April 13, 2018

Seattle, Washington State, USA

Well hullo and welcome back to this Summer Term 2018! I hope you all had a good Easter break. I managed to get nearly a month with my family, including two weeks in California before we began our term at the University of Redlands – where I’ll be teaching from the Fall Semester 2019. It was real serendipity that we started our tour in Redlands, as it allowed Stephanie and the girls to explore the area and experience life in the city. We had a great time – including three days at Disneyland!Now we continue our GOLD world tour, crossing the US and ending in New York City for my last Carnegie Hall concert with the KS. Today we fly to Wisconsin having spent a few days in Seattle, one of my favourite US cities, and yesterday I enjoyed spending time wandering around, grabbing a good coffee and enjoying Pike Place Market. It may be touristy, but you never know quite what you’re going to see there – and it’s full of interesting people.In rehearsals, we’re looking at close harmony repertoire to bring back before this year ends, as Tim and I have a few songs we’d like to perform before we leave. There have been so many favourites over my time in the group, so it’ll be good to sing some of them again – and add some new songs that I’ve not managed to perform as yet! I’ll certainly miss the wonderful resource that is The King’s Singers music library when I leave, but I’m also looking forward to having more time to arrange and compose for whichever ensembles I’m working with. At the moment I’m preparing my programme for The Phoenix Chorale, which will be presented in February 2019, as well as beginning the recruitment process for the Master’s degree at Redlands. It’s certainly a life shift - but I'm enjoying the process very much!