It weighs, at 1,335kg, about the same as a typical Mondeo-size car in these days of automotive, safety-driven obesity, so that mass-times-velocity equation leads to a lot of momentum. And you don’t want it travelling in the wrong direction.There’s a sound reason for this attenuation of efforts, though. And the steering is as solid, as free of slack or flex, and as virtual-worldly in its lightness and lack of feedback as the brakes. You guide, it obeys, and there’s seemingly no more mass to the MC12 than that of the photons that bombard a PlayStation’s TV screen.For someone like me, used to the weights and reactions and causes and effects of real-world road cars, such ease of access to such huge speed (vital data: 205mph all-out, 0-62mph in 3.8 seconds, double that speed in 9.9) could lead to a lack of respect for the forces involved.
If you plotted a graph of the engine’s note, the waves would be quite jagged, such are the multifarious harmonics It sounds fantastic. But it makes matters worse: if I ease off, the engine goes all ragged when I take the next gear. It’s meant to be driven to death, to have the accelerator riveted to the floor almost the whole time. So I’ll just have to watch my timing.And now there’s a chicane formed of cones, a right-left flick to stop me from trying to crack 200mph all the time.
(I did manage to hit that speed once, though, in a Mercedes SLR McLaren on another test track. It was a whole new world of blurring motion.) Brake, brake, how can a car so fast slow so quickly? The pedal feels granite-solid, the brake pads must be munching the brake discs to powder, and I’m not even pressing that hard.Off the brakes, flick-flick through the curve in third gear, power out again to the hammering howl of this minimally silenced V12. Into second, as I join the long straight, press the pedal harder, and velocity annihilates mass in this particular physics equation. I have no time to snatch third before the engine fluffs and flattens against the rev-limiter at 7,500rpm, rev-counter needle flailing; must change up at 7,000rpm next time to give the electronics time to think.Or maybe I should stop trying to feel like MC12 racing driver and Ferrari Formula One test driver Andrea Bertolini, on hand later to show how it should be done, and ease the accelerator during the upshift like a normal driver would. And she also has to keep the fun element.” There’s sure to be plenty of that in Paris. Various Voices, various venues, Paris, 3-8 May ( ). She describes how much she enjoys “bringing a piece of music to choir for the first time, teaching the first notes, then the whole process of building it into a piece that we can perform”.Camilla Veale, who has been with Gay Abandon for five years, says: “Jane has a very difficult tightrope to walk between encouraging those with less experience and ensuring that the very good people don’t get bored.
It gives members the opportunity to be creative, to sing well, to be part of an extensive social network and, in their visibility and the content of some of their songs, to be politically engaged. They are working on a programme that reflects the lives and loves of the gay community. It includes The Communards’ song “More to Love”, which Edwardson has arranged into a celebratory choral piece. Ian Baxter, a bass, sums up what it means to him to be part of the choir: “I love singing and realising that I can sing I love being part of such a richly diverse group. It feels like a hugely political thing when you’re doing it, and I love that aspect of it, too.”For Edwardson, 47, a nurse, the creative aspect is immensely rewarding. Various Voices, its European counterpart, is taking place in France for the first time this spring, as it celebrates its 20th anniversary. Germany is sending 24 choirs, while the host nation has only two choirs taking part.Gay Abandon is typical of the gay choral movement in its grass-roots, community-based appeal.
Her background in community singing meant that accessibility was very important to her, hence the open-door policy.In setting up Gay Abandon, Edwardson joined a rich tradition of lesbian and gay singing that began in the late 1970s with the formation of groups such as the San Francisco and the Seattle Gay Men’s Choruses. Gala, the Gay and Lesbian Association of Choruses, is an international association based in the US that puts on festivals and boasts 10,000 singers from more than 200 choruses. Edwardson had been singing and arranging music for Sheffield Socialist Choir for some years and in 1997 decided that she wanted to be part of an all-gay choir. Six of them will be British.
Gay Abandon, one of those six, is a no-audition choir based in Yorkshire, with members ranging from those who last sang at school to people with extensive musical training. The choir is the brainchild of Jane Edwardson, musical director, arranger and conductor. This gay and lesbian choral fest has been a regular fixture in Europe since 1985, when the first event took place in Cologne (with just four choirs).
