from left to right:  Micaela Haslam, Rachel Weston, Amy Haworth, Heather Cairncross

"Who on earth would dream of picking up a new car in London before driving to Cardiff for a rehearsal the same afternoon. Yes, me - crazy loon!  These things take so much longer than you think, still we made it to the hotel in Cardiff with an hour to spare, so all was well.  Poor Amy wasn't quite so lucky.  She met with hideous traffic and arrived at the hotel only to turn straight round and head off to the BBC studios for the first rehearsal. Apparently The Rolling Stones were playing in Cardiff that night, and there we were thinking everyone was flocking in to the city to see us.

Perhaps we'll play here next time!

We hadn't worked with Luke Dollman before and we all thought he did a great job with Tehillim.  It's such a difficult piece to put together on anything less than about a week of rehearsal.  Luke had 3 sessions!  It was lovely to see Ian Dearden from Sound Intermedia, who is so reliable and always makes us sound marvellous, and the players of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales were very welcoming - all in all, a very good start.

We only had one full day in Cardiff but managed to cram quite a bit into it.  Apart from rehearsing, Heather and I had a meeting with Deborah Preston from Radio 3's The Choir to discuss our interview with Aled Jones for the following week's programme.  As usual, we had so much to say, we could probably have filled a whole series....maybe they'll have us back.  Then I had an interview with Mike Roberts who was doing all the Barbican podcasts for the October Steve Reich marathon at the Barbican.  It was all go!

Llandaff Cathedral is very beautiful from the outside and very pleasing inside too.  

We were, as usual, behind the players, and somewhat dwarfed by this rather imposing concrete arch, surmounted by Sir Jacob Epstein's aluminium statue of "Christ in Majesty", but it was a lovely airy venue with a very favourable acoustic.  A bit of reverb is so nice to sing in but can be disastrous where microphones are involved.  Happily, Llandaff presented the best of both worlds.  It felt easy to sing in there, and the amplified mix was excellent.

The most critical thing on the day of the concert was of course where we were going to eat and drink after the concert.  It seemed that everywhere in Llandaff shut at 10pm with last orders at around 9.30pm - disaster!  However, we managed to find a very lovely Italian place at lunchtime, just around the corner from the cathedral, and they agreed to stay open for us if someone could get straight down there with our orders after the concert.  So there we were backstage before Tehillim, not discussing the nuances of the piece, but choosing which pasta dishes we were going to order and with how many glasses of wine.  After all, you've got to get your priorities right!"

Micaela