14th to 18th January, 2026

WA Renaissance Music Summer School

As one colleague, S, posted to the Whatsapp group, it was going to be WARMSS Wednesday, HOTSS Thursday and then WARMSS for the rest, weather wise. We felt particularly grateful for the mild weather that week as there was a three day heatwave the following week and that would have made things quite difficult.

On Wednesday 7th January I took the Sherwood to Autospark Myaree to have new solar panels put on the roof. They had to do some extra work to fit the new panels on the brackets used for the older system, but they and we did not want any new holes in our roof. The system is supposed to be 20W less than the old system of 440W, but we have had one day when the system reported 449W. They are new, clean and a good brand, Redarc, so I’m almost believing that was accurate.

We had a new head unit and reversing camera fitted, bringing our Hilux in line with most other cars. It includes Apple Carplay. The reversing camera with lines is an incredible addition. We do have a rather dim full time rear view camera, but it only allowed us to have an approximate idea of what was behind when reversing, I mainly use the side mirrors and Stephen using hand gestures.

We also had a small fan installed in the bed area so that we don’t have to carry a fan that goes on the kitchen bench. As we have very little storage in the Sherwood this is much appreciated and we will have a chance to try it out next week when we head south.

We took the Sherwood along on the first three days of the Music School. The venue was Aquinas College, about a 15 minute drive from here, and it turned out to be ideal, with large and small air conditioned venues for singing, a rather nice staff common room, where people could have their meals and hang out in the breaks. They provided snacks in one of the main rooms and Hugh, who teaches at Aquinas, drove some participants to nearby venues to buy food. As we had overseas and interstate participants, plus people coming long distances, they did not necessarily have the facilities and time to do what we did, that is, prepare food for each day in the mornings before heading off.

The Sherwood provided a fridge for food, plus a private hang out space for having meals. On the hot day we were able to run the airconditioning for lunch and dinner without depleting the batteries. As we were going home each night I thought we could charge the batteries overnight if necessary, but the solar system stepped up production and covered our needs.

The main course ran from 10.00 a.m. until 8.00 p.m. at night, with breaks for lunch and dinner. This sounds really hard, but we had sufficient variety in terms of a large tutti choir, then breaking into two halves, then into smaller groups, with five music staff to take the various groups and give them a break from conducting.

There was one session where the staff talked about making music their career, and they did another session where they sang some music new to them and demonstrated that actually getting things right all the time wasn’t possible, even with their experience and ability to read the music. I think this was to help us feel more confident, and it worked.

On Friday and Sunday we went down to Fremantle for an Evensong at St John’s Church and the final concert at St Patrick’s Bascilica. On Friday we still had the Sherwood, though I was anxious about leaving it in a public car park. We had an extra half an hour at lunch time to drive there, and, as usual, we had lunch in the Sherwood, and changed into our black clothes for the public part.

We had rehearsal for about 1.5 hours before each performance at the actual venues, if singing at a church service can be termed a performance.

On Saturday we were to sing at St Mary’s Cathedral, and that day we took the car to Acquinas, then went home for lunch and changing, then drove to St Mary’s. The time was a bit tight for going there by bus and there was plenty of parking for us as we were there long before the congregation. Each ‘performance’ had different music that we had been working on at the college. St Mary’s has the most reverberance of the venues. It’s challenging to listen to, but very good for singing as we felt our voices really soared in the beautiful space.

The participants at the summer school were mainly people in the WASO chorus. Fortunately I know many of them slightly and some a bit better because of singing at Bentley Hospital. I opted to sing second soprano, as I feared having to sing really high, but in fact the 1st and 2nd lines were often overlapping and 1st would have been easier to sing. On the other hand, I was sitting with M, who I know quite well, and enjoy her company. We both had difficulty with our part in the small group. We had been given the music prior to the course and thought we had done plenty of work, but it was more difficult singing with the others. We had the shameful experience of being the only small group where the staff joined us for various parts in the final concert. At least it went well!

As part of the course we could opt for a singing lesson. We were assigned a staff member, and both Stephen and I had Hugh, who is the choir director for the WASO chorus. I was very nervous, but Hugh was lovely and sang with me (using falsetto) to get me going. He tested my range and said I was able to sing as a 1st Soprano. He also helped with breathing, visualising ‘throwing’ the voice to get more volume, and how to stand.

He was also kind and very supportive with us when conducting the choirs, and is my favourite, though the others were kind and supportive as well. Andrew taught us a rythmn exercise that we were all able to do, usually when choir conductors do these exercises they are too difficult and you come to dread them. Everyone else loved it too, and he had to do it a few times so people could record on their phones.

The party was at Clancy’s Fish Pub over the road from the Bascilica. They ordered food and we had one drink voucher. Stephen and I called Matt on WhatsApp during our time there.

We communicated throughout the course on WhatsApp, and many participants are still posting to the group, wanting to get together for more renaissance music, and reporting earworms from the course, something I am finding as well.

The five day course should have been incredibly tiring for us, but something about the energy of it seemed to keep us going, though the last half hour up to 8.00 p.m. was definitely an effort. On Thursday night I stayed for the Compline service they ran each evening, whilst Stephen went back to the Sherwood to rest. It was worthwhile to have the experience, but I didn’t then feel I wanted to go back the next evening.

I was concerned at the beginning of the course as I still had acute back pain with the pinched nerve and general deterioration that showed up on a CT scan. However, I can report that my back is much, much better. I mainly sat on padded straight backed chairs, sitting very upright for the singing, and this is one of the best things for reducing the pain. We were quite active as we had to stand for some of the time and also moved between the venues for the different parts of the course.

I feel I am definitely past the acute stage, now in the more chronic stage where I need to be careful and only have pain in the evenings. I had an MRI just before the course, but the result seem pretty similar to the CT scan. My GP has advised to see a specialist and I have an appointment on the 11th February. She said that we now have a baseline for the damage and if I have another acute phase (the last one was over two months) they will know if the problem is getting worse.

Originally we were thinking of going down to Albany for a couple of weeks from Tuesday, but Stephen flagged that he would like to do something different this year and we have decided to go to the Margaret River area and perhaps as far as Denmark.

We won’t be able to take advantage of the mostly cool Albany weather, but we can run the air conditioning off grid, or opt for a powered site if necessary. Our research suggests that we will mostly have to pay for camping, but there are many options that are cheaper than caravan parks, plus what looks like a very nice RAC caravan park in a National Park near Margaret River that I’d like to try.