2 April 2009.
29 March 2007
2 April 2009
The original article.
Concert true to Handel original.
Christopher Morley.
Colin Baines has sung in more than 80 performances of Handel’s Messiah and helped prepare at least 30 as assistant conductor of the City of Birmingham Choir.
On April 11 he conducts the Birmingham Choral Union in a rare complete account, bringing his choir back to Birmingham Town Hall for what used to be an Easter tradition.
"It’s our first concert in the refurbished Town Hall, and it’s with a Messiah at Easter, which was a popular time for the Choral Union to perform the work historically," Colin says. "It’s a magnificent piece of architecture, both in its text and its musical structure. If it’s cut, you lose both the meaning of the work and the logic of the music, where you can end up with wholly inappropriate shifts of key, and balance of solos to chorus.
"Although Handel tinkered with his settings and re-wrote numbers throughout his life, he would never have missed sections of the text out, and he knew how to structure a large-scale work like nobody else."
The performance will use an edition closely based on Handel’s original, discarding revisions by later editors.
Despite his experience in performing the work, this will be only the third time Baines has conducted it with the Birmingham Choral Union. “It’s been very interesting and incredibly rewarding to prepare the piece with this choir, most of whom have never performed it before, and are learning it note by note and phrase by phrase like any other new piece," he says.
"We have a great line-up of soloists, and a wonderful chamber-sized orchestra, and all the performers are tremendously excited about what promises to be a great occasion."
Birmingham Choral Union performs Messiah at Birmingham Town Hall on April 11 at 7pm (details on 0121 780 3333).
29 March 2007.
The original article.
The heartbeat of the city's music scene
Christopher Morley meets Birmingham music's Mr Versatile, Colin Baines.
If Colin Baines ever ceased to be active, a massive hole would be left in Birmingham's musical life.
He is one of those people who seem to involved in a bewildering number of activities which contribute towards the city's cultural well-being, and for more than 25 years his major position has been as conductor of the Birmingham Choral Union.
Born in Moseley, he went to school there, playing Shostakovich's Second Piano Concerto at his leaving concert. After studying for a music degree at Liverpool University between 1971 and 1974, he immediately returned to his home city, taking up a number of teaching posts, leaving his last one, at Harborne's Queen Alexandra College for the Blind, to launch himself on a fully freelance career since 1993.
"I joined the City of Birmingham Choir as a very young bass in 1969, thanks to the encouragement of my music teacher David Sadler, who maintained a strong choral tradition at Moseley School, and who was the choir's accompanist," Baines recalls. "I enjoyed the musicianship of the CBC's conductor, Christopher Robinson, greatly, and learnt the mystical joyousness of choral singing."
Rejoining the choir on his return to Birmingham in 1975, he soon began playing for the odd rehearsal when Sadler or Robinson were away.
"By 1983 or thereabouts I played regularly, and eventually took rehearsals on a regular basis. I conducted the unaccompanied choir for radio broadcasts, and other small-scale occasions when Christopher was unavailable.
"For a number of years I conducted a chamber offshoot called City Voices, performing smaller pieces like Poulenc's Mass in G in Coventry Cathedral and the Durufle Requiem with Wayne Marshall.
"When David Sadler left for New Zealand, I became the full-time accompanist under Christopher, and have remained so under Adrian Lucas, playing every week and taking rehearsals and workshops when Adrian is unavailable. When not playing I still have the unalloyed pleasure of singing in the concerts."
As though all this weren't enough, Baines became accompanist to another long-established city choir, the Birmingham Choral Union around 1977 (he can't remember exactly when), conducting their Christmas concerts in 1979 and 1980, and took over as full-time conductor in 1981.
"During these years, we've done many memorable concerts, including the first Birmingham performance of David Fanshawe's African Sanctus. Others include the Berlioz Requiem in the Town Hall (and the de Montfort Hall, Leicester), Verdi Requiem in Symphony Hall (which, as well as being a great concert, actually made a profit.).
"All the standard works like the Mozart Requiem, Haydn's Nelson Mass, quite a run of Handel oratorios – for example Saul, Belshazzar, Theodora – the Poulenc Gloria."
A strong British music presence features, too. "Britten's The Company of Heaven, which is rarely done, and we're planning its companion piece The World of the Spirit next year," continues Baines.
And BCU's programme for Saturday's concert at the Adrian Boult Hall includes the second performance of Beresford King-Smith's Psalm-Symphony, a rare hearing of Elgar's complete First World War trilogy The Spirit of England (premiered at Birmingham Town Hall on October 4, 1917) and Vaughan Williams' Five Mystical Songs.
But, as well as all this, Baines still find times to compose, having written music for BBC schools programes like Let's Move and Time to Move.
"I still compose for choirs, and also for Festival Arts, a youth theatre company of which I was a founder member in 1969. I have been its musical director, composing, arranging and performing music for this since the 1970s.
"We take about 40 teenagers down to St Davids in Pembrokeshire every summer, live in tents, cook meals, sell tickets, rehearse and perform an outdoor production of a Shakespeare play in the medieval Bishop's Palace, and a musical children's show in a local indoor venue.
"This involves rousing the company in the morning, rehearsing all day, and performing every evening for three-and-a-half weeks every August. Composing is often for strange instrumental combinations, depending on what instrumentalists are going down in any particular year, and different styles, depending on the setting of the play. Last year, I had to teach myself to play the concertina – a real brainteaser – for a show called The Man whose Mother was a Pirate.
A third local choir with which Baines is involved is the City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus, for whom he is first call as a substitute pianist, and he also accompanies instrumental and vocal examinations, diplomas and recitals from Grade I to conservatoire and university finals.
"I perform as a pianist with the Valentini Trio. We've done concerts in Birmingham and Harvington Hall, and we are currently rehearsing for a programme in July for the Ludlow Festival of Saint-Saëns, Fauré and Ireland piano trios.
"I'm also involved as pianist with a really exciting project with Welsh National Opera which involves working with children in four Birmingham schools on a multi-media opera called City Songs to be staged at the Hippodrome in June.
"For a number of years, I played double bass or piano in various jazz bands, doing functions all over the country. I don't do so much of this today, contenting myself with playing the organ at Sutton Coldfield Crematorium, St Mary and St Margaret, Castle Bromwich, and Selly Oak Methodist Church."
And then comes a real surprise: "I've been heard on The Archers, both as Eddie Grundy's fingers playing the guitar, and also Jolene's Midnight Walkers."
More soberly, Colin Baines is also amanuensis for the blind composer and recorder virtuoso Alan Davis.
"I prepare materials for him to learn new music to perform, and also take down his compositions and set them on the computer for publication."
As well as all this, Baines, still living in Moseley, adds: "I have a considerable private teaching practice.
"My wife, who is also a soprano in the City of Birmingham Choir, is a reception class teacher in Highgate. Three of our children play in the band Misty's Big Adventure, an eclectic mixture of pop, indie, jazz and general good-time weirdness, and our other daughter is a recorder soloist and singer, living in London, having studied at Hull University and the Conservatoire in the Hague.
"Occasionally I go to bed."
* Colin Baines conducts the Birmingham Choral Union at the Adrian Boult Hall, Birmingham on Saturday (7.30pm). Details on 0121 303 2323