LONDON (1st October 2006)

represented by

Amy Haworth, Amanda Morrison, Micaela Haslam, Claire Underwood, Rachel Weston,
Heather Cairncross, Gerard O'Beirne, Robert Kearley, Michael Dore, Simon Grant

Ready for Action.  From left to right - Heather, Mandy, Amy

"This was our first date with the LSO since our first Tehillim of 1996 (when Synergy Vocals was still an embryo and without a name), so as Steve was celebrating his 70th birthday, we were sort of celebrating our 10th.  This was to be our first Desert Music in the UK, so we were very excited about that.  We didn't want to get too excited though, as we had a very pregnant lady in our midst - Claire - who was only a month or so away from giving birth!  Many jokes were made about supplies of hot water and towels in the wings, and some of the wind players did look slightly alarmed at the size of her bump, but thankfully all was well.  Thanks for being such a trooper, Claire, and we all hope that everything goes smoothly for you and Mark.

Claire and Rachel comparing bumps

There are two aspects of The Desert Music that make the piece more difficult than it looks.  Firstly, the amplification should not be relied upon to balance the ensemble.  It needs to be very carefully balanced acoustically.  Even with Pierson's reduced arrangement of the piece, the orchestration is heavy and needs to be put on very tight reins.  The problem for us (standing in a line across the back) is that, however much we overdo our diction, the vocals are always in danger of being submerged by the sheer weight of orchestration.

Sorting out the props at the back

I had never met Xian Zhang before, and I have to say she looked great conducting The Rite of Spring, but I'm not sure how much Steve Reich she has conducted.  In a work where the words are paramount, I feel she could have helped us a little more in allowing us through the texture.  Very little, if anything, was said about the text. There is nothing more annoying than getting reviews saying that we didn't project the words enough, when I know that everyone was spitting them out as though they were in a chorus of a thousand.  I spoke to our sound engineer about this after the concert, and he confirmed that further amplification (forcing the voices over the orchestra) would have bordered on bad taste.  From his point of view, the answer lay in the orchestral balance, but there was absolutely nothing we could do about that.

The second unusual aspect of the piece is that the mallet instrument players should more or less be allowed to drive the rhythm.  I remember hearing Michael Tilson Thomas saying that changing tempo in The Desert Music is like steering a large ship.  I think that's an excellent simile.  You really can't change tempo from bar to bar (or within a bar), without causing mild chaos at best.  The trouble is that individual players respond slightly differently to spontaneous tempo changes, so the fewer the better, and ideally all changes should be rehearsed consistently so that new tempi can lock in quickly.

Singer's-eye view of the Barbican

We had one extra problem in rehearsal in that one of the keyboards was programmed at the wrong octave, and this remained unchallenged for 2 rehearsals.  We were wondering where on earth these muddy low chords were coming from.  Fortunately, the problem was diagnosed and fixed before the concert.

All difficulties aside, it was a very exciting concert (what a programme! - Three Movements, The Rite of Spring and The Desert Music) and everyone I spoke to afterwards had enjoyed it thoroughly.  We also got some excellent reviews.  It was very nice to be described as a group with "enviable purity of intonation and clarity of attack".  It was only a shame that some of the words seem to have got lost.  I know I shouldn't mind what critics think, but I can't help being a perfectionist!"

Micaela