Coaching

The weekend's judging panel: Alison, Alan, David, Liz, Linda, Rod and AnnekeI spent last weekend in Veldhoven for the combined Holland Harmony and the Dutch Association of Barbershop Singers convention. It was a nice size of convention – with a total of 21 each of competing quartets and choruses, it had enough participants to give a good sense of occasion, but neither contest was too long to feel like an endless slog. And there was time for every group to have a follow-up coaching session, too, which is so much more useful for onward development than mere spoken or written feedback.

Having judged at the last Holland Harmony convention two years ago, it seemed to me that both the number and standard of competitors had increased noticeably.

CleftomaniaI spent last weekend in the Algarve, working with what are, as far as I know, Portugal’s only barbershop quartet and chorus. When Sylvy Wilks moved out to Portugal four years ago she wasn’t intending to introduce a whole new musical genre there, but she quite quickly found herself part of the local network of singing and performance groups. And when she was asked if she might help re-form a choir that had folded, she chose to make it a barbershop chorus as that was where her primary experience lay, having learned to sing herself with what was then Chiltern Harmony in Amersham. So by a combination of pure luck and the gumption to make things happen, Bella A Cappella was formed.

The main purpose of my visit was to help the quartet, Cleftomania, prepare for their first contest at the Spanish Association of Barbershop Singers convention next month. As well as competing, they will also be taking along a delegation from the chorus, partly as moral support, but mostly to show them why people get so excited about the convention experience. This is only the 2nd SABS convention, but it’s clear that last year’s inaugural event has already done a lot to strengthen the network of barbershop groups in the Iberian peninsula.

I had a return visit to Heartbeat Chorus in Cheshire on Sunday, to work in tandem with one of their other coaches, John Grant. John is an immensely efficient coach, effecting significant changes in performance with a few words and a brief demonstration, and it is both a pleasure and an education to watch him in action. I think the two things that lie at the heart of this efficiency are (a) his listening skills and (b) his ability to prioritise. In fact the two are linked: it is his acuity of perception that allows him to home in on precisely the issue that most needs attention.

The chorus is in good spirits, with their win at the Majestic Choir Festival in Torquay last month having given a useful confidence boost. But they are also developing rapidly, which brings its own inherent energy.

Raymond Warren, who was Professor of Music at Bristol when I studied there used to talk of the way that Brahms so easily falls into what he called the ‘moderato trap’. Fast movements aren’t so very fast, slow movements aren’t so very slow, and there’s not much room between for the tempi of what should be of a genuinely moderate speed. I’ve been noticing a similar effect in a number of the groups I’ve been working with lately.

I had the pleasure at the weekend of working with the London City Singers at their annual retreat. They are an unusual chorus in that the area from which they draw their members is based around where they work rather than where they live, so they all stay in London after work for rehearsals before commuting back out to all points of the compass. They are also a young chorus, in both senses of the word – having been formed only 4 years ago, and with members primarily between the ages of 21 and 35.

Toes to the front on the new risers!Wednesday evening took me back to Oxfordshire to have an evening’s coaching with a much expanded Harmony InSpires. Since I first visited them in 2008, they have increased in size by a good 50%, and have had to move to a new rehearsal venue to make room for everyone. Expanding membership is one of those things that people often think they need to do in order to become more successful, whereas in fact it is a result of things going well. People are attracted to participate where they can sense a buzz.

I spent Saturday afternoon working with NoteOrious on two new songs they are introducing to their repertoire. For past LABBS quartet champions, it can be something of a challenge to find new goals to keep the group developing once they’ve fulfilled their contest ‘career’, and one of the ways (of several) that NoteOrious are dealing with this is clearly to give themselves more demanding repertoire to learn.

So, we spent most of the time on an arrangement of ‘Don’t Rain on My Parade’ by David Harrington. It is the one most famously sung by Max Q, though David has revoiced it somewhat for NoteOrious to sit better on their ranges.

On Tuesday I spent the evening down in Bedfordshire with Phoenix chorus. I worked with them quite regularly back in 2003-4, and whilst I have had regular contact with several friends from the chorus in the intervening years, this was the first time I had spent time with them as a chorus for probably 6 years. In that time, they have had some significant turn-over of membership, and I have probably changed too – so there was a sense of both picking up where we had left off and starting afresh. It certainly made me notice how my coaching style and techniques have developed over the years – though I still have quite a lot in common with my past self too.

One theme that emerged during the evening was the way that developing your musical insight into the songs makes them easier to sing in quite specifically physical/vocal ways.