My all-time favourite too.  Congratulations to Emma!

That is excellent news. Can these boards send her a collective note I wonder?

I don't know, i'll ask my wife - her hair goes like that if it's own accord!

Anyway, congratulations to Dame Emma from us as well - she does have a lovely voice and, if I'm not mistaken, she comes from Camberley which isn't far from where I grew up!

I forgot to add that much as I enjoyed Dame Emma's concert in Holt, a lot of her words were inaudible, which was a pity since most of these songs tell a story of some sort. It's very often difficult to hear words sung by high voices. Yesterday morning on Radio 3 there was a recording of Pears and Bream doing lute songs (Dowland, Campion, Morley), and every word was clearly audible.

I may be talking to myself here I wondered whether I should comment on "Classical music on Radio 3", but since we already have an Emma Kirkby thread......that's my only complaint about this board - too much choice!

Anyway, it was almost exactly the same concert we heard in Norfolk. We had two more Dowland songs (which may well have been sung in Bath, but edited out) and the order was slightly different - at Gresham's she finished with Music for a While, and Bess o' Bedlam came earlier. All the way through this broadcast I could visualise her. She acts these songs. In "Away with these self-loving lads" she was definitely a boy, and a Shakespearean boy at that, and in "Bess o'Bedlam" she was like Ophelia, plucking distractedly at invisible flowers. She was wearing a green embroidered waisted coat-like garment, oriental-looking, over similar trousers - and beautiful low-heeled red shoes. Overheard opinions differed about whether the shoes went with the outfit!

"Music, music for a while
Shall all your cares beguile."

(I learnt that song years ago, from an EP of Alfred Deller. I think "Sweeter than roses" was on the other side, but I found that too difficult to sing.)

Here's an artist's impression

It's not on my PC unfortunately, Hung, and I don't posess such a thing as a scanner. It illustrates an extraordinarily perceptive and elegantly written review by <blush> of a concert that she gave here a couple of years ago, and of which I have several hundred remaindered copies. The only argument that broke out in the audience that I recall wasn't over whether the shoes went with the outfit but a disagreement in the row behind me as to whether it was bluish-green or greenish-blue. It got quite heated as I recall. Pashminas were nearly tugged.

It was quite spectacular, whichever it was. 

Returning to today's concert, I'm just more awestruck by Dowland than ever when he is sung like that. There's so much there within the apparent simplicity. Lovely stuff.