Making music for a living (room) - A lockdown project that became something more

Patricia Hammond and Matt Redman

London-based mezzo-soprano Patricia Hammond writes: In March 2020 I had an amazing email from a member of the congregation of St Mellitus, in Tollington Park. They'd heard how the pandemic had affected musicians, and put together a sum of money; they wanted to help out their organist, and they sent me a cheque. It was absolutely the most beautiful, kind act.

Almost the same day, Father Clive Lee at St Thomas More, Manor House - my other Sunday gig - sent me a similar amount. It was amazing. At that time, there was no SEISS (Self-Employed Income Support Scheme) programme, nothing.

So naturally I wanted to do something to say thank you to the two churches.

I set up some lights, my husband's film camera, sang a couple of Easter hymns, uploaded them to YouTube and sent the links to the two Priests, and members of the congregations. Little did I know that this would lead to my conquering a phobia of modern pop music, and also, more than 800 songs uploaded to YouTube.

Soon after these hymns were filmed, two people who had bought tickets to suddenly-cancelled concerts asked if there was any other way they could see my duo with Matt Redman. Well, there were those lights, and that camera, still up. One man, patron of the Arts, Ian Rosenblatt, straight-up paid us to do three recitals for his isolated mother. This was amazing; Matt was in a particularly bad situation, having zero savings at the time. In three terrifying days, every single gig in his diary had been cancelled. He applied for Deliveroo and Ubereats licenses but the competition for those jobs was unspeakably fierce. So we did those recitals in our living room and building on those, made it known we would perform "any song for £20".

It was crazy really. Matt, myself and my husband formed a government-approved 'Covid support bubble', and our living room turned into a chaotic perpetual studio. We wedged a light between books in a bookshelf, while three tripods held two cameras and a phone, and another precarious stand held a ring-light aloft. A mic boom was frankensteined together using the parts from three other pieces of equipment, and snaking about were many, many wires. On every available surface, anthologies of Schubert, Brahms, Handel arias jostled for room with songs of the 1940s, 1930s, 1920s, folk collections from the 1870s and the 1970s, A4 sheets downloaded and printed, in searchable disorder.

We made hour-long concerts of these song requests. Recorded live with no edits, a real concert with real consequences, but uploaded in HD. One lovely man put together an entire recital of his friends' requests from around the world for us to perform, having them all tune in for 'tea, tunes and cakes'. He even supplied us with a cake budget so that we could lead by example.

Relatives came in with requests for songs that they'd always wished I'd do: Aunt Jane asked for musicals: Drink, Drink, Drink from Student Prince, Shall We Dance from the King and I. Aunt Teresa requested Billie Eilish and Bruno Mars. A man from New South Wales in Australia who already followed my YouTube channel amazed us by dropping £400 at a go, with huge lists of lesser-known songs from the 1920s and 30s, performed in their day by the likes of Grace Moore, Jessie Matthews and Deanna Durbin. We had to call on sheet music collectors who could find some of these, long out of print.

I was constantly worried that I was wrong for many requests, unworthy of taking them on if they were much-revered, just plain wrong if they were for a pop singer with a totally different vocal production…and here Matt's arranging genius came in. Muddy Waters' 'I Live the Life I Love' was transformed into something gentle and sensitively dreamy with electric piano, my husband on an acoustic guitar. Toto's 'Africa' was made into a Baroque aria with a banjo. Led Zeppelin's 'Tears of a Clown' was given a cello treatment, opening it up to a more plangent feminine sound. The stratospherically high soprano 'Si mi chiamano Mimi' was transposed down to accommodate my lower range, and became less silver and more bronze.

The church was not neglected. 'I'll Fly Away' was given a folky treatment with Matt's Mandolin Banjo; 'Ave Maria' (Bach/Gounod) had a different sound than usual with Matt's Oud stylings giving it a middle-eastern flavour; the Quaker hymn 'Industry Required' had an accordion evoking an early harmonium; 'Make Me A Channel of Your Peace' featured Matt's cross-strung harp; Guide Me O Thou Great Redeemer meanwhile, had the autoharp. For 'Poor Wayfaring Stranger' there was a harmonica, and unusually, 'How Great Thou Art' was an unaccompanied vocal duet. Matt's Multi-instrumentalism ensured variety.

Viewers and requesters formed a community in the comments, looking forward to our uploads every Monday and Thursday, sharing their favourite songs with each other. To keep a consistent upload schedule, we filmed three songs at a time instead of the initial marathon sessions. I felt a connection with these people that was entirely different to that of a live audience. It was more internalised: because it was their song, I had to get into the zone of the words and the music, and to see the joy, sadness, truth, beauty of that song, in the way the requester did. It was like being inside the soul of the person who loved the song so much they would pay to have it performed by us.

Gradually Covid restrictions lifted, slowly gigs came back, and we raised the price to £40 per song. People continued to request. We listed all requests on: https://patriciahammond.com/requests in alphabetical order, with each song or aria linked so that a click could take people to each one, exactly where it started in the video.

In our concertizing in the wide world, very few if any audience members have knowledge of our YouTube existence, and the YouTube audience are too far away to come to physical concerts. So even today it remains its own, separate thing.

Matt and I applied to be musicians in residence at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital Trust's Arts for All programme, a highly desirable post for artists and musicians. I didn't expect an interview, but because of the inclusivity on our Requests list, we were accepted into the programme. It was for our Bacharach more than our Bach, our Guns N' Roses more than our Gilbert & Sullivan…John Legend more than our John Dowland (sorry, I'll stop!) Our work every Wednesday at the two hospitals is incredibly, life-changingly fulfilling; maybe the subject of another piece!

This Christmas, in fact on Christmas Day itself, being a Monday and thus an upload day, we hit our 800th request. If we're still doing this in April, we'll have been doing twice-weekly requests for four years.

The fact that the church community that surrounded me as a musician every Sunday felt the kind impulse to support their suddenly-unemployed singer and organist, led to the formation of an even wider community. And this has changed my professional life forever for the better.

LINKS

Patricia Hammond Requests: https://patriciahammond.com/requests/

Patricia Hammond Youtube: http://youtube.com/patriciahammondsongs