On process

Today, I picked up a violin for the first time in ten years.

I was never amazing, but I was good enough. Good enough to be on the second desk of first violins in youth orchestra. Good enough to have a go at the Four Seasons. Good enough to tackle some Lutoslawski. Not good within the framework that I measure my professional musical life by, but not bad either.

A few things were challenging. My left arm isn’t enjoying it very much. Crossing strings is more difficult than I remember. I’m starting to get the knack of vibrato back in my second and third fingers, but not my first and fourth.

To be honest, I was more surprised by how much I remembered. The last of my three thirty minute practice sessions culminated with an attempt at a Kreutzer caprice and… to some extent, it was like my arms and hands knew what to do.

I’ve really enjoyed today. I’m never going to be a professional violinist and this work is all about taking joy in the process.

We talk about it all the time in the music world: competitions, auditions, high pressure performances - we are encouraged to focus on the process and not on the outcome. It is a way of rationalising what can otherwise be an overwhelming weight of expectation focussed on a very short moment in time. But it is easier said than done when what’s on the line is not just first prize, a job, or being asked back to that venue, but being able to make your rent that month, or (heaven forfend!) being able to afford a holiday.

Practising an instrument without that expectation - and actually without the expectation of ever being good - has allowed me to take my time. Things that I get frustrated by in singing practice because they are ‘taking too long and the concert is next week and I’m never going to be ready’ can take as long as they like in this process. For example, I spent thirty minutes practising open strings, trying not to hit any of the others as I moved my bow back and forth. Just basic work focussing on control, quality of tone, and ease. I do take the time to do this work with my singing, but it’s hard to enjoy it when the stack of music to learn is glaring at you from your desk (or your iPad - I’ve modernised in the last few months). And after thirty minutes of open strings, I felt really proud of the progress I’d made, whereas when I do the vocal equivalent I feel annoyed with myself for not being able to execute it perfectly already!

So, although I said there wasn’t a defined outcome to this process, perhaps there is: to learn to enjoy the process.

*If you’re really interested, you can find a blog I wrote here (during Covid) when I talk about how much I love the process of singing practice! It wasn’t a good time in a lot of ways, but when you take away the pressure of performance, the joy really does come back…

The gift of time

I am sitting in a room.

Thus ends the Alvin Lucier reference. I am 24 hours into a creative residency at Fondation Royaumont, and I am reflecting on the gift of time.

I have been lucky in my career to participate several times in other people’s residencies, and now for the second time to have a residency ‘of my own’. A residency feels slightly different from going on a short course or development programme: a residency is free time to think and create, often without supervision and without the expectation to deliver specific outcomes. A residency is a gift of time and space from an organisation to gather with other creative personalities - or to gather all of your own creative personalities - and to sit together for a few days seeking the space beyond structured, goal-oriented conversation. It takes a few hours to get lost in true, meandering, sometimes confusing, conversation. And for me, it is mentally more exhausting than any other work I do to let my brain exist in this free-form way.

To let my brain create.

I am a trained singer. Singers are not trained to create. Singers are not trained to have creative agency. We are trained to interpret the creations of others, and not to view this as an inherently creative act in itself. In fact, two years ago, I would have told you quite confidently that I was not creative.

And then, two years ago, someone asked me what my artistic urgency was. I looked back at them blankly: what does that mean?

But I then urgently needed to answer the question. Why do we not ask this question of performers? Why do we perform if not for a great urgency - whether that is to communicate, or to exist alongside our colleagues - to connect in some form? So the extra gift of a residency for me is to catch up on lost time - to learn to create and explore - to give myself permission to think beyond the confines of score study and practice. To study how my ‘more creative’ colleagues think and work (and sometimes to observe how the time when they are not working is the most creative of all) and to absorb this into my own practice.

So here I am, mentally exhausted after a day of challenging my brain to work in a way it is not used to. And yet, for the first time in more than six months, I have the desire and energy to sit down at my laptop and write. To - in a way - create, and to try to articulate my thoughts not through interpreting the words and music of others, but through my own words.

Oh, that I on wings could rise

Just over a year ago I decided to go ‘no-fly’. Or rather, I decided that I would only take flights when it was physically impossible to do anything else. This meant lots of day long journeys across France and Germany – down to Aix-en-Provence, over to London, up to Berlin – collecting BahnBonus points and delay repayments in equal measure as I went.

I first broke my fast at the end of August 2021. On this occasion, I was required to be in two places at once: at the wedding of two good friends from school, but also at an abbey near Paris workshopping with young composers. I couldn’t afford to miss the workshops, but it was also very important to me to support my friends, not least as I was singing in the church service. My employer generously allowed me to miss the first day of workshops, however to additionally opt for ‘slow travel’ would have meant missing a second day, as the first Eurostar the next morning didn’t get into Paris until 3pm. So I partied half the night away, caught a couple of hours’ sleep and then caught the first flight to Paris in the morning, arriving just in time for our 10am rehearsal.

That was a long day.

One of the things I’ve learned in a year of attempting slow travel is that the modern world – and especially the modern world for a freelance musician – demands these acts of time travel almost constantly. I have a colleague who did a recital in Madrid one day and Oslo the next, something that was physically impossible until a few decades ago. Another friend confided that she’d had problems with vocal fatigue after a concert in Paris one night and a 10am rehearsal in Berlin the next morning.

In an age of frequent burnout, I think aeroplanes have a lot to answer for. Of course, their burning of fossil fuels is the greatest crime and the true reason to stop flying, but our energy is also a finite resource.

I got about six months into my pact with myself without issue. Work was planned far enough in advance that I could book trains whilst they were affordable, and I was generally spending long enough in each place that it was worth taking my time to get there.

Then audition season started and things got a lot more complicated.

In November – in a startling act of efficiency – I managed to line up three auditions in London over 36 hours, neatly fitting them in between concerts in Berlin and an audition at home in Stuttgart. However, when I began to look at my travel options, two issues quickly became apparent. The first was that I would paying these travel expenses out of my own pocket (whereas up to this point employers had paid), and the second was that the aforementioned auditions had been organised far too late in the day to book affordable train travel. So I flew. And thus begun an embarrassment of flights over four months. The full confession:

·        Two return flights for auditions arranged so last minute I couldn’t afford the train.

·        One single flight to avoid travel regulations, as entry into France from the UK was illegal (but entry into France from Germany was fine, even if you’d recently visited the UK).

·        Four single flights for work that was booked so last minute nobody was willing to pay the astronomical train fare.

Including the flights in August and November, that’s 12 flights in the space of a year – more than a lot of people will take in a life-time and certainly more than justify smugly preaching about not flying. We all know why we shouldn’t fly; I suppose what this post explores is why so many of us continue to do so.

The truth is that the train doesn’t only cost more time, it also costs more money. This is either money I don’t have as a young musician, or money that I feel compelled to spend elsewhere (eg. my heating bill). If you book sufficiently in advance the cost of a train ticket Stuttgart-London isn’t eye-watering, and I’ve also discovered a sweet spot where the booking is so last minute that both flight and train work out at about 200EUR.

After a prolonged period of chaos in my life, I’ve arrived in a situation of knowing what I’m doing until late October. Trains are getting booked, I’m doing a decent job of persuading organisations to cover my fares, and I’m determined to avoid airports for the next six months if at all possible. If the last year has taught me anything, it is admiration for those musicians who successfully live a true no-fly lifestyle. But the responsibility can’t rest solely on our shoulders. Organisations need to set aside budget for increased travel costs, agents need to make room for slow travel in artists’ schedules, and things need to be planned further ahead (I refuse to accept that an audition cannot be scheduled until the week before). On a larger scale, governments need to subsidise train travel so it really is the cheaper option – and on that note it will be interesting to see the impact of Germany’s 9 EUR ticket this summer.

Judging by my Deutsche Bahn debacle last night, many will still be opting to take flight.

I am a singer

I was chatting to a very respected friend and colleague the other day and she said ‘I really feel like I’m going to be a singer’. And I stopped her and said - ‘no - you are a singer’.

How many of us spend our young artist years living in the perpetual state of aspirational student? Always saying ‘I want to be a singer’, or hearing friends and family say ‘they’re going to be a singer’. Let me tell you this, if you earn a decent proportion of your keep doing things that are related to the business of singing - you are a singer.

Why is this important?

I believe that one of the fundamental steps to changing our business is changing the mindset of performers. Only when we stop infantilising ourselves can we start to have expectations from the people who hire us. When we stop feeling like students and start realising we are professionals with skills and responsibilities, we can ask to be treated accordingly. When we look back and realise how far we have come - and how far away we are from those students on their first day of conservatoire - we can begin to respect ourselves, and to command the respect of others.

The idea of hoping, wanting, aspiring, expecting, trying all feeds into the gratitude culture that pervades and poisons our industry. You should be grateful to be being paid at all, even if the expenses you incur on the job leave you out of pocket. You should be grateful to be hired by Mr X because he is famous, even if he treats you badly at work. You should be grateful to get an audition, even if it was organised so last minute that your travel and accommodation fly into triple figures.

I’m not saying there is nothing to be grateful for in this job, but it’s time to delineate what is and isn’t a #blessing. It is a job, that means it should cover your rent and bills and living costs. That means you should have a contract, and be treated with respect in the workplace. It is a freelance job, so it should also leave you with a bit spare for your pension, taxes and rainy day sick fund. And yes, there might always be an actual student who is willing to work under these conditions, but those of us who are no longer students need to stick together and call for fair terms. Because we’re worth it.

Some day this pain will be useful to you

Hello everyone.

Long time no see. I’d really love this to be the year I get back into blogging but… well, let’s see if the year is interesting enough first!

I’m here to talk about mental health. As I live through my second winter away from home it is pretty constantly on my mind. I make no secret of not being January’s biggest fan, and it has only got harder since separating myself by 500km from most of the people I love in this world. It is lonely and dark and generally lacking in opportunities for gainful employment. I know it’s February now - and yes, the days are a bit longer - but the above still applies to some degree.

Moving country is tough. Being a freelance musician is tough. The two things compounded are at times pretty devastating. More than I could have ever imagined. (You can also replace tough with amazing in those three sentences on occasion, but that’s not the focus today…)

You know the other thing that happens in January and February? Auditions. Either so many auditions you can’t pause for breath, or a disconcerting lack of auditions. Both are challenging in different ways and this year I am lucky (?) enough to be suffering from the former problem.

So here’s why I’m writing this blog. On Saturday I had a really bad day. I’d just done another less-than-perfect audition, received my ninth - or maybe tenth - rejection email of the year and spent most of the day alternating between staring at my bank account in blind panic, and slumping in an arm chair wondering if it was time to give up and go home.

48 hours later the world looks different. The first step to turning the light back on was a good recording session. The pain (and for me it is painful) of the last two months’ auditioning has given me a wonderful chance to work on my focus, and to get better at delivering in the moment. Today I found that rare synergy of total concentration and fun, which is always reassuring. The second step was receiving some feedback from a rejection. It is all too easy when you get rejected from things to think ‘well that’s it, I’m not good enough’. It was very affirmative to receive kind, honest, constructive feedback, and to find the belief anew that I am good enough - just so are a lot of other people. The third step was getting some work in the diary. Always reassuring. Especially for my bank account.

So, to the title of this post: some day this pain will be useful to you. I’m not sure how or when yet. But from past experience I have absolute faith that one day it will be. Through pain we discover our strength, and in moments of challenge it is important to know how strong you are. To those of you struggling right now, stick with it. It will get better. I don’t know how or when. But it will. In the meantime, find your cheerleaders - the people who say ‘I believe in you’ when you can’t say ‘I believe in myself’.

To finish, a text I sent one of my friends this afternoon, which I think sums up how I feel today: this is challenging and stressful and anxiety inducing but we grow and improve and learn with each opportunity.

Here’s to that.

On being an immigrant

My grandparents were immigrants. I have the privilege of calling myself an expat, but I call myself an immigrant anyway because expat is such an arrogant term, and because an immigrant is what I am.

It is a humbling experience to be an immigrant. Today it has involved watching an election take place in a country where I have chosen to invest my future, but having no say in the result. For my first 6 months here, being an immigrant meant feeling like I was breaking the rules every time I went to the bank, or the post office, because I didn’t yet have the document that proved my right to be living here. Back in January, being an immigrant meant a 40 minute interview with the border police, desperately trying to prove that I was allowed into the country.

Being an immigrant means doing everything important in your second language: finances, healthcare, making new friends. It means giving your number incorrectly to your cute neighbour because you are too tired to think in English - let alone German. It means making mistakes, accepting corrections with humility, and taking another step forwards.

Being a British immigrant post-Brexit has its own particular nuances. I got turned away from the theatre a couple of weeks ago for having a UK vaccine pass. Brexit-related bureaucratic challenges often just engender the response: ‘well, you voted for it’. Having an English accent normally provokes a look of sympathy or disdain, although that problem probably isn’t new...

I picked up my visa three weeks ago; a small piece of plastic that makes me feel like a different person. When people ask for ID, I no longer have to embarrassedly flash my British passport at them. I am valid. There are still a few rules to follow that make life a little more complicated, but it is a smaller weight to carry on my shoulders than the uncertainty of waiting. This last year has taught me a lot of humility, and a lot of respect for anyone who chooses to uproot their life to go and live somewhere else in hope of a better future. It’s not always easy, but who wants easy anyway?

366 days

It is 366 days since I moved to Germany. Today I finally performed my first concert – the finals of the John Cage Interpretation Award at the Nordharzer Staedtebundtheater in Halberstadt.

This isn’t really where I expected to be after 366 days. In fact, if you’d told me about the first 363 days I probably would never have moved. It has been nigh on impossible to find auditions – let alone work; or even to meet people and build a new community. I count my lucky stars every day that I have a few friends here from the UK, and also for the friends and family who live at the end of the telephone.

Covid or no Covid, life doesn’t go to plan. I knew that before I moved, and the message has been reinforced in new and different ways in the last 12 months. But life is full of surprises, and some beautiful things have happened in the first episode of this adventure:

• I have grown stronger – as a person, in my beliefs, in my identity. I have a much clearer idea of what I want from life and of why I am here than I did 366 days ago sitting in Heathrow airport.

• Despite the distance, relationships with the people I am close to have – in many cases – deepened. Our time together in the flesh is precious, and for me, our time together on the phone is even more so.

• There are quite a lot of days when I still feel like a British outsider, but there are also days when I feel like I am part of Europe. That is ultimately why I came here, and the time I have spent in Luzern, Royaumont, Aix-en-Provence, and – of course – all over Germany, has made me feel part of the European community I was so sad to be leaving.

• I have met some kindred spirits along the way. Yes, they live all over Europe (but isn’t that the beauty of being European?) so I can’t just pop over for a cup of tea whenever I want, but it is reassuring to know there are beautiful people waiting for me in Paris, Berlin, and many other places…

• I’ve stuck it out. I wouldn’t say I’ve made a massive success of it, but I haven’t given up.

Here’s to not giving up.

And on the subject of not giving up? I came second in the John Cage Interpretation Award with my pianist Pierre Delignies. I took all of those positives above and created a programme that represents who I am and what I want to sing. And I guess people liked it.

Goodbye

It has taken an awfully long time to write this. But this evening as I sit in my Stuttgart apartment missing them both terribly and listening to Jane’s remarkable recording of Chants de terre et de ciel it finally felt like time.

At the end of March the contemporary music world lost a shining light - Jane Manning. At the end of April it lost another - Anthony Payne (Tony to anyone who knew him). Jane and Tony had a phenomenal impact on the British contemporary music scene, shaping it in the latter part of the 20th century. But there are others who were around before me who are much more qualified to write about that. The side of Jane and Tony that I saw in the last six years of knowing them was two generous souls who took countless musicians under their wings - myself included - supporting them in any way possible, whether with food, rehearsal space, coaching, a friendly pair of faces in the audience, or company. Jane always used to say the world was their family, and it was not until we lost her and the tributes started pouring in on Twitter that I understood that she really meant it.

Losing Tony just a month later was a rather more unexpected blow. But then, could one really imagine one without the other? My first experiences of Jane and Tony were coachings as a student at the Guildhall. And it really was Jane and Tony. Although the coaching was with Jane, Tony would always be there at the end of class to travel home with her. Gentle, smiling, patient.

The years passed and student/teacher became mentor/mentee, then friends and eventually family. What I will miss is two remarkably funny people, brilliant encyclopaedic minds, always at the end of the phone (or Zoom more recently). I still catch myself thinking ‘Oh I must tell Jane that’ from time to time, but it is a comfort to know that both will live on through their music. For Jane, through the countless works she commissioned, recorded and premiered. For Tony, through his own musical works. Even if they can’t pick up the phone any more, I can always find them there. And that is a wonderful thing.

One year on

This time last year I was… *fill in the gaps*

• just back from an audition trip to Sweden

• rehearsing The Cunning Little Vixen and The Rape of Lucretia in London

• looking forward to seeing Fidelio at the Royal Opera House

• going for brunch, lunch, coffee, dinner, drinks and breakfast with friends - whenever and wherever I liked.

This time last year the WHO declared a pandemic. As you can see from the above, it took the UK a few days to catch up.

This time this year I am… *fill in the gaps*

• someone who has not touched, or eaten a meal with, another human being for over two months

• a professional administrator, ESL teacher, German teacher, activist, one-time gardener, workshop leader, fundraiser, website designer, lecturer…

• excited that today I was allowed to be a tourist for the first time in a city I have been living in for 6 months

• not letting myself look forward to anything, because every time I do it gets cancelled. (Although I am looking forward to seeing my family hopefully in a few weeks).

This time last year I was in a relationship, living in the UK, about to quit my part-time job and go full time as a singer. As evinced above, this time this year I am very definitely single, living in a new country, and working even more part-time jobs than I did when I was a student.

A lot has happened.

There is a lot to process.

I don’t know about you, but I am finding this imminent one year anniversary of when life changed - forever? - rather challenging. On top of that, social media has been a vile place to be this week for anyone who has experienced mental illness first or second-hand, or indeed, for anyone who is female.

And yet.

I am still here. I know the same cannot be said for everyone in our industry - to still be here is a hugely privileged position to be in. And yet, I fear the most challenging time is yet to come. Fewer jobs. Less money. More people taking advantage of freelancers who are so desperate to work they will accept whatever is thrown at them. I hope it’s not like that. I hope that we have learned this year that people are worth more than that. But I fear it, and in small corners of our industry, I can see it starting to happen. If anyone reading this runs an organisation or is responsible for employing people - please stop and think just for a second. Ask yourself if you are taking advantage. Ask yourself if the money could be saved somewhere else. Ask yourself if you could live on the pay you are offering. Ask yourself what the pay you are offering actually has to cover - preparation time, coaching, time off sick, time off, rehearsals, travel, performances… It’s not just a concert fee.

This is a meandering post, forgive me. But I want to finish on a positive note.

I still love music. I still turn to music for comfort, for joy, for inspiration almost every day. Music has been there for me in every capacity except… financially. But I can’t begrudge it that. In the confines of Zoom’s square boxes and backing tracks, we haven’t exactly given music a fighting chance to be its ‘best self’ this year. Spring is coming, crocuses are blooming, I was allowed to go to the f***ing zoo today - there is hope. There is a future. And music will be part of it somehow.

Fitting in

In thirteen days it will be 5 months since I moved to Stuttgart. Where did the time go? (Answer, quarantine).

As it looks like I will be neither returning home, nor making great career strides in the foreseeable future, I am trying to distract myself by focussing on integrating. Fitting in. I had already keenly absorbed the traditions of Sunday bakery trips, Tatort, and weekend walks, but after five months (five whole months?!) it was time to go a step further.

First up in this effort was to buy some more snow-appropriate footwear than my Converse. Sounds easy right? Well, the process started easily enough a month ago - I chose some shoes, I ordered them. Job done? Think again. DHL then decided that my flat didn’t exist, queue shoes taking a grand tour of Germany before returning to the shop from whence they came. I only discovered this when I got a full refund in my bank account one morning!

Second attempt, shoes now discounted by 15 euros, so it’s not all bad. Chose the same shoes, ordered them, chose Hermes as my courier not DHL. Except it turned out Hermes didn’t like my address either. Luckily, Hermes let me choose an alternative mode of delivery before taking my shoes on a second round-trip of my new homeland. I selected one of my local ‘Paketshops’ and eagerly awaited the arrival of my shoes. By this point it was three weeks since I ordered the shoes, and a week since any snow had been seen, but I was determined for this story to have a happy ending.

Three days in a row my shoes tantalisingly made it onto a delivery truck, only to return to the Hermes depot. Day four (today), I get a message: your package has been delivered. No location given. Could I remember which Paketshop I had chosen? No. There are four within 1.5km of my flat, so I set off to try and retrieve my long-awaited package. Paketshop 1 I got told off for using the wrong verb for collect (Note: sammeln = collecting as in stamps and coins.; abholen = collecting as in picking up objects and people). They also did not have my parcel. Paketshop 2 showed me every parcel in the shop, none of which were bigger than a hefty paperback. Paketshop 3 I hit the jackpot.

So now I have some lovely, snow-appropriate footwear, and no snow. Luckily I’m off to Luzern next week for a course, and I shall be actively seeking out snow at my earliest convenience.

Integration part 2: work on my German. I ordered a couple of books from Dussmann and… well, read the shoe-story but exchange shoe for books and you get the picture. (I have had several parcels successfully delivered since moving here by Hermes and DHL so I don’t know why they’ve suddenly taken against me, but… I’m not about to ring their customer service and find out!)

Integration part 3: expand my social circle beyond the two (incredible) people I already know here who I always speak English with. The first step was finding a new home with some housemates, and after a couple of viewings I am relieved to have found somewhere lovely to live from the end of March. There’s even a cat!

My second step was finding some way of being on a team, in spite of Covid. Committing to a job over here is a bit challenging right now, as I still have bits of work in the UK pencilled in at random intervals until the autumn, alongside my online work and teaching. So I decided to go down the volunteering route, and am now very excited to be a volunteer with UNICEF Stuttgart and (hopefully) also at a local Covid-test centre before long. My first UNICEF meeting was this evening, and I can honestly say it feels like one of the best decisions I’ve made since moving here. It was such a joy to be in a virtual room with people who live nearby, with a similar interest in charitable work, and to be chatting in German for a solid 90 minutes. I finally felt like one day I might just fit in. At a time when EU/UK relations are tense, and every time I open my mouth I feel like my accent is screaming I’m ENGLISH!!! nothing could be more important.

Winterreise

It may be twelve days later than I originally intended, but I have defeated the lethal cocktail of Brexit and new Covid-variants and made it back to Germany. As I sit in my quarantine looking out on the snow-covered streets of Stuttgart, it feels a little like I have embarked on my own Winter’s Journey.

Part One began with a rather painful parting yesterday afternoon. As restrictions got tighter and the virus figures got worse, making the decision to leave my family and come ‘home’ has become increasingly difficult. The logical part of my brain understands that to be a resident of this country, I must reside here. The emotional part of my brain is concerned about being a Covid-test, a flight and a quarantine away from my loved ones should any of them fall ill in the weeks ahead. The difficulties weren’t just emotional - they were logistical too. Thursday involved a special pilgrimage to the airport to get a Covid test, which thankfully came back negative. On Friday, it wasn’t until I boarded the plane - two hours after arriving at the airport - that anyone checked my paperwork and confirmed I really could return to Germany. I knew I could in theory, but there have been horror stories in the last week…

After a fairly easy flight, the realities of post-Brexit and mid-pandemic border control were unavoidable within minutes of landing. It took 75 minutes to get through passport control as the border-guards painstakingly checked the papers of each passenger. The slowness was only exacerbated by the number of people who had failed to fill in the correct forms before arriving in Germany. As the minutes ticked by, I gradually came to accept that I was not going to make my train - a fact I received rather more sanguinely than I might have expected to six months ago. Revelation number one of my winter journey: Covid has made me better at going with the flow.

Once I was safely through passport control, I discovered that the airport train station was nowhere near the airport, and that I most definitely had missed the train. Luckily I had 3.5 hours to get to the station before the next train. A leap of faith waiting half an hour for a bus with no timetable, a journey alone on said bus through some very dark parts of Düsseldorf, and eventually the welcoming lights of a train station, where I was to pass the next two hours.

Here comes Revelation number two of my winter journey: I am tougher than I think. With a little help from Philip Pullman, I managed the first 90 minutes of my solo sojourn on a wind-tunnel like station concourse with a fairly upbeat attitude. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared, but I had an escape plan and a bar of chocolate, so things could have been worse. It was at 1:50AM that I realised just how cold I was, and just how much I wanted to be in my bed. The next 40 minutes before my train arrived required reserves of strength and patience that I have delved into several times in the last year. Every time I think there’s nothing more in there, my brain comes up trumps and gets me through. So I suppose this is another gift from Covid.

The train came, and I gratefully collapsed into a warm seat for a fitful sleep as we travelled south. It took the full six hour journey to Stuttgart for the shivering to stop, but after 16 hours of travelling it was good to be home.

Whilst this blog focusses on some of the challenges of the journey, I am also hugely grateful to have settled in Germany in the last 5 months, and to be one of the lucky British citizens still allowed to call (a part of) Europe home. Some would say this was the end of my Winter Journey. But I feel sure that the days of quarantine, and the weeks of lockdown ahead will present other challenges to this weary traveller. Give me a few hours’ sleep and I’ll be ready to face them.

Post-blue

We did it - four performances of Tom Smail’s new opera Blue Electric to full, socially-distanced audiences the week before another national lockdown.

I was expecting to wake up on Sunday morning feeling thoroughly depressed. I don’t have another opera scheduled until June 2021, and I only have two performances remaining in the diary for live, in-the-room audiences between now and then. The combination of this snowstorm in my diary, a national lockdown regardless of whether I stay in the UK or go back to Germany, and post-show blues seemed like a lethal cocktail.

But so far, so good.

I woke up on Sunday morning feeling happy, and most of all - grateful. Unlike the majority of my colleagues in this industry, I have just spent two weeks working. Furthermore, our hard work came to fruition not just with an opening night - but with a full run of performances. I have so many friends who have made it to their final stage and orchestras or dress rehearsals, only to be shut down after just one performance this week. It must feel devastating to do all that hard work for nothing. And by nothing, I don’t mean no audience adulation, I mean literally nothing.

Because more often than not - we don’t get paid if we don’t perform.

This brings me onto the main point of today’s blog, which is not vague ramblings about gratitude, my empty diary, and the general chaos in the world. It is this: we need to change the way people get paid.

The problem is particularly acute in opera - you rehearse for sometimes up to eight weeks before any money appears in your bank account. In this eight weeks, you will have been expected to pay for the following out of your own pocket: travel to wherever you are working, rent - usually both at home and for your theatre digs, food, general living expenses, plus any coaching or role preparation you conscientiously choose to undertake before arriving at your first day of work. If - and right now it’s a big if - you make it to the first night, you then receive your first pay cheque. Which might cover all of the above, if you’re lucky. If you get Covid-cancelled, it is down to the goodwill of whoever you are working for to decide whether they are going to pay you for work already done. Or indeed, pay you for all the work that couldn’t be done through no fault of your own - because it’s not like any other work has appeared in the diary to magically take its place!

Other areas of the music industry have similar problems, although less extreme. Force majeure in contracts means that when work gets cancelled by volcanic ash, floods, or - say - a global pandemic, you don’t get a penny. Mortgage? Children to feed? Too bad, they legally don’t have to pay you and so, more often than not, they won’t.

I have counted my blessings every day during this horrible year that I am still relatively young and responsibility-free. For me, this year has meant increasing my hours in my non-musical jobs, taking on a lot of new students, and accepting that my UK home is going to be my parents’ house for a while yet (thanks Mum and Dad). For others, it has meant making incomprehensibly difficult decisions that they would never have imagined 8 months ago when they had steady, successful careers.

We haven’t chosen to be self-employed. It is basically the only way to live as a musician in this country. It is time for companies to take a long, hard look in the mirror and start treating their freelancers with the same care and concern as they treat their employees. Otherwise they may soon find there aren’t many of us left.

Want to support musicians in the UK? Donate to Help Musicians, who are doing fantastic work to support struggling freelancers. Click here to donate.

Will we, won't we

As I mentioned in my last post, I am currently in the privileged position of being in a rehearsal room every day making opera. We open next Tuesday. However there is still a question mark hanging over proceedings about whether the show will make it that far without a nationwide lockdown. This uncertainty has provoked a new, unexpected psychological battle for myself and fellow cast members, as we try to get to grips with memorising a score we may not perform.

In opera, we are almost always expected to arrive to the first day of rehearsals with the score fully memorised. In these Covid-days, where we are trying to rehearse in as short a time period as possible, that has become even more vital. When memorising a new opera, your best hope is often a midi file, where you can sing along to the wordless interjections of your fellow cast members in electronic form. If you’re lucky, you might have a piano score to take to a vocal coach - but this is not a guarantee. This makes the business of memorising rather more difficult than say - La boheme - where you at least might have heard some of the tunes before! It requires a huge amount of motivation, and that motivation normally comes in the form of an impending deadline: opening night.

So what do you do when that deadline might not exist?

To be honest, it’s been a struggle. A few weeks before the first rehearsal of this production, I wasn’t even 100% sure I was going to be allowed back into the country without quarantine. Needless to say, the score did not get memorised as soon as it should have - I kept putting it off, telling myself that it would get postponed. Eventually, with the first rehearsal inching ever-closer, I managed to spend a painful and punishing three days force-feeding my brain with the music. It turns out that potential humiliation in front of colleagues at a first rehearsal is enough to motivate me, even if I never get to humiliate myself in front of an audience on a first night.

We then move onto the next paradox of this pandemic: getting excited. Is anybody allowed to get excited about anything any more? By the end of March I felt like every time I looked forward to something, it got whisked away at the very last minute. So I stopped looking forward to things, and decided to take more pleasure in the here and now. Part of me feels that this isn’t actually a bad way to live your life, but it could potentially deprive the rehearsal room of a certain energy. I have been trying to find new ways to get excited about making work that is focussed on the process, rather than the eventual completion / sharing.

So far, so good. Although I was so determined not to get excited that I forgot to invite anyone to the opera and now its sold out.

It’s pretty exciting to be working on a sold out show in Covid times. Oh look, there I am getting excited. Let’s hope it’s worth it.

Once more unto the breach

As of yesterday I am back working in a theatre making a show! It is the first time since March, and might well be the last time until next spring. Add into the mix that we might get shut down by the government any minute, and it really is a case of making the most of every minute.

Yes, Covid is making everything a little (a lot) more difficult. There is a whole new layer of things to think about in the rehearsal room - space, masks, sanitiser. It is also a little bit (a big bit) of a shock to the system to suddenly be working eight two-session days on the trot after 7 months of working to my own schedule. If that wasn’t tiring enough, it is a massive mental workout to memorise and then correctly recite a whole role, having essentially only exercised my memory muscle with shopping lists during lockdown.

But.

God, it’s good to be back.

(There is a whole load more I want to write about the psychology of preparing for a performance that might never happen. And I will get around to writing it - although maybe not until this is over. If anyone reading this is struggling with that, I feel your pain and hope you can keep the faith!)

Berlin part 1

It may have been my first audition since Covid, but I think my lasting memory of yesterday will be that it was remarkably wet. I chose my adjective carefully there.

It was always going to be a day of adventure. I left my flat at 5am in light drizzle, equipped for the 7.5hr trek across the country with some good books and a cereal bar. The man in front of me on the train was also in it for the long haul - although had rather more lavish provisions - and we got up at each station to have a little stretching break together. No words spoken, but we nonetheless reached mutual consensus that this was our thing.

By lunchtime I was in Berlin, and off to a friend's flat to warm up (thank you Lee and Tim!) By now the rain was what you might call horizontal. Not quite skin soaking but starting to creep into my toes...

From central Berlin, to Schöneberg for the main event. With hindsight, I should have taken a cab.

By the time I got off the tube at Yorckstraße, the rain was truly torrential. My boots were filled from the bottom and the top. My clothes were soaked into my skin. My umbrella didn't stand a chance - and about halfway through the 15 minute walk (which felt a lifetime) it gave up the ghost and died on me. My suitcase - purchased for €20 the day before - put up a good fight, but I believe that even the most expensive, designer suitcase would have succumbed at some point.

And so, I arrived. I had a dry dress packed in my case, which was luckily unscathed, but as soon as I put it on, it soaked straight through. I hadn't realised until this point that the rain had permeated every inch of my skin. Let's not even discuss my hair... Thanks to the foresight of putting my arias in a plastic wallet - only the top edge of each score had turned to wallpaper paste - the staves themselves were salvaged.

And so it was in this state that I went into my first audition in 6 months. It went surprisingly well, and the lady auditioning was kind enough to take me seriously despite looking worse than Elizabeth Bennett after she had trekked to Netherfield. By the end of the 20 minutes, there was a small pool of water at my feet. I had made my mark.

I spent a good ten minutes before leaving wringing out my casual clothes in the bathroom, and then it was on to the delights of the city. But that's for part 2!

Laundry

If you’re here for content about singing - stop reading now.

This evening marks the end of my first week in Stuttgart. And, as I was out of clean facemasks I decided to do some laundry. Now, in Germany it is apparently quite normal to have a shared laundry in the basement of your apartment block. This is something I have experienced only once in England, whilst living in student halls, and my solution then was to take my laundry home in a suitcase for my Mum. (I was a fresher, OK?!) But now I live 550 miles from my family, that is not an option.

So, I gathered up my load in a string bag and headed to the laundry room. Which is in the next door apartment block. And there was a thunderstorm. So the clothes (and I) got a good soaking before I’d even put them on! Next came the really fun bit: working out how to operate the machine.

I’m going to stick my neck out here and say my German is not bad. I studied it almost consistently from the ages of 10 - 21, and although I don’t have the fluency of someone who’s lived here, I can get by in most situations. Bank, post office, supermarket - fine. International politics, refugee crisis, adoption law - also within my remit. Washing machine handbook? Nobody covered that in school.

Our shared washing machine is operated by 1 euro coins. Luckily, I had a couple in my wallet because I had not prepared for the fact it would accept 1 euro coins, and only one euro coins. So, first I had to work out what kind of wash I could fund with two one euro coins. An hour. Excellent. Then I popped my laundry and detergent in, and headed for the coin powered meter. In go my two euros, and the clock starts ticking.

The clock gives you a couple of minutes of grace to set the machine correctly, and press start. So my two euros paid for 62 minutes of electricity, rather than 60. Generous. Having already assiduously chosen my wash, this should have been more than enough time. But of course I couldn’t get the bloody thing to start (and I still don’t know why), so there I was with the clock ticking, frantically trying to decipher the German manual and trick this machine into washing my clothes before my two minutes were up. It was like the most domestic TV quiz show you could imagine. (Wo)Man vs (washing) Machine.

Eventually, with 57 minutes remaining, the machine decided it did fancy washing my clothes after all. And so, once I was convinced that things were running along smoothly, I ventured back out into the rain and up to my apartment to fry some garlic (just so that the clothes can dry in a nice, odour-free environment!)

57 minutes later, some slightly under-spun, but clean clothes. I take them out the machine, and bid farewell to the coin meter, my nemesis, until next week.

Ruhezeit

The biggest thing I have to get used to right now is Ruhezeit. Time every day for quiet. Here it is 1-3pm, and all day Sunday. So no practice for me!

I took the opportunity of a day off to trek to the local nature reserve, Büsnau and the Pfaffenwald, which is about 3.5km from where I live. The reserve is home to nuthatches, yellowhammers, many birds of prey, frogs (like I have never seen before!), and beautiful wildflowers. In a lot of ways the woodland is similar to what I am used to in the UK, but if you tune into the finer details there are subtle differences. Geraniums grow wild and in abundance. You won’t see one nuthatch, but five or six together. And I was honestly not expecting to meet so many hawks, kites and falcons on the edge of a city!

Nestled on the edge of the reserve is the university campus. Most of it looks like it was built in the 70s, but it manages to sit on the edge of this beautiful landscape without dominating it. Nature runs through the campus - ponds fringed with reeds and bulrushes. Long avenues of trees. It seems like an idyllic place to study.

Of course, we have our own city parks in the UK. But this park achieves a wildness that I have never really experienced - certainly not in London (I can’t profess to great knowledge of the parks in other cities!)

Nature has been a huge source of solace for me during lockdown, as I know it has for many others. We aren’t out of the woods yet with this pandemic, so knowing I can get my ‘fix’ just 40 minutes from my flat is hugely comforting. And there’s a bakery en route! This morning I sampled a Hefe Nuss pastry - apparently it’s some kind of vegan cinnamon bun…

Now it is time to settle into my Sunday evening, and listen to the children playing outside in the street. Perhaps Ruhezeit isn’t so sacred after all!!

Auf Wiedersehen!

Well, it looks like I’m going then. I’ve been glued to the live departures website at Heathrow for the last week, constantly checking if my flight is really going to take off. But my bag has just been checked in with a bright orange heavy sticker, my hand-luggage has been rifled through, and I’m sitting in the departure lounge with three sparrows for company. So I guess this is it.

It’s a funny time to try and move country - I’d be the first to admit that. Although there may be more live music happening in Germany than here, the industry is still in global crisis whatever country you pick. I suppose it’s just a matter of choosing where to ride out the storm. Perhaps it would have made more sense to stay in the country where I have some contacts, and some chance of employment…

But what’s that mysterious ticking noise?

Ah yes, Brexit.

I would be lying if I said I wasn’t feeling a bit angry with my home country right now. Leave aside that two weeks ago our government was promising rapid mass-testing by Christmas so we could get people back into theatres (that went well), they are also about to close the door of opportunity through which so many have enjoyed free passage over the last 47 years. I want to keep that door open a little bit longer. It may be that I have to eventually accept there isn’t anything for me on the other side of that door, but I’m going to go and have a good nose around before I lock it and throw away the key.

If this is to be where I keep a record of my adventures in the coming months, I need to make a promise not to veer into politics too often. So, from hereon, the above will be referred to as The Rant in all future posts. If I mention The Rant, you can imagine your own concoction of Brexit/Covid/insert-grievance-here bitterness.

But now to brighter things. Opportunity, exploration, hope. Auf Wiedersehen.

Relief

Since I got back to singing professionally on the 10th of July, I have been waiting for that feeling. I’ve been fairly lucky with work since then: I’ve done a recording, a fair few church services, and two live-streamed recitals. It’s not that each one has left me cold, it just hasn’t been quite the real deal. Even the church service I described as ‘thrilling’ a few blog posts back, lacked… something. It hadn’t helped that post-lockdown my nervous tension had shifted from my stomach to my vocal folds - leaving me partially voiceless on each of these occasions. And more worryingly, I didn’t feel particularly relieved to be back to work.

That all changed yesterday. My first official concert to a physical audience since lockdown. For starters, I woke up with a comforting bout of diarrhoea. Comforting might sound strange to you, but this is what I’ve come to expect on concert days. And my voice has never felt better. The right kind of nerves then.

We then had a suspiciously good rehearsal. This normally means complete carnage is due by the time of the performance.

But instead, as we walked out in front of a full, socially-distanced audience (the good thing about social-distancing is that a place looks full with half the people!) at St John’s Waterloo, I felt the surge of relief I have been waiting for. And it was even better than expected. Overwhelming in fact. In the first Berg song, I think Richard and I both wondered if we might have to stop and take a breath - but we just about kept a lid on it. And what followed was the most electrifying performing experience of my (very short) career to date. The energy and attentiveness the audience gave us was like nothing I have ever experienced, nor that I expect to experience again - you can only have one first concert back after all.

The fear was still there, but it added focus, rather than distraction. Everything just fell into place. (We didn’t record it, so you can’t dispute that unless you were there).

I am now going to write something that - if I read it on another singer’s blog - I would roll my eyes at and stop reading. Feel free to do the same. Since walking off stage at 2pm yesterday, I have been completely overcome with 6 months worth of pent up emotion. But the biggest thing I feel is gratitude. Gratitude to have had that experience once in my life, even if it never happens again. Gratitude to one of my oldest and dearest friends - Richard - who was at the piano to share in creating this experience. Gratitude to our audience - friends, family, and passers-by - who played a huge part in this incredible atmosphere.

Over lockdown I have been enjoying my practice. And I am very partial to a fun rehearsal. But honestly? This is why we do it.

And this is why we all desperately need live music back in our lives.

Start breaking the news

I’m leaving. In a month.

Those of you in musical circles may have noticed a flurry of friends moving out to Europe over the last two or three years. I am calling it the Brexodus. Why are we all leaving? Well, as one friend put it: ‘From 31 December, you can either have the right to work in UK and Ireland, or the right to work in the UK, Ireland and one other country’. There is nothing like a deadline to get me moving.

I’ve opted for Germany as my country of choice. Lots of lovely, subsidised opera houses. Welcoming to foreigners like me. Cheap enough to get back and forth to the UK for gigs. Close enough to even do it by train, should the spirit move me (should there be no quarantine if I travel through France).

If you’ve booked me for work in the UK - don’t worry - I am coming back. There is a plan A, B, C and D for every single concert in my diary. If you’re considering booking me for work in the UK - please do. Needy? Yes, we all are right now.

This move has been on the fringes of my mind ever since I graduated in 2018. It is something I have been putting off for a long time. Then Covid struck in March and all the work disappeared overnight. Once I’d got over the initial shock, the German dream started to tug at my heartstrings once more. Then I started speaking to people over there who couldn’t understand how we were letting all our theatres go bust. I retorted that I couldn’t understand how theirs weren’t - until they reminded me of the 70% state subsidy. It was when the German opera houses and concert halls started re-opening that I had a now or never moment.

I don’t have a job. I’m taking a risk. But I’d rather be a Deliveroo cyclist in a country that appreciated the arts, than in one that is letting them crumble to nothing.*

*100% stolen from another wonderful friend.