Well, not quite……….. It has been a surprisingly busy couple of months for us, given that we haven’t performed in public since the end of November.
The first big news is that we have moved home – after what seems like a lifetime in All Saints Parish Church we have moved to the Salvation Army Temple at Pokesdown. All Saints was a big part of our lives, our President was their last Priest in Charge, but all good things come to an end and Major Whittingham and her team at Pokesdown have greeted us like long lost brothers. We have settled into our new accommodation very well and look forward to very many years with them.
So why the absence from the concert stage? Mostly this has been to give us an opportunity to take stock and work on some new repertoire – the auditions of last summer left the choir a little smaller but a little more keenly honed and that, together with some new additions to our ranks, have allowed time for a little introspection.
Our absence from the stage comes to an end on 13th April when we will give a concert at Richmond Hill United/St Andrews URC for the choir Supporters’ Association and then perform a further seven concerts before the summer recess (more on those later) – it’s a famine or a feast around here at the moment! The embarrassment of riches theme has continued with our recent recruitment activities. I have had the pleasure of conducting the (successful) auditions of six new members since I last wrote here, and as such am delighted to welcome Nigel Yeoman, David Hanks, Rob Phillips, Cyril Bishop, Alistair Howie and Clayde Edwards to the choir’s ranks; these members came through their tests with flying colours and are already making an excellent contribution to the ensemble.
On a sadder note we have lost two members of the choir in recent weeks:
Ron Tomlinson, who was a stalwart member of our first tenor section, and Dave Townsend, a very hale and hearty baritone. Ron and Dave hadn’t performed with us for a while due to their ongoing treatment for cancer but their loss is no less keenly felt. “Big Dave” was a real character, a former Royal Navy Master at Arms with a big rich voice; his funeral was in Plymouth with a delegation of the choir in attendance. Ron Tomlinson was one of the choir’s most experienced singers with memberships of the Hart and Rushmoor Male Choirs before he came to Bournemouth. I had the privilege of directing about forty of the choir at his funeral service in Poole Crematorium – we learnt more about Ron’s life in a poignant address by his son Mark and said goodbye in song to a very dear friend.
On the new music front Ronan Keating’s ‘When You Say Nothing At All’ has been added to the programme along with Marshall Bartholomew’s stunning arrangement of ‘Shenandoah’ and with a little re-jigging ‘Bui Doi’ (which we learnt to perform with Matthew Ibbotson) is now a very effective choral item. A surprise to me has come in the shape of ‘I Believe’ – I originally handed this out to the choir as a sight-reading exercise but they mastered it so quickly and so well that we have now added it to the repertoire. On the stocks at the moment (but not quite finished yet) are Francis Poulenc’s gorgeous ‘Quatres Petites Prieres De St Francois D’Assise’ and ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ by Queen. In honesty, I think these two items epitomise the type of repertoire I think choirs should be singing – all sorts of diverse music from every style imaginable.
With that in mind I recently commissioned a new arrangement from Jocelyn Lavin of the arranging company ‘Vamp Till Ready’; her website says “Bespoke Musical Arrangements - If you need music, I can arrange it” and she isn’t kidding! Her arrangement for Bournemouth Male Voice Choir was an a-cappella setting of the Marcels’ version of ‘Blue Moon’ and she has done a marvellous job with it. The part writing is easy to learn, the spirit of the original song is perfectly captured and it will be out in public at a venue near you very soon! Jocelyn’s website can be found at http://www.vamptillready.com - have a look and if you are a conductor please consider supporting this excellent new venture. Other repertoire on the stocks at present includes the re-introduction of ‘The Fighting Temeraire’ by Granville Bantock and a general tidying up of lot of the choir’s standards.
In addition to all this choral activity, readers will be pleased to know that my life has just been considerably enriched by the addition of a 1975 Honda 400 Four (pictured above) to my garage. This is a restoration project for the evenings when I’m not waving my arms at the choir – any use of the words ‘mid-life’ and ‘crisis’ should be avoided at all cost!
Mark Burstow
Musical Director, BMVC
March 2010