Coaching

My Irish tour continued with a weekend’s work with Ireland Unlimited, the country’s premier barbershop chorus. Drawn from across the country, they meet for one day a month, and the skills developed centrally have also been significant in supporting and developing the skills in local choruses. I suspect Ireland Unlimited of having a significant hand in the improvement in performances I noticed when judging the IABS Convention this time last year.

The invitation to Ireland Unlimited’s retreat was the kernel around which my mini-tour had grown. I was working alongside Jon Conway, who has been working with IU on singing for some time, and as ever it was both stimulating and relaxing to cox-and-box with another coach. Having different faces in front of them keeps the chorus fresher, and we each get more chances to catch our breath and collect our thoughts, so our coaching is that much more focused and to the point. And of course it is always a joy and delight to see experienced colleagues in action and learn from them.

My coaching trip to Ireland continued with a day’s work near Dublin with Nota Bene quartet. They have formed under this name relatively recently, though three of them competed last year in Galway under a different name, and two have sung together in quartet for nearly five years now. This kind of profile offers both specific challenges such as adjusting existing vocal relationships to take account of the new singers’ voices and ways of feeling music, and specific advantages, with the know-how of the more experienced quartet singers supporting the newer additions.

Thursday was the start of a short tour coaching women’s barbershop in Ireland. The first weekend of October has traditionally been the date for the Irish Association of Barbershop Singers’ annual convention, but this year was the first of a new pattern of holding it every two years to allow more space for other activities.

As it happens, there has been enough clamouring from the foreign visitors who flock to the Irish Convention each year about how much they’ll miss the event that the pattern may yet revert back to yearly. But in the meantime, these other activities have for some ensembles involved extra coaching sessions.

My first stop was Beating Time chorus in Bray, co. Wicklow. My remit here was twofold: to work with a new song the chorus are in the process of developing and to work the director and her deputies on conducting skills.

Wednesday took me up to Leeds to work with the White Rosettes on a collection of three stupendously big David Wright arrangements, any one of which would be a major undertaking for a normal chorus. But the White Rosettes aren’t particularly interested in normality, and it gave us the opportunity to explore the specific challenges that monster charts present.

The vocal challenges are those of stamina and control, of course. And the White Rosettes didn’t need my help with these. They operate at a high level of vocal fitness, engendered not just by the challenges they set themselves in their repertoire but also by the pace and intensity of their rehearsal habits.

But music such as this sets mental challenges too, and they can’t be solved purely by doing what you’d do for regular pieces, only more so.

Thursday evening saw final episode of my trio of visits to Bristol, this time to work Avon Harmony and their new director Alex de Bruin. It must be at least six years since I last coached the chorus, but I was still greeted like a long-lost friend. And the club chair had baked a cake; I like her leadership style.

We covered a varied range of both vocal and musical areas during the evening, making it one of those sessions that feels hard to summarise. One theme that emerged in more than one context, though, was the idea that it's okay to be not-yet-skilled at something - in fact, better to dive on in an achieve it only intermittently than use a work-around that produces a competent half-way version.

As an interlude in my Bristol week, I spent Sunday over near Coventry with the Belles of Three Spires and their director Lucy Edmonds. This was the second of two full-day rehearsals for them, so they were very well into the groove. You could see a certain amount of tiredness, too, though this was mostly apparent at the start and end of the day; once we all got going the momentum of the process took over. And if they had to dig a bit deeper for mental stamina as we went on, that will return rewards in the coming weeks as they consolidate the weekend’s work.

As with my last visit, I was in a dual role of both working with the chorus and with the director. But the balance this time was much more director-focused. As the day went on we developed a working method whereby I was coaching the chorus primarily via Lucy’s posture and gesture. Our goal was to see how much positive change in their performance we could achieve via adjusting the directing technique rather than giving instructions to the singers.

My second coaching visit to the Bristol area came on Saturday, when I spent the day with Fascinating Rhythm, based just north of the city. In my last visit, we had been exploring David Wright’s arrangement of ‘South Rampart Street Parade’; this was on the agenda again, as was Rob Campbell’s arrangement of ‘Once Upon a Time’.

Our first major theme for the day was integration, in both musical and performative senses.

Thursday evening was the first of three coaching trips to Bristol in the space of a week. Entirely a coincidence as it happens, but I am going to feel properly up to date on all the news from that part of the world by the end of it. This first trip was to coach Bristol Fashion, with whom regular readers will know I have been working a couple of times a year for three years now.

I commented last time I worked with them how gratifying it is to have a sense of building on skills that have been embedded in the months between visits, and I couldn't help but notice them using exercises in their warm-up that we had introduced back in May. I'm sure they do this when I'm not there to see it too!