Art History Scales New Heights

Mike Westbrook and Andrea Argent conferring
Mike with Miscellany: Andrea Argent , Audrey Barnes, Marianne McAleer, Ann Seabright, Helen Hill, Carolyn Morgan, Alison Pemble, Julie Taylor, Christine Parfitt, Patricia Pimm, Wendy Sergeant, Cynthia Dobson

Today was the day - the great Miscellany recording in St John's church, Clevedon. We piled up the car with all the filming and recording gear, collected Mike Westbrook (still not in the best of health) and zoomed off to Clevedon, where we met Andrea Argent, the highly efficient Musical Director of the group (as well as press officer, secretary, treasurer and musical dog's body), who possesses a wonderful turn of phrase and a good sense of humour. In fact the whole group do - between each take the choir broke into peals of laughter - one of the joys of working with the girls is that they are highly professional, obviously enjoy their music greatly, and have all been good friends for years. Charles set up his wonderful surround sound recording gear in the vestry, the girls ranged themselves in the sanctuary, the piano was trundled up to help with fine tuning, and we were off. Mike has written seven pieces for the film, and Miscellany started with the ones they were most familiar and at ease with. Andrea and Mike talked way above my non musical head, and the collaboration worked well, the choir's abilities growing exponentially as the afternoon progressed, so that when they came to the last (hardest) work they practically sailed through same, although Charles is left with some stitching to perform. And the afternoon was so well organised and well paced that the recording was completed in four hours.

The recording was made using a Soundfield SPS422B microphone system, recording onto a Sound Devices 744T hard disk digital 4 track recorder; the recording was also recorded in stereo onto a Tascam DA-P1 DAT recorder and monitored on Fostex 6301 loudspeakers. The 4 track B-format master will eventually be processed into a 5.1 surround sound audio track for the DVD.

Helen Hill, Andea Argent, Ann Seabright and Marianne McAleer listening to a playback in the vestry with Charles




Andrea wrote afterwards that 'at the end of the day, I felt as if we'd climbed an unfamiliar mountain, reached the top against all odds, and glimpsed a fascinating new world beyond.'



Helen Hill and Carolyn Morgan (my highly revered sister-in-law)

We returned to Dawlish in the wind and rain, took Mike home, emptied the car yet again, and went out in search of food. Unfortunately Dawlish out of season is not the best place for culinary delights and nothing was open. We ended up buying a rather limp pizza (CM) and a tub of coleslaw (me) which was washed down in the B&B with a bottle of red which almost made it palatable.