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!

x

 

A day in Aldeburgh

Hello!!

Last weekend, CBC and I had no particular plans and we suddenly realised that the Aldeburgh festival was on!  In its 76th year, this music festival in the Suffolk seaside town was founded by great British composer, Benjamin Britten and his partner Peter Pears (pronounced Peers).  CBC and I have been to various events for this over the years. He introduced me to it fairly early in our relationship as he was a Hess student when he was young- these students spend time in Aldeburgh stewarding for it and get to stay with local families.

We decided to try and get tickets for the Sunday events.

The timing was perfect as I had JUST started my final Year 4 music unit of the year on Benjamin Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra 3 days earlier so I was very much in the mood to go to Aldeburgh!

We left home around 8.45am to drive to Suffolk and arrived just in time for the 10.30am Festival service at St Peter's and St Paul's church 

The service received a sermon from the Rt Rev’d Joanne Grenfell, Bishop of Stepneyand the  Britten Pears Chamber Choir was singing, conducted by James Davyand with Francesca Massey organ.  The service was lovely with music by composer of the festival,  Helen Grime: her Missa Brevis and a piece by Daniel Kidane: Christus factus est.  CBC's old colleague and friend L was singing in the choir as she had moved to Suffolk and it was lovely to see her.

I loved the beautiful Benjamin Britten memorial window by John Piper.  Britten had developed a new type of opera which he gave the name 'parables for church performance.  Three of these were named Curlew River, The Burning Fiery Furnace and The Prodigal son and all of these are evoked in some way in this beautiful window. 

 After the service we headed to Aldeburgh high street for a spot of lunch.  I queued in the epic fish and chip shop queue whilst CBC went to find some coffee and have a mooch around.

After 30mins, I reached the front of the queue and bought CBC a portion of chips (he'd acquired a toastie) and for myself, a Child-sized portion of Fish and chips plus a small battered sausage. 

I met CBC on the beach to eat.

The fish and chips, cooked in Beef dripping, was delicious and my portion was just the right size!

I went dressed for the seaside:

I bought this gingham sailor top in Primark last month. I never shop in there now but I saw this on Instagram and knew a 100% cotton sailor top in Gingham was something I had to see!

The skirt is from Fatface via a charity shop plus my Seasalt sandals from Depop a good 6 years ago or so.

The sea changed colour in the space of 2 minutes when the sun came out:

We enjoyed our lunch and witnessed a fly-by theft from a Seagull who stole a child's battered sausage.  It also tried to steal mine- I suddenly noticed it hovering inches from my hand.

As CBC ate his Tiramisu cake, I had a paddle! It was refreshing but the sloping shingle was hard to stand upright on as I tried to hold my skirt!

We had to hotfoot it back to the car, parked past the church (via a charity shop where CBC bought an old print of a lovely John Singer Sargeant painting) and drove to Snape Maltings for our next musical performance.   This was held in the Britten studio at 2pm.  We crept in late in the complete dark, accidentally bumping into our friend L who was a steward for it!

The concert was a performance by Fu and Betts-Dean: The programme was entitled Solitude with Schubert Lotte Betts-Dean,  mezzo-soprano and George Xiaoyuan Fu on  piano.  It began with a film called Solitude With Schubert (first screening) by Matilda Hay filmmaker. The pieces were Schubert: Einsamkeit, D.620 (17’) Schubert: Schwanengesang, D.957 (selection) (15’) Schubert: Piano Sonata No.21 in B flat, D.960 (40’).  It was wonderful!!! The programme explored how grief mingles with consolation, combined with a film exploring the loss of a loved one. 

After this, we headed out for a walk to Snape Warren across the beautiful boardwalks.

After a glorious walk, we headed into the maltings for a light dinner.

I changed into my evening concert outfit of this Monsoon cotton dress, bought from a charity shop in Hexham.

Funnily enough, I saw my friend from Gamelan who was there to watch the same concert as us by coincidence.  Last time I came to watch an Aldeburgh concert, I saw ANOTHER Gamelan friend!

Amusingly, when we entered the Maltings hall, it turned out out of 1000 seats, we had ended up seated next to each other by total coincidence!!

the concert was entitled Nocturne and Folk, performed by the Knussen Chamber Orchestra.

The solists were  Claire Booth, soprano  and Allan Clayton, tenor.  Ryan Wigglesworth was the the conductor.  The programme was Britten: Suite on English Folk Tunes, ‘A time there was ...’, Op.90 , Helen Grime: Folk (Britten Pears Arts co-commission),  Britten: Nocturne, Op.60, and Beethoven: Symphony No.8 in F, Op.9. I adore Britten's music and I loved the two pieces we heard, both new to me.  The piece by Helen Grimes, a major new commission with soloist Claire Booth, was really intriguing with some very evocative lyrics and musical crafting.

We'd had a fantastic day and it just remained to drive back to  Essex. I helped CBC mark some test papers as he drove (I read the answers and told me if they were right or not!) 

I very much recommend a day in Aldeburgh and a visit to the Maltings, ideally a concert!

xx

Weekend of plenty

 There's no TARDIS Tuesday this week as I had a Gamelan rehearsal in London tonight and hadn't photographed anything at the weekend- it was a busy one! 

Anyway, on Friday night, after school, I helped a work colleague who is very technophobic, as our payslip system (which has been online since 2018) is going to close and move to a new system so all of us need to download all our wage slips before it closes (we all know that pensions end up with issues if you don't check your paperwork- Ang, I think you had some issues with Teachers Pensions?  I've only ever downloaded 3 for a remortgage application so I need to do the same but she has never done any and had had them sent to a personal email address which she had never set up so I ended up logging into her email address, changing her mobile phone in the verification system, changing her passwords in the wage slip system and then downloading about 50 payslips one by one!  She was having kittens about the whole thing so it was nice to help her!

I then dashed off to the station and I travelled to Westcliff to meet CBC for dinner. We went to Il Palazzo, a traditional Italian restaurant opposite the Palace Theatre. It was delicious- I had Pollo a Milanese- a breaded chicken breast with spaghetti in Tomato sauce.

We then headed to the Palace to watch The Secret Lives of Words, a one-woman show by Susie Dent.  For anyone who doesn't know who she is, she is the expert in Dictionary Corner on British Programme, Count Down, a word and numbers show and as she is Etymologist and Lexicographer, she has extensive knowledge of words and their origins. 

This was incredibly entertaining and interesting. I learnt a lot and we were made to laugh as well as be educated.  For instance, do you know about orphaned positives?  Think of ruthless or gourmless. Apparently, they used to have a positive opposites- ruthful and gourmful which have been lost over the sands of time.

The next morning, despite getting back late, I was up bright and early to go and empty the teabags onto my raised bed, do the week's washing up (yes, I know....mostly not mine as I was out for most evenings) and get washing done etc.

We then headed off to Brentwood to go to a rehearsal for a concert of Tschaikovsky's Serenade for Strings (plus Ukranian National Anthem). I had a nasty shock that morning as I discovered the Lead viola player had Covid as did one of the extra players and there would only be me (leading-eek!) and one lady who had only been to one rehearsal and didn't know it that well!  And the viola part is quite hard and prominent.  We rehearsed and then CBC headed off for a quick hair cut in town whilst I had a quick tour of the charity shops, Wilko and the Larder, a refill shop.

I bought lentils and toilet bombs from the Refill shop. From Wilko, I bought some Colgate, Vegan, recyclable tube toothpaste and some early peas.

I bought this cute cartoon illusion satchel from the St Francis Hospice charity shop (best one in Brentwood).   I loved this satchel when I first saw in back years ago so was happy to find it second hand!

In Oxfam and Cancer Research, I bought 3 books and a game. I received the second two books in MG Leonard's Adventures on Trains series for my birthday but I had borrowed the first one from the library so I was pleased to have my own copy of book 1.  The Bastien book is a pretty new release and I wanted to read it (and then give it to the school library!) The Girls football one is a nice shorter book for younger children and the Codswallop game I bought for my friend Lara for her birthday. 

This lovely light Monsoon top was £4 and looked lovely and wafty for the Summer.

This Max and Co linen dress looks modest for school but lovely and light.

These two garments are inspired by an outfit I saw Vix by: a light cotton top by Anokhi at East (£4) and a brand new light denim midi skirt (£8)

After this, I headed back to the concert venue where we began our performance at 3.30pm. I was really happy to see the President of the orchestra. He's about 84 now and he used to be the head of my music school and it's thanks to him that I was introduced to the orchestra and indirectly, why I  met my husband CBC (he introduced me to the 1st flute player who worked with CBC, who got us to play in a concert together). He's quite frail now after a stroke and some very sad life events but he looked really cheerful and happy to be there.

The concert went well though I have a feeling I skipped a bar in the last movement, I realised after about 24 bars...and skipped back a bar! I THINK. Not really sure.

After our item, the brass players took over and I quickly grabbed my stuff, bid CBC farewell and ran to the train station where the delayed rail replacement bus took me to another rail replacement bus to another town for my NEXT rehearsal and concert!

For this concert, I was playing flute for a piece with choir and then had to perform a piece by Frank Xavier Wolfgang Mozart.  The rehearsal began at 5.30pm but didn't finish until 7.15pm!  That meant no time for dinner for me (hadn't really had much lunch).  I was asked to page turn for the other pieces for the piano accompanist.  This meant 2 things... 1.  I had to stay to the very end of the concert when I could have gone home at the interval.  2.  A very nerve-wracking concert. It is MUCH more scary turning pages than having to play the flute.

My solos went well and I had a chance to chat to some of the audience (who I know from church).  The page-turning went ok....

The concert ended up finishing really late, around 22.15 so I bombed it to the train station to be ready to catch the 22.36 rail replacement bus home.

Except, there was no one in the station to give information and the 22:36 didn't turn up!  I had to wait until 23:06 for the next one. It was really cold waiting at the bus stop. Around 10 minutes before the bus came, a group of drunk hens wearing skimpy dresses and no coats turned up trying to find their way back to Southend.  They were trying to get an Uber or a taxi unsuccessfully and weren't sure how to get home.  At the moment before the bus arrived, they turned to me and asked how I was getting home and I was able to usher them, mother hen style onto the bus and assure them it would take them back to Southend, around £80 cheaper than a taxi.  They obediently boarded and I reassured them that they would be warm and get home safely.

The bus took me around an hour to get to my station and it was 00:05 by the time I got there. I was not impressed.  I had to get  taxi as CBC was not wide awake enough to come and back me and by the time I got to bed, it was 1am old time, 2am, new time (clocks went forward!) 

The next morning I got up around 8.30am new time (old time 7.30am-ouch!) and quickly showered, then headed to the station to get the rail replacement bus to Southend and then bombed it to the other Southend station (had 5mins between trains) to catch the train to my Mum's.

She picked me up from the station and took me to hers.

I gave her the beautiful bouquet that I was presented at my concert last night- they were all Purple- her favourite colour. I told her they were my bouquet. I was going to buy her some but since I would be out all week, I wouldn't get to enjoy them so she should enjoy them.

I played with her tabby kittens who were really fun and affectionate but totally nuts.  The boy cat was obsessed with my long FabIndia skirt and kept getting under it and jumping up and chasing it.  Girl cat was lapping up attention and snuck into the loo when I was in there and left up onto my shoulder and settled down, bum on my head, lying down my back.  The pair of them got into my cycling pannier.

After a while, Mum and I headed out to town where I treated Mum to brunch.  I had a delicious Mediterranean flat bread with fried eggs, Harissa, lamb sausages, chillis, pickled onions, avocado and orange zest.  Mum had a veggie breakfast. 

After that, I headed home, picking up some vegetables from the greengrocers back in Southend before getting my onward train.

As I came home, I noticed that quite a few of the new Daffodil bulbs in my 40th birthday planter were out.

For dinner that night, CBC cooked one of our favourite dinners.  Lentils cooked in stock with tomatoes, Cavolo Nero and then buttery fried leeks. It was delicious.  The picture above is of night two of it on Monday night where I cooked rice to go with it and broccoli.  I do wonder if I might have a slight intolerance to red lentils though as I had some tummy, gut issues on Sunday night to Monday morning as well as some other issues that meant I felt very unwell on Monday morning.  I'm not sure as sometimes I do have issues when I eat them.  I hope it's not that as I really love them but I do keep wondering.

It was a weekend of plenty!

Hope you are well.

Colourscape- Clapham Common 2021

My first proper gig of 2021 (AKA performing to the paying public) took place last Saturday on Clapham Common at the Colourscape festival.

If you're not sure of what Colourscape is, I have taken the liberty of  borrowing some information from their website:

Cwmni Colourscape is the partnership of Peter Jones and Lynne Dickens, who create Colourscapes. Peter Jones developed the first Colourscape structures in 1974. Colourscapes were preceded by 'Spaceplaces' from 1963, which were installations of coloured surfaces made inside buildings. In 1970 they became open-air structures. Experiments with air-inflated sculpture gave new possibilities of working directly with colour. Early structures used large primary colour chambers interconnected by tubes. Subsequently, many different Colourscapes, have been made, growing more complex in colour relationships. Cwmni Colourscape have several Colourscape structures, which they show at festivals and other events in the UK and abroad.
Cwmni Colourscape also creates and makes other structures - tensile canopies, wind sculptures and giant bubbles, all of which have generated and been part of many events. Many people have been trained with Cwmni Colourscape to make structures, to develop colour workshops and to run Colourscape shows

Eye Music:

Eye Music Trust (formerly Nettlefold Festival Trust) was founded by composers Lawrence Casserley and Simon Desorgher. In 1984 they founded a contemporary music festival in south London, the Nettlefold Festival, which was particularly dedicated to live electroacoustic music and music theatre. In 1988, seeking to expand the scope of the festival and to reach new audiences, they formed a charitable trust to oversee their work.
One of the most significant moments in the development of their work was the start of their collaboration with Cwmni Colourscape, which lead to the first Colourscape Music Festival, which took place on Clapham Common, London, UK in 1989. Since then the Trust have presented many Colourscape Music Festivals, numerous other events involving structures created by Cwmni Colourscape, and hundreds of educational workshops for people of all ages throughout the UK and abroad.

In 2005 the Trust was restructured as a Charitable Company Limited by Guarantee (Reg No. 05466017) - and the name changed to Eye Music to reflect the connections between music and visual art. In 2008 Eye Music Trust became an Arts Council Regularly Funded Organisation.

Info from the Eye Music website 

I was performing with my Balinese Gamelan group- Lila Cita, on a beautiful Balinese Gamelan Angklung called Kembang Kirang which is owned by SOAS. Angklung is actually ceremonial music for Cremation but it is the most cheerful, bouncy-sounding music.

It's about the 4th Colourscape festival I have performed at, but it's been a good 10, possibly more years, since I did one, I suspect.  I forgot HOW amazing it is to walk and play in those brightly-coloured structures.  The colours are so mesmerising and you go on journeys throughout the chambers and see different shapes. As you can imagine, it is a joy to photograph.  We had a really appreciative audience who sat and listened to us for their allotted times as well as dancing through the chambers and delighting in the colour and light interplay.  A couple of times, I turned round from my suling (small Bamboo flute) to see a group of people in a far off chamber...or not so far off.... making up their own dances to music, I saw a small child leaning comfortably against an inflated wall looking content as he listened to us and when I smiled at him with my eyes, whilst playing, he smiled back in a way that suggested all was well with the world.

We played about 4 sets of music and paraded through the structure twice with our Baleganjur (street parade) music.

If you ever get the chance to visit, I strongly recommend it. It's wonderful.  I had a break where I leaned against a wall and read my book and it was so relaxing. I feel so lucky to have been able to take part in this performance.

And now, I will leave you to have a look at my photos of different views from Colourscape.  You might even find a video in there! Enjoy!