Just back from a trip to Prague where we’ve been busy recording with this year's Britain’s Got Talent winner, Sydnie Christmas. She has a stunning voice and quite a contrast to recording The Poor Clares of Arundel at Abbey Road earlier this year.

We were so delighted to get another Classical Number 1 with their second album, My Peace I Give You so many thanks to all those who listened to or bought it, we do hope you are enjoying it as a lot of love went into this one!

We have just over another week of recording to do before we are off to the Edinburgh Fringe with the family and our show, Music, Mayhem and a Mezzo, so fingers crossed summer will have arrived by then!! We would love to see some friendly faces in Edinburgh so please do share with anyone you know who is coming to the Fringe this year - with over 3000 shows, it isn’t always easy to get noticed!

Here is a link to the Fringe website with times and dates etc:

Music, Mayhem, and a Mezzo - Edinburgh Fringe

We are super excited to announce we will be taking our show, Music, Mayhem and a Mezzo up to the Edinburgh Fringe this August 2-10^th. We can’t wait to be back in the midst of the buzz of the Fringe, so much to see and do and of course the opportunity for us to perform some new satirical/comic songs as well as some unlikely new mashups.

For anyone not able to make the trip, we will be previewing the show on Sunday May 5^th, 5-6pm at The Crazy Coqs, 20 Sherwood Street, London W1F 7ED. We really hope to see some of you there, cocktails are served to your table if that helps to sell it!!

It is slightly filthy in places, so advise age 15+

Click for tickets to Crazy Coqs show:

Tickets for May 5th, London

Tickets Edinburgh Fringe:

Tickets 2-10th August

Delighted the album we produced last year has just been released: Bryn Terfel, Sea Songs. Some fantastic songs on this, songs which will move you to tears and others full of toe-tapping joy.

We spent a couple of weeks in Wales recording the main bulk of the album last year and then it took another 6 months before all the duets were recorded. We all had to down tools one afternoon as Bryn lost a tooth mid-take, that’s great diction for you!!

The album features performances from a huge variety of musicians; from Sting to Sir Simon Keenlyside, to Bryn’s wife, harpist Hannah Stone, the lovely Welsh folk singer, Eve Goodman, the Fisherman’s Friends and folk band, Calan.

Hope you enjoy listening to it as much as we enjoyed producing it.

Many people complain Christmas starts earlier and earlier every year but for record and music producers, if begins in the summer!

We’ve had a few new releases out this December. First up, a new single with our friends, The Poor Clares of Arundel. It is a new arrangement of O Come All Ye Faithful which we recorded whilst producing their 2^nd album to be released around Easter next year. It has been a joy to record this album with the Sisters, it hasn’t felt like work at all and we have made some very special friends along the way.

We’ve also been working with the BBC Singers and Warners on some new Christmas arrangements for a six track EP called Carols Revisited. BBC Radio 3 have been very supportive so you might have heard some of the carols played there. The idea was to give a new, almost meditative take on some very well known Christmas songs and to highlight the amazing blend and technical ability of this world class choir who have had a very difficult year indeed. We will hopefully working with them again in 2024 on some new repertoire.

Finally, we’ve self released another Christmas track, Coventry Carol from our piano duo, Piano Hands. Huge thank you to Classic FM for being so supportive and giving us airplay – it is very tough for new music that isn’t released on a major label to get much of a look in at this time of year with such a crowded market, so their support makes all the difference. Link to our Christmas Piano Hands playlist on Spotify here: Christmas Piano Hands

Huge thanks also to anyone reading this blog and showing an interest in our work and music!

Wishing you a peaceful Christmas and happiness and health for 2024.

 Juliette and James

Tickets here: Book Tickets

This gorgeous cabaret venue in the heart of London serves cocktails to your table whilst I muck about on stage for an hour of comic songs sprinkled with some operatic filth. James will be joining me to perform the entire history of western music in just 2 minutes and of course there will be an audience quiz of unlikely musical mashups.

Hope to see some of you there, you’d be welcome to buy me a margarita at the end as it will be my birthday 2 weeks later!!

Juliette xx

We've had a busy few months working on a new project with Sir Bryn Terfel. We've spent some time in a lovely studio in Wales for a change and looking forward to announcing more details about it soon!

Other producing work is a second album for Decca with The Poor Clares of Arundel, our favourite group of Nuns to record and I'm not just saying that for the cake and biscuits we are always given. 🍰

We're also about to do 3 dates at the Brighton Fringe Festival with our cabaret show, Music Mayhem and a Mezzo. There will be comic songs about everything from the Coronation to prosecco, strange musical mashups and all served with an operatic sense of humour although James rarely breaks a smile! If that doesn't appeal, it's only an hour long, nice and dark inside and there is a lovely pop up bar outside. Tickets here

I've also got some performances coming up at the Crazy Coqs, London; a series of evenings of conversation, music and dancing called Avril Freck: Notes on Love and Being Alone (I'm the music bit, definitely not the dancing!). First night is tonight starring Lesley Manville but other dates include leading ladies Sophie Thompson, Alison Steadman and Noma Dumezweni https://avrilfreck.com/

Now it's May, here's to a less rainy summer than spring!

We will be at theSpace @ Niddry Stret (Upper) 6:35pm, 5th-13th August

Ticket link

Join us for an hour of musical fun and high jinks whilst sipping one of their delicious cocktails. It will be a great opportunity for us to try out some new mashups and songs on you before taking the show up to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival - our first time there!

For tickets, click here: Music, Mayhem and a Mezzo

We have had quite a few new releases this winter. Firstly a two hour album called, Winter Meditation from our favourite Nuns to work with, the Poor Clares of Arundel. Sisters Gabriel and Geraldine appeared on This Morning yesterday to talk about it and charmed Phil and Holly for a second time. We also produced a new single for Collabro, a collaboration with Sir Cliff Richard on a new version of Mistletoe and Wine. Sir Cliff not only looks a good decade younger than his 80 years, but also sounds remarkably fresh and youthful. Astonishing.

Our most recent release this month is from the German superstar, Howard Carpendale with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and we were delighted to see it jump straight into the German charts, behind Abba and Adele at No.3. I'm presuming they got the top 2 spots due to an alphabetalised chart?

We are looking forward to relaxing for a few days over Christmas but we can't relax for long as we are performing our very first cabaret show in London on the 29th December at The Crazy Coqs. It will be an hour of piano mashups, comic songs and general musical madness and we are nervous and excited in equal measure! When we submitted the blurb about the show to the Crazy Coqs, I rather thoughtlessly added in a line about musical acrobatics, so we are now trying to learn to play the piano upside down with our hands crossed - what was I thinking?? To watch whether we manage it, buy tickets here: https://www.brasseriezedel.com/events/music-mayhem-and-a-mezzo/?instance_id=374107

We hope everyone has a better Christmas this year than last.  Stay safe.

🎄Juliette & James🎄

As it has been extremely difficult to record a choir in the last few months, James has recorded multiple takes of my voice and I've become a choir! We’ve also shot a video for the first time, albeit at home with our piano and a green screen in the kitchen - glamorous it ain't! We have plans to release several other tracks in a similar style so please do click on the links below, watch the video and hopefully if you like it, we'd be very grateful if you'd share it as we don't have the heft of a big record label behind us for this!

Pathétique video

You can listen to it on all the usual digital platforms. It is called Pathétique as we have based it on the main theme of the Beethoven Sonata but as you'll hear, we've reimagined the harmony!

Pathétique on Spotify

Light for the World, the album we recorded with The Poor Clares of Arundel, was released towards the end of 2020 and we were all delighted by the response it received; so many people found it calming, relaxing and helpful for their mental health, so Decca have just released a new Deluxe version. Not only is it a rather lovely blue colour now, but it also has some extra tracks on it and some remixes designed to be extra calming, maybe for use with meditation and the like.

Earlier this week, Sr Geraldine and Sr Gabriel were interviewed on This Morning by Holly and Phil, and their singing, combined with their genuine warmth and compassion, made Holly very tearful. We were so glad that so many people got to see and hear these wonderful, inspiring women. You can watch the clip here: Interview on This Morning

As a complete contrast, we will be chatting to Pete Townshend next week about a very different recording project, we might need to turn down all the volume levels in the studio before we start this one!

We have been very lucky to keep busy these last few months when so many of our talented colleagues in the business are struggling to make ends meet. Public concerts are showing few signs of returning any time soon, despite the concert halls and theatres working so hard to keep going and it is frustrating when not one case of COVID has been reported from a theatre or concert performance.

On a happier note, the album we made over the summer with Collabro, Christmas is Here has been released this month and we've really enjoyed watching the Collabro lads appear in streamed concerts online and on telly and radio, this week they were great on the Titchmarsh show! I can't believe it has been six years since they won Britain's Got Talent, what a journey and they are still such a lovely bunch to work with, not to mention they are singing better than ever.

Released in November was another album we produced, Keep Smiling Through. This album celebrated the life and music of Dame Vera Lynn and was a real honour to produce this CD with Decca and Virginia, Vera's daughter. It isn't easy to do justice to such a wonderful lady and musical icon in just one album, but it is certainly a privilege to try.  I also made my first radio programme on BBC Radio Sussex and Surrey, talking about her life and music with the likes of Alexander Armstrong, Alfie Boe and Aled Jones who all worked with her, it was daunting but I really enjoyed it.

Finally, and this is happening in just two days time, we were very pleased and grateful to receive an Arts Council Grant to stream out annual Family Christmas Concert from the Brighton Dome. We've produced this concert every year since 2004, with the Brighton Festival Chorus, the Brighton Festival Youth Choir and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. It is festive and fun and we love seeing all the different generations who come every year to join in the music-making. This year, it will be streamed on December 23rd, at 6pm. We will all still be there, albeit in lower numbers and socially distanced (luckily the Dome is enormous). There are still terrible jokes, sent in by the public, all your favourite carols, you still get to join in on the Twelve Days of Christmas, there is a virtual children's choir and we had entries for the virtual O Come all Ye Faithful from as far afield as Toronto.

Still time to get a ticket: https://brightondome.org/event/27519/sussex_sings_christmas/

Wishing everyone a very Happy Christmas and here's to better times in 2021.

We are both very proud of this album, beautifully sung by The Poor Clares of Arundel, a group of 23 women who live in a convent in Sussex.  They are very used to living in isolation from the rest of the community- in fact, they could teach us all something about how to do it and keep healthy minds and bodies!

The album is based on ancient plainchant and new melodies (written by us) to the words of St Clare and St Francis as suggested by the Sisters and we all hope it will provide meditative and relaxing music as an escape from the stresses going on in the world at the moment. We were all delighted and amazed when the album hit the No.1 spot in the Classical Charts on release.

We decided to wear the plastic visors, rather than the nose and mouth masks. It would be impossible for James conducting otherwise. It did feel rather rude when obviously the wind and brass players couldn't wear anything - what is the etiquette with that? What a fantastic first session back - the RPO, Abbey Road 2. We were spoilt to see all our friends again and most of the orchestra hadn't seen each other for months, of course. The question on everyone's lips:

"How long can they survive without live concerts and their livelihoods?"

You know what's coming next as it hasn't gone away ... lockdown.

As composers, you want your music to be heard and performed, music is nothing until it has been listened to. 

All that work for nothing.

BUT...

The Cathedral rang us up and asked whether we would be able to create the piece virtually. Luckily, we have a studio at home and after many hours (days and weeks) of editing hundreds and hundreds of home recordings from the professional choirs of the cathedral through to local school children and the rest of the community and with the help of Ben Robbins, the very talented videographer, we created a virtual performance of the piece and a real celebration of the founding of the Cathedral and the community it serves. Take a look here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZNihiTjm1E

We are hoping that the piece will get a ‘real’ performance later in the year in Salisbury Cathedral itself but this serves the purpose for now.

We also gave an interview on BBC South East earlier this week for our new album, Christmas Piano. We began Piano Hands as a way of prolonging the function in James’ hands and fingers. With Parkinson’s, everything starts to slow down and seize up so playing piano duets for him is a kind of physical therapy. Mental therapy too, as the concentration and focus required is a kind of Mindfulness and there is increasing research into how this can help people suffering with Parkinson's.

The album features a real variety of Christmas Carols, traditional and popular, all played as duets by ourselves and in a more chillout rather than cheesetastic style! Please do have a listen on Spotify Piano Hands or download it here Piano Hands - ideal for collapsing onto the sofa with that final glass (bottle!) of wine after the last of the guests have disappeared…

I hope you enjoy it, it took ages to record this way!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aodxJx654tE

He has a great back catalogue of Schlager music; that’s a particular type of pop music that even has its own chart in Germany. It’s been interesting to watch Howard on YouTube singing his songs in concert and seeing the whole audience clap along - always on the 1^st and 3^rd beats of the bar whilst in the UK and the USA, we tend to clap on the off beats (2&4). There is a great story, I hope it’s true, about Harry Connick Jnr on tour in Germany. Apparently the audience were clapping along to his song (on beats 1&3) which he just couldn’t handle, so he threw in a 5/4 bar, thus landing the claps later onto beats 2&4. I’m sure I’d never have thought of doing that.

We are delighted to be adding a duet on the record with Sir Cliff Richard who has rather impressively learnt the song in German. Apparently the two of them used to play tennis together whenever Cliff was giving concerts in Germany. The world of 70+ year old pop singers is a small but very classy one.

Finally, wrote this piano piece whilst waiting for mix comments…

Yesterday saw the release of Rise Up with Sir Cliff Richard. Here we all are in the photo back in the summer outside our studio. If I say so myself, the garden is looking rather good in the background - much better than the muddy state it is in now!

Back home now and we are looking forward to the release of a new album we’ve produced for Classic FM, The Classics You Know. It’s out this Friday, August 3^rd and features all of that music you recognize but can’t place or don't know the name of. We have the theme from TV shows like the Apprentice (that’s Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, Dance of the Knights) and the Overture to La Forza Destino by Verdi which has a far more catchy title of 'The Stella Artois ad'. We recorded it with the RPO in Abbey Road and Angel Studios and they are sounding on fine form.

Here is a link, no obligation to buy!

Classics You Know

We also have an album of John Williams, A Life in Music featuring his very best work released today. The marketing teams at Classic FM and Decca have taken full advantage of the date today when planning the release; May the Fourth…..I should say Star Wars is only one of the soundtracks on the record which features the incredible London Symphony Orchestra in all their glory.

The problem we had with this CD , was what to leave off rather than what to include. Too many hits!

Watch the video of our recording sessions with the LSO here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbTx4007N5o

This time we’ve recorded them as piano duets (cheaper than an orchestra) and this has the advantage that we can play them ourselves. Playing the piano presents an increasing challenge for James as his Parkinson’s progresses, but it has become a fantastic form of physiotherapy. Despite many fights over who plays which chord or whether James has his hand over my half of the piano (he always does), we’ve succeeded in recording quite a few songs now. Fingers crossed this prolongs James’ piano playing days.

Have a listen and please share and subscribe to our YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgWivrGZZOMANqRGNA_DhMQ

I think we are most proud of putting on Symfunny No 2 last April in the Royal Albert Hall with Parkinson’s UK. It was a huge amount of work at a time when we were snowed under with various projects but it raised thousands for the charity and it’s always good to get a reminder that work and career shouldn’t necessarily be your driving force.

We have several new projects planned for 2018 including record production and live staged events. We are also trying something on YouTube for the first time. Following the unexpected streaming success of our piano cover of I Will Always Love You on the Pop Meets Classical CD we produced earlier this year for Classic FM, we have decided to try our hands (quite literally all 4 of them) at new piano duet arrangements in a classical style of our favourite singles in the charts (or the ones we thought would be the most interesting to try!). Here are the first few, please share and let us know if you have a tune you would like us to have a go at.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgWivrGZZOMANqRGNA_DhMQ

Wishing everyone happiness and health and all that they wish for themselves in 2018.

What was lovely was revisting with Xander some of the many carols we performed together as choral scholars in the days when James would have been the organ scholar and I would have been an alto in the choir. Xander recorded a few of the songs with The Choir of New College, Oxford, where one of his sons is a chorister and we recorded The Squadronaires for the second time this year on Winter Wonderland and Silent Night. Earlier we worked with the band on the Vera Lynn 100 CD, incidentally this is also being rereleased for Christmas with some additions.

What’s not to like?

Yes, it’s official. Having spent several months this year recording him, we can verify that not only is he a really lovely bloke, but Jason Manford can sing - and really rather well.

In fact, he’s been singing for years having toured the country in several musicals but most people still only know him as a comedian instead of the all round entertainer he is.

James first conducted him in a duet on Alfie Boe’s tour years ago and was really taken aback at how good he was. He was then kind enough to perform for free twice at our RAH charity concerts for Parkinson’s UK, Symfunny No.1 & No.2 so we are keeping our finger’s crossed that his album is a success.

Unsurprisingly, it is rare nowadays for us to be introduced to new songs in the corssover genre, if we haven’t come across the song before, there is normally a reason why it hasn’t been recorded or performed much!! BUT we were delighted to be introduced to It’s Impossible by Armando Manzanero. Jason wanted to put it on the album because it was his Nan’s favourite. It’s a lovely song, go have a listen.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J94EWJ_sT2o

When I use the words, two years of work, I’m simply acknowledging that we were paid to produce this record BUT it certainly didn’t feel like work! In fact (and don’t tell the label this) we would have paid them to produce it.

We deliberately chose Ella’s early recordings from the Decca and Verve catalogue since mono tracks gave us the potential to do something transformative with the sound. These early recordings were very sparse, with often only Ellis Larkins on piano, or a small band that included Ella’s husband Ray Brown on bass and as a result, the minimal instrumental immediately opened up lots of possibilities for adding an orchestra. We felt a huge responsibility as we handled the original masters of such an iconic artist. At all times we took the greatest of care to only enhance the original recordings so that the new orchestral additions added color and warmth and didn’t dominate the end result. Often the choice was made to leave in an Ellis Larkins piano riff rather than impact the quality of the original vocal, so instead we would echo the riff with the orchestra so it sounded entirely natural.

For tracks where we didn’t need to extract the vocal, we were forever giving thanks for the incredible quality of the original recordings – the vocal right up front, rich and warm. We constantly marveled at how amazing, faultless and natural her vocal sounded without all the so-called expertise we use to record in this day and age.

The recording was mixed at Medley Studios in Copenhagen, where Ella spent much time during her lifetime. Whilst mixing, we kept hearing a noise we couldn’t identify until one of the engineers realized it was the sound of Louis Armstrong fiddling with his trumpet valves. We decided to leave that in the mix; you don’t silence Louis after all.

There is not a big campaign behind the release of this record, I’m going on Woman’s Hour this Friday to talk about it and we are both talking to Danny Pike at BBC Sussex on his Saturday breakfast show, but we are extremely proud of how it has turned out and I would urge you to have a listen.

It was very moving to work with this brave young man and we really hope this album gives him a leg up in life so please support it and buy a copy. Red Cross Week begins on 7th May and we recorded the Red Cross single with him playing the European National Anthem, Ode to Joy (Beethoven with additions from the Arabic scale!). 

Do watch this short video where he tells his story, it is accompanied by a piece we specifically wrote for him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkJkdbzyLXI&feature=youtu.be

To top this, even Gloria Gaynor tweeted her congratulations to them all this morning. Now I’m just jealous!

This week has also seen the announcement of our Symfunny no.2 which we are producing with Parksinon’s UK in the Royal Albert Hall on April 19^th. Although it is now three years since Symfunny no.1, most composers take much longer than that to produce such a work. (Although that clearly  isn't true and we aren't actually composing anything). This time it will feature performances from Katie Melua who James has conducted in the past, Josh Widdicombe and our friends, Collabro. We also have the entire I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue team doing a musical turn.

More to announce next month but follow this link to book your tickets.

http://www.royalalberthall.com/tickets/events/2017/symfunny/

Studio wise, we have had a ball recording Collabro’s 3^rd album, Home. We are pretty well at the mixing stage now and all very excited with how the guys are sounding. Men’s voices in their 20s grow and develop so quickly and it has been fascinating to hear how they’ve matured.

I was lucky enough to spend the day at RAF Northolt last week with the Squadronaires. Just walking down the corridor of their music block was like a history lesson and recording the band was a thrill. Can’t say why we were recording them yet, but that will be the next blog!

It turned out that a lot of people also thought it would be fun to spend the day hobnobbing with acting royalty, and even real royalty, so much so, many of the BBC Singers and James couldn’t get on a train to Stratford as it was so overcrowded. Their plea to squeeze on if anyone wanted to come to their concerts fell on deaf ears, which meant getting a later train resulting in them running into the venue 5 minutes before they were live on air. I pity the producer waiting for them all.

It feels rather petty to grumble about a difficult journey in the light of the violinist I’m flying to Germany to hear today. This 20 year old Syrian made the treacherous journey from Syria to Greece in a boat. He is pictured here at the Greek/Macedonian border playing a violin someone gave to him after his own was lost over the side of the boat. Humbling stuff.

I conducted the ENO chorus’s ‘strike concert’ in 2003 – a concert performance of the Verdi Requiem, when they faced a reduction in numbers from 68 to around 50. So this is nothing new; ENO has, over the years, lurched from crisis to crisis. It’s hard not to feel sympathy with the ACE decision to cut their funding; there has been a culture of financial mismanagement for decades.

Cressida Pollock has, on the face of it, done the practical thing - looked for cuts so ENO can live within their means. But, as many have pointed out, she’s looking at the problem from the wrong end of the telescope. Most artistic directors (and it’s telling that ENO doesn’t have one) would be thinking in terms of how to raise more money, lobbying and working with ACE whilst continuing to support their current programme. The work comes first, not the budget; savvy artistic managements maximises even the smallest of budgets by being…creative.

So what about engaging audiences, present and future? The golden years of the Baylis education programme are long past after years of chronic lack of interest from senior management. Compare what ENO does for the audience of the next generation with the extraordinary education work of Glyndebourne - full scale productions on the main stage, full opera commissions - ENO’s work doesn’t even come close.

Darren Henley, the new CEO of ACE is a much underrated figure in all this. We have worked with him when he was head of Classic FM, and found him shrewd, informed and above all, passionate about music. Aside from leading Classic FM to record audience figures and (that dirty phrase) commercial success, he wrote an excellent government report on music education. What better way to his heart (and ACE’s purse strings) than to reforge ENO as a company for the next generation of opera goers?

Then ENO could stand for something again. As well as supporting British operatic talent, it could put education onto the main stage of the house – with a minimum of one new production each season featuring, and aimed at, young people. Productions should be scaleable - and therefore tourable; reduced orchestrations could be commissioned so that smaller groups could go to secondary academies, community halls and summer festivals and show them how amazing opera can be.

So who could lead this education revolution? Well there are 40 people at ENO who are about to be given three months off each year…

In the words of Noddy Holder:

“It’s Christmas”

For James and me that means a return to the Brighton Dome this Saturday, December 12^th for the annual Family Christmas Concert with Brighton Festival Chorus, Brighton Festival Youth Choir and the Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra. You might have seen the chorus earlier this week surprising commuters in Brighton Station with a flashmob performance?

We are delighted to welcome back the tenor, Nicky Spence, who is

flying in especially for the occasion and for the first time ever, we will be allowing a member of the audience to conduct the Hallelujah Chorus. If you are interested in having a go, scribble your name down and put it in the box next to James’ podium in the interval of the concert.

Earlier this week we gave an interview on BBC Radio Sussex with Danny Pike and he asked whether you needed any experience to enter this draw. Having replied in the negative, it has since occurred to us that it might be worth at least a quick listen through to the piece before you turn up on Saturday….

Our exciting news is that we are using this movement to launch a new Virtual Chorus.

How You Can Be Part Of This

We’ve uploaded videos of James conducting 'No Rack Can Torture Me' to YouTube here along with the music for each voice part. Simply choose the video for your voice part and record yourself singing along to James conducting. It can be an audio or a video recording. Finally, send it to Dropbox using this link. We’ll put all the individual performances together to create a Virtual Chorus performance of the piece.

If you prefer you can download the PDFs of each voice part from our publisher, Faber Music here: Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass

Please contact us at cantataforliberty@gmail.com if you need any advice on how to record yourself. If you know children who like singing, please encourage them to join our Virtual Youth Chorus for a fun movement from the Cantata called 'King John' (video link here).

Download 'King John' PDF.

If you want to read more about this project, visit Faber Music.

Our daughter says we will have to record it however as it clashes with X factor. Nothing like a 13 year old to keep you grounded...

Yet increasingly only the rich can partake in music, only they can afford the lessons, concert/theatre tickets etc. Culture is not an unnecessary expense in our schools. The arts account for £16 billion exports from the UK, indeed in the music industry alone last year, five of the USA’s best selling artists were British, and one in every 7 records sold worldwide was from the UK.

Why would we undervalue our fantastic reputation in the arts and not build on our successes?

You can sign the petition here: www.baccforthefuture.com/sign-the-petition.html

For those of you who have no idea what a 'red wine voice' sounds like, can I suggest 7:30pm, Brighton Dome, Thursday 11th June.

The boys are doing a great job singing on every television show possible so fingers crossed it stays somewhere in the top 2 on Sunday.

We were delighted to be allowed to listen in on the day and watch fantastic workshops on Liberty, Freedom and Justice. In one workshop volunteers dressed up in courtroom wigs and gowns to act out a ‘mock trial’ based on Jack and the Beanstalk.

There was something very moving about seeing young people getting so involved in the subject matter and it we felt very priviledged to hear their young voices singing our music.

Just got to face up to our own essay crisis now: to finish composing the rest of the piece!

Next up is recording the orchestra and choirs (1 choir is not enough!) before another week of vocals and then it’s off to Copenhagen for mixing in the same studio as we mixed Alfie Boe’s records. Keep eyes peeled for the album in June.

It turned out the English market was not ready for Kurt Cobain on a bassoon (who’d have thought?) and our CD was soon to be found in the bargain bucket at petrol stations nationwide. At least we got good distribution.

However, the story doesn’t end there. A year later it had gone Gold in Germany – they loved it and delighted in hearing Robert Plant’s voice represented by a trombone. Incidentally, we ended up working with him 2 years later and he was amused to hear how we’d depicted his vocals but I seem to remember he made us pick up the tab for his bar bill at the end of the day. Revenge?

The Universal guy who was behind that CD now happens to be the CEO of Deutsche Grammophon, based in Berlin. Well, we got the call at the end of last week and I’m delighted to report it’s time to dust off our leathers and string vests.

For those of you in the South East with families come along and see us this Sunday, 14th December at 4:00pm in the Brighton Dome. As usual there will be ample opportunity to dust off your own vocal chords and share a couple of hours of Christmas music with the Brighton Festival Chorus and Youth Choir accompanied by full symphony orchestra. James will be waving his arms infront of them all (if they can be bothered to watch him) and I’ll be putting on a frock with the baritone Andy Rupp – he won’t be putting on a frock, that’s just me.

My favourite song on the album is Addio, sogni di gloria which means ‘Goodbye, dreams of glory’. We were really pleased with the warmth of the strings on this track and Alfie sang it with real depth of emotion. This great song is truly operatic in melody and emotion and is about an elderly man remembering his hopes for the future when he was a young boy and how he must now say goodbye to those former dreams of glory.

Don’t worry it’s not all depressing stuff, Volare will get you singing along with gusto!

Turning up at 6pm on my first night shoot, the set looked amazing and much as I struggled to get through the shoots (I don’t know how the crew do it night after night), I won’t forget sunset and sunrise in the desert for a while. Equally memorable was seeing Frasier as Herod, fantastic casting!

It’s James’ turn to go on set next week.

Next week the same team is in Lowestoft. We will be entertaining local school children in the afternoon before giving another Prom concert in the evening. Will I be able to sing Rule Britannia or will I have to rewrite the lyric??

“Rule England, Wales and Northern Island” doesn’t fit the tune. I wear a red, white a blue dress for the finale too. Some members of the orchestra were wondering which bit I would cut off if it’s a Yes vote…

We were both overwhelmed by the support we received from friends and colleagues and even some people we’d never met before.

We also met with Al Murray this week to discuss running order for the night. Al is acting as host at the concert which is no mean feat with the number of different comedians and musicians on the bill. We can’t believe it is now only 10 days away and there is still so much to do. Still a few tickets left but we hope to sell out by the night but we have given an interview to the Mail on Sunday for June 1st so fingers crossed that will help shift the last few seats.

If the answer is a no, we have some new acts just been announced to tempt you further to part with your £25 for an extremely good cause, research into Parkinson’s Disease. New acts include the female comedy duo from the BBC, Watson and Oliver who will be using the full Symphony Orchestra in their act. We also have Sarah Brightman who will be showing off her conducting skills. James taught her to conduct for the film First Night and she has very kindly fitted our concert into her busy schedule. Jane Horrocks, the vocal chameleon, has also confirmed she will be appearing and singing as Gracie Fields. We recorded her a few years ago singing a Gracie Fields song and luckily she was delighted to help us out on June 4th.

I do hope that persuades some more people to join us on the night. You can buy tickets from The Royal Albert Hall or Parkinson’s UK website, parkinsons.org.uk/symfunny.

Happy Easter!

We are in a dimly lit studio in the middle of rehearsals for a new album with our old friend Alfie Boe. This is the 3rd (and dare I say it) best album we have made with him yet. Strictly speaking, we haven’t actually recorded a note yet but that won’t stop me making assertions on this front.

Do I feel bad about not being there for any school runs for the next 2 weeks? Yes, terrible.

Do the kids seem to miss me? Well, the twins cried when I picked them up today because they didn’t want to go home yet so now I feel even more terrible. Still, they have to be nice to me on Sunday- it’s a 3-line whip for Mother’s Day.

Last week we both went on BBC breakfast and BBC South East and have given interviews to The Evening Standard and the Brighton Argus.

Whilst discussing such a personal diagnosis in front of a load of people you don’t know is not necessarily what you would choose to do on your Sunday evening, it will all be worth it if we raise the money for research that leads to a cure and raise awareness of a condition that doesn’t always receive the media attention it deserves.

It is going to be a fantastic night of entertainment so please book a ticket, support us and help raise awareness and money for Parkinson’s Disease.

I’m delighted to be able to announce that Tony Ross (illustrator of Horrid Henry amongst other numerous books) is to illustrate live during the performance of The Great Enormo at the South Bank on February 22^nd.  He did a similar thing at the Proms in the summer and Michael Rosen tells me his contribution was a huge hit with everyone so we are very pleased to have him join us on the day.

That’s him now…

So if you don’t normally tune in to the X Factor results show, just flick over at the ad breaks to see if you can catch it.

This is one Christmas ad campaign where  you can be assured that no shop or supermarket or any other consumer giant is the beneficiary, neither is the artiste singing and I’m in the perfect position to tell you the music producers won’t be taking any proceeds either. So if you order the single, your support goes to children. Children who really need it.

The release date of new treble Jack Topping’s debut album, Wonderful World, is also fast approaching. Last Friday I was with him at the Albert Hall for the Remembrance Day concert where he got to sing for the Queen for the first time. He’d only had a week to learn the song alongside school and homework but as ever was undaunted by the task or the TV cameras. What a pro. There’s still time to catch his moving performance on BBC iplayer if you missed it.

Well, last week my zip broke AGAIN. Please excuse the excessive use of capitals, but you couldn’t make it up. Luckily the conductor had asked me to bring 2 dresses, one for each half. Just before I went on stage I felt my dress go ‘loose’. It was one of those strapless evening dresses where a good tight, zipped up bodice is vital for security. Retelling the story now, I am so intensely relieved it happened before I went on stage. I was stuck with the dress on but with my entire back exposed and not able to move the zip back down again. I managed to hoick the back of the dress around so the zip was at the front, thinking that would give me better leverage to get it down. Big mistake. It still wouldn’t move but now the long hole under the broken zip was in an altogether less acceptable place. Eventually I had to rip the zip off the material with 30 seconds to shove on the second dress.

As I said, there are evil spirits at work at the Fairfield Halls.

Our old friend Alfie Boe will be performing on the night and if you want to catch any of it on the telly, it’s being broadcast at 10:15pm on Sunday 6th October. Now, what to wear…

Luckily the family behind us found it funny when I desperately tried to explain to anyone who would listen that he wasn’t infectious as all the spots had scabbed over blah blah.

Back now and finished up a couple of Christmas arrangements for Classic FM and next up, we have to deliver some different length versions of a TV ad which will run every day during December for Save the Children with our lovely treble Jack Topping.

Home of serious British composing giants Vaughan Williams and Benjamin Britten, more modern serious British composing giants Thomas Adès and Colin Matthews, more media-type British composing giants Howard Goodall and Carl Davis and now (no sniggering please), amazingly, us. At least that’s no pressure then.

So it’s off to Italy for a much needed holiday on Saturday (if we can get our poxy children past security and onto the plane) and then it’s back to hard work on some new projects before Faber change their minds!

We are just adding some extra tracks to Jack’s album this week which is basically finished otherwise. We have a French song for the French market, and a Japanese song for the Japanese and even something in German for our friends in Deutschland.  Jack will have sung in 5 languages on this album. That would be pretty impressive for any of the adult artistes we have worked for but it is quite astonishing for a young treble.

Interesting to see how times have changed in the record business, now every album has to have an international angle and appeal in order to make money in such a crowded market.

We were recording the Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral Choir last week. I hadn’t realised that the combination of an airless studio, 17 trebles and cassocks could bring on vomiting and fainting in such alarming alacrity. Now I come to think of it, some kid always passed out in our assemblies at school.

Off to Prague tomorrow to record the orchestra for the record and next week is Denmark for mixing. However, Jack Topping, the solo treble with the most effortless and beautiful high notes you will ever hear, is taking it all in his stride. He is just a normal 11 year old lad who is just as excited about beating me at badminton in his breaks as releasing his debut album!

We are now recording a new signing by Decca. An 11 year old from Liverpool. He might be young, but boy, can the boy sing! Watch out Aled Jones, the next generation is coming up behind you…

Next on our to do list is to arrange/reorchestrate the music for a Classic FM concert in Cadogan Hall on May 12th, just a week after The Great Enormo. It will be a night at the movies so it’s the kind of thing we love doing and as James will be conducting the concert, we won’t have to deliver the scores until the last minute – just as well! I hope the RPO aren’t reading this...

No concerts now until our Great Enormo in the Brighton Festival in May. Can’t wait. We had Michael Rosen in our studio today to work on the last few bits and bobs. I have to say that as the orchestra etc are clamouring for the music which is of course VERY NEARLY FINISHED. Honest. No really it is. It’s a bit like snagging on a building project, the last bits take forever.

One last point on the cooked breakfast, raw tomato… yuck!

Now we are back to the centrally heated and 24 hour artificial light of the studio.  We are producing a charity single with The Royal Mail Choir for prostate cancer. You may have seen the choir on the television last year with Gareth Malone; a lovely bunch of normal people who enjoy singing together. It’s not often you come across such a straightforward combination in this business. We suggested they get a celebrity soloist involved to raise the profile of the single and the lovely Joe McElderry agreed to come on board. There has never been an easier artiste to work with or a nicer guy. We had a really fun day last week recording and are nearly ready to deliver a mix. I’m not sure yet when the track will be available but do keep an eye out as it is in a fantastic cause; raising money for prostate cancer.

Speaking of music being valued, how delighted was I to see the Ebacc, with it’s gaping ommission of the arts, has been scrapped. Mind you, how much time and money has been wasted in the last few months getting to this point?

We are off to another wonderful city next week, Copenhagen. All things Danish are considered achingly cool at the moment, or so I’m told, I wouldn’t have a clue myself as to what is cool these days. So we are hoping to find the next big thing and failing that, we’ll happily settle for a free trip to a great city.

For those of you near Brighton, put May 4^th in your diaries now and bring anyone you know under about 12ish. In fact, you can bring anyone you don’t know under 12 as far as I’m concerned but these days people can get funny about that.

The film, Quartet which James and I worked on as Music Producers is in the cinemas now. It’s Dustin Hoffman’s directorial debut, stars a plethora of titled English actors and features some of your favourite bits of classical music all in a couple of hours. What more could you want to entice you away from your Quality Street?

It is of course a 3 line whip to sit through all the end credits and spot Morgan Pochin’s name whizzing past. Blink and you’ll miss us!