This week was spent mostly in Trondheim, Norway with my barbershop group the Barberfellas. We were invited to perform with Kor Hen, Trondheim’s queer choir and they were the most gracious hosts, organising hikes, city tours, social events and so on. I also led a workshop on barbershop singing and surprised myself by how much I enjoyed doing that. Our joint gig was packed to the rafters with an incredibly warm audience of around 150 people.
Kor Hen’s leader is Gunnhild Hasunds, an accomplished musician and singer of impressive vocal range – a chilled Sunday morning listening to her SoundCloud is time well spent.
One of the highlights of Trondheim was a 12-mile walk around Bymarka, where the locals go for a quick weekend ski in winter. We stopped off for hot dogs sitting by a roaring fire (it was about 4°C) in one of the cabins. The views of the lakes, trees and fjords were very soothing. We also briefly visited Hell, but there wasn’t very much there aside from a train station and it was chillier than we’d expected.
Not too much work this week, but a little prep for what will be a busy one coming up. In study world, met up with my MBA buddies and chatted in the sunshine about our next assignment which is due in a little over two weeks.
A back-burner project finally came to fruition after over a year of conversations about rights & royalties: the Pink Singers album that I was project lead on is now available via streaming services like Spotify, Deezer etc.
For the choir, this initiative was mostly to help new people discover the group, as we don’t expect to make any money from it. On a personal level, I learned a bit from this work about how to release music in the age of streaming, about the differences between mechanical and performance rights, and about contracts with session musicians. And that patience works in the end.
My favourite songs on the album are our cover of Both Sides Now by Joni Mitchell (arranged by Chris Chambers) and Running Up That Hill by Kate Bush (which I arranged). Both incredibly reflective songs – I hope we do them justice as a choir.