The Sixteen's Blog

Sunshine in Salamanca

The choir’s progress across Spain continues, and cleasrly the weather has not been too bad!  Tonight’s concert is in Palencia Cathedral.  Not one of Spain’s best known cathedrals, it is in fact one of Spain’s largest and its rather austere exterior belies a sumptuous interior.  Note the rather intriguing tower, which is believed originally to have a military purpose, before being joined to the main building.

Palencia Cathedral

I am sure it is only a temporary phase, but another football team makes it into The Sixteen’s blog.  I’ve just been in Poland for a few days meeting musicologists in connection with a project we are working on, and just before flying home yesterday evening I visited the Radisson Blu in Krakow (an old haunt, and fine hotel) for a bar snack, only to find myself surrounded by the team and management from Fulham FC, over for a Europa League match against Wisla Krakow (Fulham lost 0-1).  So that’s Arsenal, Blackburn, Millwall, and now Fulham……..Who next?

Zamora Cathedral

Rehearsal in Zamora Cathedral

With the choir flying into Madrid this morning, our six concert tour of Spain, performing works by Victoria starts this evening in Spain in Zamora, and visits some of the lesser-known cathedrals between there and Leon.  The Cathedral has the most magnificent dome: over the transept, it features 16 side narrow and tall semicircular windows enclosed in and between four turrets. These support two domes, an external one with a slightly pointed top, and an interior one with semicircular shape. Over the turrets are small domes, also with columns and thin windows, and typani with similar decoration. With its exterior, original scale decoration, the dome it is one of the symbols of the city. Details of the tour route are here.

Emily and Darius

Today marks the start of a rather manic period of touring (after Durham tonight we have concerts on consecutive nights in Edinburgh, Leeds, Zamora, Salamanca, Soria, Valladolid, Palencia and Leon).  On the train up to the North East this morning the choir were in the same carriage as Millwall FC, themselves en route to Middlesborough for a match tomorrow.  You can see our Concert and Tours Manager Emily Crewe with the star Millwall player, Darius Henderson!  This tour is entirely of works by Victoria. I was lucky to be invited to the Embassy of Spain for their National Day reception on Wednesday, and the Ambassador is clearly very impressed with the major contribution to people’s knowledge of Spain’s heritage we are making this year, by enabling so many people to hear Victoria’s music live.

Today’s travel arrangements mean that several members of The Sixteen (those who are also members of the Univeristy Senate) are not able to vote in the election for the next Chancellor of Cambridge University.  An election hasn’t been necessary since the early 19th century, so I guess the process has had to be re-invented (I was disppointed that the rules for the Single Transferable Vote were not in Latin): but (and it could only happen in Cambridge, in the 21st century) you can only cast your vote in person (be-gowned, of course). Anyway, it is a beautiful day here in Cambridge, and the queue was long but friendly – democracy being seen to be done. I look forward to catching the choir up tomorrow in Edinburgh, where we have a pre-concert reception in Blackwells, our CD retail partners, to celebrate CORO’s 10th anniversary and the release of our brilliant new James MacMillan recording.