Song Free Zone

Today is a Song Free Zone. Some days I just have to have silence! My ears need to recover from the daily battering, which, although it does not sound like it is actually a compliment - when the voice is resonating well and ringing in a forward place, it hurt the old ear drums! So oddly, the better a student gets the more painful it is for my ears!

Silence is fantastic, for me it is like a runner resting their legs. Sometimes when I am conducting 35 well trained voices I feel as if my whole body vibrates with the sound. Maybe some eminent scientist should do a study on those vibrations, except they would probably find out that it destroys some vital organ - so maybe not!

I am travelling away to work, via a party! So today is all about complete quiet in the car over the mountains where the radio signal is very poor anyway, or a bit of gentle Radio 4.

I have often taken my students away for concerts, tours, opera visits etc. and if there were more than one car full my car was always considered the 'boring car'. There was a 'cool car', and 'wierd car' a 'family car' etc. etc. but I allowed NO Walkmans' ( early days!) no tapes/CD's only conversation - boy was I popular....actually it still applies today! I drive alone alot!

Silence is very important for any musician, and there is a beautiful song one of my calm and sensitive ladies is singing at the moment called 'Hand Eyes Heart'. It is the 3rd one in the Vaughan Williams Four Last Songs, with words by his 2nd wife Ursula.

The last line says 'Where music and silence meet, and both are heard' Wow.

So off on the M6 again a bit further, in a cocoon of quiet.....Oh hang on I need to rev up for The Archers!