A musical week

Last week was incredibly busy for me in terms of performances and practices but also very positive.

Let me work backwards.

Sunday morning, I was up bright and early for church. As I usually do, I played my flute for the morning alongside Sue, our lovely worship leader on piano.

After this, I headed home and did a couple of things.

In the afternoon, we headed off to the Chelmsford countryside to our friend Annie's house to commemorate her lovely Mum, Inge's life.  Inge died a year ago.  The previous night, I had texted Annie to see if she would like me to play something for the scattering of Inge's ashes and she was delighted. I played Annie's Song and Gossec's Tambourin, two pieces that her Mum had liked a lot (the latter, my Mum made me learn when I was in Year 6 and I finally know why she liked it- apparently it was a Radio theme tune!

The vicar from Inge's church read a Bible verse and a prayer and then they played Inge's ashes in a hole and planted a beautiful rose.

We then ate delicious Indian food and enjoyed the garden.

He's Shady! He's more panther than cat but is very friendly.

I wore a shirred dress from Oliver Bonas that I admired last Summer but finally managed to find secondhand on Vinted in my size at a cheap price!

Back to Saturday night, CBC and I went to dinner at a gorgeous Vegetarian restaurant, inspired by Moroccan and Lebanese flavours called Sababa! All the food was tasty but I adore the Cauliflower wings!

Saturday, around 5pm, we went over to a colleague of CBC's from Azerbaijan who is a specialist Baroque musician.  We played through some Handel flute sonatas with me on flute, him on Harpsichord and CBC on cello continuo.  It was lovely. I'm not used to playing Baroque music much so it was a novel experience.  Their home is beautifully decorated with vintage pieces in profusion. There was a whole line of cuckoo clock on the stairs and some beautiful Grandfather clocks!

Look at that beautiful inside!

Saturday morning, I woke up irritatingly early having got to bed very late and went out to water the garden at 7.15am.

We headed to Leigh on Sea for the annual Art trail.  We bought my mum a piece for her birthday by Katrina Parris who we already own 3 pieces by.

Friday night, I performed the epic Mahler's 9th symphony with Orchestra of the City.  This mammoth work is 90minutes long with a huge orchestra.  It went fantastically but the church was very warm!

At school on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, I hosted my very first outdoor Summer performances at 9.30-10.00 involving 180 children each time from years 1-6.  They sang songs from Bangladesh, Kashmir, Sri Lanka, Ghana, Congo, Romania, Japan amongst others.  All of them went well in their different ways!

Thursday night, I was supposed to be going to Gamelan but I discovered that I cannot do the gig next weekend at the Southbank Centre for an Asian festival so I had a much-needed evening off. I still had choir after school though!

Wednesday, apart from the aforementioned school performance, we also had Exhibition evening from 4-6 at school and then I had to go to an Orchestra of the City rehearsal in Vauxhall!

Tuesday night, I headed to CBC's school to play Tenor saxophone in his school Big Band barbeque.  This was fun and I really enjoyed being part of this even though I was sight-reading everything!

Monday night, after Drumming Club and recorder club through the day, as well as regular music teaching, I headed off for a rehearsal with my flute trio/quartet (usually but 4th member is away) for our forthcoming recital in Brentwood on 25th July.   We played through all our pieces and then I headed home.

It had been a super busy week, enjoyable, but I was sorely tired and it didn't help that I still kept waking up early!

1 week to go and the school concert is tomorrow night.  Lots of parents still haven't responded to my multiple messages about it so have no idea how many are going to turn up!?!!

Hope you are well!

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