Christmas has always been a good time for catching up with friends and spending time with your family. My son Chris is home after his first term at University, so it’s great to have everyone here. Yesterday I thought it would be fun to record a family version of the Coventry Carol (always a favourite of mine), so here it is, with me on violins and synth bass, and Brenda, Chris and Jenny on handbells!! Coventry Carol
Brenda bought the handbells for use in workshops and other events, and they’ve already proved to be excellent value. They’re colourful metal and plastic affairs aimed at children but well worth having around.
I’m now looking ahead to 2009, after an exceptionally busy 2008, and hoping to have time for some exciting collaborations and possibly even another CD! The No-Man live CD and DVD should be released in the spring. I’m also working on new solo repertoire, and duo partnerships with a variety of wonderful musicians – more on this soon….
2009 is Ely Sinfonia’s 10th anniversary season, and I’m excited to be conducting all sorts of repertoire with them, from Rimsky-Korsakov’s amazing “Scheherezade” to the Mozart “Requiem” and Beethoven’s fifth symphony!
It promises to be a fulfilling year.
Whoever you are and wherever you are, please accept my sincere best wishes for 2009.
It’s finally arrived: Today, after several months of recording and preparation, 1000 copies of my new solo CD “Ascension” were delivered to my door. It’s an exciting feeling to open the first box and take the wrapping off 
the first CD. Although the music is all exactly the same as it was when it was on my computer prior to going to the CD pressing plant, it somehow feels different as I put the first real copy of the CD into the CD player and start playing it…..
As I listen through to the CD, I reflect that the wide variety of music on the recording seems to aptly reflect the sort of week I’m having: Varied seems, actually, to be a bit of an understatement!
Yesterday I was in a London recording studio, sitting in the small recording room, headphones at a jaunty angle (to allow one side to be over my right ear to hear the track I was recording over, while the other sits away from the other ear, so that I can also hear my own playing properly!), playing music by composer David Stoll. These were instrumental lines added above sampled instruments, for a ‘library’ CD – a recording which can be used by companies looking for music for TV shows, adverts and the like. I followed this by an evening orchestral rehearsal in Cambridge playing Johann Strauss’s famous operetta “Die Fledermaus”
Today I was preparing for, and then conducting, a rehearsal with Ely Sinfonia for their forthcoming Christmas concert featuring Howard Blake’s “The Snowman” and Edward Watson’s “The Twelve Days of Christmas”; a wonderfully witty musical setting based around the clever words of John Julius Norwich – a series of letters detailing the possible response to receiving the presents listed in this famous carol.
Tomorrow (although as I write this tomorrow has just become today!) I will be in Colchester giving a duo recital with clarinettist Charles Hine. We’ve put together a fairly way out mixture of acoustic and electronic music which goes from serialism to George Harrison, minimalism to Coldplay and improvisation to live looping……A first for me will be a new piece for solo clarinet where I’ll be doing live manipulation of the sound using loops, delays and other effects. A first for Charles will be having to pluck some violin notes in an arrangement I’ve made of “Fratres” by the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt – it will be his violin debut! A first for everyone in the audience (and me!) will be watching Charles perform a piece written for two clarinets, but only one clarinettist….
All in all a varied week – and it’s only Wednesday.
I shall finish this blog post now and turn off the CD player: My “Ascension” CD has just got to track 8 – a short piece by the renaissance composer Susato, which I recorded using violins, recorders and percussion. Every time I hear it it makes me grin: I had such fun recording it. I’ve always enjoyed Renaissance dance music, and to be able to record some for my CD, in a very light-hearted arrangement, was a real pleasure.
You can buy “Ascension” directly from my online shop here. Both “Ascension” and my first solo CD “Duplicity” are available with 20% off for the whole of December.
