The Adventures of R+1 and The Princess

The long awaited Singing Corsica installment is finally here. I'm sitting in our campervan in little french town in France's Central Massif, wondering how I'm going to convey the essence of what we've experienced. It's been very intense. Only one week in Sardinia and then another in Corsica, but it seems like months have passed. Mornings start early, with an ocean swim, followed by a hot shower and then breakfast in a great hotel, usually near the beach. Then it's a morning rehearsal followed by a bit of free time and lunch and then maybe an afternoon rehearsal. The choir is pretty amazing, having been flung together only at the start of the trip, but there are some amazing voices and everyone has done their homework. Things coming together very quickly. Everyone's pitching is excellent and mostly everyone has the lyrics under control. Stuart (Davis) is doing a great job out the front and has seemingly endless energy and a certain brashness to make things ha...

Thanks everyone for your patience in waiting for this next instalment of our adventures. If you don't already know, myself and The Princess are touring Sardinia and then Corsica with a pop-up choir with Stuart Davis. We've been kept very busy and doing a lot of singing and performing, as well as collaborating with numerous other choirs. We've also been getting a bit of swimming and snorkelling in too... see our little snorkelling beach below :) We've also been meeting and hearing some of the local 'cantu a tenòre' groups, which is a polyphonic singing style which has some small similarity to Tuvan throat singing. The Princess has posted a video on her Facebook page of herself singing with one group. We've been based in a local church with great acoustics and an equally great 'Father Pietro', who has been very hospitable and welcoming. We had two concerts with choirs in Cala Gonone which ended up being full houses to our surprise. Father Pietr...

Goodbye Italy, hello Sardinia! Our last view of Vesuvius, which has dominated everything for the last two weeks! But isn't Sardinia in Italy?  - Well that's a moot point… We've come to Sardinia on a singing adventure with a choir put together by Stuart Davis. Great fun so far, and what a talented bunch they are too. A little bit of homework, three or four rehearsals and we're having our first public performance in Cale Gonone tomorrow evening. I'll post some video of it if i can get some. Here is the poster on the town notice board! Sardinia is breathtaking. The days have been HOT, and we've had a dawn swim out the bay and then snorkelling, in between rehearsals. The food is great and the views incredible. Gone are the tourist crowds, apart from some late season Italians and Germans, and everything is so much more relaxed now. The mountains are high and the clouds low! Here is a view from our Hotel rooftop bar, right on the beach. This town o...

I've been having difficulty starting this particular blog. I have ambivalence exceptionally badly and it's affecting my mind. On the one hand we have the beauty of the Amalfi coast, the incredible blue colour of the ocean, the food and the wonderful people, the craggy mountainous landscape dropping precipitously into the sea - but then on the other hand we have all the other people. Not just a few, but teeming hordes of humanity crawling like the Christmas Island Red Crabs over roads and paths and parks, on a quest for something more than just an ordinary existance. Helped on their way by the grandsons and granddaughters of the penniless fisherman who remained after the 1950's exodus of the dreamers of a better life. Those who stayed finally reaping the benefits of their old, renovated houses for AirBNB, hotels and assisting the feeding, hospitality and transport of the teeming mass of humanity who surge toward beauty and romance and a huge ignorance of historicity which f...