We were unable to hold a Song Weekend here in late June 2019, but by early 2020 we were well on with plans for June of that year. Our major stars were going to be Dame Felicity Lott and the Fibonacci Sequence. We had bought a new piano and even sold some tickets, but the Pandemic put a stop to so much that year, and the whole thing had to be cancelled. We started planning again in 2021, but many of our regular audience said they were still reluctant to be with crowds of people within a confined space, so those plans came to nothing as well. By now we felt that perhaps the time had come to draw a line under this particular venture, so 2018’s project turned out to be our tenth and final one.
One of the results of that decision was that this website went into hibernation, and it’s only in the last month or so that I’ve thought of using it again. The transcript of my 18th Century Singers lecture in Gainsborough’s House is the first piece I’ve posted for a long time, and my next will be an article on Dialect and Accent in performance.