Singing for my supper

A well-timed nudge expressing pleasure that I'd "finally posted again" (!) reminded me I hadn't yet posted my annual roundup for the year. Somehow while working on that I was also moved to experiment with a "new year, new look" for the blog so apologies for any glitches - work in progress! So, without further ado: In 2010 ..... I finally caught up on about 5 years of British television I'd managed to miss; this project started out merely as entertainment, but quickly became something much more artistically important and, in a way, prompted the theme of dramatic exploration that drove my performing year. We started the year with North & South and were bowled over by this amazing production - it would be hard to overstate what a tremendous artistic "reboot" it prompted (it even warranted its own blog entry ). Impressed as we were, we decided to give some of Richard Armitage's other productions a try which led us first back to S...

As mentioned in yesterday's post, I was one of the lucky 15 invited to join David Hobby on an "advocacy journalism" shoot (definitely a case of being online on the right day at the right time and thus responding before he closed the opportunity!!). The landscape and architectural subject matter is very different from the kind of thing I usually shoot, but I really wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to stretch my legs and, of course, work with Mr Strobist himself, David Hobby, the genius behind www.strobist.com . Other than the fact that I have little experience with this type of photography - most of what I do involves people in relatively controlled environments rather than buildings or fields and at the whim of nature's light! - the most intimidating part of the day was that we had to turn over our unedited files to David. The protocol was for us to shoot - jpg, no less (I always shoot raw if only as a CYA measure!) - mark the ones we liked b...

The worlds collide. Again. Sunday, we opened the Poe recital. It went extremely well for a first outing, I'm happy to say: a momentary glitch as the page-turner grabbed 3 pages at once resulting in the usual flurry and slapping of paper that accompanies such things, but otherwise it went pretty smoothly. The Poe-settings were well received, and we can also now say that we have taken Erlkoenig and nailed it to the wall! Actually, if I'm honest, that was probably one of the most enjoyable pieces of the afternoon for me - I've wanted to sing it for many years but never had the right occasion or quuiiitte the courage to ask a pianist to learn it for me, so I'm thrilled to have done it at last! Similarly, it was a real pleasure to finish the program with Sondheim's A Little Priest from Sweeney Todd - while it is a memorizing nightmare ("Wait - was that verse vicar or friar? Is this the one about beadle or rear admiral?!"), it is an absolute delight to perfo...