I'm Back.......

Winners All !
Saltburn 2012

It has been a very very busy 3 months since I returned from Hong Kong, and I was feeling quite 'blogged out', and exhausted for a little while. After a couple of weeks as home enjoying rest and recuperation I had two weeks of my Paradise Song School. This was a corker of a time! Although two singers had to drop out at the last moment due to unforeseen circumstances others leapt in to fill the breach and we had a superb couple of weeks with much beautiful singing, and the usual 'journey' of learning and being immersed in music.

I then taught for a week or so before lurching down south to adjudicate at the Cheltenham Festival, where I heard some very lovely singing and stayed, once again in the amazing Butler's Hotel. A hotel based upon famous butlers in fact and fiction. I get to stay in many lovely hotels on my travels but none batter than Butlers, where one's every whim is catered for, the toiletries are extra special, and the breakfasts astonishing!

At the end of June I took my pupils to Saltburn Festival where they sang so well, and won around 8 trophies between them, including the Ann Lampard Award for the best Overall Singer ! I presented it myself to my own L, and felt the need to say to the assembled audience that it was NOT a fix! In many ways that festival was a bit of a turning point for a couple of the singers. Winning, and suddenly been given high acclaim and seriously good feedback can be a little disconcerting, and almost bewildering.

Young R showed her true colours for, possibly, the first time in her singing life. She performed the entire day as if she were driven by some new force of confidence, and I was so proud of this major turn in the vocal road.

It is trickier for older singers, already established in a fine career and with much broad talent, and L experienced her first success solely as a classical singer, no frills, no feet and no mike. (She is a fine dancer and musical theatre performer by trade!). Being treated as if she had been doing this all her life, and gaining results accordingly was something of a shock to her more settled and adult brain - but if it is there, it is simply there, and has to be acknowledged, used and delighted in.

That brings us up to the beginning of July and our show. As I type it is the last night this evening, so I will tell more about that in my next blog!

It's good to be back!