Not teaching - that restarts next week.
Istead, accompanying Joey, a little dab of 12 making a recording for her G2 music theatre exam. This is one offered by the stuffiest of exam boards, the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music. The title really does give a flavour of this board.
Hehe. Being faced by the alternative of developing their product or going bankrupt, the good old AB chose to develop their product. Suddenly, all the bollocks that was previously deemed invaluable to their exams has been dropped and online submissions now contain actual performances instead. Music teachers reading this might not agree with me but will know what I mean.
The Stuffy Old AB have introduced Music Theatre exams - something I never thought they would ever do. Wonderful what the prospect of going bankrupt will do.
By 'music theatre' we mean the musicals composed since about 1970. Grand Opera (Puccini et al) is indeed a form of music theatre but not what we usually mean when we use the term these days. Grand Opera is catered for in the AB/Trinity/etc graded singing exams.
Joey had continued her singing lessons with Miss over the lockdown via Zoom. One thingy about the stuffy ole AB is their inflexible approach to submission entry dates. Deadline for Joey was yesterday, Weds 10th March. Next available date is late in June.
School has adopted a phased reentry, with kids taken into school, tested and then sent home until their tests are negative a few minutes later, then readmitted.
Which left Little Dab taking her test on the morning of the recording, so no chance of an earlier rehearsal with her. We met for the first time an hour before we were due to start recording. I was not worried about this; Miss is a genius teacher so I had no doubt that LD would be well prepared. She was and any problems were down to me - more of that later.
A brief digression here to describe something I hate with a passion. Seconds after we met, a clearly highly embarrassed LD pointed to a large white rectangle of white paper with print, stuck to her blazer lapel. Printed on this in large letters was, "I was late to school today," along with some other stuff in smaller type. Not sure why LD made such a point of showing it to me but assumed she wanted to get the pain over with.
"I don't care if you were late darling and do not approve of what you are being forced to wear. I do not have the authority to allow you to remove it but I can allow you to do this; remove your jacket and hang it on the back of a chair. I will tell anyone who enters and questions your lack of jacket wearing that you cannot sing whilst wearing a jacket (true, mostly) and deflect any wrath from you."
A highly relieved LD had her jacket off in an instant. Discussing this at the end of the afternoon, Miss and I agreed that this would be cruel to some children. The rebels would wear the rectangle as a thingy of pride. Sensitive, gentle and cooperative kids would spend a day being humiliated by it. Miss and I are not fans of humiliating kids.
Back to the exam prep and recording. The AB music theatre digital exams have adopted the format I have wanted since I started teaching - four songs. That is it. No 'supporting tests' bollocks, just show what you can do when you perform. I have demanded this and been shouted down by the exam boards for more than 40 years - perform a Baroque, Classical, Romantic and accessible 20th century piece and forget the bollocks.
Here is where you all get to have another laugh at my expense. There is a limit to what we can expect from a 12 year old singer; that is fair and logical. Thingy is, musicals are accompanied by some sort of instrumental ensemble - usually a fair sized orchestra.
Composers write their scores with these ensembles in mind. The have been transcribed for the piano by the time they reach me as the piano accompanist for the likes of LD. Some transcriptions are better than others.
The worst are unplayable, so us piano accompanists quickly adopt this principle; when something is unplayable, then edit it until it becomes playable.
One of LD's four songs was, "Would You Like To Build a Snowman?" from the musical,"Frozen" Never mind the whys and wherefores, but the piano parts had only reached me on Monday. No problem. Snowman was marked, "Moderate - rhythmic but expressive." This and the look of the accompaniment suggested a gentle rolling pattern that would create no problems.
I had the good sense to YouTube the songs later on Tuesday to check, and discovered that Snowman's 'Moderate' actually meant warp speed. Think, "Little Brown Bug" of recent fame, but spread out over 5 pages of score.
Now, in a past life I performed the most ridiculously difficult of piano concertos but I do not read easily. It can take me a while to learn a difficult score. Or these days, a tricky score performed at warp speed. Snowman has these two bars.....................
I comforted myself with this thought, "How fast can a little girl sing these words?"
Very fast, as it turned out.
Very, very fast.
Very, very, very fast. Those two bars were merely a mishmash of nothing in particular.
We did a couple of recordings so Miss could chose the best to submit to the exam board. We did the second past the end of the school day, so when LD donned her blazer I removed the late slip and threw it away. "I had a lovely afternoon Joey. Thank you darling," I called to her retreating back.
Miss annojnced, "Thank you Steve. We are paying you for this afternoon. You have earned it."
I did not need paying, but will not turn it down.
