Barbershop, Bagpipes and Inspiration

To reach a port we must sail, sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it. But we must not drift or lie at anchor - Oliver Wendell Holmes

It's the choir off-season at the moment, a time to rest, reflect and generally restore, ready to launch back into the new season. We have some very good concerts before Christmas, a tour to Krakow next summer and the Male Choir competition in Torquay in March 2012.

There is no doubt in my mind that the choir has had a good year just past, some splendid performances and excellent audiences but an organisation must look to the future, for unless we move forward there is no doubt we will drift back.

Deliberately, I have been looking around at other musical orgainisations, looking for inspiration, looking for a way forward, looking for a way to help us improve our music making. I haven't yet found it but I think I have recognised some of the things our beloved male choir genre is missing, but more of that in a minute. Let me share two inspirations that I have had recently.

I spent last Saturday watching the World Pipe Band Championships on the BBC Scotland live internet feed; my best friend at school played (and still plays) in The Gilnahirk Pipe Band and I remember the thrill of hearing these wonderful organisations in my teens and early twenties.

The winners were The Field Marshal Montgomery Pipe Band from Northern Ireland, one of the leading pipe bands in the world today; it is arguably the most influential and successful pipe band ever. Led by Pipe Major Richard Parkes MBE and Drum Sergeant Keith Orr, the band has won every major championship title available to them, including seven World Pipe Band Championships and a colossal 43 major championship titles.

Watch the video below, listen to the incredible musicality of these guys and girls - they are just like you and me, ordinary people, with real jobs and real lives. The difference is that they have achieved absolute excellence in their hobby, in their passion, in their amateur music making. They are clearly enjoying everything that they do, clearly having a ball doing it.

So, what makes them so good. Well, they practice, they practice hard, they are very dedicated to their art. They are gifted but all gifts need to be nurtured and in Richard Parkes they have inspirational leadership from a gifted musician. They are very clearly proud of their achievements - but I am guessing that their pride comes from knowing that they do their very best every time they step on to the grass. Importantly (to me) is that whilst I have focussed on the winners at "The Worlds" - there were probably another 50 bands (in all the various grades) there, all competing, all striving to improve, all constantly learning from their experiences, learning from the judges comments and drinking in the experience of hearing the best in the world and wanting to be like them.

There is an overarching organisation in the form of the Royal Scottish Pipe Band Association. The RSPBA is the recognised Centre of Excellence for the promotion and development of Pipe Band Music internationally. Its services and facilities are noted on their website and include: education, training and certification in Piping, Drumming, Drum Majoring and Pipe Band Adjudication; an annual Summer School, an Academy of Pipe Band Musicianship; setting standards of Pipe Band competition performance. Please note it does not mention promoting Scottish Culture or promoting the constant playing of nostalgic hymns and arias. Excellence, training, education, adjudicating, schooling are the key words. Rather than constantly looking back the male choir genre needs to look forward, we, at Bournemouth Male Voice Choir must strive to do that. Only by embracing these kinds of values will we be able to inspire younger men (like those in the Pipe-Band world) to experience the best singing of their lives - in a men's choir.

Another inspiration came closer to home, a new friend and member of Bournemouth Male Voice Choir David Wood is also the new Director of Ocean Harmony, a Barbershop group from Southampton. David, very kindly, invited me to visit one of their rehearsals and I really enjoyed hearing this group. What was fascinating for me was that the "Guild of Judges" had sent one of their representatives to the rehearsal to discuss the groups recent performance at "Convention". A screen was set up, the choruses performance was projected on to it and played through speakers and the adjudicator had to talk about why they had given the scores they had. What a fabulous idea! No more giving the cup to a choir because they come from the same place as you! The judge had to stand by their adjudication.

I got chatting to the members and the judge and I was very impressed by their striving to improve, very much like the members of Bournemouth Male Voice Choir, but very interestingly this endeavour was well supported by the overarching organisation, The British Association of Barbershop Singers. I have taken some words from their mission statement and they are remarkably similar to those above from the RSPBA in so many ways. "Embrace and perform music predominantly in the barbershop style, and in a broad range of other a cappella styles. Through the educational and coaching opportunities available in the Society, they continually improve their public and contest performances. Each chapter embraces and performs a cappella music, our chapters are leaders in the musical life of their community, employing and enjoying the same educational opportunities for improvement available to quartets and all singers. District and international conventions, festivals, and educational conferences incorporate contests, activities, and training sessions to meet the needs of our membership and their families. We continually strive for improvement in individual, quartet, chorus and Society activities, performances, and events…….. largest supporter of vocal music education in the world, the alliance has formed strong partnerships with school choral groups, music educators, and their organizations."

So again, an organisation interested in eduction, coaching, improvement, conventions, festivals, contests, training, partnerships....

I am convinced that the groundwork we are putting in place, improving standards, singing new music and looking forward to a future that in fresh rather that looking backwards to a nostalgic past that never really existed is the right thing to do.

The 2011/2012 season will see the choir ratchet up its performance standard and strive to be the best it can be, why not get involved with us? The Male Choir genre offers a unique opportunity for men to perform wonderful music from a wide range of styles.

If you are a voice coach, why not offer to help with coaching?

If you are a choreographer why not help us with our stagecraft?

If you are a composer show us your music!

If you are a singer who lives in Dorset and wants to be the best you can be - why not join us!?

I'll leave you with a Barbershop choir singing one of our new pieces the delicious "Lux Aurumque" by Eric Whitacre - watch this then drop me an email (musicaldirector@bournemouthmalechoir.co.uk ) telling me how you can help drive forward the best sort of ensemble singing - "Men's Choirs"

Now the years are rolling by me, they are rocking evenly and I am older than I once was and younger than I’ll be, that’s not usual

Far too long since the last blog post, in fact every post I write here seems to begin with that sentiment, an excuse for inaction will inevitably follow but today I won’t bother, time to cut to the chase as time moves on and all this chatter isn't getting the photocopier oiled is it? I will however pause to apologise for the slightly confessional feel of this email but hey, we are supposed to be touchy feely artists aren’t we?

The time has come; some might say the time is long past, for us to decide what we are as a choir and how we move forward. In many ways this has been not so much a decision as an inexorable progression towards where we are today and where I hope we will be in the future.

Firstly, some background – I have been conducting male voice choirs for twenty years, I am steeped in the lore of the genre, know the repertoire intimately and genuinely believe that the opportunity for men to sing together in TTBB choirs is a valuable artistic outlet (can you sense a silent but…?) OK then you spotted it.. I genuinely believe that the genre needs to find its way into the twenty first century so that it remains relevant and something that twenty-first century men want to be part of. Our PRO John Coates undertook a major SWOT survey among our choir and supporters in 2010 that in lots of different ways told us that the image of male choirs could be off putting for many people who, unlike me, we not steeped in the history and tradition of the genre.

There is something uniquely moving about the passion combined with sensitivity that a group of men singing together can achieve, so why are so few men in England getting involved. Importantly why are so few younger men (30-50) getting involved? I hear all sorts of stories from choirs across the UK about how they are getting more young members and they have 70 members and all is rosy in their gardens but when you go on the websites and look at the pictures the story is different. For me, some of our problems lie in the repertoire.

Male choirs tried to re-invent themselves in the 1980’s and 1990’s with floods of new arrangements of what were described as popular songs but their original artists made most of those songs famous before I was born and even when they were current they were older in style and hardly contemporary in nature. This isn’t in any sense decrying our beautiful arrangement of “Softly as I leave you” for example but I sometimes look down concert programmes and think that its really all terribly similar and wonder how long male choirs can exist without an injection of new music to bring a new energy to our musical lives. This is not a new idea, when you look back at male choir programmes from the early 1900’s they were regularly singing new music by Edward Elgar, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Herbert Howells, Daniel Protheroe and the like. So for us, I am treading my own path on this one, its not necessarily better but I do think it suits us better.

I think if I was sitting in South Wales writing this piece I would probably think differently, there is a rich cultural tradition of folk song, hymn tunes and the like which have an intrinsic part of the male choir tradition and if I directed one of those great male choirs from Wales I would want to preserve the tradition, and indeed I know that some choirs in Wales are looking at new music from Welsh composers. Here in Bournemouth, and I sense in England as a whole, things are different, so Deus Sautis remains due to its incredible quality but I can’t see much space for many more of these hymn tunes in our programmes due to them perhaps not having as much relevance to an English choir or audience. More importantly, this gives us space for musical items and texts that aren't so much “male voice choir” as music for a choir that happens to be of men’s voices.

The new world seems to be leading the way for new innovative music for men’s voices; Eric Whitacre, Morten Lauridsen, Randall Stroope, Timothy Takach and many others are writing interesting, quality music and here in Britain Alan Simmons, Goff Richards, Christopher Wiltshire and others have produced some excellent new music for TTBB; the problem is that we (the English choirs for men) aren’t crying out for new compositions, we’re broadly not commissioning new works and therefore market forces intervene – no demand - no supply? The big American men’s choruses (particularly the gay men’s choirs) are regularly supporting the composition of new music. But, doing our best here in Bournemouth we are at the moment however working on Lux Aurumque and The Seal Lullaby by Eric Whitacre, a brand new piece by Timothy Takach as well as original music by Poulenc, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Alan Simmons and Goff Richards and are just about the start two new pieces by contemporary British composers who are less well known.

But modern choirs cannot live by the more serious music alone, lollipops are very popular with our audiences but to attract modern audiences and new members to secure the future of the genre we need to make sure those lollipops are acceptable to modern palates. So rather than Matt Monroe and the like our popular selections in Bournemouth are Take That, Ronan Keating, Seal and Toto with the occasional nod to great doo-wop groups like The Marcels – hopefully this is the combination of old and new that will help us secure our future – a choir of men rather than a male voice choir?

By introducing new music, arrangements of contemporary popular songs and the like we can attract an audience and members to be part of our choir – and when they are part of our great tradition we can show them the beauty of Llef, The Old Woman and that wonderful traditional range of male choir music – not in isolation but as part of a balanced musical diet. A mission statement of “Proud of our past, looking to the future”

I leave these two thoughts with you – next time the advertisements come on don’t go and make a cup of tea - have a watch! I am surprised by just how many advertisements show scenes of people of all ages together in groups who end up singing (like the one set in the airport) – it makes me think that there might still be a future for singing in choirs – these advertising companies carefully research before they make these shorts, a huge amount of money is spent – they won’t present an unappealing scenario for their client.

And finally, can you name one star, one film, one series or one red carpet show when the male protagonist (of any age) is wearing a blazer with shiny buttons, a club tie and slacks? This isn’t about age – look at the clothes every panel show, awards ceremony etc puts their leading men in, they are timeless, clean and crisp looking – what sixty year old man (or younger even) wouldn’t want to look as good as George Clooney does in that coffee advertisement?

A lot to think of, I am a very, very imperfect vessel for the challenges ahead for the genre, do you want to get involved in moving singing for men forward?

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

I cannot believe how long it has been since I posted to this blog; overtaken by events as always. I must do better this year.

As you probably have heard I am currently undertaking the re-audition process with Bournemouth Male Voice Choir - it has been a fascinating, enlightening and fulfilling experience thus far with the members on the whole acquitting themselves well and showing much more in their voices than perhaps they knew they had.

The process however has drawn me to this site and I want to talk about something that is difficult to explain but is vital to us taking the next step of our development, that is confidence. Confidence in what then?

• Confidence in singing the first note absolutely securely
• Confidence to sing "out" - (note I didn't say sing loudly)
• Confidence to know you really can sing long phrases
• Confidence to sing high (or low) notes without tightening up
• Confidence to give your all to an expressive and musical performance

So........ lets look at these and try and pin something tangible to each of them

Singing the first note absolutely securely is something which I know troubles lots of amateur choristers. From my experience of these things I notice that this is generally caused by two problems (for the purpose of this article I am assuming that there are no significant problems underlying such as a poor ear). The worst of these is poor preparation; it amazes me how often I look round choirs as the opening chord is given or as the introduction is being played and see choristers who clearly are not concentrating on the music.

You must be thinking about what you are about to sing beforehand and (if you will excuse the hippy phrase) visualise the first phrase, the shape and the meaning. But for practical measures - remember to breathe in early, breathe in rhythmically, breathe in low down and hold the breath in place just before you sing. Don't let in all out on the first note but set the stream of air going just before you place the first sound right on the first beat.

The second difficulty is confidence - you must just do it!! Don't worry or think to much, in rehearsal especially just follow the practical points and sing with confidence.

As for having the confidence to sing out - there is a lot of tosh talked by choristers about blend and singing quieter than those around you and suchlike. The important things to worry about in terms of blend are accurate intervals and tuning and uniform vowel sounds. Each chorister has and important role to play in the overall sound of the choir, every last one of you is vital to the choir - play your part confidently and when you are singing quietly do not apologise for the quiet singing, sing with even more projection, with even more "forward tone"

Long phrases are dealt with in lots of different ways, mostly through improved breathing techniques, I have talked about this in some length elsewhere on this site so here I just want to talk about having the confidence to do it. The key to being confident is to know you can actually do it!! And as for you guys, deep down you know you can do it. In our warm up exercises you can always sustain chords for 24 steady beats. That is six bars of a pretty slow 4/4, so all you need to do to work up your confidence is to remember to apply exactly the same principles in your singing as you do in your vocal exercises.

The problem of high notes in the context of this discussion can be dealt with in three words Trust trust trust. Don't try to control the note. Control everything you can - i.e., the breath support, the open throat, the raised palate, the relaxed jaw, but don't try to "grab onto" that note and make it come out. Instead, just open your mouth, start the breath, and think the note, and let it happen. You will make mistakes at first but just believe, you will be amazed at the things you can achieve. Don't change anything once you've got it started correctly - don't start pushing more breath through the folds, don't try to refocus placement, or put "spin" on the note.

On a practical note why not play with sirens and yodels. I find the best way to feel how the highest notes are supposed to feel (and how they should sound in my head) is to do sirens and yodels to get those notes first. The idea is to just touch on the highest notes quickly the first few (100) times. Then to sustain them for a short period- without making any changes to anything. If you've hit the note right when you siren or yodel, keep exactly that amount of breath support - no more, no less - exactly that mouth, facial, and body posture - no changes - and just go ahead an sustain briefly at first, over and over, until you can do it consistently, and then a bit longer, and again repeat until it's consistent.

Never reach for a high note. Never "hit" a high note. Always "gently land" on a high note - imagine your voice is a bubble riding a steady wave of breath. The high note is on the surface of the breath - the voice lands gently on it, then bounces off again. When you vocalise, vocalise as high as you can and then think about going a half step or whole step higher. Better yet, don't look at the piano at all - just sing up and up and up (yodels, sirens, arpeggios). Let the notes just bore their little laser-like hole through the top of your skull each time and shimmer out into space. Don't try to hold them inside your head. Play around with these images and see if any of them help you. "Conquering" high notes is as much a psychological coup as a technique coup.

The final confidence builder needed is in terms of performance - I'll keep this short - this is entirely down to you - I want you all to let go - feel the music - enjoy the chords - enrich yourselves with some of the delicious texts that we sing - smile when you are happy - let go your feelings into the music and convey the meaning of the texts to the audience, be it loss, love, fun, grand theological ideas - whatever - there are 50 odd of us on stage at any time, just lose your self in the music for two hours - try it - you might even enjoy it!!

And finally - a video - this is by an American voice coach as an introduction to his lesson programme, I don't agree with all of what he says, I don't agree with much of it but the idea of releasing that which is within you that he is talking about has some value. If it clicks with some of the concepts above that I have been talking about then I am happy for you to watch. If it is useless to you, well, no harm done!

Finally, finally - if you have any thoughts email me or leave a comment, it would be nice to know if these posts resonate with you in any way.

Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt. ~William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, 1604

Smile when you're singing!!! YUCK!

Most male voice choirs are a miserable looking bunch! No don't be offended it's true!. Lovely warm engaging chaps who are quick to laugh, smile and crack a joke are instantly turned into stone faced monuments when placed in a male choir and asked to sing in front of an audience.

However, I am not in favour of the cheesy grin displayed by most choirs who are "trying" to be entertaining - I refer specifically to four part male voice groups who sing predominantly unaccompanied music with the melody usually in the second tenor line!

What I would like us to aim for is an expressive meaningful look on our chops that in some way conveys the music that we are singing. I can't imagine that during Beati Mortui a rictus like grin would be thought appropriate even by our hairdressing colleagues but our somber visage during "Five, foot two" is a bit embarrassing really.

So for next season, here is what I would like you to do for me!

Lets show some emotion on our faces as we sing - express the words during each song as you would if you were singing a solo. Honest emotion will help us communicate the song to each member of the audience and make the whole experience more enjoyable for all concerned.

And when do we smile???? After each piece is completed have a look round the audience and smile at them. The smile says "Thank you for listening, I'm glad you enjoyed the song and I love your applause!" There is safety in numbers so don't feel embarrassed doing this - try it for me, you might even enjoy it!!

I attach below two examples of honest emotion expressed by a male choir whilst singing their music. I attach two contrasting items from the BBC show "Last Choir Standing", both sung by Only Men Aloud. These fabulous arrangements are sung with utter commitment by the guys, they are technically proficient, wonderfully musical and so very engaging. I was a sceptic about Last Choir Standing but Only Men Aloud have added something that the rest of the show simply doesn't have.

Hope you enjoy these - please feel free to feed back through the comments.

Sunset Poem

A member asked me the other evening why we don't sing "Sunset Poem". I smiled sweetly, made a few appropriately polite remarks about pressure of other repertoire and not being able to see where it would fit into the general run of our concert commitments - this is perfectly true.

However, underneath all of this there is a simple underlying reason why we don't do it.

I hate Sunset Poem.

I find it the most odious item that I can possibly ever be confronted with in a male choir programme. Why so? I hear you ask; How can a few short verses of "Under Milk Wood" set to a perfectly reasonable chant by Troyte be so offensive?

Well, this is because of the horrendous way that almost every choir I have heard sing it.

Regard the text....

Every morning when I wake
Dear Lord, a little prayer I make,
O please to keep Thy lovely eye
on all poor creatures born to die.

And every evening at sun-down
I ask a blessing on the town,
for whether we last the night or no
I'm sure is always touch-and-go.

We are not wholly bad or good
who live our lives under Milk Wood,
and Thou, I know, wilt be the first
to see our best side, not our worst.

O let us see another day!
Bless us all this night, I pray,
and to the sun we all will bow
and say, good-bye - but just for now!

This text should be sung in speech rhythm - that means at the pace of good well-measured speech and in a similar shape. So this might mean for the first verse something like

Every morning when I wake
Dear Lord, a little prayer I make,
O please to keep Thy lovely eye
On all poor creatures born to die.

Compared to most performances that go something like

Every morning when I wake
Dear Lord, a little prayer I make,
O please to keep Thy lovely eye
on all poor creatures born to die

Hard to represent on the page but you must have regard to the meaning of the text and it is very poor form to accent the word “I” in tastefully performed Anglican chant!

Why have I just ranted about this – well I feel quite strongly that we don’t as a whole pay enough attention to the important things in the male choir world. We are very obsessed with showering the choirmaster with saliva on final “t’s” and accenting inappropriately the word contempt wherever it appears but singing with style and attention to the words and “painting a picture” seems to slip past most of us.

Let’s concentrate on

Performing each phrase appropriately by thinking about the meaning of the text.
Looking after each interval - making it just perfect.
Singing clean vowel sounds, unpolluted by affectation
Concentrating on the phrase at hand and by doing that remaining focussed on the moment, not worrying about that difficult phrase on page 12 (or whatever)

By doing those few things above we should think all the time about interpreting the music not just producing a collection of chords.

Oh, and as for Anglican Chant – this is fun!

With a La La La!

Once again I want us to think about legato. I have been working on some things with you regarding this and want to try and give you some things to work on at home.

Get out your learning aid CD for Beati Mortui and try this.

Instead of singing the words practise your part to a good old La!

But, and this is important, don't just la la la along - make sure that the music is in one continuous flow of sound and the "L" of La is merely used to define the start of each note.

Keep your mouth open in a really good shape - not over stretched, nor mostly closed - a nice open shape is ideal.

Breathe in nice and low down, expand your rib cage low down and out creating a nice barrel shape in your tummy and as the sound comes out conserve the air by using your tummy muscles (remember our hiss exercise)

Now La the phrase as a continuous stream of tone.

Only when we create a really good legato line will we be able to sing truly expressive phrases and create truly musical performances.

I dug around "tinternet" and found this example of gorgeous legato, delivered by a choir directed by the 20th century's greatest choirmaster (probably)

Enjoy

Hi All,

We spoke on the last rehearsal of the old year about commitment - I want to share a very old video clip with you of my absolute favourite singer (well almost) - Giuseppe di Stefano.

Being a deeply flawed character myself, it will come as not surprise to you that one of my musical heroes (despite his genius) was not perfect. Giuseppe di Stefano was a natural talent, a voice with an immediacy and passion unrivalled in this century. His story was the story of a tenor who was more than liable to yield to temptation - and he did, singing without precaution.

During the decade of 1946 to 1956, Di Stefano performed onstage and on recordings with a beauty of tone and an intensity unique in this century. His lifestyle was as intense as his performing - it made the behaviour of the wildest player in Manchester United seem more sedate than that of a house-bound Baptist preacher.

His technique, which in some respects was extraordinarily good, spread his tone and negotiated the transition of vocal placement that occurs in the tenor range around F above middle C in the worst possible way. But while the voice lasted, it was unlike anything heard this century. Its sound was beautiful beyond compare and Di Stefano could manipulate it with nuanced expression of seemingly endless subtlety. His diction in both Italian and French was perfect. Every syllable he sang was suffused with meaning. He shaded the music so that the listener seemed to sense the meaning of what he sang without understanding a single word of Italian or French. He could also make a seamless transition from the very loudest to the softest sound without losing support of the tone, and he could do it over his entire vocal range.

Both Plácido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti were asked which tenors had influenced them. They both named the same two - Enrico Caruso and Giuseppe di Stefano. The recently published biography of Jussi Björling written by his wife describes how taken that great tenor was by Di Stefano's singing, how Björling said that if Di Stefano kept going the way he had started, he would leave everyone behind.

The aria is E lucevan le stelle is the last solo aria in the Opera ra Tosca by Giacomo Puccini. It is sung by Tosca's lover, the painter Mario Cavaradossi,when lamenting his coming execution. Mario Cavaradossi is a beautifully shaped character who, being in love with a passionate and extremely jealous diva, Floria Tosca, endures all her doubts and jealousy and loves her more and more every minute. But he is imprisoned for treason and he is to be executed at dawn.

Cavaradossi, who is aware of the situation, bids his farewell to life, singing one of the most beautiful arias in the entire operatic repertoire. He starts recalling a night spent with Tosca - everything was so beautiful, sublime and almost unreal. But something is wrong with all that Cavaradossi's shows his anger over the unjust laws of life and death in the second part of the aria, when he cries out in complete despair:

This level of commitment to each note, to ensure that every phrase is what we want it to be is (in the words of Shakespeare's Hamlet) "a consummation devoutly to be wished" Please enjoy a masterful performance below.