Latest solo concert – don’t miss it!

This is just to flag up my next solo concert, which is on Friday 17th July. It’s in the Memorial Hall in Brinkley, a village near Newmarket and the start time is 7.30pm. (For map and venue details go to; http://www.cambridgeshire.net/organisation/brinkley-memorial-hall/7116.aspx)

This will be a great opportunity to hear some of my most recent looping pieces and will also include two duos with my wife Brenda: My looped two electric violin version of Coldplay’s “Fix You”, and the second ever performance of “Duo Economique” by Graaf (a contemporary of Mozart. This is an incredible and hilarious work for 2 players, each with a bow, but playing only one violin! Not to be missed, it caused a sensation at it’s first outing in May.

Excerpt from \”Fix You\” by Coldplay arranged for 2 electric violins

I’ll also be playing looped and non-looped music by The Beatles, Telemann, Nirvana, Andrew Keeling (a beautiful looped piece he wrote for me called “You Cut The String”), Bach and Yes. So; my usual eclectic mix! Plus there’ll probably be some minimalist stuff, a bit of improvisation and undoubtedly the lovely “Folketone fra Sunnmore”, a traditional Norwegian tune which gets me doing the longest loops in any piece I currently play – nearly 1 minute long.

It’s a fairly small venue seating 80, and the ticket price includes an excellent buffet supper during the interval. There will also be a paid bar available. Currently there are only about 30 tickets left so book now! You can book tickets (a bargain at £12.50 each to include supper) direct from me in person or by phone, or online from my shop site (click here for a direct link). I hope to see you there.

If you can’t make it, don’t despair: The whole concert is being filmed!

Those of you who follow me on Twitter will have heard about my exploits with a motion capture suit last week! Hopefully I’ll have some photos and video of that experience soon for the blog…….

Improvizone

A word about Improvizone: This is a venture run by the excellent drummer Andy Booker, who I’ve been working with in the No-Man band. He invited me to play at one of the Improvizone gigs in north London a couple of weeks ago. These are basically concerts by a variety of improvising musicians in several different venues – the one I played was in a pub in Walthamstow, with a line up of violin, guitar, bass, drums and sound engineer. Os, who does fantastic live sound manipulation, also records the gigs live. Andy then puts edited highlights on to the Improvizone website. You can already listen to a couple of clips from the recent gig (plus 80 or so others from past events), with more excerpts to come. Do take a look at – and more particularly a listen to – the website: www.improvizone.com. Meanwhile here’s one of the clips:

This gig was a new experience for me: My first completely improvised concert! It’s hard to describe the feeling you get (particularly for a classically trained musician) when you allow yourself to block out everything except the music that is happening at that moment, with no written notes, or even the memory of written notes, to get between you and the collective creative process which is going on. It can be completely exhilarating.