Like most singers, I have lost a large number of opportunities to perform this year. A rough list: four concerts with Bristol Choral Society, three with Gloucester Choral Society, the Erleigh Cantors’ 30th anniversary bash, a day working on Tallis’ Spem in Alium<\/i>, a Cotswold Big Sing Mahler 8, visits to York Minster and Bradford, Portsmouth and Chichester Cathedrals. Plus whatever other concerts I might have been offered (Proms, Bath Cantata Group, CanZona?) and countless church services both regular and special occasion. Opportunities to go to concerts likewise disappeared.<\/p>\n
Another way of looking at it:<\/p>\n
Not all of these delays are entirely due to the coronavirus pandemic; the reopening of the hall in Bristol (when Bristol Choral Society can use large orchestras again) was delayed by two years even before that happened, and for various reasons I did little performing outside church in autumn 2019.<\/p>\n
So what was I able to do? Rather more than many people, and for part of the autumn I was in the fortunate position of having three choirs which had restarted. The main events, in the order they occurred:<\/p>\n
I have also discovered that I don’t get on with rehearsals on Zoom (I tend to crouch over the device) or singing in a mask (I feel disconnected from the sound I make). But I have got practised at singing my line to a backing track, of organ or singers, with clicks or a conductor.<\/p>\n
I’m not even going to try to predict 2021. Some already postponed events have been postponed again, but others remain pencilled in for now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Like most singers, I have lost a large number of opportunities to perform this year. A rough list: four concerts with Bristol Choral Society, three with Gloucester Choral Society, the Erleigh Cantors’ 30th anniversary bash, a day working on Tallis’ … Continue reading