Starting Lessons

I started voice lessons in about 1991 or thereabouts because I had a great interest in it professionally even at such a young age as a I was an avid choir fan and I never missed a rehearsal. Commitment was a real strength in me musically early on. Although I was establishing myself as having some form of talent for vocal studies my instrumental and compositional talent was not discovered until much later on. At this stage I wasn’t considered and all round musician with the six skills I have today. I was seen as a bit of a lame musical one-horse-jockey namely just a vocalist and nothing else compared to some of the other candidates. I wasn’t but that’s what they expected me to become back then. That’s why I took voice lessons for I think 90 pounds a term extra once a week for a 45 minute lesson hour.

My First Singing Teacher was Jane Bagnall

Jane was an extremely humble singer but she had a wonder bell like Schubert voice and one that could adapt well to singing all forms of Early Music. She was the Head of Music at Ipswich Preparatory School which was our associated primary school. What I liked about her most is her ability to play for me as my accompanist as well as sing herself. So many of my later more prestigious male teachers were just singers and couldn’t play for me and that made life doubly difficult in those days as U-Tube and it’s karaoke boxes were in their infancy, the only way to learn a piece was face to face from a teacher until you could read music yourself. It was the way it had been for centuries. I would still never teach singing unless I could play for my pupils even in this technology led era. What Jane taught me with the sensititivity of her playing to my voice and how to respond to accompaniment was invaluable. I can accompany simply folk music myself and I’m very proud of that. I can even do an Elton John playing the piano part and singing over the top! I don’t see it as anything different to playing an organ with your foot pedals and hands.

Jane had a habit of producing a lot of strength and depth in her pool of singers. Here is a list of pupils I know she had a hand in teaching. 

Ben Parry of the Swingle Singers

Tom Fletcher of McFly

Hugh Waldock

Jamie Trowell

Stephen Trowell of The Magnets

Tim Kiddell of Kings College Choir, Cambridge

Nicola Carnaby a BBC employee

Those are just the ones I know about for sure. 

You couldn’t have asked for more in a 1st singing teacher. She never wrote you off even if you forgot your pencil to mark up a copy and were her Weasley like me

Her and her husband Martyn were graduates of Trinity Laban Conservatoire where she studied with local legend Ian Ray whom she rated very highly. 

She ended up making so much money she lived in Dubai. 

We ploughed through the Chester book of Celebrated Songs books 1 and 2 selected and graded for developing voice.

 An Die Laute (Schubert); Bois Epais (Sombre Woods) (Lully, Jean-Baptiste); Have You Seen But A White Lily Grow? (Anon); If It’s Ever Spring Again (Le Fleming); Jeunes Fillettes (Anon); Like To A Linden Tree Am I (Dvorak, Antonin); Nod (Armstrong Gibbs); O Can Ye Sew Cushions? (Anon); Silent Worship (Handel); Star Vicino (Rosa); Under The Greenwood Tree (As You Like It) (Arne, Thomas); What Then Is Love? (Rosseter). 

An Die Music (Schubert) * Chopcherry (Warlock) * Come Away, Come Sweet Love (Dowland) * Death and the Lady (Anonymous) * Der Musikant (Wolf) * Vieni, Vieni (Vivaldi) * Jagdlied (Mendelssohn) * Lydia (Faure) * Oh Fair Enough (Moeran) * The Princess (Grieg) * Verdi Prati (Handel) * Immortal Gods (Castelnuovo-Tedesco)

Of that lot I initially learned : 

Star vicino (which I can now play as well as sing myself by Salvator Rosa

Under the Greenwood Tree by Thomas Arne

Like to a Linden tree am I by Antonin Dvorak

Have you Seen but a White Lilly Grow? by Anon

If it’s Ever Spring again by Le Flemming

Silent Worship by Georg Friedrich Handel

Verdi Prati by Georg Friedrich Handel

An Die Musik by Franz Schubert

Jane normally only bothered doing 2 grades with her singers, Grade 5 and Grade 8. She wasn’t grade mad. Doing grade five was a great test of my imagination adn fun for me. I think I really surprised her with my ability. We chose the countertenor voice for me at that stage as my baritone sounded undeveloped and raw to her but the countertenor was sweeter. One of Ian’s pupils at Colchester Institute Timothy Kennworthy Brown was becoming quite a celebrated one and she wanted me to devleop in his footsteps. He was also heterosexual which was controversial at the time. In fact when I wen to CINST later Stuart Yeats, Me and him formed a trio fo them pushing gender boundaries the other way for men. It proved very unpopular outside East Anglia. Because my mother was a woman architect in the class of 1958 it didn’t bother me at first until the other men took the Mickey with so many girls and that began to hurt but to us three it was just a voice. My pieces were as follows : 

Where’re You Walk from Semele by Georg Friedrich Handel

Adam Lay Ye’bounden by Boris Ord

Five Eyes by Armstrong Gibbs

The Bird Song (unaccompanied)

It was a very high merit just 2 marks short of a Distinction Grade. My sight singing let me down and 1 aural test. 88.5%

She didn’t even dare put her name on it as a presenter in case I failed she put Ipswich School Instead! 

The GCSE Music Performance Exam

I played it safe using Wher’ere you walk for the solo from my Grade 5 and Jane and I recorded a duet together called Sound the Trumpet by Henry Purcell from his masked ball called Come Ye Sons of Art. 

We also recorded the movement I wrote for the death of my father called Requiem.

For the performance component I got 92% and an A* but we didn’t have any help with composing at all and I came in with 60% and a B. It was our teachers thing that we did our compositions entirely on our own and uninfluenced without any help. I felt I got marked down for that as a great composer later on. 

I got a B overall from the London Board. 

The truth about countertenors by Hugh Waldock

Welcome to a story 

That’s rosier than you

A story of tragedy

Love and something new

Anyone can learn from a countertenor such as I

The sly ways that women love tenors and then cry

But why, when such a Romantic specimen they can find

Away from the brass bulldogs and bulging basses

In the higher tones of sweet melancholy

Less bull and more of a brother

And that’s why sweet baritone’s lie

Us countertenors bring you closer to heaven that’s why.

The Ipswich School Singing Competition win March 7th 1995

I won the Ipswich School singing competition 1995 so my choirmaster said, by the skin of my teeth. It was just a solid performance when my main rival for years Tim Kiddell’s voice was changing.

I seized my chance to sneak in a win against our undisputed 3x champion whist I still could in 1995. It was the only year I could have won and I did it because Tom Fletcher of McFly was just that little bit too young. It wasn’t emphatic like the speech prize but a solid 1-0 to the Waldock.

Peter Crompton the Head of Music at Royal Hospital School Awarded it to my in March 1995 as judge and I collected the trophy which I was allowed to keep for a year from the new headmaster Ian Galbraith. On the right is the programme with the winning entry and judges comments and on the right is my mugshot of me with the cup.

I was officially the best solo singer in Ipswich School in 1995 but Tim will always be the Man U or Liverpool of that cup competition I was just a Leicester or Chelsea in the 90s sense of it all. He was the most naturally gifted chorister of my generation there I just got lucky to say that I’m a champion musician as well as an actor and that I have that in common with the head girls of my dreams and Nicola Benedetti and people. I love being champ as well like she does even if it sets you up for being a target. It also got me the job of being regular alto soloist with the choirs at school along with the fact that I was an A Level music student also.

I won with the aria form the Messiah called He Was Despiséd by Georg Friedrich Handel.

A Level Music

I did A Level performance major whCih was 40% of the marks. That consisted of 10 performances which were both solo and ensemble plus an exam with a quick study for 10 minutes (leaning a piece from scratch and performing it within 10 minutes of first seeing it), and also a 30 Minute assessed recital. I could beat anyone on my day but lacked the consistency for a top Grade, but did pass all the same. The London Syllabus B Music exam probably was the hardest Arts A Level. I passed first time and this is my A Level performance log which also records my win.