sing, but that’s how my sense of priorities works. Still, I was grateful not to find myself as windblown as you get sometimes at the Ladies Association of British Barbershop Singers conventions.

This was the second year I was attending without judging duties, and I can see that I’ll be saying, ‘No I’m not a judge any more,’ to people asking me about my weekend for years to come. (I mention this here in an attempt to hasten the process of people taking that on board.) I did have a new ‘official’ duty this year, though; in my role as LABBS Chorus Director Development Specialist I ran a Fringe session on ‘What Do You Want From Your Chorus Director, and What Do They Want From You?’ on the Friday afternoon.

And the traditional warm-up shot before I get started...Last Saturday took me down to work with Avon Harmony in Bristol. I last worked with them back in 2012 when their director, Alex, was relatively new in the role. You could see how much he had worked on his technique in the intervening time, and how he was being rewarded with a much more consistent and resonant sound. We spent much of the day mapping out where the next stages of development are going to lie.

First up, though, was one basic bit of conductorly bad habit that we needed to deal with. Like many directors, Alex was frequently tempted into mouthing the words. I have tried various methods to help directors break this habit over the years, often involving holding things in their mouths. Straws are good, as blowing into a straw is good for the vocal mechanism, so gives a positive benefit in how the director models their bodily set-up as well as inhibiting the habit you’re trying to eliminate.

And another stage-shoe-shot, for the same reason

My visit to Brunel Harmony was followed the next day by a coaching day with Yours in Harmony just down the road in Torquay. This chorus is also preparing for the Ladies Association of British Barbershop Singers Convention at the end of the month, but for them it will be their first time. As a chorus, they have a several years of experience behind them competing in festivals of various sizes, but it is they have only recently affiliated to a barbershop organisation.

So, in some ways, they agenda was the same as the day before - polishing and confidence-building - as they are at the same point in the preparation cycle. But in other ways it was quite different, as they are juggling a lot of unknowns - they know how to perform, but very few of them really know what to expect from a barbershop convention.

Rehearsing in stage shoes is also good for the confidenceSaturday took me back down to Saltash for a follow-up visit to my session with Brunel Harmony last month. With only three weeks to go before Convention, the agenda was one of polishing the performance, and building confidence. One of the first confidence-inducing things to note was that I could hear that they had taken on what we had worked on last time and really embraced them. Bubbling had greater stamina, and the characterisation was embedded in both vocal colour and body language.

We balanced our day between attention to detail and holistic work. The nearer you get to performance, the less you really want to get the Manager on duty, so it’s not the point in the cycle to focus on technique. But where there are details that are getting away - the odd chord that isn’t locking, the odd phrase that loses energy - then finding the means to bring them under control increases confidence as it removes distractions for the singers as well as for the audience.

The women's chorus in the final concert

I mentioned in my last post about the BinG!* Harmony College that they held a contest on the first evening to select the quartets to compete in their Convention next March. This was useful not just for the coaches to starting diagnosing learning needs, but it was a valuable part of the overall learning experience. And over the four days of the college, there were three general sessions structured around performances, and I have been reflecting on what they contributed to the overall effectiveness of the event.

This was the view from my bedroom window...I’m starting writing this post on the train along the Rhine valley from Oberwesel to Frankfurt at dawn. After several days of glorious autumnal sunshine, the clouds are hanging down over the hilltops. In both guises, you can see why the early Romantics were so willing to mythologise this area.

I was about to write that this is almost incidental to the joy and richness the last few days have seen at BinG! Harmony College, but then I thought - maybe the setting helps more than you think. I suddenly remembered how I found myself at culturally rich events in green hilly landscapes in different countries in successive weeks of summer 2009 and wondering to what extent a landscape facilitates artistic growth.

Anyhow, the view is such that I am pretty sure I won’t get this post finished in this one trip, but I wanted to start getting the ideas down while the impressions are fresh.

Sunday saw the LABBS Convention-preparation season continue with my friends from Green Street Blues. They are taking two of my arrangements to contest this year, one that they commissioned and first performed a few years back, and another newly arranged for them earlier this year.

As might be expected from this programme, we spent far more time on the new song, exploring its structure as a means to develop the expressive shape of the performance, in particular in relation to the pattern of tonal centres the arrangement uses.

(This is fun. I am always careful not to spoil the big reveal when premieres are coming up, so I won’t tell you what song it is. But I can tell you which keys bits of it are in, and leave you to try and guess what song it could be. The original song stays in one key throughout, so you’ll be guessing from the emotional content of the lyrics. If you don’t want to play the guessing game, of course, then just come along to Bournemouth next month and they’ll sing it to you.)

I spent Saturday working with Brunel Harmony on the contest package they are preparing for the Ladies Association of British Barbershop Singers Convention in October. They had got to the point where things were generally in place - music and choreography largely embedded, and the overall concept and intentions clear - so what it needed next was a combination of polishing of execution and bringing out the details.

What we found ourselves doing to achieve this, though, was integrating technical control of the various performance elements with a sense of characterisation and narrative. It was a classic example of how you can start with any one item of technique, and find that as you explore it, it turns out to be connected with all kinds of other areas, both technical and expressive.