15 Jun 2009 - Summer madness

Hello again and many apologies for having been away so long. Blogging always seems to need a good morning's worth of free time and such days have been few and far between. But now, having had a great week in Cardiff at the Singer of the World Competition, I can turn my attention to the rest of the summer and look ahead to many festivals and wonderfully varied programmes. The spring flew past in a flurry of activity. After my tour of Handel with the AAM, Easter fast approached and I spent a week in Porto, performing Jonathan Harvey's 'Passion and Resurrection' at the Casa de Musica. It was a fantastic event, using local Portuguese choirs and a fantastic modern orchestra, and the composer himself was there to oversee our hard work - I think he was happy! Good Friday saw me singing the John Passion for Stephen Layton in St John's Smith Square, a much-loved event and one I thoroughly enjoyed having always been in the choir in the past. There's a fantastic atmosphere to these Polyphony concerts and always a wonderfully warm audience. Easter itself was the stuff of dreams. By a roundabout chance I was invited to perform for the Pope in the Vatican, in a performance of American composer-conductor Andrew T. Miller's 'Birth of Christ'. The concert took place in a splendid Vatican church, bedecked with chandeliers (one of which nearly took a tumble when bumped by a camera jib!), and there were even Hollywood narrators: Jim Caviezel, Michael York and Louis Gossett Jr. Alas, the Aquila earthquake meant that the Pope was unable to attend but it was still an astonishing and certainly memorable event. April and May were then happily busy, and saw me sing in the Crickhowell Festival; in Galeri in Caernarfon; Cadogan Hall with John Rutter; in the Severn Theatre, Shrewsbury with the Armonico Consort; The Anvil at Basingstoke with the OAE; at St Mary Redcliffe, Bristol; in the QEH with the Sixteen in the Thirtieth Birthday Concert (many happy returns!); and in Temple Church performing a lovely small-scale version of the Messiah. June has already taken me to Salisbury Cathedral to perform the Mozart Requiem and some Bruckner from a dizzying height, and of course last week I was lucky enough to be pundit for the BBC 2 Wales coverage of Cardiff Singer: if ever a young singer needed inspiration and reassurance that their career is worthwhile, last week was it! On, then, to a summer of festivals. O for a dry British season..!