April 10, 2018

San Jose, CA

Good morning, all! I hope everyone is well and that you all had a fabulous Easter. I spent our Easter break in New Zealand with Gemma, Harry and Gemma's side of the family. It was so awesome to see Harry at the beach - running into the sea and playing on the sand - not the norm back in London, that's for sure! I also spent time meeting with lots of different directors in the music world over there - as some of you may know, we will be moving over to NZ at some point after I leave The KS at the end of this year. I was fortunate enough to get the opportunity to teach a masterclass at Auckland University during my time there, too - a massive thank you to Martin, Karen and Morag for putting all the work in to make this happen. It was a lot of fun and the University has a brilliant music department - full of dedicated staff and talented pupils.So today, we have a concert in San Jose - at the glorious Cathedral Basilica of St. Joseph. It is a beautiful building. We were lucky enough to sing here back in 2016, and also lucky enough to perform with The Choral Project on that occasion, too. This fantastic choir, led by Daniel Hughes, is a co-commissioner of To Stand in This House - an anniversary commission by superstar New York-based composer, Nico Muhly. It's therefore going to be an extra special performance of this work tonight - one that I'm incredibly excited about!Right, I'm off to Skype Gemma and Harry before he heads off to bed. The joys of modern technology :)Toodle-oo for now....