Jacqueline Shave - celebrating 10 years as Britten Sinfonia Leader

This April we celebrate Jacqueline Shave's first ten years as Britten Sinfonia's Leader. A unique and inspiring musician, we talked to some of our principal musicians and others about what makes her so special...

Jackie taking her bow after directing Strauss' Metamorphosen in Wiltshire in April 2016.

Clare & Jackie in Norwich in Jan 2016

She is a wonderful musician and a natural, gifted leader. She directs with passion and commitment. Every rehearsal is injected with her enthusiasm and positivity - and this is shared amongst the players. Jackie's attitude in rehearsals is serious and fun. She skilfully and respectfully handles all our different personalities - things can get very heated when we are under pressure preparing for a performance with limited rehearsal time. She will steer everything in the right direction, often with humour, taking everybody on board. The culminating concerts, the success of which she is utterly committed to, always feel like a real collaboration of our work and ideas.  Jackie is a special person. We are lucky to have her!
Clare Finnimore, Principal Viola 

David & Jackie collecting an RPS award in 2013

Jacqueline's musical credentials and spirit embody the artistic ethos of Britten Sinfonia; a collaborative chamber musician of pure class and quality, hungry to embrace a wide range of music and collaborations from across the musical spectrum. It must be palpable to audiences watching and listening, how much she is adored by the orchestra and the many collaborators we’ve worked with over these years, and there’s no doubt that her artistry, inspiration and pure unfettered love of the music we play, has had so much to do with the orchestra’s happy success over these years.
David Butcher, Chief Executive

Jackie Shave is a musical force of nature. She has led and directed Britten Sinfonia over the last ten years with a magical combination of warmth, passion and inspirational music making. She ignites every project she undertakes. Her direction of Bach's St. John Passion was a triumph of unashamed emotional commitment combined with technical mastery. It was a highlight of my musical career and a privilege to participate.
Caroline Dearnley, Principal Cello 

Jacqueline Shave is simply one the most inspiring musicians I have had the privilege of sharing a stage with. Britten Sinfonia is deeply collaborative but in the end we would follow her anywhere without question. The Bach St. John Passion she directed was a deeply moving experience for us all and a 3-year journey for her. I will simply never forget it. She led the same piece for me at Dartington last summer with amateur forces and was equally as inspiring.
Nicholas Daniel, Principal Oboe

Thomas & Jackie in 2011

I've learned so much from sharing a desk with Jackie over the years in Britten Sinfonia - her unfussy leadership style, flamboyant musicality, and her special ability to deal with stressful situations by relaxing everybody around her. With leaders as good as Jackie, who needs conductors?
Thomas Gould, Associate Leader

Miranda & Jackie rehearsing in 2012

As ever this season, Jackie has been a real inspiration through her fabulous musicianship and unparalleled ability to encourage each member of an ensemble to give of their best. Britten Sinfonia is propelled by her into meteoric flight in any given genre or period of music, taking the audience with her.
Miranda Dale, Principal Second Violin



She’s such a fantastic leader – she’s very charismatic. You can tell that she’s thinking about so much more than just the notes.
Elena Langer, composer


This April and May Britten Sinfonia tours a programme specially curated by Jacqueline to celebrate her ten years at the helm of the orchestra. With performances in Wiltshire, Cambridge, Norwich and London the concerts feature a Bartok string quartet movement, a Mozart piano concerto with soloist Benjamin Grosvenor, Strauss' Metamorphosen and the world premiere of a new work by Elena Langer, commissioned and written especially for Jackie. Find out more here.

In both Norwich and London, Jacqueline will discuss her role as leader/director with Fiona Maddocks in a special pre-concert talk.

Sinfonia Student review: At Lunch Two

At Lunch Two: West Road Concert Hall, Tuesday 19 January

Stephen Wilkinson

Although this programme, the second in this season’s At Lunch concerts, was created as a celebration of texture, thanks to the musicians’ skill and sensitivity it became a showcase of artful balance and ensemble. The 250-year timespan of the pieces, stretching from Bach to a new composition by Anna Clyne, showcased similar techniques and sound worlds which formed parallels between temporally- and geographically-distanced composers’ works, which was hinted at by the title of Ligeti’s Continuum. The result was a varied programme, which attested to the richness and intertextuality of the Western classical tradition.

Despite the spacious dimensions of the 500-seat concert hall, the musicians created an intimate atmosphere from the very beginning of the programme, which began with the welcome addition of the sinfonia from Bach’s BWV21. The instrumental movement set the tone for the rest of the concert, drawing the audience into the fine textural world of J.S. Bach’s 1714 cantata in its stately pace, which was maintained by the whole ensemble, despite the absence of a conductor and with no perceptible intervention from Jacqueline Shave. At the outset of the concert, the ensemble’s disposition outlined a key element of the concert. The soprano, Julia Doyle, was seated by the harpsichord at the rear of the ensemble, allowing her colleagues to take centre stage. This was a programme in which no divide was felt between the vocalist and the instrumental group, instead promoting a sense of unity, which added to the overall impression of balance.  

Julia Doyle’s silvery soprano was a perfect fit for the ensemble from which her first soft sighs of ‘Seufer, Tränen, Kummer, Not’ seemed to issue in the aria from BWV21. Doyle’s expressive singing never compromised the intimacy created by the ensemble’s sparse accompaniment in this movement, establishing a mood which was carried on into ‘Chi m’addita, per pietà’, the first of two arias from Scarlatti’s Due arie notturne dal campo, arranged by Sciarrino in 2001. Whilst Doyle afforded a slightly more indulgent, warmer tone to this Italian aria, she once again appeared to work with the string players who, even in monophony, achieved a beautifully subtle balance, which supported the soprano perfectly.  Doyle’s repeat was adorned with understated decorations and never detracted from the searching, internalised mood that was shared by both the first Bach and Scarlatti arias.

Sciarrino’s layered string texture, particularly in the use of harmonics, found an interesting parallel in Pärt’s Fratres for string quartet (played today by Jacqueline Shave, Miranda Dale, Clare Finnimore and Caroline Dearnley). An example of Pärt’s ‘tintinnabuli’, a neologism of his own coinage, the success of this piece was testament to the instrumentalists’ superb grasp of balance. The four voices were so unified that the impression was of one instrumentalist rather than a quartet. The steady unfolding of Pärt’s ‘tintinnabular’ variations was effected so skilfully that the entire audience was completely motionless, including four rows of schoolchildren, as the piece’s sense of expansive timelessness stretched out, a notable achievement in a lunchtime programme of only one hour.

The ensemble found a new, more expansive, positive tone in the second Scarlatti arr. Sciarrino aria, ‘Non to curo, o libertà’. The imploring, internalised vocal tone Doyle had found up to this point was replaced with an enriched, confident warmth as the piece swung onwards. Doyle’s postural change here, opening up to the audience and allowing herself more movement, also marked this shift whilst her vocal performance always remained as restrained as the elegant strings. In the absence of oboist Marios Argiros, this all-female outfit was reunited in Bach’s soprano aria ‘Tief gebückt und voller Reue’ from Cantata BWV199, in which the pious timidity of his earlier work is replaced by a more self-assured tone. In response to this shift, the ensemble’s accompaniment was generous yet never overpowering. In return, Doyle’s attention to the soaring, more expansive soprano lines, although allowed to blossom from the instrumental texture, never detracted from her colleagues’ sensitive playing. Bach’s BWV187 aria ‘Gott versorget alles Leben’ saw the whole ensemble united in this warmer, fuller sound which accompanied Doyle’s more lavish tone in her declaration of ‘Weicht, ihr Sorgen’ (‘Worries, be gone!’), with the soprano and oboe lines joyfully interweaving above an accompaniment which glittered with harpsichordist Maggie Cole’s rich spread chords.

Cole’s performance of Ligeti’s Continuum saw the harpsichord’s capabilities span from its role in Bach’s cantatas to a more modern setting. Ligeti’s piece is at once reminiscent of Bach’s keyboard works and of twentieth-century minimalist techniques. The piece’s gradual changes and sense of steady crescendo created a sense of Cole taking a Baroque invention in all its intricacy of form and demarcation of individual notes, and slowly melting it down until smaller elements are lost in a blurred and blended sound world in which only broad changes can be perceived. As the piece moved towards the higher registers of the instrument, the percussive sound of the plectrums falling back onto vibrating strings suggested other more recent realisations of the harpsichord’s capabilities with a hint of musique concrète. Cole’s flair and sensitive playing were rewarded with applause worthy of this accomplished performance.

The nocturnal theme from Scarlatti’s Due arie notturne dal campo was echoed in Anna Clyne’s new work, This Lunar Beauty, co-commissioned by Britten Sinfonia and  Wigmore Hall. As W.H. Auden (whose poem Clyne sets for soprano, oboe, string quartet and harpsichord) and Benjamin Britten were collaborators as well as close personal friends, there was a sense of reuniting the two as the Sinfonia that bears Britten’s name played Clyne’s setting of Auden’s poem. The piece neatly encapsulated many of the programme’s explorations, mixing suggestions of British folksong with a more modern, avant-garde sound world. The setting of the poem’s second stanza sees rising scalic melismatic patterns in the soprano, echoed in the instrumental lines, suggesting a raising of the eyes and voice to the lunar object of the persona’s meditation. These more expressive, confident voices then surrender to a once again personal, introspective mood.

This programme showcased the capability of a small group of musicians to work together in order to create a diversity of moods and to highlight unobvious intertextual and intertemporal links between a range of pieces. Given the amount that this programme achieved, it is surprising that it lasted only an hour. It is testament to the quality of the musicianship and the diligence of the programming that the lunchtime concert was not only intellectually appealing but also contained many moments in which a weekday’s inevitable busyness seemed to melt away. All of the musicians are to be congratulated for today’s subtle yet no less powerful, varied or transporting performance. 

Stephen Wilkinson (Sinfonia Student 2015-16)

Meet Frederieke Saeijs

Ahead of performing Oliver Knussen's Violin Concerto as part of our TAKE TWO: Oliver Knussen in Focus double-bill this October, violinist Frederieke Saeijs took some time out of her busy schedule to answer some questions about her musical career so far.

What has been the highlight of your career so far?
Every concert is unique and therefore a highlight in a way, but if I have to choose I’ll go for this upcoming performance of Oliver Knussen’s violin concerto with Britten Sinfonia. I have never before performed a violin concerto under the baton of the composer himself. It will be a great opportunity and inspiration to work so closely together with the very creator of the piece and such an experienced ensemble. I’m looking forward to this experience incredibly!

When are you happiest?
When hugging my son Maxime and my partner Arjen at the same time, in a true family “group hug”!

What is your greatest fear?

In a way, fear itself.

What is your earliest musical memory?

Hearing my father (harpsichord/piano) and my mother (flute) play sonatas by J.S. Bach together.

Which living person do you most admire, and why?

One of the many persons I admire is Mauricio Fuks, my former professor at Indiana University. Somehow he is able to read the soul of his students through their playing, as if he had a sixth sense. Also, he knows exactly how to encourage each student by handing out the right tools to perfect technique and to connect to ones own unique musical voice. He has surely contributed greatly to my development as a violinist and artist, for which I’m very thankful.

What is your most treasured possession?

My violin, crafted by Petrus Guarneri in 1725. The instrument is not actually my possession, but thanks to the Dutch National Foundation for Musical Instruments I have the chance to play on it. This violin has become an extension of my body over the past 8 years.

What would your super power be?

I’d like to be able to fly and play Quidditch!

In real life I hope to touch the hearts of the people in the audience through my violin. Music has the potential to create magic and to “give wings” to the listener. So, I intend to use the bow as a magic wand and make the music fly

If you were an animal what would you be?

I’d love to be a seahorse…floating elegantly and peacefully through the sea.

What is your most unappealing habit?

Nibbling a cookie (or other sweet) and putting it back on the plate it is served from

What is your favourite book?

Harry Potter

What is your guiltiest pleasure?

To drink a soy chai tea latte, accompanied by a Dutch “stroofwafel” (syrup waffle)…yummie!

Who would you invite to your dream dinner party?

Jascha Heifetz, Fritz Kreisler, Eugène Ysaÿe, Georges Enescu, Jacques Thibaud, Pablo de Sarasate…all phenomenal violin masters of the past!

If you could go back in time, where would you go?

To the workshop of Pietro Guarneri in Venice, 1725, to witness the birth of my violin and to hear it’s first notes being played.

How do you relax away from the concert platform?

I love to salsa dance. Especially after many hours in the same posture (which for the violin is not the most natural one), salsa helps to shake everything loose. Also the happy music instantly puts me in a good mood and helps to get over any sense of fatigue.

What is the most important lesson life has taught you?

To embrace the “here and now” and to count your blessings.

In a nutshell, what is your philosophy?

Seize the day: carpe diem!

*** 

Join Britten Sinfonia, Frederieke Saeijs and Oliver Knussen for this performance of Knussen's Violin Concerto - alongside Tippett's Concerto for Orchestra and works by Mozart and Stravinsky - on Wednesday 28 October 2015, 7.30pm at London's Barbican Hall. Find out more.

Read Frederielke's biography here

Meet Kitty Whately - mezzo-soprano

(c) Natalie Watts

Kitty Whately will be the mezzo-soprano soloist in an upcoming performance of Bach's Magnificat (6 December 2014) in London's Barbican Hall. She will also be joining Britten Sinfonia abroad in the new year as one of the soloists in an Amsterdam performance of Haydn's Nelson Mass (February 2015).

Find out more about Kitty in this blog post as she reveals her biggest fears, guiltiest pleasures and what animal she would be...


What has been the highlight of your career so far?

That's a tough one. I have been so lucky over the past few years to get to work with some fantastic people in beautiful places. I think I'd say working in the Aix en Pravence festival last summer. It was a newly commissioned opera by Vasco Mendonça, for just two singers. It was directed by Katie Mitchell, and I found her rehearsal process fascinating. It was a great part, and I got on so well with everyone involved. We were rehearsing in a beautiful old chateau in sunny provence and the whole period was fab. 

When are you happiest?

In my favourite place on earth, Aldeburgh, with my fiance Anthony and my 8 year old daughter, Ivy. Anthony and I are getting married there next year. 

What is your greatest fear?

Losing the people I love. 

What is your earliest musical memory?

Singing along to Paul Simon's Graceland, Katheryn Tickell the Northumbrian piper, and Salif Keïtar, an Afro-pop singer/songwriter from Mali and favourite of my dad's, on long car trips with my family. 

Which living person do you most admire, and why?

Oh that's too hard. I'll say my family- I admire my fiance for his kindness and his calm, positive attitude to life, I admire my dad for his hard work ethic, and his well-earned reputation for being an incredibly lovely collegue and warm person, and my mum for her intellegence, her wit, and selflessness and generosity towards supporting her family, especially me. 

What was your most embarrassing moment?

I can't think of any really. I must wipe them. I try to laugh at myself as often as possible so perhaps that helps me to not feel embarrassment? No, I really do. I just can't remember any. 

What is your most treasured possession?

My daughter. Can I say that? If not, my pillow. 

What would your super power be?

Hmm, if I could choose one? I would choose the power to click my fingers and arrive somewhere without travelling. 

If you were an animal what would you be?

A pot-bellied pig. I love food, and I already have the pot belly. 

What is your most unappealing habit?

Licking my plate after a delicious meal. I try not to do it in public, but my family have to put up with it at home. Waste not - want not. 

What is your favourite book?

How To Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran.

What is your guiltiest pleasure?

Watching X Factor.

Who would you invite to your dream dinner party?

Jamie Oliver (to cook), Billy Connolly, Stephen Fry, Caitlin Moran, Jo Brand and Phil and Fern (Schofield and Cotton). 

If you could go back in time, where would you go?

To the era of Jane Austin. I love all that. I'd only want to visit though. I wouldn't want to stay there for ever.  

How do you relax away from the concert platform?

Cooking or watching cookery programmes with my fiance, and watching movies and eating popcorn with my daughter. 

What do you consider your greatest achievement?

My daughter. Honestly, I know that's a cliche. But I really do. So often I look at her and I think "I made a human being in my body, and kept her alive! And she can walk and talk and everything!!"

What is the most important lesson life has taught you?

Happiness is a transitional state. You don't arrive at 'happiness' and live happily ever after. It comes and goes. 

In a nutshell, what is your philosophy?
Enjoy the happy moments while they last, and keep strong in the unhappy ones. Remember they will pass. 

Bach's Magnificat featuring Kitty Whately will be performed on Saturday 6 December 2014. More information can be found on our website.

Tom Coult on composition

Composer Tom Coult is writing a new work for Britten Sinfonia, which will be premiered in March 2015 in London followed by performances in Norwich and Saffron Walden. Tom is on the rosta of composers individuals can support through the Musically Gifted campaign. In this blog Tom answers questions about himself and his music;

How would you summarise yourself in one sentence?
‘Tom writes music, lives in London, and is amazed at the difficulty of this opening question.’

What’s your earliest musical memory?
Being played Jimi Hendrix in the car by my dad.

What do you like most about composing?
The occasional bursts of feverish excitement and productivity. And hearing my music performed well, although by then all the ‘composing’ is hopefully done…

What inspires you?
At the moment I can’t stop gazing at Oliver Byrne’s 1847 edition of Euclid’s Elements – it’s a beautiful publication using beautiful coloured, proto-Mondrian diagrams instead of words. There’s something in the boldness, geometry and simplicity of the illustrations that I wish I could imitate in music.

When was the last time you experienced writers’ block, and how did you move on from it?
I experience writer’s block every day – still haven’t found a satisfactory remedy…

How do you feel about new music and what we’re trying to do with Musically Gifted?
A commitment to performing and commissioning music by living composers is one of the marks of an intelligent and relevant ensemble (Britten Sinfonia certainly comes under both of those categories). It’s also essential that composers’ considerable work be valued and remunerated. Any scheme that raises money for new work to be written (and repeated) is well worthwhile, and this type of funding hopefully creates an extra level of engagement with the piece for those that are able to contribute.

What would you like to be recognised for?
Excellent sideburns.

What advice would you give to other composers?
Try to compose every day, listen to several orders of magnitude more music than you write, and get some good pencils.

What’s your musical guilty pleasure?
Sentimental spoken-word verses in songs – cf. Porter Wagoner’s Green Green Grass of Home, Elvis Presley’s Are You Lonesome Tonight?, and the granddaddy of them all, the Everley Brothers’ Ebony Eyes.

If you turned your iPod on now, what would be playing?
The Everley Brothers’ Ebony Eyes.

Favourite five tracks of all time?
Interpreting ‘tracks’ extremely liberally; Bach’s Brandenburgs no.s 1, 2, 5, 6 and the Everley Brothers’ Ebony Eyes.

The last concert you saw?
Rachel Podger directing the English Concert at Wigmore Hall – doing Vivaldi 391 with its scordatura violin… mind-bendingly good piece.

If you hadn’t been a musician, what might have happened?
I’d be making and repairing clocks.

Which musical instrument do you wish you could play, and why?
The tenor viol – viols are far more beautiful instruments than anything in the modern symphony orchestra.

Is there anything else you want to share with the world?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQOjxA8rrks

Hear Tom Coult's new work on Friday 20 March 2015 at London's Milton Court and then on Saturday 22 March 2015 at Norwich Theatre Royal and Sunday 23 March 2015 at Saffron Walden's Saffron Hall. Click here for full information on the concerts and to book tickets.

Jacqueline Shave on Bach's St John Passion

This April, Britten Sinfonia's leader Jacqueline Shave directs unconducted performances of Bach's St John Passion. In this blog post she describes how she has immersed herself in the work and how she is preparing for the performances.

Capture
Betrayal
Denial
Interrogation
Flagellation
Condemnation
Crucifixion
Death
Burial

Having spent a great deal of time over the past year immersed in this great work, I am wondering if it should perhaps be presented with an X certificate rating, so extreme are the range of human emotions and behaviour found within it.

I first experienced the St John Passion as a mature student at the Britten Pears School in Snape, where Nicholas Daniel and I worked intensively on many of the arias with Peter Pears and a group of young singers and instrumentalists from around the world. It made a deep and everlasting impression on me, and it is particularly moving to be here thirty years on, again with Nick, shaping this work together.

It is of course a great privilege and responsibility to be at the helm, making decisions, as performances of Bach can vary enormously. I have spent many hours listening and feeling and I have come to the conclusion that there is no definitive way of performing Bach's music. Bach himself was always experimenting and making changes. He offers us a palette of many colours.

I have decided to use a harpsichord with the voice of the Evangelist throughout, as it seems to bring a human and expressive dimension for the listener, in contrast to the halo of the organ sound surrounding the voice of Christus. Britten does the same in his 1971 recording, but these days it is often performed with organ and no harpsichord. We are also using a lute, which brings an exquisite ancient timbre, and of course the plaintive gamba for "Es ist Vollbracht", one of the most unconventional and original arias that Bach ever wrote.

As soon as the music begins there is the pulsing human heartbeat of the bass line, the painfully beautiful dissonance of oboes and flutes, and the turmoil of the string semi quavers. Bach leaves us in no doubt that this is serious, strong and passionate. There is no gentle ' warm up'. He throws us directly into the emotion. Imagine hearing this at the first performance nearly three hundred years ago! I find it hard to listen to this opening without feeling greatly disturbed, almost angry, at this vision of a vast stirring soup of mankind. It is as if everything is revealed; the tragedy and beauty of the entire Passion.

It is masterful how Bach frames the work with the two great Choruses; the harrowing first, and the moving, loving "Ruht Wohl" at the end. We are also given the communal ‘commenting’ element of the exquisitely beautiful chorales and the vivid depiction of Christ's trial with the chorus almost shouting with hysterical intensity.

Amongst all this Bach gives us the ' freeze frame' emotions of the arias, when all action stops, and we have time to explore and reflect on what is happening. Time seems to stand still in "Betrachte Meine Seel", the intensely moving soul searching Bass aria where one hardly dares breathe for disturbing this precious place that Bach has created for us. In the next aria "Erwage", we have time to ponder on the battered, bruised and blood-stained back of Jesus. It is truly miraculous how, in the midst of the piece, Bach is able to evoke such introspection in the listener by this change of pace.

Ultimately we want to create a powerful shared experience by performing this work unconducted, and to show the directness, the unbridled immediacy, and the raw power contained in Bach's music.

Jacqueline Shave
Britten Sinfonia, Leader

Britten Sinfonia perform Bach's St John Passion on Wednesday 16 April at Cambridge's West Road Concert Hall, Thursday 17 April at Amsterdam's Concertgebouw, Friday 18 April at London's Barbican, Saturday 19 April at Saffron Walden's Saffron Hall and Sunday 20 April at Norwich's Theatre Royal. For more info click here

You can also hear Jacqueline Shave and Stephen Williams (Principal Double Bass) talk abuot the St John Passion in a previous podcast, SinfoniaCast 21

Meet Eamonn Dougan

Britten Sinfonia Voices, formed in 2011, once again join the orchestra for the premiere performances of Eriks Esenvalds new work, Aqua. This new work forms part of concerts entitled Baltic Nights featuring music by fellow Latvian Peteris Vasks alongside works by Bach and Perotin.

Eamonn Dougan, Director of Britten Sinfonia Voices talking about the programme said "So much amazing choral music has come from the Baltic states in recent years and they enjoy such a strong singing tradition that it seemed natural to preface a new work by Eriks Esenvalds with pieces by composers who must surely have influenced him."  Eamonn will be conducting the new work by Esenvalds alongside Bach's motet Komm, Jesu, komm and Perotin's Viderunt omnes. Eamonn took some time out of rehearsals to answer a few questions about himself.

What has been the highlight of your career so far?

Directing The Sixteen at the Concertgebouw in a programme celebrating James MacMillan's 50th birthday with the composer in the audience.

What is your earliest musical memory?

Sitting in my sister's piano lessons thinking I'd like to have a go.

What would your super power be?

To be able to do without sleep periodically so that there really would be enough hours in the day to get everything done.

If you were an animal what would you be?

Probably a small, yapper-type dog (à la Eddie Izzard)

What is your favourite book?

As it is in heaven by Niall Williams. He writes so beautifully - prose which is more like poetry.

Who would you invite to your dream dinner party?

Not sure this would be my dream dinner party, but I have lots of questions for Jarvis Cocker, Bono, Peter Warlock and Brian Patten. However, I think there might be an almighty row.

If you could go back in time, where would you go?

Either to Tudor England to just hear how this incredible music sounded in their time (and in the process find some definitive answers on pitch and voice types) or to Bach's Leipzig to see him at work (and to ask him what his preferred forces would be, given a choice!)

How do you relax away from the concert platform?

Playing with my son is the perfect antidote as there is no chance to think of anything else.

What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
Try to enjoy the here and now as you don't know what might be around the corner.

In a nutshell, what is your philosophy?
Same answer as the previous question really, coupled with if a job is worth doing, it's worth doing well. (Oh, and remember to put the glasses in the cupboard neatly, in height order!)

Baltic Nights performances take place at Cambridge West Road Concert Hall on Monday 25th February, London's Barbican on Wednesday 27th February and Norwich Theatre Royal on Sunday 3rd March. Find out more about the concerts and book tickets here