Here we are two weeks on from my last blog. The next Saturday after the competition I found myself once more in London this time to hear an ex pupil who is now at the Royal College of music giving a part recital at the Wigmore Hall.
I taught this young lady from the age of 15 up until she went away three years ago. Her voice is like melting chocolate and I knew from the beginning that there was so much potential.

Sometimes being a truly laid back highland girl we battled against perhaps not quite enough practice, and the feeling of reluctant indifference about the theory of music which I cold heartedly made her do until she had passed her grade 5 exam!

I travelled on the very early flight from Inverness to Gatwick and then spent a very pleasant couple of hours shopping in Oxford Street, something I have not done for a very long time!
I arrived at the Wigmore Hall in time to greet parents and friends all of who were almost as proud as I was.
Fiona's mezzo voice rang so richly around the beautiful Victorian hall.
It was part of a series of recitals representing music which had had its premiere at the Wigmore Hall sometime during the last hundred years.

Fiona sang four songs by Coleridge Taylor very late romantic and lusciously exciting. She sang with such passion and such drama but all the time retaining the essence of the Fiona I have known and taught from many years.
It was still the voice of the 15 year old but bigger and more mature, but just as a warmhearted and affectionate, like the girl herself.

I was bursting with pride and so thrilled to have been there.
I came home on the late evening flight back to Inverness and arrived home exhausted but very happy at around midnight.

The south of England bugs seem to love getting me these days and from the Tuesday I was stricken with a chest infection which I still have, and my own poor students have been left without singing lessons for two weeks.

I have to say chaps, I don't regret it, going to hear Fiona was worth every squirming bacteria!

Cough cough cough splutter .........wheeze..