Wandering about in a suit and tie is not much fun in this weather. Instead of raining all day on Saturday, as promised, it decided to go all windy and weird. The plain trees in Holland Park were spewing out little bits of grit, seemingly specially designed to get into the eyes and cause misery.
We did a morning singing in synagogue, which went well, from my perspective at least. The more singing I do, the more robust my voice gets, and, because I’m a bass, the later I stay out and the more I shout, the more fruity my voice begins to sound! Thank God I’m not a tenor. They’re a much more fragile bunch.
One of the things which I find a little distressing is the level of security we need at our shul. Imagine going into a church on a Sunday morning and having someone say “what are you here for? Who do you know?” I find it incredibly sad that this is the way of things in the Jewish community.
Nathan was in Leeds teaching. His conquest of the world via knitting needles continues. He’s recently started an initiative called “diversknitty” to encourage under-represented people in the knitting community to talk about what it is that makes them tick and what it is that makes them different. It’s really taken off. I think he’s particularly heartened by the fact that, by using the hash tag, knitters from BAME backgrounds particularly, are finding each other. What I’ve found somewhat pleasing is how people are also using the hashtag to celebrate the true meaning of diversity. Celebrating diversity, to me, means celebrating everything which is different from the norm (whatever that is) and potentially under-represented or overlooked in the general scheme of things, whether that’s being of colour, having a disability, being vegetarian, having facial disfigurements, being state school educated, having mental health issues, surviving cancer, being LGBT, talking with a stammer, being under-confident, following a religion... Nathan heard from three identical triplets who wanted to talk about how different each of them were, despite sharing identical DNA. Diversity shouldn’t be an exclusive club based on a very narrow definition and I’m worried that this is exactly what it’s become. I suppose I first became aware of this fact when Our Gay Wedding: The Musical, nominated for 14 national and International awards, was entirely overlooked and not even shortlisted for just one award that we were entered for: namely the National Diversity Awards. That always struck me as something of an irony.
Monday, 30 July 2018
Saturday, 28 July 2018
Party
A fact I forgot to mention in yesterday’s blog is that, of the nine people (conductor plus eight singers) who recorded The Blue Book yesterday, five were ‘cellists! And not just “I-used-to-play-at-primary-school” ‘cellists. I was probably the least capable of all five. Two had diplomas in the instrument. All five of us had our grade eight. They do say that the ‘cello is the closest instrument to the human voice - particularly the male voice - and I wonder if this has some bearing on things. Are ‘cellists marginally more likely to sing, I wonder? Were those of us who could sing well in early childhood offered the ‘cello to learn? Perhaps being a ‘cellist encourages a certain sort of mellifluousness in ones voice?
What’s certainly the case is that when I’m sight-singing, I often find myself doing ‘cello fingering with my left hand and, when I want to sing in tune, or when I’m deeply engrossed by choral music, I often move my arms about. I realised yesterday that I was air bowing!
The older I get, the more I learn that I pretty much owe everything that’s good in my life to having been a ‘cellist. It was the ‘cello which gave my young self extraordinary opportunities to travel and perform in exciting and life-changing locations. It made me want to compose. It introduced me to the people at the music school who gave me broader horizons. It allowed me to play in countless ensembles. It got me into York University. Selling my fancy ‘cello paid for my drama school...
I still remember the moment my junior school music teacher, Chris Twell, came to our class and said “who would like to learn the ‘cello?” I shot my hand up. It was the instrument that Julie off of Fame played (although, come to think of it, she was no singer!) I still remember Mrs Twell looking at me rather seriously and saying, “you want to learn it do you, Ben?” I like to think it was a look of the penny dropping. It was an important moment.
I spent the morning yesterday with the writer, Bernard Kops and his deeply charming wife, Erica. We are going to try and write a piece together about the Battle of Cable Street, which Bernard himself actually witnessed. It’s very wonderful to simply sit and hang out in their garden flat in Swiss Cottage. They remind me of so many of the Jewish intellectuals I’ve known over the years, all of whom have made me feel incredibly welcome and very much at home.
We talked a lot of about Soho in the 1950s. The two of them lived there during this time in an assortment of rooms, usually rented by Greek Cypriot women. They talked about the incredible energy generated by the melting pot of different cultures present in the district from Italian to Afro Caribbean. There was a sense that anything went in Soho. Bernard was drawn into the area by the sound of singing. Isn’t that amazing? He walked into some sort of bar-cum-cafe and knew he’d found his misfit tribe. He and Erica used to sell books from a giant barrow which they’d wheel to different central London pitches. They told me all about the characters from the time: what drew them to Soho. How they’d lived. And often how they’d died.
We talked for a while about one of their friends who was an early proponent of the Orgone Box, which he used in an attempt to cure himself of his homosexuality. If you don’t know about Orgone Boxes, I suggest you have a quick google. They’re fairly bizarre!
I went back home and sat, comatose on my sofa, as the rain pelted down outside. It was a relief to feel the rain, but I was sad it had come yesterday, because it meant I missed the sight of a blood moon in the evening. It also managed to still be raining when I left the house, so I got utterly soaked on my way down to the tube.
In the evening I met Llio in Covent Garden to go to Ian’s 50th birthday party. It was only as I took out my phone to find the number of the flat in the courtyard behind Upper St Martin’s Lane I’d confidently walked us to, that I realised the party was in a completely different part of town. I pretended we were simply going around the corner for the next half an hour, in an attempt to save face. By the time we’d reached the obscure corner of Bloomsbury where the party actually was, I think Llio was ready to punch my nose!
Fortunately the party was wonderful fun. It took place in a penthouse flat with commanding roof top views over London and a cooling breeze which eventually dried the shirt I was wearing!
Lli and I stationed ourselves by the food and met a multitude of fascinating people from an old Jewish American who talked obsessively about Angela Lansbury and a bloke who’d taken a few too many drugs, to a lovely actress and her paramedic husband who we simultaneously described as being wonderfully present - possibly in direct contrast to the person who’d been hammering the drugs who was definitely not present. Someone suggested I was wearing a waistcoat because of Gareth Southgate. The idea that I would do anything to copy someone else (lest still a football manager) is deeply insulting! At school, we used to call that “stacking” and I am no stacker!
What’s certainly the case is that when I’m sight-singing, I often find myself doing ‘cello fingering with my left hand and, when I want to sing in tune, or when I’m deeply engrossed by choral music, I often move my arms about. I realised yesterday that I was air bowing!
The older I get, the more I learn that I pretty much owe everything that’s good in my life to having been a ‘cellist. It was the ‘cello which gave my young self extraordinary opportunities to travel and perform in exciting and life-changing locations. It made me want to compose. It introduced me to the people at the music school who gave me broader horizons. It allowed me to play in countless ensembles. It got me into York University. Selling my fancy ‘cello paid for my drama school...
I still remember the moment my junior school music teacher, Chris Twell, came to our class and said “who would like to learn the ‘cello?” I shot my hand up. It was the instrument that Julie off of Fame played (although, come to think of it, she was no singer!) I still remember Mrs Twell looking at me rather seriously and saying, “you want to learn it do you, Ben?” I like to think it was a look of the penny dropping. It was an important moment.
I spent the morning yesterday with the writer, Bernard Kops and his deeply charming wife, Erica. We are going to try and write a piece together about the Battle of Cable Street, which Bernard himself actually witnessed. It’s very wonderful to simply sit and hang out in their garden flat in Swiss Cottage. They remind me of so many of the Jewish intellectuals I’ve known over the years, all of whom have made me feel incredibly welcome and very much at home.
We talked a lot of about Soho in the 1950s. The two of them lived there during this time in an assortment of rooms, usually rented by Greek Cypriot women. They talked about the incredible energy generated by the melting pot of different cultures present in the district from Italian to Afro Caribbean. There was a sense that anything went in Soho. Bernard was drawn into the area by the sound of singing. Isn’t that amazing? He walked into some sort of bar-cum-cafe and knew he’d found his misfit tribe. He and Erica used to sell books from a giant barrow which they’d wheel to different central London pitches. They told me all about the characters from the time: what drew them to Soho. How they’d lived. And often how they’d died.
We talked for a while about one of their friends who was an early proponent of the Orgone Box, which he used in an attempt to cure himself of his homosexuality. If you don’t know about Orgone Boxes, I suggest you have a quick google. They’re fairly bizarre!
I went back home and sat, comatose on my sofa, as the rain pelted down outside. It was a relief to feel the rain, but I was sad it had come yesterday, because it meant I missed the sight of a blood moon in the evening. It also managed to still be raining when I left the house, so I got utterly soaked on my way down to the tube.
In the evening I met Llio in Covent Garden to go to Ian’s 50th birthday party. It was only as I took out my phone to find the number of the flat in the courtyard behind Upper St Martin’s Lane I’d confidently walked us to, that I realised the party was in a completely different part of town. I pretended we were simply going around the corner for the next half an hour, in an attempt to save face. By the time we’d reached the obscure corner of Bloomsbury where the party actually was, I think Llio was ready to punch my nose!
Fortunately the party was wonderful fun. It took place in a penthouse flat with commanding roof top views over London and a cooling breeze which eventually dried the shirt I was wearing!
Lli and I stationed ourselves by the food and met a multitude of fascinating people from an old Jewish American who talked obsessively about Angela Lansbury and a bloke who’d taken a few too many drugs, to a lovely actress and her paramedic husband who we simultaneously described as being wonderfully present - possibly in direct contrast to the person who’d been hammering the drugs who was definitely not present. Someone suggested I was wearing a waistcoat because of Gareth Southgate. The idea that I would do anything to copy someone else (lest still a football manager) is deeply insulting! At school, we used to call that “stacking” and I am no stacker!
Thursday, 26 July 2018
Blue Book Day 2
Today found us back in the recording studio for the second and final day working on The Blue Book.
I was up with the lark again, and met Michael at Elephant and Castle tube, some time after 9am.
I hate everything about Elephant and Castle. It’s basically impossible to get our of the tube. Follow any exit sign, and, after much to-ing and fro-ing underground, you invariably end up on another platform for a different tube line, following another exit sign which takes you back to where you started!
When you emerge from the station, you end up on a giant roundabout surrounded by ghastly blocks of concrete. I’d heard the whole area around the station had been gentrified, but saw no sign of this today - not that I have any interest in gentrification. Frankly, if you want to buy a wildly expensive hovel in a shit hole because some wide-boy estate agent has told you the area you’re moving into is on the up, then you only have yourself to blame. The rents in Elephant are probably more expensive than they are in Highgate. I jest not. Friends of mine in Hackney pay much more than I do. And we don’t tend to get drive-by shootings in Highgate!
The recording session went well: much better, in fact, than Monday’s session. It’s to be expected. We found our feet. We started blending as a choir. We started to realise what was required of us in terms of concentration and commitment to tuning. We worked incredibly hard.
It was a three-session day, the first two of which were spent physically recording, the last of which was spent in the control room, choosing takes, comping them and then finally adding the all important reverb which makes you suddenly relax and think “oh, we’re good!”
I would have loved to have the choir in the space for all three sessions. Recording is, of course, exhausting, but something very magical can happen during an evening session. I always used to make my favourite singer, Ian Knauer, record his vocals at the end of a heavy day. When his voice was trashed, he started to pour emotion into his performances. The solo for Pie Jesu in the London Requiem was recorded as a demo at the end of one such session. We were going to take the demo to Alfie Boe but when I played it to our producer, PK, he said “no one else should be allowed to sing this solo, and no other recording of Ian singing should he made.” And that was that. Ian became a featured soloist on the album.
We finished the actual recording session bang on time today, so I was a little surprised at the speed with which one of the singers skedaddled out of the studio. We were trying to take a congratulatory selfie of the choir, but he was so desperate to leave that he physically pushed us all out of the way to get to the door. Some people have no grace... and no sense! Play the game: thank the person who booked you and paid you to be in the studio and they will want to book you and pay you for future gigs. Make them feel like you’ve done them a favour and you’ll leave a very sour taste in their mouth. We no longer live in an era where diva-like behaviour is rewarded.
I was up with the lark again, and met Michael at Elephant and Castle tube, some time after 9am.
I hate everything about Elephant and Castle. It’s basically impossible to get our of the tube. Follow any exit sign, and, after much to-ing and fro-ing underground, you invariably end up on another platform for a different tube line, following another exit sign which takes you back to where you started!
When you emerge from the station, you end up on a giant roundabout surrounded by ghastly blocks of concrete. I’d heard the whole area around the station had been gentrified, but saw no sign of this today - not that I have any interest in gentrification. Frankly, if you want to buy a wildly expensive hovel in a shit hole because some wide-boy estate agent has told you the area you’re moving into is on the up, then you only have yourself to blame. The rents in Elephant are probably more expensive than they are in Highgate. I jest not. Friends of mine in Hackney pay much more than I do. And we don’t tend to get drive-by shootings in Highgate!
The recording session went well: much better, in fact, than Monday’s session. It’s to be expected. We found our feet. We started blending as a choir. We started to realise what was required of us in terms of concentration and commitment to tuning. We worked incredibly hard.
It was a three-session day, the first two of which were spent physically recording, the last of which was spent in the control room, choosing takes, comping them and then finally adding the all important reverb which makes you suddenly relax and think “oh, we’re good!”
I would have loved to have the choir in the space for all three sessions. Recording is, of course, exhausting, but something very magical can happen during an evening session. I always used to make my favourite singer, Ian Knauer, record his vocals at the end of a heavy day. When his voice was trashed, he started to pour emotion into his performances. The solo for Pie Jesu in the London Requiem was recorded as a demo at the end of one such session. We were going to take the demo to Alfie Boe but when I played it to our producer, PK, he said “no one else should be allowed to sing this solo, and no other recording of Ian singing should he made.” And that was that. Ian became a featured soloist on the album.
We finished the actual recording session bang on time today, so I was a little surprised at the speed with which one of the singers skedaddled out of the studio. We were trying to take a congratulatory selfie of the choir, but he was so desperate to leave that he physically pushed us all out of the way to get to the door. Some people have no grace... and no sense! Play the game: thank the person who booked you and paid you to be in the studio and they will want to book you and pay you for future gigs. Make them feel like you’ve done them a favour and you’ll leave a very sour taste in their mouth. We no longer live in an era where diva-like behaviour is rewarded.
Wednesday, 25 July 2018
Pat Val
Yesterday offered me a much-needed day off to do a bit of admin, laze about, watch some telly, prep some music and generally try to relax. I’m pretty sure my body will punish me with some sort of cold. I have been fighting off low-level symptoms for weeks now and feel I can expect a short, sharp snap of something awful before it properly goes away. Healthy eating. Gym. All of that is required through August.
The hot weather continues and London is a nightmare, particularly on the tubes. Rush hour must be a living hell. Mind you, the terrible fires in Greece surely serve as a reminder of how much worse this stuff can get. The idea of fleeing in terror and your car suddenly going up in flames is just awful. I’m told people were trying to swim to safety. Some drowned. 26 people were found dead on a cliff top, “instinctively embracing” to protect themselves from the flames. A survivor has described it as being like Pompeii. I actually had to stop reading about it, I found it so distressing.
And yet Trump continues to dismiss the idea of climate change...?
This afternoon, we went into Central London to meet our dear friends, Ian and Jem, who are here from New York. As ever, seeing them was a hugely rewarding experience. We had lunch in the Mediterranean cafe on Berwick Street. It’s a really charming spot. The food isn’t expensive - you can get a two-course meal for £9 - but they really care about what they cook. Berwick Street is in the part of Northern Soho where all the fabric shops hang out. It’s where I went with Philippa to buy the material for the waistcoat I had made for my wedding. There’s a street market there, which used to be a salt-of-the-earth affair, full of typical barrow boys selling fruit and vegetables, but these days, to mark the gentrification of Soho, it’s full of chi-chi brownie stalls, pop-up sushi stands, super-food juice bars and vegetables I’ve never seen before.
After eating our two courses - which for me involved borek and moussaka - we headed for Old Compton Street for tea and a fancy cake in Pat Val. Ian and I had scones. Nathan had a lemon cheese cake. Jem had ice cream. We were served by a charming Portuguese woman called Isabel. I think she was a little confused when I congratulated her on her country’s win at Eurovision last year.
I’ve always been amused by Pat Val’s existence on Old Compton Street. It’s been there for years; certainly as long as I’ve known the street, and probably a good few decades before that. A fancy patisserie with waitress service was always a bit of an anomaly on a grubby old sex street like Old Compton. It’s bizarrely much better suited to the street it’s become of late. I always assumed it worked as a place where gay men could parade their beloved mothers. Certainly in the olden days, mothers had a very high value on the gay scene. You weren’t a proper homosexual if you couldn’t show your mother off to the world! During the time when HIV was a death sentence, you’d periodically see these emaciated, prematurely old men, covered in strange blotches, sitting bravely in the windows of the cafes with their mothers. I often wonder what was going through those poor women’s minds...
The hot weather continues and London is a nightmare, particularly on the tubes. Rush hour must be a living hell. Mind you, the terrible fires in Greece surely serve as a reminder of how much worse this stuff can get. The idea of fleeing in terror and your car suddenly going up in flames is just awful. I’m told people were trying to swim to safety. Some drowned. 26 people were found dead on a cliff top, “instinctively embracing” to protect themselves from the flames. A survivor has described it as being like Pompeii. I actually had to stop reading about it, I found it so distressing.
And yet Trump continues to dismiss the idea of climate change...?
This afternoon, we went into Central London to meet our dear friends, Ian and Jem, who are here from New York. As ever, seeing them was a hugely rewarding experience. We had lunch in the Mediterranean cafe on Berwick Street. It’s a really charming spot. The food isn’t expensive - you can get a two-course meal for £9 - but they really care about what they cook. Berwick Street is in the part of Northern Soho where all the fabric shops hang out. It’s where I went with Philippa to buy the material for the waistcoat I had made for my wedding. There’s a street market there, which used to be a salt-of-the-earth affair, full of typical barrow boys selling fruit and vegetables, but these days, to mark the gentrification of Soho, it’s full of chi-chi brownie stalls, pop-up sushi stands, super-food juice bars and vegetables I’ve never seen before.
After eating our two courses - which for me involved borek and moussaka - we headed for Old Compton Street for tea and a fancy cake in Pat Val. Ian and I had scones. Nathan had a lemon cheese cake. Jem had ice cream. We were served by a charming Portuguese woman called Isabel. I think she was a little confused when I congratulated her on her country’s win at Eurovision last year.
I’ve always been amused by Pat Val’s existence on Old Compton Street. It’s been there for years; certainly as long as I’ve known the street, and probably a good few decades before that. A fancy patisserie with waitress service was always a bit of an anomaly on a grubby old sex street like Old Compton. It’s bizarrely much better suited to the street it’s become of late. I always assumed it worked as a place where gay men could parade their beloved mothers. Certainly in the olden days, mothers had a very high value on the gay scene. You weren’t a proper homosexual if you couldn’t show your mother off to the world! During the time when HIV was a death sentence, you’d periodically see these emaciated, prematurely old men, covered in strange blotches, sitting bravely in the windows of the cafes with their mothers. I often wonder what was going through those poor women’s minds...
Tuesday, 24 July 2018
Recording the Blue Book
They say there’s no rest for the wicked, and I must be a very bad person because, on Monday, the day after wrapping on 100 Faces, l was up with the lark and off to The Pool recording studio in Bermondsey. I say Bermondsey. It’s actually in the slightly grubby area between the Walworth Road, Elephant and Castle and a million council blocks. It is, however, my favourite London studio. We recorded vocals for the London Requiem there, Four Colours and Brass. It holds some very special memories, including the day that we recorded Barbara Windsor there. I recently read that Barbara has been diagnosed with Alzheimers, which is terribly sad. She remains one of the most gracious and kind celebrities I’ve ever met. Life can be terribly cruel.
Anyway, we were at The Pool to record The Blue Book, an album of songs based on a 19th Century book of liturgical Jewish music, with age-old, specific associations with the synagogue where I sing. It would be the equivalent of Hymns Ancient and Modern if Hymns Ancient and Modern hadn’t been updated for a hundred years. It’s the bane of our lives. In a quest to save paper, those canny Victorian printers filled every last inch of page with words, tonic-sol-fa notation, Hebrew transliterations and basically anything else they could cram in. The result is a glorious hot mess, which is almost impossible to sing because you simply can’t read anything!
The arrangements are pretty awful as well; filled to the brim with somewhat awkward harmonic shifts and clunky voicings. Nevertheless, the book stands as a unique collection of orthodox Jewish religious music and it feels important to immortalise some of the tunes by doing this project. Because recording equipment is banned on the sabbath in the very synagogues who still sing this repertoire, it’s actually unlikely that these compositions will ever be heard by a wider audience again without initiatives like this. Some of the melodies are both ancient and very moving.
On top of everything else, there’s actually a dearth of people equipped to perform this type of music. One must be either Jewish, Jew-ISH, or interested enough in Judaism to want to use music to facilitate worship and learn how to sing in Hebrew and Aramaic. Stylistically, it tends to suit choral scholars, whose traditions, of course, are usually Christian, so it’s a fairly exclusive club that I seem to have stumbled into!
The recording went well. There were eight singers in the choir, two per part, which is singularly exposing. One person per part, and you’ve only got to worry about tuning with everyone else, two people per part, and you’re forced to blend with the other person singing without having the security of ensemble that three or more on a part brings.
Singers are funny. There are always these huge debates in the recording studio about the minutiae of music, but woe-betide anyone suggesting that people might be singing a passage out of tune! Say that, and you’re always asked to qualify exactly what you mean. Is it a timbre thing? Is it a harmonics thing? No, we just sometimes sing duff notes. Sometimes they’re sharp. Sometimes they’re flat. Sometimes we need to focus a little more and hang on to our hats! Somebody once told me that telling a trained singer they’re singing out of tune is tantamount to criticising their technique.
Recording sessions are always slow - and you always run out of time however carefully you plan. I don’t believe I’ve ever walked away from a session feeing 100 per cent happy. But we recorded some really beautiful music which I feel incredibly proud of. I’d insisted all day that we listen to what we’d recorded, dry, with no reverb, knowing that things improve hugely when the bells and whistles are added. And sure enough, when we added reverb and listened back at the end of the day, everything sounded really rather special.
We finished at 9.30pm. Somewhat exhausted. What is with all this hot weather?
Anyway, we were at The Pool to record The Blue Book, an album of songs based on a 19th Century book of liturgical Jewish music, with age-old, specific associations with the synagogue where I sing. It would be the equivalent of Hymns Ancient and Modern if Hymns Ancient and Modern hadn’t been updated for a hundred years. It’s the bane of our lives. In a quest to save paper, those canny Victorian printers filled every last inch of page with words, tonic-sol-fa notation, Hebrew transliterations and basically anything else they could cram in. The result is a glorious hot mess, which is almost impossible to sing because you simply can’t read anything!
The arrangements are pretty awful as well; filled to the brim with somewhat awkward harmonic shifts and clunky voicings. Nevertheless, the book stands as a unique collection of orthodox Jewish religious music and it feels important to immortalise some of the tunes by doing this project. Because recording equipment is banned on the sabbath in the very synagogues who still sing this repertoire, it’s actually unlikely that these compositions will ever be heard by a wider audience again without initiatives like this. Some of the melodies are both ancient and very moving.
On top of everything else, there’s actually a dearth of people equipped to perform this type of music. One must be either Jewish, Jew-ISH, or interested enough in Judaism to want to use music to facilitate worship and learn how to sing in Hebrew and Aramaic. Stylistically, it tends to suit choral scholars, whose traditions, of course, are usually Christian, so it’s a fairly exclusive club that I seem to have stumbled into!
The recording went well. There were eight singers in the choir, two per part, which is singularly exposing. One person per part, and you’ve only got to worry about tuning with everyone else, two people per part, and you’re forced to blend with the other person singing without having the security of ensemble that three or more on a part brings.
Singers are funny. There are always these huge debates in the recording studio about the minutiae of music, but woe-betide anyone suggesting that people might be singing a passage out of tune! Say that, and you’re always asked to qualify exactly what you mean. Is it a timbre thing? Is it a harmonics thing? No, we just sometimes sing duff notes. Sometimes they’re sharp. Sometimes they’re flat. Sometimes we need to focus a little more and hang on to our hats! Somebody once told me that telling a trained singer they’re singing out of tune is tantamount to criticising their technique.
Recording sessions are always slow - and you always run out of time however carefully you plan. I don’t believe I’ve ever walked away from a session feeing 100 per cent happy. But we recorded some really beautiful music which I feel incredibly proud of. I’d insisted all day that we listen to what we’d recorded, dry, with no reverb, knowing that things improve hugely when the bells and whistles are added. And sure enough, when we added reverb and listened back at the end of the day, everything sounded really rather special.
We finished at 9.30pm. Somewhat exhausted. What is with all this hot weather?
Final day
It was our last day of filming for 100 Faces yesterday and, from the early afternoon on Saturday, I’d started to believe, once again, that our ludicrous mission was possible. I ended up with not one, but two replacements for Fenella Fielding. One was a charming lady called Hedi, whom I’d met at the Holocaust Survivors Centre. Unusually, she’d been very keen to give me her number, and I was very grateful to have written it down. Because Fenella had signed up to the project about four months ago, I hadn’t placed a great deal of emphasis in finding anyone else for her year, and, in fact, when people said they were born in 1927, I’d often wrap the chat up as quickly as I could to avoid the disappointment of falling in love with a person I couldn’t feature. Hedi slipped through the net with her youthful lust for life and brilliantly coiffured barnet, which looked like a huge blob of candy floss.
When I phoned her to ask if she’d like to be in the film, she didn’t seem to be the perky, somewhat over-the-top character I’d met, and explained that she’d been rather ill. If I’ve learned nothing else on this project, it’s that 2 months is a long time for a person in their nineties.
Nevertheless, and perhaps even to prove my theory, by Saturday, she was feeling chipper again and agreed to do the filming. In the meantime, one of our other faces got in touch to say that her mother was also born in 1927, so, in a fit of pique, and in the interests of not being left in the lurch by a re-run of Thursday, I decided to film her as well.
Yesterday started with an email from Hedi to say she’d had another turn for for worse, so my belt and braces attitude looked like it was beginning to pay off.
I’d arranged to film Annabel’s Mum, Evelyn, at her house in Swiss Cottage at 10.30am. I was at the tube by 10 and had a rather lovely period of decompression sitting in a cafe outside the station. I was served by a handsome gentleman with a tattoo with something which looked like Hebrew on his arm. “What does the tattoo say?” I asked. “Benjamin... in Hebrew,” he said, before flushing red. “It’s upside down and back to front.” It turned out that he was technically Jewish but had never been brought into the fold, as it were. I told him my name was also Benjamin and his response was to shake my hand.
Evelyn, it turns out, is a remarkable woman. At 91, she’s still a practising architect and to say she didn’t look, or seem, a day over 70 is probably an understatement. Her hearing is remarkable. She is glamorous. Sharp as a tack. And she polished off her sequence in a few takes, her daughter’s dog, Bono, sitting at her feet.
I’d received another email from Hedi by the time we’d left Evelyn’s saying she really wasn’t feeling well at all. She didn’t want to let me down but it looked like the doctor might need to be called. I instantly replied to tell her she needed to focus on getting better, not on filming, and she seemed very relieved.
Without Hedi, there was a gap in the day which meant we could do a bit of lazing about in cafes. We headed for Holland Park in readiness for the next location and were joined for lunch by Michael.
It was at this point that I got a text from young Mitch telling me that one of our younger faces had just called to say she was pulling out because she needed to go to the “hospital for personal reasons.” There was, of course, no way that I was going to let that pass without some hard facts, so I immediately called her Mum whose number I’d asked for because the girl in question is 18. This decision to call the mum proved to be a good one and the situation was sorted in the blink of an eye. The Fenella situation has made me realise that I shouldn’t stand for ludicrous or self-centred behaviour on a shoot like this. I genuinely wish I’d told Fenella exactly what I thought of her behaviour and how out of our way we’d gone to film her, but then I wouldn’t have ended up with the wonderful Evelyn.
The post-lunch filming took place at the beautiful Notting Hill home of my mate Felicity, who is one of the stalwarts at New West End synagogue. Her teenaged son, Alex, is one of the 100 faces and she’s the sort of good egg you can rely on for a favour. I therefore asked if she’d mind a couple of other people being filmed at her house, and she graciously agreed. When we arrived, everyone was sitting around the dining room table and I wondered if I’d actually told Felicity how many people she was expecting and what their names were! Then I felt terrible...
The two other faces were a young A-level student called Maya, and Abi, who’s in the Royal Navy. I realise now that I don’t know which rank, and probably should have asked. Maya was singing - beautifully, Abi polished off her line in a matter of minutes and we filmed Alex in his bedroom surrounded by toy frogs and spring onions.
Unfortunately my crew is all-male, and we were filming two young women, so Felicity was dragged into every space, just so that no one felt uncomfortable, or, as Felicity put it: “I’m here, well, because of boobs!”
From Felicity’s house, we headed to Finchley, in a drive which seemed to take forever. Driving on a Sunday in London is usually okay and I don’t remember getting stuck in any traffic, so I think it may just have been a long way away.
We went to film a wonderful lass called Lily, who’s a mixed-race university student at Leeds with a strong sense of her dual heritage. She wants to be a performer, and she certainly has an aura of something very special about her. She has a very beautiful singing voice and I think she has every chance of making a splash.
The penultimate location was a quirky, somewhat bohemian cafe in Golders Green, called Headroom, which is run by a Jewish mental heath charity called Jami. Yesterday was a day of fasting in the Jewish calendar so the cafe was meant to be closed, but they opened it especially for us, which was incredibly generous. It made for a really interesting space, and yielded some fabulous shots. We’ve looked for as many non-religious Jewish locations as we could find because there are so many people who identify as Jewish without actually feeling religious in any way, shape or form.
At Headroom, we filmed the dream-boat opera singer, Anthony Flaum, who is currently playing Pinkerton in a production of Madam Butterfly, ambulance staff member, Nicole, a young lass called Darcy who’s mother is the first Scottish Jewish person I think I’ve met on this shoot, Phoebe, a student from North London and a young chap who is learning to lein for his bar mitzvah next year. Leining is essentially the somewhat mystical process of singing the Torah. It’s something all bar mitzvah boys must do (and people wonder why so many Jewish people are musical!)
The last location on our entire shoot was in Walthamstow at Gabriel’s house. Gabes sings with me in the shul choir and used to date Hilary back in the day, so I’ve known him for years. It felt rather appropriate therefore that we would film him last. It was ever likely to be momentous. As the day flashed past, I ticked off the names, one by one.
And then, we were done. That was that. All faces were in the can... 100 brilliant, beautiful Jewish faces.
We did it! I don’t know how we did it, but it happened. The adventure is not over yet, of course. I continue to move forward with editors and sound engineers. But it was very sad to say goodbye to Andrei and Keith and continue along the path without them. I don’t think I’ve ever had so much fun on a shoot.
When I phoned her to ask if she’d like to be in the film, she didn’t seem to be the perky, somewhat over-the-top character I’d met, and explained that she’d been rather ill. If I’ve learned nothing else on this project, it’s that 2 months is a long time for a person in their nineties.
Nevertheless, and perhaps even to prove my theory, by Saturday, she was feeling chipper again and agreed to do the filming. In the meantime, one of our other faces got in touch to say that her mother was also born in 1927, so, in a fit of pique, and in the interests of not being left in the lurch by a re-run of Thursday, I decided to film her as well.
Yesterday started with an email from Hedi to say she’d had another turn for for worse, so my belt and braces attitude looked like it was beginning to pay off.
I’d arranged to film Annabel’s Mum, Evelyn, at her house in Swiss Cottage at 10.30am. I was at the tube by 10 and had a rather lovely period of decompression sitting in a cafe outside the station. I was served by a handsome gentleman with a tattoo with something which looked like Hebrew on his arm. “What does the tattoo say?” I asked. “Benjamin... in Hebrew,” he said, before flushing red. “It’s upside down and back to front.” It turned out that he was technically Jewish but had never been brought into the fold, as it were. I told him my name was also Benjamin and his response was to shake my hand.
Evelyn, it turns out, is a remarkable woman. At 91, she’s still a practising architect and to say she didn’t look, or seem, a day over 70 is probably an understatement. Her hearing is remarkable. She is glamorous. Sharp as a tack. And she polished off her sequence in a few takes, her daughter’s dog, Bono, sitting at her feet.
I’d received another email from Hedi by the time we’d left Evelyn’s saying she really wasn’t feeling well at all. She didn’t want to let me down but it looked like the doctor might need to be called. I instantly replied to tell her she needed to focus on getting better, not on filming, and she seemed very relieved.
Without Hedi, there was a gap in the day which meant we could do a bit of lazing about in cafes. We headed for Holland Park in readiness for the next location and were joined for lunch by Michael.
It was at this point that I got a text from young Mitch telling me that one of our younger faces had just called to say she was pulling out because she needed to go to the “hospital for personal reasons.” There was, of course, no way that I was going to let that pass without some hard facts, so I immediately called her Mum whose number I’d asked for because the girl in question is 18. This decision to call the mum proved to be a good one and the situation was sorted in the blink of an eye. The Fenella situation has made me realise that I shouldn’t stand for ludicrous or self-centred behaviour on a shoot like this. I genuinely wish I’d told Fenella exactly what I thought of her behaviour and how out of our way we’d gone to film her, but then I wouldn’t have ended up with the wonderful Evelyn.
The post-lunch filming took place at the beautiful Notting Hill home of my mate Felicity, who is one of the stalwarts at New West End synagogue. Her teenaged son, Alex, is one of the 100 faces and she’s the sort of good egg you can rely on for a favour. I therefore asked if she’d mind a couple of other people being filmed at her house, and she graciously agreed. When we arrived, everyone was sitting around the dining room table and I wondered if I’d actually told Felicity how many people she was expecting and what their names were! Then I felt terrible...
The two other faces were a young A-level student called Maya, and Abi, who’s in the Royal Navy. I realise now that I don’t know which rank, and probably should have asked. Maya was singing - beautifully, Abi polished off her line in a matter of minutes and we filmed Alex in his bedroom surrounded by toy frogs and spring onions.
Unfortunately my crew is all-male, and we were filming two young women, so Felicity was dragged into every space, just so that no one felt uncomfortable, or, as Felicity put it: “I’m here, well, because of boobs!”
From Felicity’s house, we headed to Finchley, in a drive which seemed to take forever. Driving on a Sunday in London is usually okay and I don’t remember getting stuck in any traffic, so I think it may just have been a long way away.
We went to film a wonderful lass called Lily, who’s a mixed-race university student at Leeds with a strong sense of her dual heritage. She wants to be a performer, and she certainly has an aura of something very special about her. She has a very beautiful singing voice and I think she has every chance of making a splash.
The penultimate location was a quirky, somewhat bohemian cafe in Golders Green, called Headroom, which is run by a Jewish mental heath charity called Jami. Yesterday was a day of fasting in the Jewish calendar so the cafe was meant to be closed, but they opened it especially for us, which was incredibly generous. It made for a really interesting space, and yielded some fabulous shots. We’ve looked for as many non-religious Jewish locations as we could find because there are so many people who identify as Jewish without actually feeling religious in any way, shape or form.
At Headroom, we filmed the dream-boat opera singer, Anthony Flaum, who is currently playing Pinkerton in a production of Madam Butterfly, ambulance staff member, Nicole, a young lass called Darcy who’s mother is the first Scottish Jewish person I think I’ve met on this shoot, Phoebe, a student from North London and a young chap who is learning to lein for his bar mitzvah next year. Leining is essentially the somewhat mystical process of singing the Torah. It’s something all bar mitzvah boys must do (and people wonder why so many Jewish people are musical!)
The last location on our entire shoot was in Walthamstow at Gabriel’s house. Gabes sings with me in the shul choir and used to date Hilary back in the day, so I’ve known him for years. It felt rather appropriate therefore that we would film him last. It was ever likely to be momentous. As the day flashed past, I ticked off the names, one by one.
And then, we were done. That was that. All faces were in the can... 100 brilliant, beautiful Jewish faces.
We did it! I don’t know how we did it, but it happened. The adventure is not over yet, of course. I continue to move forward with editors and sound engineers. But it was very sad to say goodbye to Andrei and Keith and continue along the path without them. I don’t think I’ve ever had so much fun on a shoot.
Sunday, 22 July 2018
London Zoo by night
It was my Dad’s birthday celebration on Friday. The 100 Faces project, therefore, couldn’t have chosen a less appropriate day to totally hit the skids!
I woke up to find that my social media appeals for a replacement for Fenella Fielding had yielded nothing. The search for someone born in 1927 was never going to be easy and could well have proved impossible. The most worrying thing was that all my contacts in rest homes were either not responding, or couldn’t help, so by the time I reached UK Jewish Film offices in the late morning, I was bouncing off the ceilings.
I tried to make myself a cup of tea to calm down, but the milk was off. And let me tell you: when this man is prevented from having his first cup of tea in the morning, life suddenly becomes a very distressing place! I took myself into the communal cafe space, tried to take some deep breaths, and, after googling a list of celebrities born in 1927, was trying to work out whether June Brown from Eastenders was Jewish enough to be in the film. Quite how I thought I was going to get in touch with her, I’ve no idea!
It was at that moment, the bottom dropped out of the project when I found out that cellist Natalie Clein, whom we were due to film on Sunday, was also unable to take part. She apparently needed to rest her fingers and arms and therefore wouldn’t be able to play. The big problem was that I’d written a large ‘cello solo in the middle of the piece, especially for Natalie, so had been left with a twenty second hole in my film. I can’t feel anger. Natalie was an absolute delight to deal with and I can only assume she didn’t realise the complicated nature of the project and quite how derailing her dropping out was going to be. I was so tragically excited when she said yes and poured a lot of love into what I wrote for her. I looked back at the first draft I’d written for her section and it says “Natalie’s sequence - yay!”
I did a bit of ranting and railing and then made Michael (who’s executive producing) rather angry by being defeatist and imagining a world where I could throw in the towel and blithely pull out of the project like Fenella and Natalie. Ultimately, of course, the great tragedy about being a writer is that whilst everyone else can run away from your babies, you, yourself, are stuck with them for life, so the only option is to doggedly continue.
So I hauled my sorry arse back into the office and spent the day, with Michael, putting out feelers and trying to remedy the situation.
I went down Oxford Street in the late afternoon to find my Dad a birthday present, and walked, in a mega-daze through John Lewis and various other department stores, realising I wasn’t actually looking at anything. I was, simultaneously, buried in my phone, repeatedly checking Facebook to see if anyone had offered me a lifeline. I got incredibly antsy with one of those women whose task it is to go up to people in department stores and ask if they need help. She could plainly see I was engrossed in my phone.
Everything got a little less stressful after I’d walked up to St James’ Park to meet my parents, Nathan, Brother Edward and Sascha.
The plan for my Dad’s birthday was to visit London Zoo by night. They only open up at night time for a few weeks a year, but they really go for it. Children aren’t allowed, which genuinely makes a big difference. The little stands are more likely to sell alcohol than ice cream and, as the sun sets, everything takes on a rather magical quality.
There were a few drops of rain. The first we’ve had for some time. At one point, our noses were filled with that glorious scent which only comes when rain falls on sun-baked, dusty earth. The smell, I learned from Brother Edward, has a name: petrichor.
I woke up to find that my social media appeals for a replacement for Fenella Fielding had yielded nothing. The search for someone born in 1927 was never going to be easy and could well have proved impossible. The most worrying thing was that all my contacts in rest homes were either not responding, or couldn’t help, so by the time I reached UK Jewish Film offices in the late morning, I was bouncing off the ceilings.
I tried to make myself a cup of tea to calm down, but the milk was off. And let me tell you: when this man is prevented from having his first cup of tea in the morning, life suddenly becomes a very distressing place! I took myself into the communal cafe space, tried to take some deep breaths, and, after googling a list of celebrities born in 1927, was trying to work out whether June Brown from Eastenders was Jewish enough to be in the film. Quite how I thought I was going to get in touch with her, I’ve no idea!
It was at that moment, the bottom dropped out of the project when I found out that cellist Natalie Clein, whom we were due to film on Sunday, was also unable to take part. She apparently needed to rest her fingers and arms and therefore wouldn’t be able to play. The big problem was that I’d written a large ‘cello solo in the middle of the piece, especially for Natalie, so had been left with a twenty second hole in my film. I can’t feel anger. Natalie was an absolute delight to deal with and I can only assume she didn’t realise the complicated nature of the project and quite how derailing her dropping out was going to be. I was so tragically excited when she said yes and poured a lot of love into what I wrote for her. I looked back at the first draft I’d written for her section and it says “Natalie’s sequence - yay!”
I did a bit of ranting and railing and then made Michael (who’s executive producing) rather angry by being defeatist and imagining a world where I could throw in the towel and blithely pull out of the project like Fenella and Natalie. Ultimately, of course, the great tragedy about being a writer is that whilst everyone else can run away from your babies, you, yourself, are stuck with them for life, so the only option is to doggedly continue.
So I hauled my sorry arse back into the office and spent the day, with Michael, putting out feelers and trying to remedy the situation.
I went down Oxford Street in the late afternoon to find my Dad a birthday present, and walked, in a mega-daze through John Lewis and various other department stores, realising I wasn’t actually looking at anything. I was, simultaneously, buried in my phone, repeatedly checking Facebook to see if anyone had offered me a lifeline. I got incredibly antsy with one of those women whose task it is to go up to people in department stores and ask if they need help. She could plainly see I was engrossed in my phone.
Everything got a little less stressful after I’d walked up to St James’ Park to meet my parents, Nathan, Brother Edward and Sascha.
The plan for my Dad’s birthday was to visit London Zoo by night. They only open up at night time for a few weeks a year, but they really go for it. Children aren’t allowed, which genuinely makes a big difference. The little stands are more likely to sell alcohol than ice cream and, as the sun sets, everything takes on a rather magical quality.
There were a few drops of rain. The first we’ve had for some time. At one point, our noses were filled with that glorious scent which only comes when rain falls on sun-baked, dusty earth. The smell, I learned from Brother Edward, has a name: petrichor.
It was rather lovely to walk around and see the animals either preparing for bed, or preparing to get busy. I was rather taken by the bush babies and the Australian water rats, and loved seeing the fruit bats. The lemurs stole the show, however. Visitors literally get to walk into their cage and they are quite happy to run around, swinging from the branches above. If you’re lucky, they’ll even come and sit down next to you.
Are all giraffes gay by the way?
I’d never been to London Zoo before and was a little disappointed that there weren’t any elephants. My Mother shared my dismay. Both she and my Dad had been to London Zoo once in their lives: my father in the early 50s and my mother, in 1948! She believes she may have visited just after it had reopened after the war. She also remembers seeing the penguins and thinking they were actually little men, and being utterly terrified! She maintains that no one relieved her of the notion.
Mind you, as a child I remember being in Hyde Park and seeing a group of women in niqabs wandering about in a playground and thinking they were a flock of black sheep.
A little bit of research on penguins reveals they are one of nature’s animals most likely to have homosexual relationships. Fact.
Are all giraffes gay by the way?
I’d never been to London Zoo before and was a little disappointed that there weren’t any elephants. My Mother shared my dismay. Both she and my Dad had been to London Zoo once in their lives: my father in the early 50s and my mother, in 1948! She believes she may have visited just after it had reopened after the war. She also remembers seeing the penguins and thinking they were actually little men, and being utterly terrified! She maintains that no one relieved her of the notion.
Mind you, as a child I remember being in Hyde Park and seeing a group of women in niqabs wandering about in a playground and thinking they were a flock of black sheep.
A little bit of research on penguins reveals they are one of nature’s animals most likely to have homosexual relationships. Fact.
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