Had a lovely day today. The sun was shining, Fi was back in Brum and there were things that needed to be done.
First off was a bit of Opera. Not watching but singing. Birmingham Opera is our local company but they take the notion of reaching out to the local community to extremes and use actors and singers from the local community, ideally people who’ve never done anything like this before and don’t consider themselves actors or singers. I can sing (it’s in my genes thanks to my mum) but haven’t done so in any capacity since junior school and after hearing from John Mostyn about his wonderful experience with Birmingham Opera I figured I’d go along to one of their taster sessions. This involved a couple of hours with a group of about 30 people (from, and I know it’s a cliche but it’s true, all walks of life) going through basic Opera singing stuff. We ended up singing a round of You’ll Never Walk Alone which while not strictly opera does have operatic aspects. The whole experience was amazing, from the warmups to the singing to the general sense of “this is really quite awesome”. I loved it.
Their next show is Othello in December. Rehearsals start on Tuesday. I was planning to go see Theo and Fuck Buttons that evening but suddenly I have a priority. (Might be able to squeeze both in though…)
After that we grabbed some lunch a headed into darkest Digbeth for a photo job. The Destroyers, one of Birmingham’s Balkan/Klezma groups, had managed to get hold of a rather nice looking truck and wanted some photos taken with it. I don’t do professional photography as a rule but this sounded like too much fun to be missed. Hell, I’d pay to spend time photographing these guys!
After hanging around in the lovely warehouse they were rehearsing in (photos of rust and decay to follow) we bundled into the van and drove to a patch of wasteland I knew on Liverpool St in Digbeth for the shoot. Getting 13 guys in silly costumes to coordinate while clambering all over a vehicle did require a megaphone but in the end proved remarkably simple. It helped that the mighty Paul Murphy was in the foreground – I just had to keep him in frame and he did the rest.
Here’s a couple of photos:
(I’m giving them a variety of different processes. I just like this one myself. Something about the way it brings out the folds in Paul’s clothes.)
After that we wandered through the Custard Factory with Nicky where there was a load of life graffiti going on and chanced across the Inkygoodness art show in the VAAD Gallery there. Lots of really lovely illustration-esque work on display which I liked a lot. Usually with gallery shows I might like the work but can never imagine actually buying any. This was chock full of stuff I’d hand cash over for, if I had cash to hand over. Triffic and well worth checking out before it ends next Sunday 27th.
Then we went back to The Destroyers rehearsal warehouse to pick up bags (resulting in me photographing more rust and grime while Fi chatted with Paul) before going home.
Lovely day!