October 9, 2014

Toulouse, the morning after...

Bonjour tout le monde! We had a lovely show last night in Toulouse at the Auditorium Saint-Pierre des Cuisines. For me, being in my third year, I’m starting to revisit places so it was a lovely feeling walking into a building that I recognised. All the memories of the previous visit come back. Looking out into the full house last night was exactly the same feeling as two years ago. The Toulouse concert goers are a discerning audience and highly appreciative of their own music so Poulenc's Quatre Petites Prières de François d’Assise and Debussy’s Trois Chansons de Charles d’Orléans went down a treat!

I was speaking to someone the other day when they asked me about our upcoming concert schedule. I found myself thinking that it was a crazy thing to be explaining that singing in Germany, Czech Republic, England, France, England and then Russia, in the space of eight days, was ‘normal’! As I reflect on my twenties, my ‘normal’ lifestyle has a rather different feeling about it heading into my thirties. I still look back to my time in NZ and think, ‘Did I ever imagine I’d be doing this?’ My brother, Alastair always says to me, ‘no regrets, bro’, and I can safely say that I have no regrets whatsoever about the decision to move to the UK when I did. It’s an exciting time to be in The King’s Singers and this season is going to be great fun integrating Jules into the mix. Each show the sound is improving and the audiences have been tremendous so far which has helped him settle in nicely. Well, I’ve got a fair bit of admin to do before this weekend so I best get back to that. Bye for now!