Category Archives: Music

Damnation

I know there’s a whole bunch of stuff going on in the world which I could be talking about right now, and before I get started I just want to reassure you all that I’m thinking about all those big things – Biden, Rashford, Oxford-AstraZeneca. All the big good guys right now.

But I’m also thinking about Damnation Festival, a metal festival which would have been held yesterday if we weren’t all currently avoiding an actual plague.

I have been to Damnation three times in the last few years, which I’ve been able to do because I work at the venue where the Festival is run (Leeds University Union). As most readers know, I work there as the Leadership & Governance Support Manager, which basically means I look after the administration of the charity. It is not very metal.

I’ve always had a fairly diverse taste in music, but I have to confess, metal has actually never really been my thing. There’s definitely some that I really like, but it’s a bit of a hunt and honestly I’ve just never put the work into the genre. So it might therefore seem strange to you all that I would repeatedly turn up at a metal festival when the only link to it that I have is that we’re both based in the same building.

But listen guys. It is honestly an AMAZING event.

Opeth at Damnation 2019

The first year I went, I was shadowing a colleague who was mentoring me – giving me a greater insight into the commercial workings of the organisation. I’ve always been into live events management, but up until I started working at LUU that really revolved mostly around live theatre, speaking…narrative-based production. I’d not really had much experience of the workings of a live music event on the scale of Damnation.

It’s a whole day thing, so our doors open at lunchtime and then we don’t close again until the end of the afterparty in the wee hours. The attendees are a mix – not our normal crowd of students, but people of all ages, from all walks of life, from all over the country. We host four stages and there are stalls selling merch and bars selling beer and food. It transforms the building. It’s loud (naturally), and at times a bit intimidating, but it’s also one of the most friendly and charming crowds that you’ll ever meet.

After that first year, I was hooked. I’ve volunteered to go back each year since, getting up a silly-o-clock in the morning to get into work and move furniture, try and locate various people with far more technical skill than me, and scanning thousands upon thousands of tickets. The organisers are lovely and even though I suspect they’ve no idea who I am, I’m excited to see them every year just because I know what a good day it’s going to be.

This year as there’s no festival, they’ve released some custom merch and a podcast – and I, a self-confessed non-fan of metal have bought my merch and listened with interest to the podcast (and you should too, it’s honestly great).

Why?

Because actually, you don’t have to be massively into something to see its value and to love it. If I wasn’t able to go along and help at Damnation, I don’t know if I’d buy a ticket, certainly not every single year, because I wouldn’t get the same enjoyment as I do making sure that everyone has the right wristband, and that the acts can find their dressing rooms. But I might buy a ticket because Damnation is exactly the kind of live event I hope makes it through our current plague-ridden storm. It’s a well-run festival packed full of people who just want to enjoy screamy shouty art together. More power to them.

Oh and guys, I might not be massively into metal, but because of Damnation I got to see Opeth live last year, and honestly, that’s enough.

Support the arts guys, in whatever way you can. Buy some merch – if nothing else, it looks really cool.

#savethearts

525,948.766 Minutes

In 2011 I posted a different story with the title 525,600 minutes – in which I found that the song is incorrect in suggesting that is how one should measure a year.

This year, I have decided to measure my year in shows I have seen or participated in, because I figured it was probably a lot. But honestly, I feel like I’ve been writing for hours now, which I think shows that I potentially spend too much money on this stuff.

January
Aladdin – my first LIDOS experience, trying to shift book flats 3 times my height
February
Hello Dolly – supporting the MD, at the Alhambra
Rent – honestly, I only stayed for half
Marriage of Figaro – OperaSoc (who nailed it)
Madame Butterfly – Opera North
Un Ballo In Maschera – Also Opera North
March
Don Giovanni – I really like Opera North (also I got the keys to my house on this day, and my wonderful friend Lorna was the lead, it was amazing)
All Shook Up – Probably the best student show I saw this year
The Mikado – I helped build the set for this Leeds G&S production
The Pirates – Northern Opera Group resurrected this little-known show with a wonderful community cast
April
Salome – Dramatic and in the town hall
The Rileys – (it counts)
May
Orpheus in the Underworld – Another fab outing from OperaSoc, reminding us that #rushtonmustplaybass
My Favorite Murder live – My fave American story ladies told stories about murders and it was great
Hamilton – I HAVE NO WORDS
June
The Wedding Singer – high points of being in this show included being a hideous bridesmaid and “dancing in a club”
Guys and Dolls – more supporting of friends in their excellent ventures
July
Leeds Haydn Players – more friends, awesome music
Everybody’s Talking About Jamie – watched this live-streamed to the cinema. Didn’t love the plot, but the set was AMAZING
August
Macbeth – visited good friends in York for an adventure to Shakespeare’s Rose Theatre
The Original Chinese Conjurer – part of the Left Bank Opera Festival, and I was lucky enough to host one of the cast
La Princesse Jaune – another Left Bank Opera show
Calcutta – the final Left Bank Opera show, by the fabulous ensemble Tempus Fugit
September
Joel Dommett – he made jokes about the theatre I built, but I liked him anyway
Sister Act – more talented friends, this time more than one in the same show
October
The Merry Widow – back to Opera North
Light Night – Leeds’ annual festival of light installations (worse in the rain)
Tosca – Opera North, but with the most insane set on Earth
Matilda – horribly talented children
The Dresden Dolls – one of the best gigs I have ever been to, or will ever go to
November
Left Bank Choir Festival – singing pretty music with a number of choirs from the city
Chicago – more talented friends (it’s actually quite sickening how many talented people I know)
Urinetown – comedy from LUUMT
West Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra – more talented friends (plus fun locations and great music)
December
In The Heights – I only saw the tech run of this, and it was still incredible
Six – History meets Little Mix. I bought the album
Ross Noble – He says a lot of words, and most of them are funny, and many of them are chihuahua
LVM Winter Concert – The best thing I’ve done this year. Watch the video below. For serious.
Shrek the Musical – Birthday theatre to top off the year

I don’t “do” new years’ resolutions, but if I can continue the trend above next year, I think I’ll be pretty happy. I already have my eye on a number of upcoming community shows as usual, and I’m starting my year with another panto (Snow White & the 7 Dwarfs, come!)

Also next year I’ll try and write more. Maybe. Probably.

See you in 2019!

Little Wanderer

Bear with me today. I have a cold and my brain feels SO HEAVY rattling around in my skull. I’m not sure if any of my thoughts are going to make any sense, but it’s a while since I shared any regardless, so here goes.

I’ve been listening to Kintsugi (by Death Cab for Cutie, for the uninitiated) on loop for about the last month. And it’s amazing how when you go back to music you hear lyrics differently, or in a new way. I didn’t love their previous album, Codes and Keys, and I think I gave Kintsugi a cursory listen before setting it aside and deciding that I’d only listen to Plans for the rest of my life.

Then I got tickets to see them again in January, and I felt I should catch myself back up. Boy am I glad I did. Your mindset is everything about how you appreciate music, and I appreciate Kintsugi now because I think I have a “kintsugi” mindset. For those who have not yet run to google, let me explain:

Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. As a philosophy, it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise

And I mean, how great is that. To recognise that everything about our journey is worth displaying, and that patched-up things can still be beautiful, maybe more beautiful than the original version.

The track I’m particularly fixated on is ‘Little Wanderer’, which I maybe didn’t ever make it to on my first listen, or allowed to blend into the background. I have no idea how, because now that I have given it time I’m falling in love. I think that Death Cab construct their tracks perfectly (I’ve always adored ‘Summer Skin’ just for the structure of the piece instrumentally) and Little Wanderer is rapidly climbing to those dizzy heights.

I also love it because it reminds me of travelling, and that’s something which I’ve not done for so long, I’d slightly forgotten the joy of it all. Today I went and watched Mamma Mia 2 (singalong, of course) and that also reminded me of travelling, and seeing the world in technicolour, and finding the things you love, and leaving the things you love behind, and knowing that they’ll still exist even if you’re miles away.

I apologised at the start, because I knew this post would run away with itself, but here’s what I think I’m trying to capture – I’m so proud of all of my experiences, even the ones which left me a little broken and in need of some repair, and I love having cause to look back on all of the things I’ve seen and all the places I’ve seen them. Here’s to making memories and mistakes, and finding the things you love and knowing that you can go back to them.

Things I learnt during show week

(Listicles are still a cool and popular format, right?)

  1. I am quite good at folding large numbers of costume bags
  2. In general life I am quite body-conscious and avoid showing skin if I can help it. But I will absolutely strip to my undies in the corridor of a theatre for a quick change and not bat an eye
  3. I still can’t dance.
  4. Dressing-room camaraderie is just lovely, and during a stressful week I could not have wished for nicer people to share a bench with
  5. There are levels of tired I haven’t reached yet, but dear lord I have been close this week
  6. Children are better actors than everyone, I’ll hear no more on the matter.
  7. Children are incredibly strong (or I am incredibly weak)
  8. Nothing beats a good pair of legwarmers.
  9. I am wife material, if your definition includes turning up in hotpants with cupcakes.
  10. Creative people can do amazing things with a few square foot of space and I am in awe of the crew.
  11. I want to do props for the rest of my life
  12. It is possible to do a choir concert and then 6 all-singing all-dancing musicals, but it is not advisable
  13. If you leave my parents alone for 24 hours they will completely re-landscape your garden
  14. I love theatre. I don’t understand how I forget this. It’s just brilliant. Get yourself down to a theatre and get involved (and if you’re a bit inept like me, find the friendly and inclusive people because it makes all the difference in the world).

The Wedding Singer was incredible, and I am ever so sad to say goodbye to it. I’m excited to revel in my free time of course (barring the two board meetings and two subcommittees I have this week) but I’m so excited to be part of a new community of people and I’m excited for the next thing, whatever it is. Probably panto to be honest. Remember the time I dressed as a fish for a pantomime? A story for another day.

LIDOS, it has been swell.

…and if you need something to do over the summer, can I recommend the fabulous Left Bank Opera Festival?

Left Bank Opera Festival

Left Bank Opera festival – 22nd-26th Aug, Left Bank, with Northern Opera Group

Not an ad vol 2. (return of the not-so-covert ads)

love to sing.

When people ask about singing I always give the same answer. All range, no skill. That’s me, though it’s probably a little unfair to the parents who paid for lessons, and the singing teachers who taught me for years. It feels accurate though, because despite many years of pretending otherwise, I really can’t read music at all, I struggle with pitching, and I can’t ever hear my line in a harmony.

I can sing a bunch of notes though, so I do. And as with a great many things in life, I do so with great (and slightly intense, I imagine) enthusiasm. If being enthusiastic is a talent, then that’s my talent. Need someone to think your thing is the best thing ever. Give this girl a call [points at self].

In recent times I have been testing the limits of my singing a bit – dabbling in interesting bass lines, mostly hanging around the tenor section (being a tenorlady, yes the joke is purposeful, no I will not stop making it) and singing soprano while dancing (!). Sometimes singing soprano instead of tenor for kicks/to see if I can still hit the high notes – with questionable results.

I remain, I fear, mostly range, minimally skill.

But, the other people in the room are full of skill, and range, and all that good stuff. So, you should come and see them. And me. But them. And their wonderful skill, and beautiful singing.

Leeds Vocal Movement

Leeds Vocal Movement summer concert, 16th June, Left Bank

The Wedding Singer - LIDOS

Wedding Singer – 19th-23rd June, Carriageworks Theatre, with LIDOS

Left Bank Opera Festival

Left Bank Opera festival – 22nd-26th Aug, Left Bank, with Northern Opera Group

Jitters

I have spent this evening repeatedly telling people that I’ve not auditioned for 9 or 10 years, and in the interests of honesty I should say I’ve realised that’s a lie.

Technically I auditioned about 4 years ago for a music theatre showcase. I sang ‘A Spoonful of Sugar’ because I’m everyone’s mum and I’ve got a posh girl singing voice. I didn’t get in, which was a blessing because on the evening of the actual showcase I had no voice and only just made it through the evening. I also auditioned 8.5 years ago, when I first started university, to be in Grease. I was also unsuccessful there, but it did help me find my place backstage, so I mustn’t complain.

Regardless, this evening when I auditioned for the first time in a fair old while (if not actually 10 years) I remembered what it feels like to be genuinely, face-shaking, knee-knocking nervous.

As a general rule, I’m a fairly nervous person. I just hide it well with facts, and lots of confidence in other people. Once I know people I also hide my nerves with wild gesticulations and slightly ridiculous voices. I’m just used to having low-level nervousness most of the time.

In a slightly unexpected turn of events, most of my nerves came through in my singing (I think), and I managed almost all, if not all, of the basic dance. A definite first for me.

One way or another, I’m looking forward to the Wedding Singer – it seems like a fab show, and if I don’t get to see it from onstage then I’m sure I can see it from the wings or the audience. And one way or another, I’m proud of sticking with today, pushing past (to a certain extent) the nerves, and getting involved. When the worst outcome possible is someone saying no, that’s not a terrible thing at all.

(And when I’m alone, I can sing the below shake-free, and it’s a fab song)

A life of moments

“Oh, if life were made of moments
Even now and then a bad one
But if life were only moments
Then you’d never know you had one”

Let me tell you about two moments in my life, both related to the 21st-23rd of February 2007. My upper school did a production of Bugsy Malone. I was 16, nerdy, and had just chopped all my hair off in some kind of show of teen individualism.

I knew I wouldn’t be cast as Blousey Brown (the lead) and I didn’t want to be. Ever since playing the little match-girl in year 6 I’ve been successfully blending into the background of shows. I just wanted to be involved.

Then the cast came back, and I’d been given a one-line part, as the failed opera singer who auditions to sing at the club.

My heart sank, and I went to find Mr Jones to tell him that I couldn’t do the part. I was so self-conscious of my voice already, and I felt like taking the part would be the final nail in my already quite firmly sealed  social coffin. He was nice about it, and said that I should do it – it’s the right style of voice for me – but he let me drop it on the promise I’d still be involved.

And I was. In that show, I ended up doing everything, from building set, stage managing, costume, to playing about 6 different parts and helping choreograph some of the dances. It was one of the shows which definitively gave me a love of every side of theatre.

Moment two came a few weeks after the show. We were packing down after a live rock concert which Mr Jones organised every year. He was a “cool” teacher, not really much older than us, and with a background in media which meant that traditional dirge-like music teaching really wasn’t for him. The DVD for Bugsy Malone had just been sent through, and as we packed down the amps and staging for the concert, he mentioned he’d watched it.

Then he turned his head to me and said “Sally, has anyone ever told you you’re amazing?”

I found out yesterday that Mr Mark Jones was fatally injured in a car accident last Friday. Since I heard, I have seen so many other people sharing their moments, and that’s what he gave people. Until the second moment, I’d thought he didn’t like me, with my classical voice and my complete inability to learn the flute. But in a few words he proved otherwise.

When I got to Uni, I met OperaSoc, and suddenly found the people I’d been looking for. I could do all of the theatre things I wanted, without feeling like I’d lose friends in the process by being “uncool”. I don’t think I’d have joined if I didn’t have Mr Jones’ voice in the back of my head reminding me that I’m an opera voice.

He also, incidentally, introduced me to ‘Into the Woods’. It’s my favourite musical, and one of the productions I am most proud of my work on. The quote about moments which I began with is from the show.

Now I’m a trustee of Northern Opera Group, and I work in the building where I took part in my first OperaSoc show, and where I gave countless hours to improve on the backstage skills which Mr Jones began teaching me. It is not overstating to say that everything I am today, I am because of those two moments.

I’m desperately sad that Mr Jones can’t give other people their moments any longer, but I have 100% confidence that in the almost 11 years since my moments, he’s done the same for hundreds and thousands of other people.

He’ll be in my heart and memories forever.

Supernova

Last night the sky was so perfectly clear that I stood outside for 15 minutes before I got home, and just stared at the stars.

The thing about stars is that they mean everything. They have been interpreted in literally every way possible, from controlling and dictating our personalities, to creating everything in the universe. They can make you feel tinysmall, like nothing you ever do will matter in the vastness of the cosmos. Or they can make you feel huge, because out of all of the particles in the vastness of the cosmos, a few billion decided to come together and form you.

(Youtube is just full of such terrible videos, how did we even cope in the mid-2000s?)

Songs for a New World

The future is global, regardless of the whims of the BNP or Donald Trump, or Katie Hopkins (a woman who should genuinely be shot into outer space and left to shrivel up alone). And so, to celebrate this fact, I’ve decided to compile a list of songs I love in languages other than English.

This post may also be fueled by Boyfriend’s obsession with the first track.

Despacito – Luis Fonsi ft. Daddy Yankee
This is everyone’s favourite tune at the minute, and I have to say, it’s pretty catchy. Particularly without unnecessary Justin Bieber.

Aicha – Khaled Sahra
My mum used to listen to this when I was younger, and get me to translate the lyrics for her. I have no idea how I did.

Ai Se Eu Te Pego – Michel Teló
Catchy AF (here AF standing for “and forgettable” because I can never remember the name of it and then end up just searching for vowel sounds until I hit the right few)

Adiemus – Karl Jenkins
I’m not sure if this counts, because it isn’t actually in a language – it’s been designed to just sound calming but structured.

Ya Banat – Nancy Ajram
This was played to us in one of my Uni classes, and I don’t know how you can’t love this song, even if just for the video.

Que me quedes tu – Shakira
She had to make an entry on the list somewhere, right? Because she’s the queen of my entire life.

Bonustrack – La Oreja de Van Gogh
Spanish language songs were always likely to dominate this list, because I am biased towards my own language base, and there is something about this song which has always just made me smile.

Major Tom – Peter Schilling
I am historically not a fan of German, because it has too many genders and cases, and LOTS of syllables. But Deutschland 83 and its amazing soundtrack definitely won me over.

Volare – Domenico Modugno
It would be wrong not to recognise Eurovision as the home of all the best music, and Volare just feels like the right choice for peak Eurovision.

Songs to Sing To

I’ve spent all afternoon singing, and I’ve no idea where the song choice came from. I do love a good sing though, so I thought today’s update could be the songs I most like to sing.

*Disclaimer. These are not songs I sing for other people. I will not sing for you. I am not a good singer. Yes, I know I did opera. Still not a singer, still not singing for you.

  1. Fly me to the Moon – Frank Sinatra.
    Who doesn’t love singing swing?
  2. Transatlanticism – Death Cab for Cutie.
    (Who was guessing how long I’d manage before a DCfC song?)
  3. Life in Letters – Lucy Scwartz
    To be honest, this is just a lovely tune.
  4. Angels – All Angels
    I love this version, and I definitely always try to sing all the parts. Also All Angels were just great and I definitely wanted to be them.
  5. Chained to the Rhythm – Katy Perry.
    Because how can you not really?
  6. Don’t Stop Believing – Journey
    HOLD ON TO THAT FEEEEEEEEEEELLINNNN
  7. Ferry Cross the Mersey – Gerry and the Pacemakers
    Or really anything from my mum’s 60s album. But mostly this.
  8. Eliza’s Aria – Elena Katz-Chernin
    The most fun piece of bank advert music ever.
  9. Swing Life Away – Rise Against
    I can’t help my age, ok.
  10. Don’t Cry for Me Argentina – Evita
    One of these at least was going to be a musical, and if we’re talking about a slow build and fantastic finale (which we are, obviously) then nothing comes close to this.