Singing Teaching in Paradise: Skye Song School comes around again !

I am finally home, the sun is shining and everything looks green and springlike. Blossom is appearing on my plum trees and the miniature rhododendron shrubs are all flowering. What a wonderful welcome home after a month in vocal exile !

Skye Song School begins next Monday, so I am resting and recovering in readiness for a fun filled yet intensive couple of weeks with the singers - having said that, the admin still needs tackling, but I have some days left to do the files and print offs.

This will be the first year without Penny, who has attended all but the first year, and leaves a mighty hole in the first week of singers, and Annabel will be greatly missed as she actually passed away during the first week last year. These are sad memories, but also happy memories - all the funny songs with which Penny entertained us over the years leave a sizable mark, and her performances will always be part of the timeline and history of the Song School.

My recollections of her Ballad of Jenny, The Warthog, The Elephant, I did it for Love and many many more will live with us all, and her Many a New Day from Oklahoma which was last year's song will stay with me for ever. Her complete disregard of the weeping females around her as she told them to musically 'pull themselves together' was heroic and very very funny !

Penny was solely responsible for introducing yours truly to a whole new world of light song. Ballads of the 30's and 40's and songs from Noel Coward, Ivor Novello and the 'lesser spotted' songs of the Gershwin brothers. I am so grateful for her kindly and comprehensive education in this genre of music about which I was a raw beginner ! All my students have benefitted from this education, my wider knowledge of light early 20th century song has given me a pool of songs to give them, and indeed pass on to my past pupils who now also teach in all four corners of the UK !

Thanks Penny, for many things.