Despite providing a particularly poor quality recording of myself (singing like a crow) as part of the selection process, I was delighted to be offered a place on this year’s Solo Singers’ Summer School at Abingdon. Perhaps they felt sorry for me. The week-long course is singing heaven for someone like me, allowing me to indulge my passion for a whole week without the slightest trace of guilt (almost) and developing my singing into the bargain.

The programme is built around a series of Masterclasses given by a most impressive team of tutors. Every one of the 60 students performs in a masterclass with at least six different tutors over the week and also benefits from watching others performing in their masterclasses. There are also plenty of opportunities to perform in concerts (both formal and informal) – my own tally being 6 concert performances – and performance skills were also developed through classes in movement and Alexander Technique as well as lectures on performance psychology and vocal health. Ten fabulous accompanists worked as an integral part of the course providing superb support and advice to the singers and performing jointly with us in concerts and masterclasses.

Abingdon School (the setting for the course) is blessed with some excellent facilities including a modern, well-equipped music centre, rehearsal rooms and theatre. Set in rather lovely grounds, it is an ideal venue for the course. The accommodation (in the school dormitories) was perfectly fine too, although I suspect that some of the beds were designed for vertically-challenged schoolboys rather than adults!

The quality of the tuition was quite superb and delivered by five ‘resident’ plus a number of visiting tutors. A quick glance at the resident tutors’ abbreviated curricula vitae speaks volumes: Robin Bowman was previously the Head of Vocal Studies at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and a consultant to the National Opera Studio and currently teaches at the Birmingham Conservatoire. Henry Herford (whose ever-efficient wife and daughter (Lindsay & Alice) expertly administer the course) teaches singing at the Royal Northern College of Music and Birmingham Conservatoire. Margaret Humphrey Clark teaches singing at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama (and at Eton Choral Courses) and is also a qualified Alexander Technique teacher. Elaine Kidd is head of staff directors at the Royal Opera House and coaches on the Jette Parker Young Artists programme. Susan McCulloch teaches singing at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and is the Performance Consultant to the Young Artists’ Programme at the Royal Opera House. In addition to Masterclasses with all of the above, I also sang in a Masterclass with visiting tutor Linda Ormiston (mezzo-soprano). Alexander Technique was taught by Lindsay Wagstaff, and Performance Feedback was provided by Elizabeth Wingfield. Each brought their own particular strengths and the result was a well-rounded course that addressed every aspect of singing and performance.

For me, the amazing thing about this course is that you can see real improvements in performance happening in each and every masterclass. Of course that doesn’t mean that everyone came away instantly improved, but over the coming months, building on the techniques taught should yield tangible improvement!

A mere amateur, I felt very privileged to be on a course with so much young talent. (The average age of the student body was probably about 22, making me the course granddad by a comfortable margin). The other students came from all over the UK plus America, Canada, Belgium, Estonia, Portugal and France. Many were already studying singing full-time at music colleges and, without exception, all shared a passion for singing that was quite infectious! The repertoire was wonderfully varied and covered everything from Art Song, to oratorio, Lieder and opera. Each student had prepared seven pieces to perform in masterclasses – my own selection included opera, English Song, and Lieder. I couldn’t resist revisiting Schubert’s dramatic setting of Erlkőnig, a poem by Goethe, a supernatural tale about the death of a young boy and a father’s frantic attempts to reach safety. The closing line is “in seinen Armen das Kind war tot” (in his arms, the child was dead) although I have heard it modified to “in his arms, the accompanist lay dead” on account of the extreme demands it makes of the accompanist! (Alice, you were fabulous.)

I learnt far too much to be able to document it all here and I discovered things about myself that I didn’t know before the course. The tutors were all hugely encouraging and I will try very hard to remember the lessons learned. Elaine Kidd made an excellent suggestion to ensure that all our good intentions (to improve technique etc) do not simply evaporate over the coming months. She paired us up and encouraged us to set goals for the coming year. Our “partners” have been asked to contact us at appropriate points during the year to check our progress and maybe do some gentle nagging if the impetus is flagging. I have set myself six goals, one of which is to lose some weight. (Seeing a concert video where your paunch enters the stage several seconds before the rest of you is enough to inspire this particular goal!). I hope to be selected to attend again next year and, if I am so lucky, then I certainly want to return having improved throughout the year. Despite my “maturity” (physically, not mentally that is), my voice is still developing and although I will never be a professional singer, I am still keen to be the best I can be!

I want to say a big thank you to all the staff - and special thanks to the two brilliant accompanists who performed the major concert items with me: Alice Turner (Erlkőnig) and Bethe Levvy (Sea Fever).

I took time out from the course on the Saturday evening to sing in a concert in Hungerford (as part of the Hungerford & District Community Arts Festival.) The event, organized by Kennet Opera, was planned to be an outdoor concert of opera highlights (”Traviata on the Triangle”) but wisely given the foul weather, the event took place indoors instead. I sang two numbers (the Brindisi from Verdi’s La Traviata, and the Papageno/Papagena duet from Mozart’s Magic Flute). During the interval I was able to reflect on my ill-fortune when it comes to outdoor concerts: on the last three occasions when I have attempted to perform outdoors, the Almighty has intervened with thunderstorms of biblical proportion. Perhaps I should come with a health-warning for concert-goers along the lines of...”please bring picnics and liferafts”?