The wondrous Celestial Sirens and Musica Secreta camped it up at Latitude 2011 in Suffolk last weekend – well, it was a tiny coterie from both ensembles, as the stage in the Literature Tent was about the size of a kitchenette in a multiple-occupancy student house, and about as clean and welcoming. The rain had left ankle-deep mud in the festival grounds and wheel-arch-deep ruts in the vehicle tracks around the site, but the sun came out on Sunday morning as we sang Agnus Dei to the brightly-coloured sheep.

We were there as the backing band (according to the compère, we were “Sarah Dunant and the Sacred Hearts”) to a semi-staged reading of Sacred Hearts by Sarah herself, Niamh Cusack, Deborah Findlay and a lovely young actress from Cork, Molly Lynch. The stress leading up to the event was, at times, unspeakable – but, rather like childbirth, although I can remember the fact of the pain, the pain itself has already mercifully been blocked out. Days of communication failure, email/text badgering and panic invested in trying to sort out the sound requirements were ultimately wasted, as the sound guy had never been given the microphone plot, had an incomplete equipment list and arrived over half an hour late. Mobile phones – or at least my wretched O2 iPhone – were useless on site; performers had to battle uncomprehending minions who had not been warned of their need for early check-in; and it is a tribute to the resilience of the singers and the ever-serene Claire Williams that the performance went on at all. There was competition from the first sunshine in 24 hours, rap, techno, township jazz and, bizarrely, another female-voice chorus (albeit one that sings U2 covers), but in the end the performance was greeted with whistles and cheers of approval from a packed-out tent.

Our yarnbombing campaign didn’t quite go to plan, either, as the torrential rain on Saturday made it impossible to find dry places to leave our small army of nano-nuns, who were carefully tagged to bring punters to the gig, promising a free download of our trance track. Still, the little sisters must have made someone happy. And we are taking commissions now…

It’s still hard to tell whether our appearance will have rewards beyond being able to say we did it – CDs sold like a hotcake (miserable festival organization left our merchandise selling-point well hidden, while the Comedy merchandise and signings took place outside the Literature Tent… go figure). But it was a nice day out, and we made a few people smile. And it could have been the first performance of Palestrina by an all-female ensemble in jilbabs, rosaries and wellies.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 19th, 2011 at 4:39 pm and is filed under Musica Secreta, Sacred Hearts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.