Thursday 20 December 2012

Rebecca visits EOES rehearsal

Music for Everyone’s chamber choir members were delighted to welcome our adopted composer, Rebecca, on her first visit. We all met up in Nottingham on a normal Wednesday rehearsal evening in November. The plan is for Rebecca to include some material specially for this choir in the final piece, but also to try out some preliminary ideas with them when she is ready, going on to rework and develop them for the big choir setting.

But her first visit wasn't just a meeting and greeting occasion. Rebecca had opted to get to know the choir from the inside, taking a seat in the soprano section for an evening working on a Buxtehude Cantata and the Poulenc Christmas Motets. Her decision to ‘embed’ was really appreciated by the choir and everyone felt comfortable with her from the start. Angela Kay, MfE’s Artistic Director, was in action conducting the rehearsal; so Rebecca was able to experience Angela’s lively, skillful and motivating approach at first hand. Although the big choir is not auditioned and includes some less specialist singers, Angela’s ability to inspire everyone to achieve great performances narrows any ability gaps quite amazingly! Pictured at the end of the evening, Rebecca and Angela certainly look happy with the partnership.

We are currently discussing possible themes for the new work and hunting up interesting texts for Rebecca to consider setting to music – we’ll probably need a bit of a joint confab just on this, pretty soon! Meanwhile MfE’s preparations for the next big choir event are well under way and we look forward to welcoming Rebecca to our Verdi Requiem course and concert weekends in late January and early February, when she will really get the measure of the big choir and orchestra, the concert hall where her composition will be premiered and the cast of hundreds she’s going to be writing for!

Monday 3 December 2012

Rebecca's first blog!

When, in my Adopt A Composer interview, I was asked "in an ideal world, if you could write anything, for any forces, what would that be?", I answered that, given no limitations, I would love to do something exciting for very large forces, involving both choir and orchestra. Never did I imagine that I would actually be offered the opportunity to work with both!

 So being paired with the wonderful Music For Everyone really is a dream come true for me - if the prospect of writing for a choir of 250 is a little daunting! The piece will celebrate the organisation's 30th anniversary, and at our first meeting we had plenty of ideas. We talked about the possibility a suite of short contrasting movements, so there is something for everyone, and keeping it broadly filmic in feel. Other than that I am keeping my mind open until I have got to know the ensembles a little better. Everybody involved has already been incredibly welcoming, and I can't wait for my first visit, which is coming up very soon.