Synergy represented by:
Amanda Morrison, (Micaela Haslam), Gerry O’Beirne, Andrew Busher, Alastair Putt
Synergy with Ensemble Modern and Brad Lubman
“Having met up at Heathrow airport, we headed off to Cologne and another 70’s time-warp Maritim Hotel. I love these crazy places. They’re so characterful, and I hope they don’t change. Our “breakfast room” was actually a restaurant in the enclosed courtyard of the hotel, onto which half the rooms in the hotel looked, and the lifts were polished brass and glass affairs that went up the middle of the courtyard onto walkways that straddled the building – bizarre!
Breakfast restaurant
You may have noticed my name in brackets above. That’s because I didn’t actually sing a note in this concert, nor indeed in the rehearsal. Dreamhouse in Salford was my last tuneful utterance before falling prey to a nasty throat lurgie and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. It was too late to organise a replacement singer. All I could do was sort out some re-voicing in order to cover the essential lines and harmonies, then sit back and watch the others. I believe this is the first Synergy concert I have missed due to illness in 15 years, and it was very weird.
"He looked long through his binoculars..."
In rehearsal
Alastair came to my rescue. Fortunately, Three Tales is scored so that Soprano 2 and Tenor 3 very rarely sing at the same time, so he was able to jump between parts filling in what he could. Soprano 2 is relatively low so he could sing much of my part at pitch, but it was still very high for a tenor. When Alastair was ill during our Barbican You Are (Variations) concert, I sang in a few high tenor lines for him, so it was rather ironic to find ourselves in this situation only a month or so later. He definitely got the short straw, but did a great job. Andy Busher threw in a couple of top C’s for good measure and all was well.
Andy sneaking a peek!
Being out front was ultimately a very positive experience. It was great to hear Three Tales in concert, but it was also useful to watch the run-through. I was able to make sure that everyone was standing and moving uniformly, and just tidy up the production side of things a bit. It’s easy to slip into an attitude of invisibility when you know that the audience are all watching the screen, but it’s amazing how a lack of uniformity draws attention to itself. Anyway, the singers looked really polished in concert, so it was a useful exercise!”
Micaela