As 2015 ebbs away, I look back on it as a year of progress rather than achievement. It couldn’t really match up to 2014 but there were some wishlist works that I got to perform: Poulenc’s Gloria (twice in a fortnight with different choirs!), Frank Martin’s Mass (or most of it), and Gowers’ Viri Galilæi. Other notable performances included Mahler 8 (albeit in a different place and with a different conductor from the ones I’d planned) and Verdi’s Requiem (for personal reasons). Venues included Worcester Cathedral, Canterbury Cathedral, York Minster, St George’s Windsor and a return after a long time to St Edmundsbury Cathedral. I’ve been happy with the standard of my own performance in all of these. On the concert and opera-going front it was rather quiet, the highlight being Igor Levit at the Wigmore Hall.
I started doing occasional solos in the church choir (and have done several during the year) as well as a couple with the Cathedral Chamber Choir. Against this must be set the possible loss of Priory Voices – I sang a weekend with them and saved dates of a couple of weekends in 2016, but that wasn’t enough to keep me on the list.
Musically speaking, 2016 is going to be dominated by participating in the Three Choirs Festival in Gloucester. I’d been keen to take part in this at some point, and for various reasons this seemed obviously the right year to do it. It will mean sacrificing some regular engagements such as the Erleigh Cantors in July. It will mean an awful lot of new notes, strenuous physical demands and a great deal of travelling to and fro. Watch this space.
Other planned singing includes weekends in Wells (very soon), Cambridge, and, erm, Gloucester, and a tour in Lichfield, as well as my first encounters with the Sea Symphony and Belshazzar’s Feast. Bristol Choral Society gains a new musical director, though I don’t think I’ll get to sing in a concert they conduct until the end of the year. Around me there are changes as at least two Bath choirs will also change their MD.