Monday
My wonderful husband brings me a large cafetière of luxury coffee, the essential fuel for my two-hour morning routine before my first meeting. Each day begins the same way: clearing the inbox, updating my social media and scanning the newspapers, before offloading those apps from my phone so I’m not reaching for them on autopilot for the rest of the day.
At 9 a.m. I meet with the ORA Singers team to plan our Malta tour later this year, followed by a little housekeeping before I catch the train from Bath, where we live, to London, where we have a shoebox pied-à-terre. I give a seminar on Poulenc’s Figure Humaine over lunch, then spend the afternoon in score study ahead of the evening’s rehearsal for the ORA Singers forthcoming programme, Evolution of British Song: 1826 to 2026. I also find time to work on repertoire and logistics for Odaline de la Martinez’s Festival of Contemporary American Choral Music, which marks America at 250. I catch a late train back to Bath and manage to get in bed by midnight.
Tuesday
The morning begins with my usual routine before catching up with my local vicar and his wonderful team over a cup of tea to plan our annual summer fundraising concert for his church. Last year, 200 villagers came to support us, so we’re hoping to see if we can cram in even more this year.
It’s then back on a train to London for a Wigmore Hall lunchtime recital given by my son-in-law, Guy Johnston, and great friend Melvyn Tan. The playing is sensational. The 80-minute train journey back to Bath proves usefully productive as I prepare for the ORA Singers’ forthcoming St Martin-in-the-Fields concert, Spirit of Place. Once home, I hop on a couple of Zoom calls with some American colleagues – I am hugely fortunate to have a parallel life in the US, having been Visiting Professor of Choral Studies at USC for 13 years, and those friendships are ones I truly treasure.
Wednesday
Today I’m back in London for a full day of rehearsals before tomorrow’s concert in Manchester. The Spirit of Place programme is fantastic and features two world premieres; commissioning is at the heart of everything ORA Singers does, and in October we’ll be premiering our 100th commission, by Brett Dean, at the Wigmore Hall. Tomorrow we are premiering Gabriel Jackson’s extraordinary Kingdom of Mist, which is not a score for the fainthearted. Our singers are remarkable: we have six hours to rehearse this new and complex programme entirely from scratch, so time management is paramount. Back at our London pad, I order a Chinese via Uber Eats and mentally prepare for tomorrow’s concert.
Thursday
I take the train to Manchester with the ORA team – I love the rare luxury of chatting with them en route. We arrive at Stoller Hall via a quick lunch with the team, before an intensive three-hour rehearsal, where I do my best to save their voices before the concert. Choreography – or choralography, as we like to call it – and presentation are a distinguishing feature of ORA Singers, so we work to be nimble and slick in each new venue. The 7 p.m. concert is a massive success: happy singers, happy audience, happy conductor. My driver collects me afterwards for the three-and-a-half-hour drive back to Bath and my head finally hits my pillow at 1.30 a.m.
Friday
It is dreamy and restorative to wake up in our Bath home, with beautiful, unrestricted views of fields and sheep and total silence. After some much-needed housework, I head back to London for a quick update meeting with our brilliant new record label, Orchid Classics. The afternoon is given over to something rather special: the Pureland Foundation and I are filming a mini-series in a beautiful London church, in the form of a two-way interview with Sir John Rutter. We each choose four tracks from ORA Singers’ 12 albums – four Renaissance polyphony and four contemporary commissions – and take it in turns to ask each other questions about our lives, thoughts, philosophy and the music itself. Afterwards I take the train back to Bath where I discover that six of our twelve grandchildren have arrived to cause chaos, along with house guests from London. Fortunately, I love cooking.
Saturday
Weekends at home are a treasured luxury. When I’m not on the road with ORA Singers, we take the opportunity to invite friends and family to stay at our rather special Georgian home, set on a hill with lovely views of the Somerset hills. Our guests, many of whom come from far-flung places, arrive after lunch to enjoy the garden and house. I love cooking and entertaining, so I spend the afternoon preparing dinner for 12 and creating a stunning centre piece for the table from the roses in our garden. After dinner, the conversations continue, and we all enjoy some music-making. As the guests retire to their beds, I catch up on emails and clear my inbox and reward myself with an hour of my favourite TV show, accompanied by a feast of leftover chocolate.
Sunday
I’ve lived in many parts of the world, but our Bath home is my happiest place on earth – my forever home. To wake up to that view on a sunny Sunday morning is deeply restorative. I’m obsessive about staying on top of everything, so the first task of the morning is planning the week ahead, making lists and scanning the broadsheets while listening to BBC Radio 3. I’m particularly gratified to hear ORA Singers featured today.
My husband John is on breakfast duty, so I come downstairs at 9 a.m. to the lovely smells of oven-baked pastries, coffee, and bacon and eggs. We are 10 for breakfast, including some of the grandchildren, and the room is full of enthusiastic chatter as we all catch up and debate the meaning of life. After breakfast, John takes our guests for a walk, while I stay behind to make sure the house is immaculate when they return for coffee and their guest book entries, which take the form of a sonnet, ode, haiku or limerick. Then it’s off to the local pub for a Sunday roast where there’s lots of frivolity and we end up discussing everything from the state of the arts to Kosky’s new Ring Cycle at the Royal Opera House.
By 3.30 p.m. the house is quiet again as everyone has gone home, and I score-prep for next week’s ORA concert before sitting in the garden, marvelling at the view. An early night as there’s another early start tomorrow.
