UK photos!

The photos are now up! I managed to edit my 560+ photos down to a lean 300. :) Had my first day back to work today, and I'm already looking forward to my next vacation in October... Still not back on the right sleeping schedule, either. I woke up at like 5am this morning, and am trying to force myself to stay up past midnight to even myself out. Stupid Greenwich Mean Time...

Mikey's UK Choir Tour

Chichester, Arundel, Rye: There and back again

So Chichester was our last cathedral engagement of the trip. We did an actual mass there instead of just Evensong like we'd done all the other places, so there was a bit more music and a bit more rehearsing to be done. It was actually a little luxurious at Chichester to just spend more than 24 hours in one place and not have any sightseeing to do that day, and to have more than just one hurried rehearsal before the performance. We were also staying in an actual HOTEL, with real amenties, even though I ended up rooming with a woman who made it clear she was not too pleased at being paired up with a dude. The performance came off rather well, as the recordings will attest. It's a little bit of a shame that the town of Chichester didn't have much to offer, since we actually had time to relax and see it at a leisurely pace, but I think we were all over the charm of cathedral towns by that point anyway. There was an amazing Indian place that I missed, apparently, as everyone went there the first night while I was enjoying some time away from the group, although I did meet up for drinks later at this weird bar that was built in what appeared to be a small church bulit in the same style as the cathedral (all stone and gothic-y). The last night we were there, we went to this bar for dinner that turned out to be the place all the 20-year-olds in town come to party, and we saw a guy get literally dragged out of the place by security at one point. Lovely. Anyway, evening came, and morning followed: the ninth day.

At last we were on our way to Rye, but first, a stop off in the castle town of Arundel. Arundel castle has been the home of the Dukes of Norfolk for the last several centuries, and is still home to the current duke today (unbelievably!). The medieval castle keep was fascinating, offering some dramatic views of the grounds and some insight on the early days of the norman part of the castle. The main part was a lot like Windsor - full of gaudy priceless antiques that didn't really interest me much, but there was an astounding library that contained orignal copies of Shakespeare and the like. I hurried through the castle and spent most of my time just enjoying the grounds. They have a large expanse of gardens that were quite peaceful and needed by this point in a long group trip. We also saw the duke's private chapel inside the town's Anglican cathedral, which is behind a screen and sectioned off, where Roman Catholic services are held for the duke's family (apparently the dukes of Norfolk have always been the catholic holdouts, whereas all the others belong to the Church of England). It was kind of odd - you could see the chapel from the Anglican side of the church, but you could only enter it through the grounds of the castle. It was kind of like they were trying to do some sort of "you don't see this chapel here" Jedi mind trick.

Finally we arrived in Rye, home of our sister church in England. We were greeted by a throng of host families, which we would be staying with, along with the town crier, in period costume, the mayor, rector of the church, and the photographer from the local paper. Apparently in a town of 4,000, we were a big deal! After the town crier made a proclamation in our honor (complete with Oye! Oye! Oye!s), we were whisked away to our home stays. Me and the two bass section leaders (whom I stayed with in London) were assigned to this really cool single guy who owned a duplex about a 5 minutes' walk from the station (to be fair, everything was really a 5 minutes' walk from the station, the whole town is only about 10 minutes' walk end to end). He was really worldly, having lived in Africa & Indonesia, and had lots of stories to tell. I think we had the best host our of the group, by far (and the youngest. I would have said he's probably in his 50s, whereas the average age of the other parishoners was approximately 107). He fixed us a great dinner, and then took us out to a local pub, whereas most of the other people in our group were in bed by 9:30. Not bad!

The next day, we did our Sunday morning service at the Church of St. Mary's, Rye, England. This was definitely a little closer to our usual Sunday services, in terms of the music, size of the congregation, and acoustically as well. The only difference was that we were singing in a 905-year-old church instead of a 100-year-old one. After church we got a tour of the old town hall and learned a little of the history of Rye, and then we were treated to a church lunch in the garden of one of the parishioners, a beautiful, huge bit of lush green garden you would have never known was there behind the houses and storefronts on the cramped cobblestone streets. After lunch, our host took us up into the church tower, which was fascinating and full of tight spaces to squeeze through. We saw the 8 massive bells and even were standing there when they struck the hour (which nearly caused me to crap my pants). The view from the top was just gorgeous - row after row of preserved houses, surrounded by green pastures as far as the eye could see. You just don't ever see anything like that on this continent, I tells ya.

Sunday evening was our final Evensong, again at St. Mary's. A last minute change in repetoire meant I got to do the solo from Salisbury again, and we really packed the place. The choirmaster told us afterwards that someone came up to him afterwards and said that they had relatives who heard us in Salisbury, and urged her to come here us in Rye because we were so good! Quite a compliment, considering the vast number of really amazing choirs from all over the world that pass through Salisbury and the other renowned cathedrals we sang at. We had a big, final dinner at a nearby inn to close the trip, where many toasts and awards for the kiddies were given out, and then we were off the next morning at 6am for home!

And here I am, back in Queens, hating the weather (from a cool, overcast 65, to a sticky 86 in one day), but glad to be back. And I think Nate and Ani and Titi (who is licking my hand right now, which is rough and unpleasant, but cute) are glad to have me back. Overall, I think the trip went spectacularly, and there's even talk of doing another one in three years (I think I might be ready again by then). I'm glad that I got a chance to go, not only to sing in some of the most amazing spaces in the world, but to get to know some of these people that I work with every week a little better. I think I truly feel like part of the group now, not just the hired help, and it was a good affirmation that singing is something I need to keep in my life, even if it's not my main focus. I hope you all get a chance to visit England someday, and if you do, don't spend it all in London. London is great, but to really experience the color of the country, you have to get out to some of these little daytrip locations, where the pace is slower and things are still done the way they've been done for the last thousand years or so. I think that's the thing I take away more than anything when I go overseas - the layers upond layers upon layers of history that have passed on the European continent that we just don't have here. Here, something that's 100 year old is ancient; over there, it's not really old until it's at least 500 or so. I can't tell you how many times a guide would point out "modern" features added in the 19th century to an 11th century building and just be astounded by that fact.

Thus end my story. Go in peace.

Glastonbury, Wells, Winchester & Stonehenge: The journey gets old and mystical

We left early Wednesday to head to Glastonbury, the site of the ruins of an ancient Abbey. There's a lot of legend surrounding the site. It's more or less fact that Joseph of Arimathea fled to England following Christ's death and established an Abbey on that site, which was once an island. The original was wooden, but two successive stone abbeys rose over the centuries on that same site, until the dissolution of the abbeys under Henry VIII, which saw it destroyed and much of the stone repurposed elsewhere.


This site was sooooo cool. I don't know what it is about ruins that intrigues us humans so much, but it really was amazing. To stand and think about there being 2,000 years of history there was just kind of mind boggling. There are a lot of legends about Glastonbury having been Joseph of Arimathea's home, and how he might have been a relative of Jesus, thus people think Jesus may have actually been to England in his lifetime. Apparently, people also believe there are these bands of energy that circle the earth, and that several of them intersect right at Glastonbury. So it's a pretty important mystical place, although I can't really say I felt anything out of the ordinary. There also is a crypt claiming to contain final resting place of King Arthur and Guinevere, although, apparently, there are many such spots marked all over England, and no one really knows for sure. It did make me want to read "The Once and Future King" though.

After Glastonbury, we headed to Wells for lunch and our next engagement. It was pretty much the most stressful time here so far. First off, my watch stopped, and I had to get the battery replaced or I would never know when it was time to be at the next rendevous point for the bus. That ended up taking longer than expected, so I didn't go up to the cathedral with the group, which would have been fine, except that our stupid tour guide sent me a bass-akwards way through a construction zone to the choir room, and when I got there, I could see it, but there was no entrance that was unlocked. After running around for about 10-15 minutes trying to get in, finally got someone to tell me through the window how to get in - guess what? Through the frigging front door! I was so pissed at our tour guide for that; it wasn't the first time he'd been less than helpful, and it just made me even more frantic than I was about to be in the service.


So after all of that, we had a pretty stressful & ragged rehearsal, due to the fact that we were doing some pretty big 8-part stuff and hadn't looked at it in a few months. On top of that, I was responsible for chanting all the sung prayers instead of the priest, something that had been mentioned months ago but never rehearsed. Sheesh! Talk about a nail-biter of a service. It ended up fine, but we were all really stressed out the whole time, and we sort of got rushed out the door after our service ended, so we never really got any time to see the Wells cathedral for more than a few minutes (and what little we could see from the enclosed choir area during the service). We also had one of the worst dinners yet; some kind of gross, overcooked chicken thing with sauce at a hotel across the street - only the second of our dinners with the whole group at once, but neither has been edible. Another gathering in the suites on our last night staying in Salisbury, along with some booze made it all forgotten.


This morning I said a fond farewell to my private room in Salisury, and we moved on to Stonehenge. So. Freaking. Awesome. It really is something that everyone needs to see once in their lives. It's surround by this enormous field of gentle rolling hills that goes on for miles in every direction, with nothing around except a few flocks of sheep and cows in the distance. That more than anything makes you wonder how the hell people 5,000 years ago dragged these stones 30 miles over the land into position. This afternoon we saw Winchester cathedral, which was the best by far, in terms of the architecture and the history in it. It began as a Norman cathedral right after William the Conqueror came to power, and was modified on the inside to reflect more gothic style later on. It helped that we had a real, live tour guide taking us around and telling us stories. She was an adorable old English woman who told us funny stories about stuff like how Jane Austen was buried there, and they had to ask the old girl to shove over a few feet so they could run a steam pipe through her crypt when they installed radiators in the early 1900s. I also had lunch at the supposed oldest bar in England, where I had fish and chips, and tried Shandy - a mixture of beer and lemonade. It sounds so awful, but it was sooooo good, I'm a little ashamed to admit.


And here I am now, in an actual hotel in a weirdly suburban little part of Chichester, a town on the southern coast of England. I haven't ventured out yet to explore, as I wanted to take advantage of having early evevning free time to chat with Nate, but it was very, very weird to turn into a 21-century parking lot with a Mc Donalds and an awful looking chain restaurant selling "New York style italian food" after spending all this time staying in ancient cities. Supposedly the area right around the cathedral is a little more old-timey and quaint, so I'll have to go out and grab some dinner by myself later, as I skipped out on the group dinner outing. I'm a little over the group togetherness by now, if you couldn't tell. It's fine and all, and it's a good group, but I never really truly feel at home here, especially without my Nate-y. Who is great-y. Ah well, only 3 real days left, and then a half day of travel and I'm home!

390 pics so far!

Salisbury & Bath: The journey continues...

Monday we moved to Salisbury, a Medieval walled city about a hundred miles west of London. Uh, yeah. It's just as awesome as that sounds, it really is. "Quaint" is really the only word that can be used to described the town, and I'm not talking lame "Ste. Genevieve, MO" quaint, this is the good quaint. The kind of good quaint that you don't want to leave for a really, really long time. Not saying I'd want to live here, I thrive in a city, but if I ever had a country home, this would be the place.

The town itself is very small, and it really is walled by a big stone wall with iron gates. You literally have to be home by a certain time or you'll get locked out for the night. We're staying in the dorms at Sarum College, which is just across the lawn from the enormous Early English Gothic cathedral, which is celebrating it's 750th birthday this year (and this is partially under a ton of scaffolding and being cleaned up). The pictures don't really give you a good indication of the size of the thing, except for the fact that I literally can't fit the whole thing in one shot with my camera without a wide angle lens, even standing in front of the college (and it takes a good 5-minute walk from the cathedral doorsteps to the college doorsteps). Say what you will about the Anglicans, but they kick the Catholic's asses in art and music every time.

Speaking of music, we had our first performance that night, an evensong service, which is the type of service we'll be doing for the bulk of the trip. Evensong is basically the Episcopal equivalent of Evening Vespers; that is, an evening prayer service that occurs each night at most cathedrals, and usually once a month or so at most parishes, and can be spoken or sung. When it's sung, it's suuuuuuuuung. They sing everything. And like Vespers, it's very old-timey and typically full of lots of archaic language and high-church music. Think Benedictine monks, but Anglican chanting is in 4-parts.

At any rate, we kicked some major ass. As you can imagine, the singing in an enormous space like that echoes for days, and we brought lots of huge, screaming choral music to do in that space. Totally awesome. That night, we went for dinner outside the walls - there's nothing really inside the walls except for the church and school and some residences - then back to one of the suites for some drinks and merriment since we had to get home before we were locked out. The rooms are such a vast improvement from the scout lodge - very modern, brand new bathrooms, real beds with TWO pillows! My favorite part actually are the keys to the rooms, which are old-timey skeleton keys - awesome (see left). I'm in my own little single room, which is such a nice little reprieve, and I'm enjoying it now while I can. I needs my space, I does. The party was down the hall in a suite two people were sharing that had a kitchen and a separate sitting room. We had a great time, laughing and shouting way too loud for the amount of singing we'd have to do the next day. We also listened to a bit of the recording from that evening (I brought my mini disc and plan on recording every service - clips to follow when I get home), and generally imbibed too much (got rid of quite a bit of the Maker's Mark from JFK), but had a good time. I also went out and took some shots of the cathedral lit up all dramatical-like at night, which was pretty sweet. I was asTOUNded by the silence out in the courtyard that night. I don't think I've been somewhere so peaceful and serene...well, ever.

I paid dearly for my merriment on the bus this morning, though. We took a daytrip to Bath, an ancient Roman settlement about an hour and change northwest of Salisbury, and you can imagine the combo of whisky and long bus rides was not good. It was pretty sweet though, and well worth the pain. It's the site of naturally-occuring hot springs, over which a Roman bath and temples were built. At first, I was not really into, especially since I was queasy and moving slower than the hordes of little old ladies present, but my architecture/history/musuem nerdery finally kicked in and I enjoyed it muchly. I especially enjoyed the room in which they had done a very 21st-century-museum-style video projection on the walls to simulate men coming in and out of the baths in various states of dress. The europeans sure love their naked men!

Tonight was the night of my big solo in one of the settings of the Magnificat & Nunc Dimitis we'd brought, also at Salisbury cathedral (the Mag & Nunc are standard at choral evensong - there are thousands of settings by famous composers). I was somewhat nervous, just because, well, we hadn't rehearsed it since June, if not earlier, actually. That and the organ console is above us, so I had no eye contact with the organist, and just singing a solo in a freaking grand 750-year-old space like that is humbling. And slightly terrifying. It went well, though, I think I nailed it from what I can tell from the recording. It was good to get that one out of the way earlyish; I have two more solos, but they're solo trios so it's not the same when you're singing with two other people. There's always that thought in the back of your head that if you fuck up, maybe the audience was listening to one of the other people at that moment. Afterwards we did the whole photo shoot thing here, which was a nightmare as the kids were REALLY wound up after the service and really could not stand still long enough for photos. Honestly, though, that was the first time that the kids were really obnoxious; it's been pretty smooth so far. This might be because they're usually off in their little chaperone groups, so the only times we're really all together at once is when we're singing. Lord knows I don't envy those chaperones.

Tomorrow we're off to Wells, but we're coming back and staying here in the Salisbury dorms one more night. I'm taking it easy and staying in tonight - I'm having no repeats of this morning's hangoverosity. Plus, this bed is so friggin comfy I just don't want to get up. I'm sure the others will get along smashingly without me!

222 photos so far!

London: The trip so far

Our story begins at JFK, and our departure from New York. I was peer-pressured by people who were, ironically, much older than me, into buying some duty-free hooch to take with me on the trip. To be fair, everyone WAS doing it! :) I assumed there would be plenty of time to enjoy and share on the plane, but the guy I ended up sitting with also bought a bottle of whisky and kept refilling my glass from his bottle, so I never really got the chance to break into mine. So now I have this bottle of Maker's Mark and I don't really know what to do with it. Oh well, I guess either the opportunity will present itself, or I'll take it home with me (if I can even do that).

At any rate, the flight was rather uneventful, and far less painful than I thought it would be, for a 7-hour flight (perhaps the booze helped). All of the seats had their own little TV with a menu of movies, TV shows and games that helped pass the time. I had expected to sleep most of the time, but I think I only got maybe 2 or 3 hours at most. Not actually a good thing, since we left at 6:30pm, and would be arriving at 6:30am local time, with a full day ahead of us. Likewise, getting through Customs was quick and uneventful, aided by the fact that we were able to use the group travel line and get through all at once. Then it was onto the bus and off to our first destination...

...Which was Windsor Castle. We actually got done so fast at the airport that when we arrived, the castle wasn't even open yet. It was pretty nifty, and hard to imagine that people still actually live in this building furnished with 900 years worth of furnings in it. After the castle, we had tons of time to explore the town surrounding the castle a bit, and then we were off to our lodgings. There wasn't enough money to get a group our size into a hotel, so we're staying in a hostel that's mainly used for Scout troops. Basically, the rooms are like dorm rooms, only possibly smaller, with a bathroom the size of an airplane bathroom that somehow has a shower crammed into it. We had an awful dinner at the hostel (if you didn't know already, British food is shit), and then I ventured off to explore the neighborhood we're staying in.

First of all, the weather is beautiful. It was high 80s in New York when I left, and it's upper 60s in London, so it's like I just got off a plane that landed in Fall. I wandered past Hyde Park and happened upon our Kensington store, so I popped in to have a look. It was funny to see that all the new venues that have been popping up in the new stores we're opened stateside were all clearly copied exactly from this store. I wandered about some more and passed by the V & A museum right next to the hostel, which was open late, so I spent a little time there. It was a pretty cool museum, and at least it kept me awake a bit longer. By that point I was pretty exhausted, having been up for more than 24 hours, but not wanting to sleep until at least 9 or 10 to beat the jetlag. I wish that I could say I had an amazing, well-deserved sleep, but the 10-year-old girls running around screaming in the hallway, and the horrible springy mattress with only about an inch of padding proved otherwise. But it was enough.

Saturday we were up bright and early to do all the typical touristy London things - a walking tour for photo ops at Westminster Abbey, Big Ben & the Houses of Parliament, the changing of the guard, and the Tower of London. It really is spectacular seeing the crown jewels, and yet also a little frightening when you think about how much they're really worth and how all that money could've been better spent over the enturies. That night a group of us decided to see a show on the West End. We sent one person to go get tickets to Joseph from TKTS, but when he got there, the only available options were Zorro, and Buddy: The Musical. Buddy it was. Oh dear. It was possibly the worst thing I've ever seen, even worse than you might think a jukebox musical about the life of Buddy Holly might be. It was so bad that it actually became rather entertaining, especially with the group of queens from the choir I was with. Let's just say there was a lot of clutching of pearls when the actor playing Richie Valens came out in his stretch pants and started shaking his hips (and other such things)...

Sunday, our last day in London, was church and more church (exciting, huh?). We went to Westminster Abbey for Sunday eucharist, and watched a choir from New Zealand in the shoes we're about to fill at Salisbury cathedral tomorrow. They were pretty good, but didn't blow us away for sure. It was a choir of men and boy sopranos, so I did get a kick out of the old-timey frilly high collars the boys wore. Later that afternoon, we headed to Southwark cathedral for evensong, which is where we really got our confidence back, meaning the choir there suuuuuucked. They even did one of the pieces we're going to be doing, and we know we can do better. One of our choir members even fell asleep on her feet at the service, and had to literally be caught from falling down!

Tonight was probably the best night thus far. A group of us went for Indian at a nearby restaurant and really bonded. I felt like I really connected with some of these folks for the first time, and it made me really glad to be here with this particular group of people, and not a bunch of assholes like so many other choirs. At one point in the evening, someone asked me if I could do anything in the world, would I want to sing full-time, and my answer was unequivocably, "no." I wasn't a surprise to me, but it was sort of good to say it out loud and to talk to some people who understand where I'm coming from and feel the same way as I do - that singing is something I do for me; that it's an avocation and not a career. I need the stability of a fulltime job, and something that I do just for me that is a creative outlet that in unmarred by the stress that comes from a job. I had a similar talk with my friend Jean in the summer, and I know that my life is as it should be in that matter. It's sometimes hard to reconcile those two worlds, though, and it's something I've been struggling with a bit lately, so it was nice to hear that I have peers who feel the same way, and that it's ok to not want to have a fulltime music career. This doesn't mean I'm going to stop singing, or that the singing I do is never going to be anything more than what I'm doing now, it just means I need to do what I want to do and not worry about it.

Right, anyway, tomorrow we head off to Salisbury and our first gig. Wish me luck!

Pip pip! Cheerio! And all that rot...

Well, my time has finally come. I'm leaving for England in two days! For those of you not in the know, I'm the tenor section leader at an Anglican church in Rye, New York, and our choir is doing a tour of the U.K. for the next ten days. We're starting out in London for a few days of sightseeing and then we're off to sing at 3 cathedrals and our sister church in Rye, England, with a few stopovers to see some castles and Stonehenge on our way. It should be awesome!

I'm a little bit terrified, and not only because I haven't even begun thinking about what I'm taking with me yet... I'm not really worried about the music (although it is unsettling that we haven't looked at any of it in two months, especially after the touch-up rehearsal this evening), more about being in a foreign country for ten days with a group of people I've never spent more than a few hours on Sundays with. The last time I was in Europe was likewise with a group of folks I didn't know really well - I did London, Paris and Madrid in highschool - and I actually ended up having a fantastic time and making a lot of new friends. I'd like to think that'll be the case this time around, but I'm of course worrying about it anyway.

At any rate, I will have my computer with me, so I'm hoping I'll have some time and internet connectivity to send updates your way while I'm on the road. Stay tuned!