October 24, 2016

London, UK

You catch me on a relatively rare 'day off'! I'm putting the quotation marks in there because for a member of The King's Singers, it's never really a day off during our term time. There are always things to be doing behind the scenes and today is no exception.In just over a month, we head to the United States, to begin a three-week long tour, with the new Christmas Songbook album - buy it now! - as the backbone of our programme. In order to travel to the States and perform concerts, we require work visas from the Department of Homeland Security. Obtaining these visas involves a huge amount of administrative work from our amazing office staff, and from our agents out in the USA. The final stage before being issued the visa, however, is a short interview at the United States Embassy in London, and we have to go in and do this in person.Today, Tim and I were due to go in for our interviews. Queuing up outside the embassy at 7.50am, who should we see, but David Hurley! My predecessor happened to be there at exactly the same time by pure coincidence. So what was to be a rather dreary trip turned into a reunion for Tim and David, and a lovely chance to catch up with what David has been doing since leaving The King's Singers. He's keeping extremely busy and enjoying teaching in his home city of Winchester, sharing some of his experience and wisdom with keen students. He is also heading to the US next month to sing freelance on a tour with a British group, and thus required the same type of visa as we did![caption id="attachment_5397" align="alignnone" width="450"]

The Three Countertenors at the US Embassy in London

The Three Countertenors at the US Embassy in London[/caption]After my visa appointment, I had a quick cup of tea with David to finish catching up with him, then went to visit an old friend of mine from King's College Cambridge, who lives in North London, for brunch and a cup of coffee. Now I'm home and doing some work on music for our forthcoming trip to Poland, before cooking Ellie dinner. Let's hope I don't burn the clam soup!