So when I first heard her latest single, This Pretty Face as I was driving through rural Suffolk… well… I’ll leave the rest to your imagination.  It’s not just the timbre of her voice, but the way the lyrics and instrumental interweave. Another winning catchy choon.

You may have heard it already, it’s getting a lot of plays on a lot of stations, but if you’ve missed it… enjoy

I’ve spent some time today updating the showcase pages of this site, so if you are interested in my work (ie you’re my mother), you can browse the latest video, digital comms, digital marketing and media relations work.

There’s still loads more to add to these pages, but just looking at what’s there I’m reminded that I’m fortunate enough to get to do a really broad range of work, and to work with some fantastic people. There is of course an element of vanity publishing to these pages (and to blogging as a whole!) but it’s also useful for keeping track of what I need to learn – managing light in video shoots is a priority.

At CIMA we have a number of UK homeworkers and staff in global offices who can sometimes miss out on HQ’s successes (and vice-versa). This video was one of our first attempts to use a Flip Mino HD camera to go behind the scenes at an event, there’s clearly work to do to get better, but I think the Flip has huge potential as an internal comms tool.

I filmed the main event on our Sony HVR-A1E camera (purchased with the aid of the excellent and knowledgable sales team at Calumet), and you can see those videos on my video page.

The Flip HD performance is  much stronger in conditions where there is strong lighting, one of our exec directors took it out to Vietnam with him, and the picture quality is superb:

One problem we’ve found with the included simple editing software is that it has no option other than to export your video to the My Documents folder on Windows. When you use My Docs locations which are based on network drives, as we do, the Flip software can become very temperemental about exporting.

I spent a couple of hours there and did a bit of the social media thing as the sun went down.

Here’s a quick pan of the river uploaded to YouTube from the iPhone:

Some thoughts captured to Audioboo, slightly drowned out by the blustery breeze:

And finally a couple of yFrog photos

More music sharing. The National Theatre’s War Horse is currently playing in the West End, and greatly deserves each of the five star ratings it has received. Music is an intrinsic character in the story, and the production includes stirring arrangements of hymns and traditional songs.

The soundtrack is well worth buying. I have included track four from the soundtrack CD above, found on YouTube accompanying a Disney-esque video which I have tried to squash out of view – hit play to hear the delicious Devonian sound.  The song is called The Year Turns Round Again on the War Horse CD, it is written by John Tams and he originally called it Snow Falls (click for lyrics).

My taste in music is broad. Some would say eclectic. Some might very well say random. Most would say piss poor.  It falls in to four broad groups:

• Early music, particularly renaissance polyphony
• Classical and romantic music
• Musical theatre
• Pop music (particularly 70s/80s artists)

When listening to classical music I usually veer towards large, bombastic works – music for jolly times. The same is true of musical theatre (of course).

Early music and pop music are more polarised. Both contain pieces of  high elation, and also deep contemplation. Sometimes one piece is suitable for both.

I thought I’d take a look at the top 15 tracks of the last five years, and see what record my musical diary reveals.

There are several artists and songs I listen to over and over again. Psychologists have theories about what this says about a person, I won’t go in to detail, but in a nutshell walk away slowly. No sudden movements. There is even a last.fm group for people like me, but as the poor deluded fools are mainly listening to Coldplay (over and over again), I haven’t joined.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, as someone who loves singing and music in general, my top 15 tracks show I turn to music at the very best, and the very worst times.

Top tracks of the last five years

OK pop pickers, let’s go…. Here’s the raw data.

Good times

Tracks 1, 5, and 7 (Spem in Alium): The soundtrack to big decisions, small decisions, ups, downs, pretty much everything in life. Sometimes I play it and it’s a raw, all consuming emotional experience. Sometimes I play it for white noise, and barely notice it. If you said “Rob Fenwick” in a game of word association, more than one person would say “Spem in Alium.” I have spent at least 55 hours listening to this work, and I’ll probably play it again tomorrow. More often than not it’s an anthem of joy.

11 (Ecce beatam lucem): A very similar work to Spem, but discovered some time after so doesn’t enjoy ‘first love’ affection.

Tracks 2, 3, and 4 (Jersey Boys): This is all good stuff. Pure musical theatre schmaltz, to which I was introduced by a good friend. Often hits the iPod on a summer’s day. A sign of many happy days.

8 (Beautiful people): A TV show theme. How deeply embarrassing. But a pure feel good choon, so a sign of many a happy day.

13 (Monteverdi 1610 Vespers): The first movement is an expansive joyous sound. If Spem were to be a funeral piece for me, Deus in adjutorium meum intende is there for if/when I walk down the aisle.

Bad times

Tracks 4, 9, 12 (Ariadne’s Lament): I’m a little sorry to see this feature so highly, as these tracks show hours of troubled and perhaps conflicted thought. This collection of Monteverdi madrigals is haunting, and particularly useful when mentally navigating ethical dilemmas.  These tracks were prominent during a period in one job when we were making big and difficult decisions with real impact on the lives of  many good people.

10 (Misty rain): In the weeks immediately after the onset of Tinnitus earlier this year, I needed this track of natural rain noise playing through speakers next to the bed in order to mask the whistling in the ear, so I could get to sleep. These days the tinnitus is less of an intruder (it’s still there, it’s just familiar now), so this track is rarely played.

14 (Run): A tearjerker. Featured heavily in the services following the death of friend and fellow Liberal Democrat campaigner Neil Trafford.

15 (Life is): Again I’m surprised to see this in the top 15. This song by Runrig is for getting through the most difficult days. This piece doesn’t make you feel better, but it does keep you company if feel awful!

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So on that happy note, that’s it… I wonder how this list will change in the next five years.

Quite often I find myself driving home in the late evening, listening to Sue Marchant on radio Suffolk. One of her set piece questions is to ask her main guest where in time and space they would choose to travel if they could make a single trip in a TARDIS. It is a question that is simultaneously rather narrow (even geeky), and huge (sometimes inspirational) in scope.

I know what my answer would be. To the Chapel Royal of 1568, and lunch with Thomas Tallis. Like many enthusiasts of Tallis and his incredible composition Spem in Alium, I have questions I’d like to put to him. Not least of which is the piece’s relationship with Allesandro Striggio’s Ecce Beatam Lucem (embedded above).

Historial records indicate that Ecce was composed for a first performance in 1561, possibly a royal wedding. So far as we know, Spem was first performed seven or eight years later at Arundel house. As relatively little is known about the history of Spem a plausible if not definitive theory has gained currency – namely that the Duke of Norfolk, on becoming aware of Striggio’s work, commissioned Tallis to compose a work of equal or greater scale and complexity as a birthday gift to Elizabeth I.

While Tallis’s work makes a more finely developed use of counterpoint and spine-tingling antiphone, has seen greater enduring success, and could be argued to be technically superior, I prefer (on no rational basis whatsoever) to see the pieces as siblings. For example, both use the same technique of building steadily to great tutti moments – Striggio on the “O” of O mel et dulce nectar (oh honey of sweet nectar), and Tallis on the “respice” of respice humilitatem nostram (look upon our humiliation / lowliness).

But the killer commonality is the modesty. For me you will find it in the score of Ecce, and in the story of Spem. At the time he chose the words to use as a basis of  Spem in Alium, a plea to the almighty to watch over us in our lowliness, Tallis was at the zenith of his career – a musical giant who had survived numerous seismic shifts in the religious and political fabric of England. He could have been forgiven an inclination towards triumphalism, particularly given his royal audience.

When I listen to Ecce Beatam Lucem it is the last minute which blows me away. The whole piece is a joy on the ears, but as the piece approaches what could be a rousing finale with the words “This delight, this peace, this goal, this mark. Draw us from here straight to Paradise” the dynamics take the deliciously unexpected turn of slipping away from us – ever diminishing until the final word paradisum -paradise – is almost a whisper. There are no such dynamics written in to the scores I have. I would love to know if this is interpretation, or the will of the composer. In either case it’s little short of genius.

If you are north of the border you can hear Spem in Scotland on 2 July at the East Neuk festival, I’ll be there at the generous invitation of friends.

Then a week later there is what true artists call “a real humdinger” of a concert at Southwark Cathedral. I’ll be attending this one too – it will be very interesting to hear how the forty individual voices are able to fill a space as cavernous as Southwark.

Every couple of months I drive up to Orford – it’s one of those rare places in the UK where the sky seems a little bigger, and the light a little warmer. Watching over the village is the arresting Orford Ness lighthouse.

One cold afternoon in January I stumbled on the news that Orford Ness lighthouse had been recommended for closure, and had an idea. An idea which, thanks to Twitter, I could simultaneously share with the world and pitch directly to Radio 4 continuity announcer and Suffolk-born man Zeb Soanes:

What began and ended with a few casual (and easily forgotten) keystrokes for me was the beginning of a chain of thought and real time commitment for Zeb, so it’s really pleasing that by his own account he had an enjoyable time reading an excerpt of the shipping forecast from the lighthouse this morning.

This recording is from today’s Lesley Dolphin show on BBC Radio Suffolk and yes, of course, I blushed a little at the name check.

As I begin to write this I’m on an East Coast train with the Tyne Bridge to disappearing to my left. When heading back down south there’s always a sense that I’m leaving behind a special place. I guess many people feel a close connection with where they were born, but above and beyond that the reason I bang on (and on and on) about Northumberland to people from further afield is that I really think it’s one of the most beautiful places in the country.

So if you’ve never been, I thought I’d try and lure you with five possible reasons why Northumberland might one day win you over, with the aid of the interweb:

• PUFFINS, on the Farne Islands – who could resist? Northumberland is also one of the last remaining places in the country where you can see red Squirrels.
• A thriving regional music tradition, centred around the Northumbrian small pipes
• If you spend a lot of time in the cities, you might want to experience the empty open spaces of the Cheviot Hills or the North Pennines
• After you’ve had a Stottie, a regular sandwich will never seem quite as filling (and you can pick up a Greggs Steak Bake for 80p!)
• And finally, who can forget Hadrian’s Wall? I don’t think it’s possible to truly understand the history of the United Kingdom without standing on one of the high vantage points and taking in the scale of the construction. On that note, on 13 March the good people of The North will be illuminating Hadrian’s Wall – definitely a spectacle worth seeing.

If I can be cheeky and squeeze in a sixth, and one you can’t easily prove online, I’d say one of the defining characteristics of Northumberland and the North East is that though life is still hard for a good many people (and there are parts of the area where you can see poverty deeply etched on the faces of the residents) you’re never too far from a smile from a stranger. We were brought up proper, we were.