Forthcoming dates Booking is open for events up to and including September 2020. 

9–16 October 2019: The Scratch® Seinesation. Cruise your way along France’s most famous river, absorbing lots of French food, wine and culture, and singing as you go. With Brian Kay and pianist Maria Marchant. A few cabins le . 7 December 2019: The Scratch® Youth Messiah/Messiah from Scratch®. Two performances, each unique in its own way. No rehearsal for the evening performance – just turn up to sing at 7.00pm. Wonderfully exci ng and seriously good under Brian Kay’s direc on. The award‐winning Scratch Youth Messiah at 2.00pm is for youth choirs aged 7–25. 26–29 March 2020: The Scratch® Tantalising Trieste. We’re sorry to disappoint you, but this trip has already sold out. 

10 May 2020: The Scratch® Mozart Requiem. A perennial favourite returns to the Royal Albert Hall, coupled with Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto and the Overture to Don Giovanni. Gavin Carr conducts (see page 3). 12 July 2020: Hallelujah Handel! A choral and orchestral extravaganza celebra ng the work of the master. Favourite choral and instrumental works, with anecdotes from Handel himself (see above). 

4–9 August 2020: The Seventh TRBC Summer School. To celebrate the 250th year of Beethoven’s birth, Brian Kay will coach singers in the Mass in C and the Choral Fantasia; also Morten Lauridsen’s Lux aeterna. 

24–27 September 2020: The Scratch® Hungarian Rhapsody. An early autumn visit to one of Europe’s most beau ful ci es, where Buda and Pest contemplate each other across the Danube. Our concert will be in the neo‐classical basilica of St Stephen, where we will sing Messiah with a local orchestra, directed by Brian Kay. It’s many years since we have sung Messiah abroad, so this trip is bound to be popular and you are advised to book early.  15 November 2020: The Scratch® Youth Messiah/Messiah from Scratch®. The date is provisional, but unlikely to change.

Dear TRBC Members As another choral season gets underway, it’s time to welcome new singers to the TRBC family and to tell you about our plans for the next twelve months. New events for which leaflets are enclosed in this mailing include: our Royal Albert Hall concerts in

May 2020 (Mozart) and July 2020 (Handel) (see opposite and on pages 2 and 3);

a celebration of the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth at the seventh annual TRBC Summer School;

a trip to Hungary in September 2020 to sing Messiah in St Stephen’s Basilica, Budapest. The last two TRBC trips abroad have sold out, so book early!

On page 2 there is some import-ant information about our RAH concerts, such as which rehearsals to attend and what to do if your party includes singers under the age of 16; and, on page 4, an update on the very few seats re-maining for Messiah from Scratch®. Best wishes to all from

The TRBC Team

Handel was a prolific, innovative and exciting composer, and if you’ve only ever sung Messiah you are missing out on some stunning music. Those who attended our 2018 Summer School, for example, discovered just how stimulating it was to learn and perform Israel in Egypt, written just three years before Handel began work on Messiah. We have therefore devised a new programme for 12 July 2020 celebrating Handel’s genius with

some of his best-loved choruses and orchestral works. For those who welcome a little extra rehearsal prior to the day of the concert, we offer an afternoon workshop in London’s Bloomsbury on Saturday 20 June. Along with Zadok the Priest and well-known choruses from Messiah, there are solos and choruses from Israel in Egypt, Judas Macabbeus and Samson, and orchestral favourites such as the Water Music and the Arrival of the Queen of Sheba. The concert will be presented by former Radio 3 announcer, Chris de Souza, costumed and bewigged as Mr Handel himself. The portrait of the composer shown here belongs to The Royal Society of Musicians of Great Britain, and we are delighted to announce that this prominent musical charity, founded in 1738 by Handel and more than 200 other musicians, will be the recipient of the proceeds from programme sales and bucket collections at this concert. Handel supported the charity throughout his life (and, indeed, beyond), and we hope you will want to follow his example.

News and information for Members of

THE REALLY BIG CHORUS www.trbc.co.uk

Issue 33: Autumn/Winter 2019–20 published twice a year by Scratch Concerts Ltd, PO Box 4211, Bath BA1 0HJ

Our details in brief Address and email. Send booking forms or queries to us at PO Box 4211, Bath, BA1 0HJ, UK. Email us at members@trbc.co.uk, but never send credit card details as email is not secure.

Website. All about us at: www.trbc.co.uk. TRBC on Facebook. To join the community, see the panel below. TRBC on Twitter. See the panel below for how to follow us. Travel partner. Specialised Travel Ltd deals with bookings and looks after all the travel logistics for our trips overseas: www.STLON.com. Telephone booking line. This service, applicable to our May and July Royal Albert Hall concerts only, is operated by Blackwell’s Music Shop on 01865 333582.

For those who do not have a local music shop, we recommend: >> Blackwell’s Music Shop in Oxford, which offers a special 10% discount on scores for TRBC Members. Telephone 01865 333582 or email printed.music@blackwell.co.uk. >> ChoraLine which supplies rehearsal CDs/MP3 files with indi-vidual voice-parts highlighted so that you can learn from the comfort of your armchair or car. Shop at www.choraline.com. See also page 4.

Sing with us!www.trbc.co.uk

Anyone can join this group which is called ‘The Really Big Chorus Singers and Supporters’.

For regular updates why not follow us @ReallyBigChorus and tweet about us to your friends?

SCRATCH CONCERTS LTD registered in England and Wales No. 2740803. Registered Office (please note: this address should NOT be used for correspondence): 141 Englishcombe Lane, Bath BA2 2EL VAT number: 133 0052 73. THE REALLY BIG CHORUS and CONCERTS FROM SCRATCH are operating names of Scratch Concerts Ltd.

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Given that TRBC has, in the past, performed Mozart’s Requiem with as little as an hour’s rehearsal, some singers might wonder why three hours have been scheduled for 2020. Knowing the music better, so that we can get our heads out of our scores, communicate with the audience and give a more commit-ted performance (see Gavin Carr’s comments on the next page) is only one side of the story. Another is that more and more people these days want to sing and

join choirs, but many of them grew up outside the UK choral tradition. They won’t be as familiar with Mozart’s Requiem as some of us, and will welcome the increased confi-dence which comes from having a little more rehearsal time. Finally, anyone who sang with TRBC and Gerard Wirth in Vienna last December will know that there is always something new to learn when one is performing a great piece of music – no matter how often one has sung it before!

Royal Albert Hall concerts: important things to note Children. Because the RAH is a licensed venue, there are special rules gov-erning performances by children, even if they are in the one-to-one care of a parent or guardian. Please don’t let this stop you bringing children with you, as it is very important that they learn how enjoyable choral singing can be. Just tell us if there are any under-16s in your party; we will then ask you for a few basic details, and will fill in all the paperwork ourselves. Rehearsals. Messiah is the only one of our concerts to be truly ‘from Scratch’, with no rehearsal whatsoever. Other concerts will have between three and four hours of rehearsal on the day, and sometimes an optional workshop if the music is new or tricky. Please make every effort to attend the RAH rehearsals. If you turn up just for the concert, then you may miss important instructions from us or from the conductor; you won’t know the correct speed for some choruses; nor will you know when to stand and sit. This is embarrassing for you, and irritating to your fellow singers who have been there during the day. If attendance in the morning is impossible for transport reasons, then you must, please, join us for the afternoon. After all, would you be allowed to miss the final rehearsal on the day of your own choir’s concert? If a group of singers fails to appear during the after-noon, it may be necessary to move other singers forward to fill the gap. Consider your neighbours. For the comfort of the singers around you, please avoid the use of perfume and aftershave; don’t record the performance illegally from your pocket (the sound-quality in those circumstances is ter-rible anyway); and turn the pages as quietly as you can. Thank you!

Rehearsing the Mozart Requiem

Members of TRBC performing Haydn’s Creation with local singers, Choir Musica, in Christos Lambrakis Hall in Athens in March 2019. Brian Kay conducted, and our soloists were Sarah Power (soprano), William Wallace (tenor), and Frederick Long (bass-baritone). It was a delight-ful experience all round, and people seemed particularly to enjoy sharing the stage with the local choir: ‘such a joy to sing with the Athens orchestra and choir’ was one comment.

Sending snail-mail Please don’t send post to

our registered office in Englishcombe Lane.

Letters sent there may take weeks to reach us, as it is NOT the street address ‘behind’ the PO Box number. Use the PO Box address (page 2) to contact us,

and your mail will arrive promptly.

As a professional singer as well as a conductor, would you rather face an audience or have your back to it? I love facing an audience as a singer, but the capacity to shape the entire music that comes with conducting is something that is worth turning around for! I still sing whenever asked – and still take lessons, in fact – but about 95 per cent of my work is conducting. With your back to the audience, are you still able to feel a sense of communicat-ion with your listeners? As a conductor, I’m always highly aware of communicating with an audience – it’s not just a matter of eyes and facial expression. I’ve always felt, and I hope others agree, that a conductor’s gestures are one of the main communicators of the entire concert experience. And how do you persuade choral singers to engage with the audience? Getting the singers to look over and past you is crucial, and the first step is for them to know the music well enough so that they can lift their eyes from the copy and actively communicate with their audience. Encouraging them to ‘act’ the music out is the second step; to do this, they need to feel enabled by, and not shackled to, my beat. Opera chorus members sing without music. Do you wish choral singers

sang more from memory? Yes I do – it’s incredible when an entire chorus has every eye on you and the music can ‘turn on a dime’, as it were. However, as the conductor of two of the country’s hardest-working symphony choruses, I know only too well how practical considerations make this tricky indeed. Has any one musician in particular been an inspiration to you? Thomas Beecham has inspired me enormously: his wit somehow seems to blind people to his sheer genius as a musician. Once a year at Christmas I play his Goosens-orchestrated ‘Worthy is the Lamb’ at full volume (when the neighbours are out) to remind myself what grand music-making really is, and how Handel and all great composers thrive in the glory of sound itself. Which choral works would you take to a desert island? Would Mozart’s Requiem be one of them? I adore Mozart’s Requiem, and I find its terribilitá absolutely excori-ating in a fine performance. For a desert island, however, it will have to be Bach’s B minor Mass for the perpetual fascination, Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 for sheerest beauty, the Brahms Requiem for solace and (for those occasional grand waving-

around moments to banish the lone-some blues) the Missa Solemnis and Berlioz’s Grande messe des morts will do nicely! This presupposes an absolutely mega hi-fi system, no doubt solar-powered. Have you ever been tempted yourself to ‘complete’ the Mozart Requiem? If I’ve conducted the thing properly, I usually feel like we have all completed it together, and nothing more is necessary. How can we encourage more men to join choirs? Get ‘em while they’re young. Every major choir and choral society in the country should have choral bursaries for teenagers, and the bigger ones should have youth choruses attached that feed them on into the system, such as we have in Bournemouth. That way, when they’ve set up home and family and work is going along nicely, they will have a neural pathway into the idea of singing in a choir. There’s no other way – the education of these generations now has to be done by us, the choral singers, leaders and conductors of today.  

The Really Big Chorus welcomes Gavin Carr . . . . . . who will conduct our performance of Mozart’s Requiem on Sunday 10 May 2020. Gavin is the energetic and charismatic Chorus Master of the Philharmonia Chorus, and is also Music Director of the Bournemouth Symphony Chorus and the Bath Minerva Choir. In September 2017, he was appointed to the vocal faculty of the Royal Academy of Music. He continues to work as a professional baritone, and has a great understanding of how to encourage singers to give of their best. We caught up with Gavin during a rare break in his busy schedule.

Singers at this year’s TRBC Summer School tackled two joyous 20th-century choral works: Poulenc’s Gloria and Puccini’s Messa di Gloria. Thanks to the combined efforts of Brian Kay and Chris Finch, the choir’s tentative early efforts were transformed into a sparkling end-of-week performance in Coventry Cathedral. The presence of the English Symphony Orchestra made a huge difference, with the interesting and varied orchestral textures – for the Poulenc in particular – lifting the music to a higher level. The choir responded magnificently with excellent ensemble and tuning, and a real sense of the overall shape of the pieces. Our lovely soloists were Robyn Allegra Parton (soprano), Lawrence Thack-eray (tenor) and Jake Muffett (baritone).

A good many of us also enjoyed a trip to the Royal Shakespeare Company, and an evening of revealing conversation between TRBC principal conductor, Brian Kay, and Richard Morrison, chief culture writer and chief music critic of The Times.

Post-Brexit travel Singers and their guests joining us for the Scratch® Seinesation in October have nothing to worry about as long as their passports are valid beyond the date of return. Once we leave the EU, how-ever, the picture will change, and new rules may apply for travel to Europe, whether the UK leaves the EU with or without a deal. Anyone who has booked to travel with us to Trieste in March 2020 should ensure they have at least six months left on their passport at the date of travel. The passport office is likely to be busy, so do apply in good time.

Specialised Travel have moved

and their new address is:

3rd Floor, Craven House 40–44 Uxbridge Road

London W5 2BS Phone numbers and email addresses are unchanged.

Messiah update: Tickets for Messiah from Scratch® have sold out faster than usual this year. As at the end of August there are no seats available anywhere for sopranos or altos, and only a handful in the Main Singing Area for tenors (15) and basses (29). Nearer the time, keep your eye on our Facebook page to see if anyone has spare tickets for sale. We will also keep a waiting list in case tickets are returned to us, or should more RAH Members’ Boxes become available.

Members of Tonic Choir joined TRBC for Carmina Burana in July. Philip Barnett, one of the choir’s two

joint Musical Directors, talks about the challenges of rehearsing and enthusing such a large group, and what drew them to the Royal Albert Hall. When Tonic Choir was formed in Harrow in October 2009, we found ourselves with 120 singers to accommodate, and more kept coming! Tonic 2 was formed three months later; Tonics 3 and 4 have since been added and we currently have around 220 members. All four choirs sing the same repertoire and come together to perform. A fifth choir, Tonic Extra, tackles more challenging projects. To ensure we are accessible to those of any faith or none, we sing only secular music. Our repertoire has spanned nine centuries, covering over 300 pieces in 20 languages, and yet only a small number of our members had sung in choirs before, and only about 10 per cent can read notation. Nevertheless, we enjoy singing all forms of music, from rounds, world-music and pop, to music-theatre, four-part choral writing and opera. We have worked with world-class industry professionals as well as rising stars; we have premiered new works; and we have sung in venues from shop-ping centres and care homes to museums, theatres and major concert halls. Carmina Burana is one of the few popular secular choral works, and in the summer of 2018 we arranged a workshop with a local choral society, noting also that The Really Big Chorus had programmed this work for 2019. As a choir, we have sung in some exciting places, such as the Great Court of Blenheim Palace, the Royal Air Force Museum and the Royal Fes-tival Hall, but the prospect of performing at the RAH was tempting.

The initial workshop was a great success, and about 40 of our members decided to sign up for the TRBC performance. As the majority of Tonic members were not involved, we could not use our weekly rehearsals to learn the work, so we encouraged members to buy rehearsal CDs, and added three extra sessions in the run-up to the concert. We invited Brian Kay to lead one of these, and his help and support were invaluable. Our day at the RAH certainly lived up to expectations, both musically and socially. We had lunch together on the steps of the Albert Memorial and during the dinner break we ate (pre-booked!) at a local Pizza Express. Tonic Choir’s second decade beckons, with the challenge of maintain-ing our innovative and varied schedule. In November, our 10th anniver-sary Gala Concert will be our first with orchestra and will feature about 200 performers. And many of those who sang with TRBC this year have already signed up for the Mozart Requiem on 10 May 2020. Singing with TRBC truly added to our programme and I encourage other choirs who have not yet done so to book as a group. www.tonicchoir.co.uk

What a Tonic!

Tonic Choir performing at the Royal Air Force Museum in Hendon

Download the app! ChoraLine has produced a new mobile app for choral singers which is receiving 5-star reviews. The app ‘puts a complete choral repertoire at your fingertips, enabling you to learn your voice-part with ease and confidence from your phone or iPad’. To read more about the exclusive features of this convenient new choral learning aid, visit www.choralineapp.com where you will also be able to download the app (optimised for your device) via links to the Apple App Store or Google Play. To give the company more time to concentrate on the devel-opment and promotion of the new app, ChoraLine learning CDs are now distributed by Presto Music (01926 886883 or via a link on the ChoraLine website www.choraline.com). Based in Leamington Spa, Presto is an long-established, independent music retailer offering a wide range of sheet music and classical recordings, and a mail-order service.