Jeff Stewart’s Blog

This last couple of weeks has flown by. I got very excited by the prospect of conducting Bledlow Church Choir in choral evensong. I find working with them so rewarding. It’s lovely to be working with a group of people who just do it for the fun of it and don’t have to worry about a bad performance effecting career prospects. They’re a really good bunch and, three years after taking over the 7 members, there are now 30 of them. I remember John Hosier interviewing me for my place at Guildhall and asking what I would like to give back to music. Well for me, Bledlow Church Choir is what I give back, corny though that may sound. I just get so much out of helping people to enjoy the music I first came to love as a boy. Also the effect that doing things like our cathedral evensongs has had on many of them is something that will touch me forever.

So the choral evensong was terrifc, including two lovely soloists, one of whom ,the soprano Holly Nicholls, is a pupil of mine, which made it even better. We sang Dyson’s Mag & Nunc in F, Ley’s “Prayer of King Henry VI” and Balfour Gardiner’s wonderful “Evening Hymn”. Sadly it was pouring with rain and Saunderton Church was less than half full, but that still represented about a ten fold increase on the normal evensong attandance.

This weekend I had a performance of Elijah with the Sudbury Sympfony Orchestra and Choral Society. It was lots of fun, with really  nice soloists, (lovely soprano) Melanie Cotton, Elaine Henson and Glyn Paul (Still in possession of a great voice even if he hardly sings in public these days). For my part, I think it was one of the most realxed and complete oratorio performances I have ever given, which is not me being arrogant, just thankful that I seem to be going in the right direction after all these years. Lets see where it leads.

All the best.

Had a fun day yesterday at an Opera on the Run training day. It was great to have all the various singers there and to have a laugh together. One of the acts we often do is singing waiters. we go in and pretend to be waiters, usually from a foreign country and mostly incompetent. Then we make some excuse to start singing and the audience usually goes nuts. Yesterday was about getting to know eachother and also getting to know exactly what they want in terms of a script. If ever you get to see these acts you will love them. I did a singing policemen gig recently at which I ended up doing a scene with David Jason, and then another one recently where I was a waiter  at Coleen Nolan’s wedding. All the sisters were there, it was great fun. I know, it sounds like the sort of thing a serious opera singer shouldn’t be doing, but the truth is, it’s in these sorts of gigs that people really learn how to relax in performance and to communicate. Regular readers will know I’ve been restructuring my vocal technique and these gigs have really given me the chance to try things out and to really relax in a way that I’ve not been able to do fro a long time. I know for sure that the jeff Stewart who finally steps back on the operatic stage next year will be so much more technically assured and so much more relaxed and the result wll be that you will hear & see a far better musician and performer than you have seen in me previously. Thanks Ian Bloomfield and Tim Taylor for giving me exactly what I needed! 

It’s been a lovely weekend. Yesterday I had the very great pleasure of singing the Mozart Requiem with the St. Michael’s Singers and the ESO. Both fabulous. Among the other soloists I was delighted to have Kate Manley alongside me on the platform. Those of you who know Kate will know of her very brave fight against breast cancer, which she is clearly winning, and I’m happy to report that she is looking and sounding super. The concert was in Tewksbury Abbey which is such a beautiful church. I’m just coming to the end of Ken Follet’s wonderful book “World Without End” which is the sequal to “The Pillars of the Earth”. Both books (as I find with most of his works) are unputdownable, and the action centres around a Cathedral in a place called Kingsbridge. Whether Follet had Tewksbury in mind or not I don’t know, but certainly the abbey there is almost exactly the way I imagine Kingsbridge Cathedral, which added to the evening for me.

This morning it was back to Bledlow, to conduct my choir in the Remembrance service. We sang two pieces “For the Fallen” by some guy called Jeff Stewart and “Turn Back O Man” by Holst. The choir were on great form, I don’t think I’ve ever heard them better. It’s truely been a Remembrance weekend to remember.

Hi All,

Well it’s been all action since I last posted although I haven’t set foot on stage in an opera (unless you count Trial by Jury) since July. I started working with Noelle Barker in April and she asked me to try to keep off the boards for six months or so in order to get myself back in shape without constantly having to get through performances.

Noelle was Audrey’s suggestion, as they work together a great deal, and she has proved a God-send for two reasons. Firstly, I can’t imitate her: I have found that I have ended up imitating the sound of my teacher on a number of occasions, including David Maxwell-Anderson, who I really rate as a teacher, but going on stage and instinctively trying to reproduce his sound rather than using what he says to produce my own was fatal. Secondly, Noelle actually seems to know exactly what she’s doing,  a trait all too rare in singing teachers these days I find.

Anyway, she’s pulled me apart and put me back together, and very shortly we shall have some recordings to show for it, along with a relaunch of myself as a singer.

In the meantime, I’ve been having fun working for a company called opera on the run who, as the name suggests, specialize in doing short opera pops gigs and getting out asap. They’re really fun and have really kept me going and helped me to really enjoy performing again. Their performances are almost without exception, rapturously received (one gig was a bit duff but it was for the samaritans, and they had just heard a role play where  the samaritan had just tried to persuade a caller that they were scuicidal).

We’ve also just come back from a cruise on the Aurora which ws wonderful (Thank you Stephanie Williams). Apart from the delight of working with Audrey, and being able to dust of the “Be My Love” show for a couple of performances, it was lovely to meet up with old friends baritone: Mark Oldfield, Soprano:Sally Harrison and the outrageously hillarious Linda Ormiston. It was also wonderful to work alongside the wonderful Brazilian pianist Clelia Irazun and the sickeningly talented Linden Trio, all stars individually as well as collectively.

November & December are now looking really busy. I have a Mozart requiem on 10 November in Tewksbury, an Elijah on 25th in Suffolk and return to Leighton House on 5 December for the usual Soiree. On top of this there will be loads of Opera on the Run Gigs.

So all is exciting in my world at the moment. Watch this space and see how well the rebuild works out.

Adios!