Toronto! Hugh's Room! Fitness gadget! Bach!

Backstage in Charity Shop finery

VERY soon after Swaledale I was off to Toronto. It was to be the North American premiere of the Ragtime Parlour Band, only with NONE of the boys here. It was just one gig and so the budget simply wouldn't stretch to five Air Canada tickets plus hotel rooms and all the rest of it.

So I landed, met the four guys hired by Scott, my manager, and shared the songs with them.

It's always nice to share one's love, and my love for ditties like Moonlight Bay, Oh Johnny, Don't Bring Lulu, Long Long Trail and so on is something very strong.

I had a rock guitarist on banjo, a klezmer/bluegrass clarinettist, a classical tuba player on Sousaphone, and a pianist who plays anything, just anything. Though his party piece is certainly all things Muppets. His Kermit is creepily accurate. He also does the Muppet Show song with all voices.

The Sousaphone that Trishul Sharma played was of cream and beige fibreglass. I regret the lack of good pictures of said instrument!

Interview on Classical 96 with Alexa Petrenko

We played at a big tea-party for almost 200 senior citizens at St Andrews, then a few days later played Hugh's Room. I called the show "From the Titanic to the Speakeasy" and it consisted of two sets: one pre-WWI and one post-WWI. I brought the banners along. I think the lads were pleasantly surprised at the level of delighted recognition we had from both audiences, young and old. In fact at St Andrews we had a call-and-answer going for "Moonlight Bay" (me: we were sailing along..." they: "We were sailing along..." me: "On Moonlight bay..." they: "On Moon-Light Bay!") the echo arrangement as seen in the Doris Day film of the same name. Utterly and totally charming.

The Hugh's Room crowd was just as loud in their approval. We were encored and we did "Let Him Go Let Him Tarry" and brought the roof off. The owner of Hugh's Room liked us and said we were welcome back any time.

From the Titanic...

Pianist Donavon LeNabat then accompanied me to three Nursing Homes the next day and I brought out as many different songs as I could to explore Toronto memories. I sang in an atrium with two real palm trees! In truth, with one exception on the Isle of Jersey, these were the three ritziest nursing homes I've ever sung at

...to the Speak-easy

Then next day, I went back to London. I saw fireworks over Montreal at night...they look like little paperweights from above. So funny how these things impress you: I'd always thought of fireworks as being so HIGH up. Well they just barely come off the ground!! Bumpy over the Atlantic, and that meant a long, long time jolting around feeling woozy and worried...Oh I'd travel by freighter and rail exclusively if I could. Queueing at Heathrow I turned on my phone and discovered that poor Martin at St Anne's hadn't found an alto for that day's performance of BWV 21, Ich hatte viel bekummernis. He was desperate. He's one of the most supportive musicians around so I had to help. I dumped the luggage at Hanwell, grumpy and tired - a man complained loudly to his wife about people 'taking up more than one seat' as I sat slumped with 32-kilo suitcase and three bags in the bus and I spun around and growled "This is not the time to mess with me, pal...I am NOT in the mood". At the flat I threw down the bags and snatched up a black dress and went to the Wren church on Gresham Street where I sang through the alto bits while Martin played the rest. Then orchestra, bass, tenor and soprano arrived and we rehearsed. I had strong tea, and dammit if that thing didn't go smoothly! It is not an easy one, that Cantata, and one voice per part means no let-up. But it is one of the most extraordinarily gorgeous creations amongst an output crowded with extraordinary gorgeousness.

I left the gig and out on the street was an audience member standing in front of the church staring into space. She had a cane and I looked to see if it was white and if she needed assistance. She focused on my face. "You were the alto weren't you? Such beautiful, sinuous lines you sang...beautifully done. That was incredible in there. What an emotional journey that work is! What we've all just been through! Is it really the same day? It feels like three days have elapsed!"

"I know what you mean," I said. I went home and slept 11 hours with no dreams.

In Toronto I stayed with an amazing woman and her two lovely animals, persian cat Lucy and big poodle Larry. Margaret is an art librarian and intensely creative and clever and has the best sense of display I think I've ever seen. A sample of what her house looks like, on the right. The blue plastic elephant gets plugged in and fills with tiny pink lightning.

And this is her idea of a Christmas tree ornament. At about four inches high, it's the seminal 1913 "Armory Show". If you, like ignorant I, don't know what that was, here it all is. Notice that her ornament also has a mini catalogue attached by a bit of fishing wire. CLEVER.

She also likes beer and popcorn, two things I'm pretty fond of myself.

Mine for twenty-five cents. 

I walked past a yard sale in Toronto, and saw, offered for pennies, a crucified Christ in a bottle, a plastic poinsettia (with glitter) in a mini plastic toilet, and a pastel-and-oils portrait of Eminem, framed in gold. But there was a fitness gadget for 25c and I need to get fit. So I bought it.

Oh, the "Titanic" dress came from an RSPCA Charity shop and cost 18 quid! Woooo!

All fun at the Gilbert Scott!

I'd like to pay homage to two marvellous things: the restored St Pancras Hotel, and the photographer Debee Calveche.

 

Here's a photo by Debee of part of the Gilbert Scott bar.

This is part of the magnificent restoration of Sir George Gilbert Scott's St Pancras Midland Grand hotel, now the St Pancras Renaissance.

I was on my way to the Illuminated Manuscripts exhibition at the British Museum one day when it was raining, and I cut through the covered portico at the westerly side of the building. I stopped dead in my tracks when I caught sight of the ceiling! With bells hanging from it! I thought of my Parlour band, and it occurred to me that any other music would be out of place there. What goes with this sort of splendour? Ragtime and Parlour, that's what.

So here I am.

With a new band-mate, the ever-grounded, ever-proactive Emily O'Hara.

We were given a room to leave our things in, and sort out music. Here we are sorting music.

Emily suggested that I make banners to cover music stands, so off I went to Shepherds Bush Market, where I found exactly what I needed. Felt! I don't want to sew, particularly, so I designed the banners on the back of a Music in Hospitals contract, inspired by 78rpm record label designs I've seen, and using Suffragette colours (Green, Violet, White = Give Votes to Women. Occasionally you'll find Edwardian jewellery in emeralds, amethyst and diamonds, meaning the same thing). Then I just got felt, and scissors and fabric glue. It was pretty much all free-hand, with a few little pencillings. I used an exacto knife too.



Emily O'Hara, John Baker, Simon Marsh



I think they're very pretty. Good idea, Emily!



We did all sorts of things. Songs from the forties, the thirties, but mostly the 20s and before. We got very good reactions to "Moonlight Bay" which really worked well. We did it all without amplification, and I could feel my voice soaring up to G. Gilbert Scott's ornamental, vaulted ceilings.

Divine.

Emily in her turn did some of her Annette Hanshaw songs, impressive multi-talent she is. She's younger than me, slimmer than me, and plays the guitar. Aren't I the opposite of a diva to have her anywhere near me? Just needed to say that, you know. To be appreciated as the selfless one I really am.

Debee Calveche

Now. Debee here has come along, often at her own expense, to most of my gigs. She has taken the most stunning photos, and footage of me including those two clips of me singing at the Clerkenwell vintage fair sitting on the top of a piano. She has a creative, artistic eye. Most of these blog posts feature her work: the Lucky Dog Picture House, the Clerkenwell Vintage Fair, the Scoop gig...and many marvellous others from Passing Clouds and the Experimental Cocktail Club in Soho (which I didn't blog about, but which I give an example of below). If any musicians are reading this and would like to have something that really shows not only themselves in action, but the true atmosphere of the place, and moments of beauty and surprising, poetic and humorous juxtapositions, they need look no further than Miss Debee.

I was also lucky to have another photographer drop by, Commander Charles Giles, Retired. Pilot for the Royal Navy, and many other acheivements in sea and air!

I love how he's captured a camera-in-a-camera effect here.

Photo by Cmdr Charles Giles

Well in any event there was some talk of a possible engagement for the Jubilee weekend, so watch out for announcements, as they say.

Gin at the Idler, Costumed Handel with scores.

On the plane back from Canada I ran through the words of "Don't Bring Lulu" in my head. You can bring peas and crullers and cheese but don't bring Lulu! Give her two beers and she tears portiers and throws cups of the shelf...I wished I had a score of Jephtha but I'd been unable in Gibsons, Sechelt, Vancouver or Toronto to get to a shop to buy one, and I was convinced that I had one already, anyway. I was to sing the role of Storge, Jephtha's wife, in Epsom, at a semi-staged, but fully-costumed production.

I'd picked out my outfit from the National Theatre's costume warehouse. A lot of their stuff is in tatters, and this dress isn't much of an exception. It smelt of basement, and had threads fraying all over the inside of it, completely raw-seamed. However. The design! There's a flattering cut for anyone!

Jephtha is a story from the Old Testament, but the director thought that as it is about a war, it'd be nice for it to be set in WWI.

Looking through my boxes of music in three locations I didn't have a score after all, and everyone involved in the production had bought the last Novello copies (at about 10 quid) and I had to buy one of those big blue Barenreiters (at 22).



 Micawbers from NT productions past...

  

Masks at the National Theatres' Costume Hire!



Less jetlagged, I'd have braved the rain and poked around the Archive Bookstore's basement on Bell Street, and no doubt found a Novello copy for a fiver. But the weather! Oh the weather. Those droplets on the plane windows as you land at Heathrow...it's a wet parody of confetti, welcoming you to Britain. It didn't stop for days. I felt glad for the plants' sake, and for animals' and birds' sake. And of course, you're glad to be back in England just as soon as you see, say, a lot of colourful canal boats at the side of the railway line (at less than a minute as you take the Heathrow Connect toward Hayes). But I did go directly to Chappells instead of Bell Street.

Ben Thapa, director Stephen Oliver, moi, Iestyn Morris,
Jen Clarke, David Stout

Aside from picking out a dress at the National Theatre's hire-warehouse and being told that I'll be Storge, there was nothing in the way of preliminary rehearsals for the production. The soloists were all picked up at Ewell West station, having studiously ignored each other in the railway carriage but then extremely friendly once we actually spoke. The fee was a standard 'day-of' fee. That is, meet everyone on the day, use the score. And, USUALLY, stand in one place and sit down quietly when not singing. To have memorised it is a whole different ball game. To have gone to rehearsals costs, as it ought, much more. We tried on our costumes at noon, and went down to have instruction from the director, who told us when and where to come on, come off, and whom to greet, take by the hand, react to, stand, sit, and so on. Props were pointed out and we wrote it all down in our scores. Rehearsals were music rehearsals, in ascending order of ensemble. So as the musicians arrived we went through our bits in a radically different order to the way it's written. In effect, no run-through of what we'd just heard. The choir arrived and went through their parts with the orchestra, in between our bits. We just managed to finish at six-ish and the concert started at seven thirty. My mind was a blank. How did we do it? I don't know. We held our scores and wandered around, emoting and acting, and finding truth in it. It was a small miracle. The girl who played my daughter, Jennifer Clarke, was a sweet, almost old-fashioned Viennese-style voice in the tradition of Erna Berger, Lisa della Casa...when I came back onstage after she'd been saved from human sacrifice (tis that sort of a story, is Jephtha) to be the overjoyed mother, she was crying real tears, sobbing her heart out! I asked her afterwards how she'd managed to so invest herself in the role. She said it was relief at having survived it all.

Her parents were in the audience. They overheard a couple next to them muttering "Those soloists...shocking...after all those rehearsals and they still haven't memorised their music!"



With Richard Barnett! Photo by Kelley Swain!
Behind us is a book called Facial Justice. An interesting
Dystopian read from the looks of it. By L P Hartley! He
of "The Go-Between". Whaddya know.



Two days later and I was singing with the Parlour Boys in Notting Hill. It was the launch of Richard Barnett's latest book, the Dedalus Book of Gin. It is a gloriously quirky bookshop, club-house, coffee shop called The Idler, and the launch of the book involved G&Ts at heroic strength. But the gin was Miller's, which is quite all right!! Richard gave one of his really really great talks. This fellow never ever says "um" and he doesn't use notes and he is always fascinating. His talk was on the very starry origins of gin. It was inspired by philosophers, and it inspired philosophers. It's good to know something other than "Drunk for a penny, dead-drunk for tuppence" and yet again see Hogarth's Gin Lane engraving in your head. Then the Ragtime Parlour Boys supplied a rip-roaring version of the Old Gin Rag, later known as the Tiger Rag. I sang Don't Bring Lulu, Button up your Overcoat, the Tango des Roses, and the Honeysuckle and the Bee. All acoustic, and all appreciated, I think!



Richard B, me, Simon Marsh, John Baker, Matt Redman, Nick Ball.





 

Ragtime Parlour!

One of my favourite covers.

Here's something you don't get very often. A combination of stompingly good Ragtime, and the Parlour songs that preceded it, and the songs that were informed by it after, and a band that doesn't really need amplifying. It's genuine, hundred-year-old fun. If there are ANY Titanic Centenary events that do not call on us to perform, they are extremly silly. Beyond silly; certifiable.

My first-ever piece of sheet music.



This IS the RMS Lusitania Ragtime Orchestra, Matt on piano.



I've collected old sheet music since I was at least nine. I've gone through mountains of it. I collected it from neighbours, abandoned shacks, benches in used piano shops, charity shops, and through classified want ads. I put out the word, and people gave me boxes of it.
I still have the same system today: I sit down at the piano, play through it and sort it into as many as ten different categories, then take it out and try it on audiences everywhere. I take it to hospitals and to nursing homes where people are brutally frank. If a song makes it there, it will make it almost anywhere.



I've done gigs for Matthew Redman, wunderkind of yore (he's now a wundermann) with his RMS Lusitania Ragtime Orchestra, and I've done gigs for Nicholas Ball and his Flying Aces. Putting together elements of both, and adding my chintz and parlourishness, what we have is this:

I have had people advise me that I should take all mention of Parlour out before going to North America. There was a revival of Parlour in the 1970s, and it wasn't all good. So, they tell me, it is doubly, triply, stuffy. I ask you! Is this stuffy?

For one thing, you'll never hear a Sousaphone imitate a bumblebee anywhere else.  

We are like a Renaissance "Broken Consort" in a way, because we take on different combinations through the concert. I started a capella with Stephen Foster, then we launched into Oh Johnny all together, then the four instruments did a fresh and bright rendition of "Aeroplane Rag of 1912", then Nick came out and sang a solo, then Matt and I scaled right back with a guitar-and-voice "Love's Old Sweet Song", and then he sat down (not on his tails) at the piano to play "Pale Hands I Loved Beside the Shalimar", and then we were all of us back with "Moonlight Bay", and so it went.

Simon can't resist touching it.

Footage is still being edited from this concert, and then you can see Nick's fabulous singing-trumpet and hear how mellow his voice is through it. He made it out of a metal waste-paper basket, part of a vaccuum hose, and some red enamel paint. Works a treat. Simon Marsh's marvellous clarinet, with its beautiful vibrato, developed specially for this project and era, you might remember from "Our Lovely Day". Listen for his little counter-melodies through the music. Bliss.

At Mayfest. Hence my flowers, hence Nick's boater.

And what does one say about the Sousaphone? It is an edifying sight. And played by Dickie, an edifying sound. This is a man who has played in symphony orchestras, but doesn't mind dragging his massive, hundred-year-old instrument on and off night-buses for gigs at the Experimental Cocktail Club, or in this case, to a church in Notting Hill.

The audience was very happy to see us again. We had appeared in the Notting Hill Mayfest 2011 and believe it or not, when I was wandering along Portobello Road a few months ago, a very respectable lady actually stopped me and said "Did you sing all those wonderful songs, with the sousaphone and the banjo and everything? I never had so much fun in my life!"

End of the year gigs...

At the Forge...




...the Camden Forge

Blogging requires time, and photos to hand. I didn't have much of either in November and December! So here I am in the snows of January with my memories of the end of 2011.

There was the gig at the Camden Forge with some Flying Aces. Earlier that day I'd rescued a sick fox at the back of a pub in Hanwell.

A week later, or was it the next day? The Lovely Parlour Trio and I were on BBC Radio London's Saturday Breakfast Show, performing live. Jon Butterfield played their wonderful trusty studio upright, Matt Redman treated us to his guitar, and Nick Ball played spoons and washboard, a first for the studio. We did Button Up Your Overcoat and The Honeysuckle and the Bee. Listeners phoned in to say how good it was to hear something that wasn't anything to do with "X Factor Crap". I only quote. Joanne Good and Simon Lederman are the most fun, generous, fabulous people possible.

Photo by David Rowley. Ellen Smith, Patricia Hammond, Zita Syme.

Then I joined Ellen Smith, BEAUTIFUL harpist and Zita Syme, BEAUTIFUL soprano, to adorn the library of the Reform Club. We all wore red, and processed in singing the Hodie from Britten's Ceremony of Carols. Ellen can sing, too. I found a fabulous book on the shelves there: Ronald Firbank's "The New Rhythum" and other pieces. 

A random quote: 

"'He looks ever so much more like Narcissus than Apollo,' said Wildred, and seating himself on the river bank he recited to the first moonbeam that touched the lake, a poem of Verlaine." 

Then went to Switzerland to sing Rossini in a church at the top of an icy hill. It was recorded and photographed, but I have neither...yet.

Hugely looked forward to Ragtime Parlour's return engagement when I got back, and we tried out "Moonlight Bay", as it was written in 1912. A nice, neat century ago. Some dandy footage was taken, but if anyone knows how to edit MTS files, and intercut them with MP4 files, and overlay a WAV recording, please let me know! Then maybe those who weren't there can see how much fun we all had.

But as to the voice and harp combination, here's one Ellen Smith and I did a year ago. I'm wearing my pioneer grandma's pearls.