Being random, as the blog's title implies

1. My wife and I were outside this morning in the sun chopping down the upper half of the holly hedge that separates our house from our neighbours' place.  It was a beautiful morning.  We then spent nearly an hour around 1pm talking to my son and his wife in the States, on Google's equivalent of Skype, went to go outside and found it was pouring with rain.  Since then the temperature's dropped considerably and we're now trying to get the house warm.  After all the fine weather we've had any cold day comes as a bit of a shock.

2. A friend lent me a copy of Edmund Gosse's book, Father and Son, a couple of weeks or so ago.  I'd heard of this book over the years, but never got round to reading it, even though it has some status amongst the English classics.  What an odd book!  Gosse was the sun of Philip Henry Gosse, who was a famous zoologist in the 19th century, around the time of Darwin.   He was also a Puritan Christian, as was his wife - the mother of Edmund: she died of breast cancer when Edmund was still under ten years old.  Philip married again, a few years later. 

The book is supposedly the factual memoirs of Gosse as a child, and of his relationship with his father, who, according to the book, was virtually a recluse, and a very rigid Christian.  (Gosse's mother was as puritanical as her husband, according to Gosse junior.)  The book claims to be fact, but later biographers of both father and son have found a good deal of fiction in the writing.  It's very much the view of a man who has cast his parents aside along with his religion, but in writing about it he colours the characters of his parents - his father in particular - in such a way as to make the reader recoil from them. Knowing that Gosse's writing is more biased than not is quite helpful in reading the book: you see how he shows himself as the one treated somewhat unjustly, when in fact this was apparently less than the truth.  He also, perhaps unwittingly, shows himself as rather pompous and quite class conscious.  Those who are lower than him in the social scale are written about in such a way as to show that Gosse despises them - it's not just what they do, it's how the author describes them.  For example, in describing John Brooks, a poor man who doesn't do the right thing according to Gosse's lights: John Brooks was a heavy dirty man, with a pock-marked face and two left legs...  I'm not sure how Brooks manages to have two left legs, but doesn't it immediately make you feel he's something of a monster?

I'd got to a point with the book where I thought I wouldn't finish it, but I will.  However, Gosse has lost my sympathy quite some time ago! 

3. I'm currently learning lines for the play, The Sunshine Boy, in which I'm playing Al.  He has a substantial enough part, but it's nothing like as long as that of the main character, Willie.  There's a great deal of humour in the play, and it'll go across well with an audience.  The line-learning has kind of interrupted my latest attempt to learn Psalm 119 (the longest in the Psalmody).  It's a tough psalm to learn, but I'm making slow progress on it.  I'm also singing with the Sunny Side Up group tonight, at one of the retirement villages, and I'm revising words and music for that as well.  So the brain is getting quite a work out at present!

Vibrato

While driving to a rehearsal for the group, Sunny Side Up, today, I was thinking about the use of vibrato in singing because a bass singer in Don Carlo, which was on the car radio at the time, seemed to be making excessive use of it. I have a bit of a thing about vibrato: I tend to think that it's an overdone practice, and certainly opera singers from some countries make more use of it than others.  Supposedly vibrato is natural in a singing voice.  If that's the case I'm not sure why certain singing teachers insist on increasing the use of it, something that young singers often find quite hard.

String players and wind players make use of vibrato too, some to an extent that it becomes irritating.  Again this seems in part to depend on the nationality of the player.  Vibrato isn't quite the same as tremolo - pianists can play tremolo, for instance, whereas they can't do vibrato in any sense - but the words do get interchanged.  Thus when you go to buy a Floyd Rose tremolo at GC you're basically buying a tremolo for your guitar, since a Floyd Rose tremolo is a type of double-locking vibrato arm to keep your guitar strings from going out of tune when you produce a tremolo effect.

Apparently if you say the words, Floyd Rose, guitarists will understand that you don't mean the person, Floyd D Rose, [pictured at left] the man who invented the locking vibrato arm, but the device itself.  Thus a person's name gets taken over by his invention, as did Alessandro Volta's name by electrical voltage.

Busy weekend and Tangled

We've nearly finished painting the house: Saturday was a big day, with one of our sons also giving us a hand to do a couple of bits we didn't fancy trying to tackle - too far off the ground! Today, with the heavy rain, we won't be doing anything, and yesterday, being Sunday, we had a day off.  Well, sort of: I was at church in the morning, at a read-through for a play at 2 pm, and at the first practice of the year for the choir Sunny Side Up at 4 pm.  So not quite what you'd call a quiet day.  Plus we talked to our son in the States on Skype around 1 pm, and caught up with what's been going on with him.  So perhaps it's just as well it's raining today!  I might get time to breathe.  (Might also have to swap my shorts for long trousers for the first time since early January - it's been so hot this last month, I've hardly been out of shorts since I had to buy a pair in Christchurch just after New Year.)

The play we're doing is about the woman, Rosalie Macgeorge, who was the first Baptist missionary sent out from New Zealand, back in the 1880s.  It's been written by one of our congregation as part of the celebrations for the 150th Anniversary of the church, which is happening this year at Easter Weekend.  I've got a couple of small roles in it, one as a bumptious minister and the other as the doctor who has to tell Rosalie that if she doesn't leave India soon she'll die from her ill-health.  There are twenty or more in the cast, most of us taking more than one role.

Last night my daughter reminded me that the animated movie, Tangled, was on and that I might like to watch it.  I'd heard it was a bit quirky, and certainly it lived up to its reputation.  Rapunzel has been imprisoned by a woman who isn't her mother for years - not to protect her from the big bad world, as the mother claims, but so the pseudo-mother can keep Rapunzel's hair (which has magical properties) under her control.  The male romantic lead, who unwillingly rescues Rapunzel, is a young man who's fallen into a life of crime as a result of being an orphan, and who has based his personality on the heroic character Flynn Rider whom he read about in his childhood.  He has quite a bit of growing up to do - as has Rapunzel, especially as her main reaction to any stranger is to thump them with a frying pan.  There's a horse, Maximus, who seems to think he's also a dog, and a variety of crims who all have a dream - as we discover in a riotous song and dance in a tavern.   The story is probably a fair way away from the Grimm Brothers version, but that's never stopped Disney and Co using one of their fairy tales as a springboard for whatever works in the 20th or 21st centuries.

Talking of movies, Our TV stands on a cabinet that was intended to hold videos.  Remember videos?  You can't give 'em away now - except to op shops.  We sent a pile to one of the town's op shops a while ago.  Obviously there are still people out there who watch movies on video, but they must be getting fewer and fewer.  I think we need to clean out our few remaining ones before it's too late.  Now that painting is nearly done, it might be time for another patch of de-cluttering around the house.  I'm noticing more and more books that I've finally decided I can live without.  The bookshelves might start to look bare...!

Not a disaster, thank goodness

Well, it's been a bit of a day.  First we helped at the monthly church lunch this morning - and over lunchtime, of course.  It was a barbecue day, so I was cooking onions, as I have done traditionally since we started these lunches.  Beautiful day (following an equally beautiful day yesterday) and I probably got my neck sunburnt.  I mention the beautiful days because we've had a long run of rainy days, or days with bitter, sharp winds, or a combination of both.  Seeing the sun for more than a few minutes at a time is a great relief.  

Because it was so lovely yesterday, my wife and I went for a walk along the road that runs beside the reservoir up on Dalziel Rd.  We'd never been down there before, and eventually it peters out and becomes the lead-in to some private properties, but we got a fair walk out of it, with a moderate amount of hill-climbing.  There's a deer farm along there, so we and the deer inspected each other (and the dog did too) both going and coming back, and they performed intricate manoeuvres whenever we tried to count how many there were.  (Forty-ish, we decided.)  On one of the properties (which appear to be mostly lifestyle blocks of several acres) there was a host of gum trees, a wonderful cathedral sight, with rich, dense grass beneath.

As we drove back home again, via a road that used to be gravel and is now sealed (and was unpleasant to drive on when it was only gravel, because it's fairly steep in places) we saw some small bird that appeared to have things dangling from it on either side.  At first I thought they were wings, but they remained stationery when the bird flew.  Some curious decoration, and not a bird I recognise at all.

In the afternoon we shovelled some more bark mulch onto our garden, and I went for an audition for the play on the life of Rosalie Macgeorge that our church is putting on at Easter next year - it's the church's 150th anniversary.   And that was pretty much enough to wear us out for the day...

But back to today.  After we'd finished with the lunch at church, we decided to head straight down to Port Chalmers, where Sunny Side Up (the a cappella group I sing with) was doing six songs at Iona Church, as part of that church's fundraising.  (A million dollars are required just to bring the church back to its normal state.)

We thought we'd kill the extra time we had before the concert started by having a cup of coffee in Port Chalmers.  We nearly didn't get there.  On the way down, my wife was eating the salad she'd brought with her.  She started to cough, then choke and splutter, and then just choke full stop.  I stopped the car - it took a moment for me to realise that she was trying to get her breath - but I had no idea how to help her.  Apparently a stringy bit of salad had gone the wrong way down and was caught at the back of her throat.  She tried to reach into her mouth to get it, but her fingers couldn't grasp it because it was too slippery.  I tried, with no result either.  She grabbed a kitchen cloth that we had in the car for no obvious reason and, because it was dry and had some grip, managed to grasp the bit of lettuce and pull it out.  Messy and extremely scary.  For both of us.

Onto Port Chalmers feeling rather edgy after that experience, and had a coffee in a cafe near the Church.   The concert had an interesting mix of artists, with Owen Rooney as compère.  Apart from SSU, there was a pianist, an Irish comedian/baritone (the pianist accompanied him too), two very good saxophonists (one of whom I'd seen playing at the Competitions a few weeks ago), a quartet of singers made up of some of the top people from SSU (known as One Lucky Guy because there are three women and one man in it); a woman singing her own compositions accompanying herself on guitar, and an organist (I think the church's organist, in fact).  One Lucky Guy are a great combination, and do some marvellous, jazzy, a cappella arrangements.  The composer's songs had interesting guitar accompaniments, but didn't seem to have an awful lot of lyrical content, though the singer had a good voice.  The Irish baritone, who had a lovely voice that was still holding up even though he obviously wasn't young, told some good clean jokes, and sang some old favourites from the Irish ballad repertoire (not Danny Boy, thank goodness).  The pianist's solos left a little to be desired; I got the impression he'd played them a lot (he plays at rest homes and such) and that his heart wasn't quite in it.  I might have been wrong.  The organist....well, I'm not sure what was happening up there in the organ loft, but it was a bit dodgy at times!

And home...

Heavenly Choirs

Sang with Sunny Side Up again today, at the 'Heavenly Choirs concert' in Knox Church. The concert was a fundraiser for the Hospital Chaplaincy service, and went smoothly and successfully. Hopefully they made a few thousand dollars out of it.

I didn't feel quite so secure in my singing today, even though I knew the pieces. Just one of those days when you're more edgy than other times. Anyway, after we'd had afternoon tea at Knox, a good number of us trooped up to the house of a couple who are in SSU, and had an early tea of soup and buns and anything else people brought with them.

And a singsong. A good old-fashioned singsong.

Also in the concert were the Dunedin Harmony Chorus - we didn't get to hear them, unfortunately, being stuck backstage at that point. They were followed by the Southern Consort of Voices; these people were practicing when we arrived, and were singing some very difficult stuff and singing it well.

In the second half there were three secondary school choirs: Barock (as opposed to baroque), a strong group of boys and girls who sang very well, a girls' choir (their name escapes me because I've lost the programme) of about 25 young ladies who did a great Mumma Mia and a rather more serious piece that showed them off well but wasn't quite so peppy...!

The boys' choir at the end seemed just a little under par - perhaps it was because some of their singers were at the Cleveland Awards this afternoon. The whole group, choirs and audience finished up singing The Hallelujah Chorus. Great stuff.

Debut

Last night, at the RSA Choir concert (that's the Returned Services Association Choir) I made my debut as a singer with the acapella group, Sunny Side Up. I wrote about them back in May after going to a concert in which they were one of several singing groups. At the time I said to my wife, if I was going to join any singing group, it would be them. At a meal with several people a couple of weeks later, three of whom were members of SSU, the subject of me thinking about joining them came up, and a week later I'd started going to their Sunday afternoon rehearsals. And then a couple of weeks later my wife started to come too.

I've always enjoyed singing, and though New Zealand society on the surface seems to imply that it's not a thing for males to do, plenty of them around the country do it. In fact the two soloists at the concert last night were young men, and the 50-plus RSA choir is (still) all male. (There's another all-male choir here in Dunedin too: the Royal Male Choir, and plenty of secondary schools have male choirs.)

I grew up in a Catholic family, so we always sang at church - admittedly it was the same half dozen songs, year in and year out, taken off a cardboard sheet that had been printed before I was born, I suspect; it was still in use when I left my home town in the 60s. And as a young pianist I used to sing my way through complete musical comedy scores. No one ever commented that it didn't sound that hot, but I suspect it didn't always.

And then I was continually involved with singers from my teenage years, as an accompanist - that's continued to this day. After my wife and I came back from overseas we joined a Pentecostal Church, where the singing could go on for half an hour or more before the preacher got up to speak. So singing's 'in the blood' as it were.

The only time I've ever sung solo in a concert, that I can remember, was maybe 15 years ago when a group I was involved in presented a night of George Gershwin songs. The director had found one called 'Blah blah blah blah blah' (yup!) and as a bit of a joke, I sang it and accompanied myself. I think it put that particular director off my singing for good: he's never encouraged me to sing since...

Anyway, as a member of the thirty-plus-strong SSU, my singing blends, (read: doesn't stand out). I wondered once or twice last night if a note I was singing wasn't quite what the rest of the basses were singing, but the notes still seemed to harmonise!

SSU music is often lively, and in the slower songs, full of striking harmonies. My wife and I have heard the group on a number of occasions over the years, and have always been attracted to their particular sound. Last night we sang a couple of African-based songs (easy for the basses: we provide an ongoing rhythmic line underneath), a fabulous arrangement of Total Praise, the powerful Up Above My Head and a joyful spiritual. And we sing again on Sunday, at Knox Church, along with several other choirs. Different songs, mostly, so it's quite a full-on week for the group.

The RSA itself was in good form, though we missed the first part of the first half of the show, being backstage getting ready. I particularly liked Shenadoah and Cwm Rhondda (which was sung in its English version: Guide me, O thou great Jehovah). Some of the faster songs suffer a bit from so many voices trying to get their tongues around lots of words in a way that's tidy, but there seemed to be plenty of energy in the choir, which is great - the oldest singer is ninety (!)

The two soloists were Ben Madden and Alex Wilson, and, from what I heard of them, these are splendid pair of voices, with promising careers ahead of them.

Big Sing

After seeing a tweet late yesterday afternoon saying: Concert tonight glenroy auditorium Dunedin. Best harmony singing around. Raising money for chch. 7.30 pm $10 entry - it was from mackersline, the username of one of the ODT writers - and then getting further confirmation (when I struggled to find it online) saying; Barbershop choruses from dunedin and chch women from Dunedin and two other Dunedin chorus, we decided to go and check it out, $10 a head being a reasonable price for us pensioners! (Just have to stick that in.)

When I did find it online, I noticed that Sunny Side Up were also performing, and that made the effort of getting out well worthwhile. We're good friends with some of the people in this group, but that's not the only reason we like to hear them sing. They bring a vibrancy to their singing that's different to anything else around (in Dunedin), and last night was no exception.


Their items came in the middle of the programme. They're not a slick group in the sense of choreographing their items, though they don't exactly stand still either, but they have some excellent singers (at least three of whom are people we know) and they perform songs that are out of the ordinary rather than old favourites from yesteryear; they pick up material that has its roots in Negro spirituals, or comes out of the folk streams of different countries (often including American folk). Last night they also sang Hey Jude with a strong solo from Bill, and Up above my head with an absolutely superb solo from Karen. Bill and Karen are also part of a singing quartet we've heard on several occasions: in fact they've more than once sung at gatherings such as birthdays we've attended, or put on ourselves (where they've happened to be part of the guest list).

Sunny Side Up was also the most 'diverse' group of the evening: one of the singers was in a wheel chair; they had an Indian woman playing drums a couple of times, and the people come from a wide range of backgrounds. This diversity was emphasized perhaps by their scarves, the only item they had in common (this group doesn't wear any sort of uniform) - these ranged over the whole colour spectrum.

Anyway, you can see I (we) like this group!

But we also liked the other groups too, and the range of singing talent in Dunedin was shown again and again. Some groups are stronger than others, which is only to be expected; nevertheless there was no group about which it could be said that they lacked the necessary skills to perform.

The evening opened with the Highland Harmony men's group. These guys tend to sing barbershop style songs arranged for choir, and I enjoyed them a lot - they also had the advantage of being on first. There's something soul-stirring about the sound of men singing in harmony. One of my favourite movie moments comes in Crimson Tide (or it might be The Hunt for Red October), where, as the sailors stand out in the pouring rain waiting to go on board their submarine, the sound track is filled with a choir of men singing the old hymn, For those in peril on the deep. If the film consisted of nothing else, it would be worth watching (listening to, perhaps).

A women's group, Distinctive Sounz, followed. Again they did their items well, but they seemed to have more altos and sopranos, and this somewhat limited the range of what they could sing.

Sunnyside Up came next and was followed by the Canterbury Plainsmen, a very experienced men's group from Christchurch. (Something else that's noticeable about these groups: the age range is often huge - this ChCh group had at least one teenager, and several guys who would have been well into their sixties, if not older.) The Plainsmen were excellent, but their style is very much national competition, which I suspect is based on an American approach to these kinds of barbershop choirs: the leader up the front doesn't just conduct the choir, he (or she in the case of the Dunedin Harmony Chorus, who followed next) is a bit of an actor too - very much so in the case of the Plainsmen. This is something that either suits your taste or doesn't; I'm not sure that either of us were enthused about the leader of the Plainsmen's approach, but it was a kind of integrated choreography which certainly gives some visual interest to the proceedings.

This choir has its own 'Unnamed Quartet' - the leader (singing as second tenor?) was part of this along with a guy from the choir who did a kind of falsetto solo version of Bring him home (from Les Mis) at one other point, and a young bass and baritone. Very stylish, though each of them was better as part of the group than when singing briefly as soloists.

There was also a female quartet called Nota Bene. Nice title. They're part of the Dunedin Harmony Chorus (formerly the Sweet Adelines, if my understanding is correct). This is an award-winning choir too, and you can see why. They're lively, the choir's full of good singers, and they work superbly together. (We also know one of the choir members well, but don't let that make you think I'm biased here!)

Nota Bene did a couple of items, substituting one about chocolate for one of the advertised pieces, because the latter was being sung elsewhere in the evening. We really enjoyed their items: the words were clear and snappy, the harmonies secure, and the niftiness of their vocal movement with each other was top notch. (That's another factor about this concert: clarity of words was a plus; so often I hear choirs from the classical stream who sing beautifully but don't seem to have any concern for the words.)


The same applied when the full choir came on. This is a choir that deserves the awards it's received. Plus their sparkly uniform was just great...!

Finally the Plainsmen got together with the Highland Harmony guys for a big sing of some old favourites. As always they did very well, but I think by that time of the evening I'd had my fill, and I needed to get up and stretch - we could have done with an interval: two hours plus was just a bit long to be sitting on seats that aren't the softest.