March 20, 2017

Riehen, Switzerland

Why good evening everyone! You find us in Switzerland, in the lovely town of Riehen, where shortly we will be giving the third concert of this German/Swiss tour. Last night, we were in the beautiful Tonhalle in Zürich, a venue that means a lot to Julian - he used to go and sing there in his freelance singing days, boosting the regular chorus. It was a lovely concert, and my first chance to sing James MacMillan's wonderful 'A Rumoured Seed' - a four movement work with beautiful text and an astonishing array of different musical styles within its 10-minute length. There are some tricky corners in it, as with lots of modern music, and learning it certainly kept me on my toes with difficult interval pitching!Tonight's venue is less grand than the Tonhalle, but has a lovely 'town hall' feel to it. We've got a fairly light, 'frothy' programme for tonight's audience, and I look forward to getting on stage shortly. I can hear Tim warming up through the wall of our hotel, so that means there's precisely 35 minutes until the concert starts, and thus I'd better get changed, brush my teeth, and do a bit of humming!