We break our Aylesbury Duck! ...(and a Wedding)

Ho ho ho... (duck, Aylesbury... geddit?)

Lovely afternoon in the beautiful town of Aylesbury... as part of the Avondale Summer Music Festival... Our first time in the place, I reckon (excellent to look around the place before the concert - perhaps my colleagues might correct me if I am lying & we have been before!)  The weather stayed fair and we entertained the assembled masses under sunny skies & our Madrigal to McCartney show was appreciated greatly...

Also lovely to see our friend Irene married to Steve a few days ago - we wish them all the very best in their future together....

Other jolly news.. it remains warm and (mainly) sunny & England have remembered how to play cricket.
Great Commonwealth Games too...

Have a splendid Summer!

Philippsburg & Frankfurt-Höchst DE + TV & Radio

Two more German joys...

First the Jugendstil splendour of Philippsburg...

 

...beautiful hall from the outside and a fantastic place in which to sing... a final Best of British performance for the moment, and the last of four gigs with Gareth Hunt - excellent to have him around for these few days...

Then a second return visit to Höchst (very near to Frankfurt), for a Madrigal to McCartney show.

Both audiences were warm and delightful and fully ready to partake in our shows, and great technicians too!
Sales of Songs of Love and War were very fine - we have started spreading our new CD around Europe!

Apologies if anyone tries to watch us on BBC4 tonight - the programme was moved to Mondays and thus the first wee bit was on near the end of last night's viewing of Rule Britannia on BBC4 at 9PM... the next two episodes are on the 15th and the 22nd - at a similar time (we have a small bit in each it seems!)

Also:       BBC Radio 3 - In Tune - 4.30-6: Friday 25th April
                BBC Radio London - Gaby Roslin show - 2.30 - 5: Sunday 27th April

Then on to Crazy Coqs 30th, 31st April and 1st May - 8pm

Minden and Wunsiedel, DE

Two more concerts.... just much of the length of England apart!
Much Union Flag-waving in both north and south Germany... (from Minden in North Rhine-Westphalia to Wunsiedel in Bavaria!)

Quite a long drive by British standards, but the autobahn worked its magic & all felt fine.

Minden an especially beautiful theatre, built in the v.early 20th-century (here it is):

 

 

Staff as marvellous as the theatre is lovely!

...and after that long drive, delightful to back in the arms of Wunsiedel, and with our old friend Christian on the sound desk... excellent.
Very well looked after as always... Gareth especially taken with the huge dark beer on offer at the bar last night (tho' not overly so, of course).

More Best of British in Philippsburg tonight, then it is a farewell to pianist Gareth Hunt as we head to Hoechst for a Madrigal to McCartney on Monday...

Temse, BE

As we watch the Thames on the TV swelling to fearful proportions, we remember being in Temse, BE a few days back...
Temse has the French name Tamise (from the Romano-Gaulish Tamisiacum), so has the same root as Thames...

But enough linguistics... we had a splendid time in Temse - a really quite large community, of which I am ashamed to say we had never heard!
They bought lots of songbooks and CDs, and thus...
...lovely to see a large audience... & our ever-hard-working BE agent, Thomas Van der Spiegel (NOT Thomas Van den Spiegel the basketball player)... great to see Thomas... and indeed to share some splendid dark Belgian beer after the show.

Eurostar a wee bit delayed on the way home, but not too much - home in time to watch England beat Scotland at Rugby.

Forgot to say that in Linkebeek, we saw our old friend and opera singer, Margaret Lysack - good to catch up with her.

We have some filming on Thursday for TV - some of it outside... hope the rain is good to us here in London (and everywhere else too)...
...more info on TV anon...

Engis & Linkebeek, BE

Two nights at Engis and one at Linkebeek allowed us to flex our linguistic muscles... Engis (near Liège) was indeed French-speaking (tho' we had been discussing a gig in En-giss and not On-jee); and Linkebeek is on the linguistic border just away from Brussels, so we spoke some Dutch, but tried not to get embroiled in the language frictions in this part of Belgium (there is a French-speaking mayor here)!

But a splendid time was had by all... we were performing a cappella concerts, Madrigal to McCartney, and as ever, enjoyed our forays into the Belgian countryside!

Now we have arrived in Temse for our last show of this tour... the glorious Eurostar home to flooded & wet England tomorrow! (the rain has just hit Belgium).

 

Bad Elster & Halle

Just realising that starting these last two emails' titles with BAD is not such a great idea!
Ho hum...

Here's the wonderful frontage of the König Albert Theater, Bad Elster... with our name in red... hooray!

Great theatre with great staff - and excellent restaurant just around the corner... yum!
Lovely acoustic in this glorious theatre, and a super enthusiastic audience... & a great penchant for cricket tea towels... we will have to get/create more...!

In Bad Elster we were just on the border of the Czech Republic, and it another very beautiful spa town, where people were taking holidays/cures etc in very lovely surroundings...

Then it was on to Halle, where Handel first learnt his trade... and hence a statue in the main square (just around the corner from China garden restaurant where I got my dinner, which I am sure was the height of fashion in Handel's time)...

... should you wish to look up Handel's skirt, this is the place to come.

We sang in a beautiful Konzerthalle which was/is a church, just shy of the main square; The 12 Tenors are coming here in March next year... (is that too many all at once?)... We had the great privilege of sitting on the double bass stools of the orchestra who rehearse here - what joys...

Another excellent audience, lots of happy smiling faces in the front row... very good of the happy people to come to the front!

Just one more concert this year; Jena at 17:00.... then roll on 2014!

 

Upcoming London Concert - July 9th

Come and see us in central London:
Grosvenor Chapel, Tuesday July 9th at 7.30....
A joint concert with St Edmund's School, Canterbury...

Get your tickets here

You can see two songs which can only be heard on CD - Love Makes the World Go Round (from Music of the Night - which requires 22 parts) & Over the Rainbow (from A Tribute to Hollywood - which requires 8 parts)... a must for all!

See you there!

Skipton, then St Bride Inst. once more

Train trip up north to a crisp and frosty Yorkshire (much like the rest of the crisp and frosty UK, I suppose) led us to Skipton... where we are returning after a few years.

Skipton was indeed looking particularly Christmassy, and the gateway to the dales shone with beauty...
Nice bookshops & great fish & chips too... Lovely evening, and the audience were kind and appreciative of our Madrigal to McCartney show (we did Christmas last time!)

Particularly delighted to have two old friends from Croydon in the audience, who years ago escaped the city life for the better air/views/stonework in Yorkshire... lovely to catch up.
I do rather think, we'll be back up here... it's all rather glorious!

Then rather too quickly chased back home, but to another cute Christmas evening, once again, at the St Bride Institute - definitely for the good and the good of that organisation!... a delight too...

Then it's Germany come Friday...

Bonheiden and Jezus-Eik

Two lovely full gigs in Belgium, performing our Madrigal to McCartney show...
Proof once more that it is a splendid country to visit... all the staff and people around are so friendly, helpful & uncomplicated... and the food is so nice!
And all managed with a nose full of phlegm... thank goodness it is a nose and not a throat... luckily only I am thus afflicted.
Two more in the next two days, giving our Best of British programme.... today in Jezus-Eik [Jesus Oak, btw] we had a rather British time too; it is just down the road from the English school over here.... lots of children [some Flemish speakers and some English] had a concert in the theatre, and we sang at the end of their time... they were delighted to see how silly it is possible to be whilst singing!
As ever, both new and old friends were about... including today someone we worked for last in Germany in 1992; hoping it will be less than 19 years before we meet once more!
We continue to spread Songs of Cricket amongst the unsuspecting Belgians.
Tomorrow we welcome back pianist, Paul Plummer, who now works in Austria; we have not worked with him for many a while... let's hope he has some cold remedy with him; it will be great to see him...