Music Director’s monthly review – February 2023

With no scheduled performances for RMC this month, the gents have been working hard in anticipation for the St David’s Day concert on March 1st when they will be joined by Risca Primary School Choir and their director, our very own accompanist, Alison Thomas. 

With nearly all of the repertoire for this concert being sung in Welsh, some of the best male choir repertoire can be heard in this concert, from Gwahoddiad and O Gymru! to an arrangement by our very own MD Emeritus, Martin Hodson, of Ar hyd y nos. 

Alongside this, we’ve still found time to focus on our tour repertoire and our contest pieces for the Llangollen International Eistedfodd. 

We now have two drop down microphones installed in our rehearsal room, which many of the gents may not have even noticed as they are quite inconspicuous. These are also paired with a separate headset for myself which has made the sound quality of our live streamed rehearsals even better. Alongside this, technical wizard, Andy “Gandalf” Williams has been able to use these microphones to create real time recordings of our repertoire, allowing us to play them back straight away or at a later date and reflect on our “in house” performances. 

It was interesting for me as their conductor to see how critical the gents were of some of these recordings, and what stood out to them in the performances. Many comments and opinions were shared during these sessions and some interesting discussions developed as a result. 

It was fair to say that as a group we enjoyed spending some rehearsal time being able to have a conversation about the music as opposed to just rehearsing it and we’ll definitely make use of these recordings further. 

Personally, after hearing some of the harsh critique the gents came out with about themselves, I feel I now have license to be even more cutthroat in rehearsals than I am now. (Watch out boys, you might regret this) 

In all, though short, this month has been useful for us as a choir and we’ve done a lot of challenging work in a short space of time which again is testament to how talented a choir Risca really is. 

And as there’s no rest for the wicked, it would make sense for us all to be back into rehearsals the day after our St David’s Day concert, where we will be diving straight back into our preparation for the tour to Chester, Eistedfodd participation, and annual concert later in the year.

Matthew Harrison
February 2023