Second rehearsal last night, and this year’s Choir is taking repertoire on and throwing it back at me as fast as I’m throwing it at them.

Well..nearly everyone!

Barnum’s Dawn, which we performed last year, is a special request for the December Gala concert celebrating the new building from the Deputy Vice-Chancellor, and we began last night by looking at the middle of the piece, exploring the intense colours of ‘doors upon doors’ before moving to explore the rest of the piece. Finzi’s evergreen My Spirit Sang All Day started to come to life as well – this piece moves through a wealth of harmonies, both related and not-so-related (!) keys, at a lively pace; no sooner has the piece opened with an uplifting ascending unison phrase in G major, then you suddenly find yourself in the middle of the next page in G# major…

We’re continuing to explore my piece for the December concert, getting the rhythmic patterns with which the piece starts into place and learning the second section with its dissonances and clashing semitones.

A key moment in February’s concert will come at the end of the first half, when we’ll be singing a setting of ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ by Sir John Tavener, which we looked at for the first time last night. It’s a wonderfully tranquil piece, which consists of one or two phrases which simply repeat, creating a highly evocative and serene moment; we’re hoping to leave the audience in a contemplative state at the end of the first half.

This year’s student conductor, Emma, led the choir through part of You Are The New Day, a piece she’s chosen for the second half of the February concert. As is customary with barbershop-style, close-harmony singing, it’s actually pretty tricky to sing, for all that it sounds very easy, and the group rose to it with aplomb.

We finished by looking at two more of my Forgotten Children’s Songs – it’s the songs that have been ‘forgotten,’ that is, rather than the children – a lively ‘Stick Dance’ with which the suite opens and the more lyrical second movement,  ‘Cradle Song.’ The choir have responded readily to the child-like nature of the pieces, especially the rustic ‘Dance’ from last week, and have embraced the mock nursery-rhyme language and the individual character of each piece with great vigour.

And not only is she conducting the choir; Emma brought along ‘Welsh cake’ to the rehearsal last night, which sets a dangerous precedent for future rehearsals…