May 4, 2018

Heidelberg, Germany

The whirlwind year continues! This week has seen us in London for auditions, rehearsals and the big reveal: our visualisation project "tessitura" with our friend Felix Faire which we held on Tuesday, 1 May - 50 years to the day since those six original choral scholars from King's stepped out on-stage for their first true professional engagement. It was a good birthday event, and we're delighted with the results - we hope you'll be able to see them online very soon.Having flown to Germany almost immediately thereafter, we performed in one of my favourite venues on Wednesday evening: the Leiszhalle in Hamburg. I have fond memories of Hamburg; it was one of the cities on my KS "shadowing" patch in late 2003, before I joined the group, and I met some wonderful people in the city - many of whom came to Wednesday's concert. To be able to sing to a packed house there, in my final year, was a very special moment. To sing five encores at the end was the icing on the cake!!!Touring in Germany after a long trip to the States is an interesting contrast; it's harder to get food at all hours of day or night, true, but the food we DO get is probably more healthy. Italian cuisine in particular is very fine here. It's tough to get a good curry though...This afternoon we were up at the castle in Heidelberg, filming a short slot for ARTE, the German TV channel. We spoke to the producer about all the archive footage they have of the KS, dating back to the early 1970s, and agreed that we'd try to make more of this available for wider distribution. It seems such a shame to have so much locked up in the vault!Now for a much-deserved free evening. This does mean an amount of admin, but I'm also hoping to get an early night...