May 27, 2019

Richmond, UK

Back home again, after a week away in Germany and Switzerland (and, this morning for 13 minutes, France). Yesterday afternoon we had our concert in Sion, in the beautiful hilltop church there, where I did my fourth ever King's Singers concert in the autumn of 2016. It's nice to note how much less stressful it felt being there 310 concerts on!

As Johnny mentioned in Saturday's blog, we're at a crunch time at the moment, all noses-to-the-grindstone (is that the phrase!?) preparing for our next recording. It includes lots of brand new music that we've commissioned, in a total of 10 different languages. So tomorrow we have a (quite rare!) dedicated rehearsal day in London, where we'll be polishing up the music in detail, fine-tuning the difficult bits of pronunciation, and shaping the pieces ready to record in a couple of weeks' time.

As this is a window of just 18 hours from flight landing to rehearsal starting, Eddie is staying with me and Ellie this evening. So this afternoon, Eddie and I are parked up in one of my favourite coffee shops near home, doing some work together and being extra-keen by working on our music together. Team Countertenor is go!

After tomorrow's rehearsal day, and a charity concert on Wednesday, we have a week of holiday scheduled, so I'm taking Ellie for a little break to rural Sussex where we're going to go walking, and exploring some of the wonderful towns and villages in the South Downs. Google it if you're not familiar -- it's picture-postcard England, and we're both excited for it.