Report from somewhere in Sussex by Margo

Update 10th April 2020: Margo has provided links for the weekly interactive World Of Music Choir, which may interest some of our singers.
 World Of Music Choir general information
 World Of Music Choir sessions archive
 World Of Music other links

Twice now, I have made a Freudian slip and written Corvid19. I think this may have something to do with all that folklore and some of the songs that we sing about rooks, ravens and magpies who belong to the Corvus family and were thought to be harbingers of doom!

Tina and the Lewes Group had good plans to link up for our sessions using modern technology, but there is a time lapse that makes synchronized singing impossibly awkward.

I hope that some of you have already caught on to Gareth Malone’s Home Chorus which he started on 23rd March and broadcasts at 5pm each day; you can catch up on YouTube. The Telling Medieval Music Group has lots of songs on YouTube and are running a live workshop every Friday at 11am (details here), but I couldn’t get Zoom to cooperate!

What I would really like to tell you is that on Easter Monday, 13th April, the BBC are broadcasting a documentary about the creating of a new Cantata called Windover Hill by Nathan James at 9pm on BBC Radio Sussex and Surrey. If you go to Castley Music – Windover Hill you can see lots of nice photos and read what The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra had to say about the premier performance at Boxgrove Priory in early March. You can also listen to computer-generated recordings – there are nine tracks, but not presented in the same order as the nine movements of the cantata (also available on Soundcloud). Part of the first section, Up From the Hollow, should sound familiar!

Glad none of you can hear me singing at home. When I am out in my garden I remain quiet so that I can hear the busy birds – mostly chattering house sparrows, a pair of wood pigeons, twittering long-tailed tits, a fleeting flock of goldfinches, the occasional rasp of a wren and two robins enforcing their territories, but sadly no blackbirds this spring. Yesterday I actually saw a female chiffchaff rather than her song. Hope we will be allowed to gather together again in time for hay-making. Keep safe and healthy.