- LIVE FROM LONDON is an online festival of the world’s finest vocal music. Set mainly in VOCES8’s stunning church in the heart of the City of London, it is a series of ten concerts of mainly a capella vocal music by groups including The Swingles, The Sixteen, Voces 8, Stile Antico and Voces 8. They run on successive Saturday evenings from 1 Aug to 3 Oct.
- You might like to see/hear this Damons favourite, put together by the alumni of the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain, and conducted by former Damons conductor, Will Dawes
- You can also see Will in no less than 4 choirs out of 8 (and in 4 different shirts…) in this beautiful lockdown recording of the 40-part motet ‘Spem in Alium’ by Thomas Tallis. It’s particularly useful to see which choirs are singing at any point.
- Another previous director of the Damons, Alex Flood, has posted his first online singing video. The music (‘How blest are the shepherds’ from Purcell’s ‘King Arthur’) can be found here, and rehearsal tracks are here. Alex will be doing more of these so, if you are interested, please let David or Simon know.
- Eamonn Dougan, associate director of The Sixteen, has posted a series of short videos with some great singing tips illustrated by professional singers.
- Robert Hollingworth and his group I Fagiolini have produced a series of very silly but instructive ‘Sing the Score’ videos for you to sing along with. Try this one on Bennet’s ‘Weep O Mine eyes’ which has some really interesting tips on tuning: The rest are well-worth investigating.
- David Allinson, the conductor of the Renaissance Singers, has been giving a series of video talks (From the Conductor’s Stand) based around recordings of their rehearsals and performance. As well as giving us insight into the music, David brings the additional perspective of what it is actually like to conduct a choir.
- Have you ever wanted to learn how to sing from 16th century partbooks? You can find out how to here and then sing along with a madrigal by Verdelot.
- Join the Stay At Home Choir, or Gareth Malone’s Great British Home Chorus
- Making Music (we are members) has created a fortnightly series of concerts from May-September.
- BBC Radio 3 and the Wigmore Hall ran a series of 20 lunchtime concerts throughout June which can be seen for a while here: or just listen to them on BBC Sounds. They culminated in an especially moving performance of Schubert’s ‘Winterreise’ (Winter Journey) by Mark Padmore and Mitsuko Uchida.
- Check websites for concerts at The Royal Albert Hall, Royal Opera House, Metropolitan Opera…
- The Bach Choir have been running a series of free workshops on major choral works.
- Classic fm’s website has some suggestions too:
- Look out for favourite composers/musicians, e.g. Jeff Douma, Eric Whitacre
- Look out for performances by other music groups such as Camden Voices.
- Other performing arts institutions & artists are streaming productions include National Theatre At Home, Sadlers Wells, and Andrew Lloyd Webber.
And last, but definitely not least, you can find Karen’s excellent monthly botanical notes on her website ‘All About Plants‘.