Risca Male Choir Blog #6
September has come and gone, and we’re still waiting patiently to meet again to rehearse. However, there is a glimmer of hope: the Welsh Government has laid out a plan for choirs to follow enabling them to return to rehearsals. At the moment, we are not allowed to come back to practice, but at least we have an idea of what will eventually happen!
Alison, our accompanist and I have been recording videos to send out recently, but with the local lockdown in Caerphilly, we have not been able to carry on the way we had been going. We will have to find a new way of getting music out to the guys.
Whilst we have been indoors, the BBC Proms made its return to the stage and our screens, with the Last Night of the Proms aired on the 12th of September. There was some controversy around the night as the new director general of the BBC decided to scrap the singing of Rule, Britannia and Land of Hope and Glory, but the decision was reversed after some backlash. Besides that, some of the highlights were the BBC Singers’ socially distanced rendition of Eric Whitacre’s Sleep and Nicola Benedetti playing Vaughan Williams’ Lark Ascending, with the former’s powerful visual effect showing the viewers what the arts are capable of in a time like this.
Another interesting thing happened recently in the world of music; American composer, John Cage, created a project where chords are played on an organ that will span across 639 years… and, to great excitement, the chord changed this month for the first time in 7 years!! The performance began on the 5th of September 2001, in the German city of Halberstadt, and will finish in 2640. Let’s hope Risca Male Choir are still going by then!!
Finally, I am pleased to see some fellow professionals back at work singing and socially distanced from others in their company – especially Trystan Llyr Griffiths, who was meant to be performing with us this month at our Annual Concert. He was with Garsington Opera performing a concert version of Beethoven’s only opera, Fidelio.
Stay safe!
Tomos
A picture of the specially built organ in the church in Halberstadt that will play chords, changing between every 2 to 7 years until 2640!
