Headphones, click-tracks, and old trumpets
Shortly after the choir last sang in church on Sunday 15th March, performance cancellations started to come thick and fast. The lead up to Easter is always a busy time for singers, both in churches and on concert platforms, but in the space of a few days it became clear that this year would be very different. By the time we reached Easter Sunday, not only had the flurry of musical activity associated with Holy Week – in and out of church – completely dissipated, but all of my upcoming performances for the next six months and beyond had been cancelled. Scores for imminent new operatic productions found themselves back on shelves, concert shirts remained un-ironed, and frantic attempts were made to get refunds for flights and train tickets that had been booked for performances, with Ryanair in particular doing their very best to fill the now vacant hours of one particular Tuesday morning – and afternoon.
So, what now? Well, after running out of refunds to chase up, and having had a go at baking some bread, the thing that I think we were all missing most was singing, and singing together. This maybe seems obvious, but I don’t think it was to me at the time. Sure, I missed the music, the act of singing itself, and the sense of purpose and professional identity from being able to carry out my work, but our job is also inherently interactive; communication is a vital component of good performance, both among performers and between them and an audience. In fact, in many ways it’s the whole point of performance, and so in a life suddenly without singing there was a real sense of social loss, a break in the circle, and a feeling of having lost the ability to communicate.
The choir’s weekly hymns were initially conceived as a way of keeping the choir in touch with the congregation at Hampstead, and the hope was that in gathering together to sing familiar music at home, we might feel connected even though forced apart. For me, the weekly task of preparing these hymns has not only provided direct and meaningful contact with my wonderful friends and colleagues in the choir, but has also afforded me the opportunity to stay in touch with my own communicative capabilities as a musician and as a social being.
The photos show the set up I use to record the hymns (trumpets, microphone, laptop, keyboard etc), one of the complete audio files for the most recent hymn, and one of a little drawing of a slightly disconnected circle ..!
