Claire Bradley, who sings soprano in the GSA Choir, writes about her experience of rehearsing Margaret’s Moon – composed by Ailie Robertson, with lyrics by Scots Makar, Jackie Kay – the first new work rehearsed by the ensemble for Composeher.
Having been in one or two short-term, temporary choirs for one-off, special festivals or events in Glasgow, and having decided I would like to find a permanent choir to join, I was excited to find out about the GSA Choir from a member I met while hillwalking one day in the Campsie hills. Although it’s just over a year ago since I joined the choir, it feels so much longer…so much has happened since then, it’s hard to believe.
Tuesday nights were, from September to December 2019, wholly reserved for choir practice and, whether I was in the shower, driving my car or making dinner, my recordings of rehearsals would be playing as I prepared to participate in the Christmas Concert at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall. Such an exciting and energising four months for me, which culminated in my first performance with the choir – and what an incredible day and evening that was, all dressed up with an audience filled with our family and friends and members of the public! Nerve wracking but so, so thrilling and the feedback came in abundance via the applause and standing ovations.
Since Covid-19 has restricted choir members from meeting and rehearsing in person, Jamie, our Musical Director and enthusiastic motivator, has been in my living room via Zoom almost every Tuesday evening as we’ve tentatively but boldly taken steps in this ‘new normal’ to begin rehearsing the pieces that will make up the Composeher programme that we hope, as a choir, to perform in 2022.
Margaret’s Moon was first, with music written by Ailie Robertson, composer and harpist, and the text coming from a poem by Scottish Makar, Jackie Kay. The piece resonated deeply with me immediately, and evoked strong personal emotions. I remember just before we went into lockdown and were still in the Art School for rehearsals, we took our first look at the piece. On leaving that evening to go home, I was thinking to myself, ‘I cannot wait to learn this one, I cannot wait to perform this’. There’s a tear in my eye just now as I write this, because I still feel exactly the same as I type and listen to the recording of it that Jamie so kindly sent me for inspiration while writing this.
Why a tear in my eye? Although not adopted, I can identify with Jackie’s life experience of having two mothers (it’s a long story!). Both my mothers were called Margaret, believe it or not. My birth mother Margaret and my ‘other mother’, wee Maggie. My birth mother, Margaret, passed away at aged 91 in December 2019. She ended her days in residential care and when I visited each week, I’d tell her about everything I had going on in my life, including all the news about the choir rehearsals for the Christmas concert. She was thrilled that I was in a choir and was going to perform in the Royal Concert Hall as she herself had sung there, in a choir, back in the 90s. The choir was called ‘Call That Singing’ and it was formed to celebrate Glasgow, City of Culture. Unfortunately, my wee mum passed away a few weeks before the big day, but I sang my heart out for her that day, with my brother and niece in the audience, and ‘blew a kiss to the stars’ thinking about her watching us with a big smile on her face.
Wee Maggie, my other mother, on the other hand, who left us 14 years ago, couldn’t sing a note, but she would have been proud of anything I did and, if she’d been alive, she’d have bought all the tickets and given them out to her friends and family. She used to say ‘there’s nothing you can’t turn your hand to, oor Claire’.
The opportunity to write this blog came just a month before the first anniversary of birth mum Margaret’s passing – just when I had been thinking of how I could mark the occasion. Listening to the music, reading the text and singing Margaret’s Moon more than usual, to help me write the blog, has become an expression of my thoughts of her. I am remembering her and, by singing and living my life as best I can in these strange Covid times, I am celebrating her and the life she gave to me at my birth. Margaret’s Moon is bringing her back to me in memory and imagination. ‘I kissed your head in that strange room’ is exactly what I remember doing the evening she died, while she lay on her bed in the room she had only lived in for one year, in residential care. And sometimes I am a little ‘haunted by regret’ when I think back to our sometimes complex and difficult mother-daughter relationship – how things might have, could have, or should have, been different or better for her and sometimes between us as mother and daughter too. But I don’t dwell on the could have, should haves, my focus is on a wonderful way to mark a year since her passing and allow some deeply buried grief to surface from the emotion the text is unveiling – I wonder how I will experience the calling of her name ‘Margaret, Margaret, Margaret, Margaret’ when the whole choir comes together to sing this beautiful piece.
I choose to dedicate my choir practice and future performance of Margaret’s Moon to both my mothers – each of them different, each of them having shaped me, and each of them worthy of remembering and celebrating. And I’m wanting, so much, to perform this now treasured piece. Learning it also gives me hope that sooner rather than later we will all meet again as a choir to perform it. Ailie said in her recent blog that she had happened upon Jackie’s text but, for me, I would say the celestial beings intervened on my behalf, as the words and music allow me to honour, celebrate and immortalise my two Margarets (as well as mothers everywhere), and to explore my deeply personal emotions via the universal theme of grief. Thank you Ailie and Jackie.