Six days later, it was a very different though equally challenging take on the Ordinary of the Mass, as Will Todd’s Mass in Blue was the featured work in Bristol Choral Society’s first Come and Sing of 2018. I’d heard a lot about this piece, although I don’t think I’d actually heard it previously.
We gathered a sizeable number of people from far and wide, most of whom hadn’t sung it either, although I was sat next to someone who had. It turned out that the work was extensively revised when OUP published it, and her unrevised earlier edition had considerably more dots even than ours!
Jazz rhythms don’t come naturally to me, but I got the hang of most of them I think, albeit by watching the beat and listening to the bass line in the piano part closely. There were a few bars, though, where I fitted in notes, words and rhythm somehow and simply relied on getting to the first beat of the next bar at the right time. It helps that there is quite a lot of repetition.
The various movements are in different styles; the vocal parts in the Sanctus could almost be by Fauré, while I felt the Gloria had something of a Latin feel (I imagined us, topically, as a backing group on a float at the Rio Carnival).
We were conducted by Hilary Campbell with Vanessa Bowers showing us how it should be done on the solo soprano part and Steven Kings accompanying. Now I am in the position that if I get asked to sing the piece in future I may be one of those who is expected to give a lead….