Terrible Times part 1

I thought it might be of interest to any blog readers I may have, to know what I am doing during the current terrible times for the entertainment industry. On 18th March 2020 I conducted what, unknown to me at the time, was to be my last concert until.......well, that has not yet been decided. I had conducted in St David's Hall a few days previously, and we had wondered at that time whether the concert on the 18th would go ahead. But to those musicians like myself who were hopping from the London Concert Orchestra to the National Symphony Orchestra, much to our surprise it went ahead. Little did we know then how long this close-down would last. We all thought it would be a month, maybe 6 weeks and we'd be up and running with the summer concerts. Now here we are nearly 5 months later and no sign of this disastrous state of affairs ending. To begin with, as I thought this would be temporary, I started to do some on-line videos with the London Concert Orchestra playing individually at home. I think I'm right in saying we were one of the first, if not the very first, to attempt to do this with an orchestra by using multi-screen of the musicians, and we had 30 musicians on the screen at the end. I asked my old mate Wynne Evans, a tenor I have known a long time and who has found fame as the face (and voice) of a certain comparison website to sing Nessun Dorma; but this would be Nessun Dorma with a difference. We would alter the words and pay tribute to all those essential workers who were doing so much to fight this frightening disease that at the beginning no-one knew how to fight. And some were paying with their lives. From my life with the Two Ronnies, I knew the theory of making a click track, and then playback to that click track, but not how then to put that into practise on the screen. So I rang another mate, Steve Carr who happens to be one of the very best sound engineers mixing for all sorts of orchestras and stars including Katherine Jenkins, and explained the theory. He thought a bit and said, yeah, that should work! Then I had to find someone to do the vision. I didn't know a vision mixer, so inquired of my eldest son, who is a pilot in the RAF and therefore technically minded, if he would do it. He thought a bit, looked into the possibility, asked for a video editing software package and agreed to learn. It was a very steep learning curve for him, which he overcame brilliantly. Not knowing what reaction I would get from the musicians themselves, I tentatively emailed around and of course, received 100% enthusiastic replies from this marvellous orchestra, who all contributed their amazing talent. So I made a click track, which when you've got a piece with plenty of rubato, pauses, rits and accels, is not that easy. But I worked out how to do all of that, sent it to the musicians and Wynne and the result is for all to see at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=addeWnAwMxQ more soon...................