In the news recently there has been a lot of talk about food which is bad for you. For example, we learnt earlier this week that Bacon will kill you. This was particularly bad timing for me as the news broke on the day I had travelled to Coventry to play the organ at the Cathedral for the Sunday services. Consequently, I was staying overnight in a nearby hotel (the one where everything is Premier but the food and the room). As a result of this (and not having heard the news at the time) I was easily tempted into a full English breakfast with lots of (no doubt processed) bacon and sausage.
Following the 10.30am service of Eucharist, I accompanied some choir members to a nearby pub and ordered a Pulled Pork Burger for lunch. Usually I am a stickler for Roast Beef on a Sunday, but since the pub in question was offering a Sunday Roast for £5.95 (which included mashed potato) I assumed it wouldn’t be worth having! More rehearsals and Evensong followed later in the day, at which point I retired back to my hotel for dinner, and the best option seemed to be a Sirloin steak. Not being the world’s finest hotel, it turned out not to be the finest steak. Nevertheless I had been fed and watered and, all in all, it had been a good day. I then read the news about processed meat…
Now I could just stop there and conclude that in order to balance all this misery and despair which we hear everyday in the news, you could join a choir. Singing is proven to be good for you and therefore it is the solution to life’s woes and should therefore cure you of any disease which may, or may not, have be caused by eating a slice of bacon. Of course, sadly this is not entirely true. Singing does have many health benefits, but, to the best of my knowledge, it cannot yet cure you of cancer. However, singing will always have that ‘feel good factor’.
This weekend I am off to Berlin to run a short choir workshop for some Lawyers from various corners or Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Basically I have just over an hour to turn approximately 50 Law Graduates into a Choir for a single one off performance which is being professionally filmed and recorded. No pressure then! At first sight this might sound quite daunting. However, I take the view that if they could do it themselves, they wouldn’t be asking for my help. Therefore my plan is to try and find the right balance between having fun and also creating something worthy of filming! Apparently when Gareth Malone tries this, it takes between 8-10 weeks! I have about 90 minutes tops! I will let you all know how it goes…
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Jules Addison is Musical Director for The BlueBelles, The Pewsey Belles, Cirencester Male Voice Choir & Great Western Harmony.