...the last fortnight has been busy...
We started in late November in the splendid Voice Mania Festival in Vienna, where we performed a 'mitsing' concert as we have previously in Bayreuth...
Hearing a room of Viennese singing Mozart's Ave Verum Corpus with us was especially tremendous in the very home of Classical music!
But they loved everything else too... seemed to know London's Burning round already! - and sang Oh Susanna (Foster) as if they were from Alabama!
Lovely to be back once again, and looking forward to many returns!
We also chased around the city doing some filming... we cannot say much more about that yet... but we will very soon... we also filmed in London the following week... all to be revealed anon!
Then it was a sojourn to Germany.
We started with three nights singing in a beautiful arts centre-cum-restaurant situated in a grand old Post Office - don't think low-ceiling British, think art gallery, in Pirmasens!
Three lovely evenings of good food and Christmas jollity...
The first made all the more glorious by our luggage having been sent to Nuremberg instead of Frankfurt... just a few hundred miles out.
In general we're pretty lucky with luggage going astray and have previously had to borrow clothes when one bag has gone missing... all four of our bags not appearing has only happened once before...
So we did a vast majority of the first night in our own clothes. no-one minded, and many thought this was an elaborate joke!
...and here we are (we looked better for 68% of the time!)!
But the three nights there were a delight, it was good to be still for a while! We were treated very well and shared lots of lovely food!
Sonja - who runs the place - and Tobi the technician were terrific (& he even helped our doing a wee bit more filming - splendid chap!)
We had a little drive to Hameln (where the rats fled from) - just the five hours - for a 6PM concert in the theatre there... our third visit & a lovely place with excellent technicians with imagination and skill.
And we were joined by Chris Hatt at the piano - hotfoot from helping to prepare a new production of musical Chaplin in Belgium... very pleased he could fit us in to his schedule.
We had a delightful evening singing many of the tracks from the new CD - A Song for Christmas in case you missed it! - for the very first time live...
...and here's a review (in German, but all should get the gist!)
We finished early enough to have a wonderful meal in our hotel, just a few hundred metres from the theatre (always a joy)
And then whilst fine dining is in the mind, we had the delight of performing in the Church in the grounds of the Michelin-starred restaurant Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons in Great Milton, OXON.... they run a few evenings before Christmas coupled with music and readings...
We were paired last night with the hilarious John Sergeant, who read some terrific pieces... from Sue Townsend's Adrian Mole and Richmal Crompton's Just William; to a letter home from WWI and the Grosmiths' Diary of a Nobody... delightful to meet him again, we met last year at the Royal Albert Hall Bloodwise gala.
The night before us, my old school choir were performing, Trinity Boys Choir, and it was lovely to get a cheery message from the Director of Music as we arrived (via the organisers!)
We sang even more music from our new album and the atmosphere in the church was Festivity itself... we were joined by the excellent Paul Plummer - great he had time to come down from Glasgow and share the evening with us; always a delight to work with.
Having heard music from Germany, Belgium, Britain and France, & the title song of our CD - A Song for Christmas AND had three singalong carols, the people left the church with Let It Snow! on their mind... even tho' it had indeed been sunny and pretty warm all day!
Merry Christmas one and all...
