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

Beach art

For the days surrounding the August Bank Holiday weekend, CBC and I joined his Mum, sister and husband to stay in a cottage in a place called Stradbroke in Suffolk.  On the Sunday, we went to Southwold for the day.

It was a beautifully sunny day and we headed to the beach.

We seated J, MiL on our fold up seat and the others all went to meet CBC's OTHER sister who, coincidentally, was on holiday in Southwold!

Whilst they went, I decided to try and make some beach art. I love trying to make pictures on the beach out of things I find and have made a few little efforts before (look at my Beach label if you want to see any others!

A while back, I saw a beautiful piece of art where someone had used smooth (and wet) grey stones as well as white shells to create a lovely piece of art with rotational symmetry and I decided to try and recreate it

When I looked back at the inspiration piece, it had double the amount of arms as this so looked more dense (and the stones were more even and consistently sized) but still, I was happy to have given it a go.  Several people walking past admired it (and I gave anyone who came to close to stepping on it menacing looks!) 

I returned from taking our nephew (well, CBC's, but mine by marriage!) to the toilet block and my art had been messed up. So I decided to try something else!

Here's my little beach house with added twigs, seaweed and feathers!

I hope you like them!

Important question:

What shall I make next time!?!?

 

The Seagulls

Today, I am not reviewing Anton Chekhov's Famous Play but sharing some images I took at the Seaside. I find Heron Gulls quite aggressive  (I never looked at Heron Gulls in the same way after Emily's blogpost in which she was attacked by a Heron Gull for her Cornish Pastry).  There were several times I thought a seagull was going to take off with a small child clutching some sort of edible.  I decided to take some pictures of the flight of the Suffolk seagulls. 

Beautiful but rather intimidating!

x

Visiting the Aldeburgh festival

A few weekends ago, as mentioned in my last post, CBC  and I headed to Suffolk to Aldeburgh, meeting up with his brother WKWTTG (Who knows where the Tim goes* his once blog name) later on.

We arrived at our campsite at around 4pm and headed down to Aldeburgh to walk on the beach and eat some ice-cream, seen in the last post.

Returning to pick up WKWTTG, we were running late for our concert and ordered pizzas from the pub but they forgot to cook mine which I was not best pleased about and it was too late to wait.

We had three concerts booked at the Pumphouse, which is a disused Victorian pumping house by the marshes. It was idyllic to lie in the field eating pizza and listening to the music we were late for. They set up a  quirky marquee in front of the pumphouse with hilarious décor- old sofas, mannequin body parts tastefully displayed and lampshades.

The first concert which we were late for was a collaboration between a Kora player and a double-bass/cello/Viol player which was an interesting fusion of African rhythms and lyric bass.

 In between, there was an hour between concerts, so we went for a walk back to Aldeburgh and bought some chips from the chippy since I was hungry having stolen slices of pizza from CBC and brother.

The second concert was a collaboration between a film and TV composer (he composes music for Sherlock) and a cello player. They used electronic sounds from his iPad combined with the acoustic instruments and were very evocative and beautiful- they did an improvisation too which was beautiful but short!

 In the hour space this time, I stayed put on a comfy sofa and read my Catherine Storr murder mystery book whilst CBC and WKWTTG sampled the Pumphouse BBQ.

The 3^rd concert was frankly amazing! The group was Perhaps Contraption http://perhapscontraption.co.uk/ who in their own words:

“This truly unique, multi-vocal troupe meld elements of art pop, oompah and post-minimalism. The high energy performances are full of exuberant choral harmonies, choreography and intricate grooves.

Whether leading jubilant parades, fully amplified stage shows, or pop up street performances, Perhaps Contraption create an unforgettable live experience.”

They had SO much energy, hilarious and very talented.  They have done really well and won some competitions in Europe.

This ended at midnight so we headed back to the campsite where I donned my best seaside-themed pajamas!

 The next morning, we rose, showered at the very nice campsite in Saxmunden and faced the arduous task of packing up the tents and trying to fit us, the equipment and a bike into CBC’s car.

Heading into Aldeburgh, we went first to Thorpness, a beautifully kitsch chocolate box village near Aldeburgh to The Kitchen for breakfast. This was a GREAT place to eat.  They had an extensive outdoor area. Inside, there were sofas and tables to eat and a huge menu. Plus, I’d left my coat and cardie in the car, so I appreciated the blankets you could help.

 We all opted for eggs on toast with tomatoes.  I asked for sloppy egg which came beautifully made!

 What was great was that it had an antiques and collectables centre inside, so I went for a wander whilst CBC and bro read the papers. There were so many fun articles inside!

 I really contemplated that 1970's tiered rainbow maxi skirt, really, really liked it but resisted!

Afterwards, we headed onto Aldeburgh. I made a quick stop into Joules Kids to return this t-shirt. I hoped I would be able to fit into it as I LOVED it but whilst I can fit into aged 12 clothes, I was pushing it with with aged 10 t-shirt!

After perusing art galleries, we headed to the beach (typically in the rain) for another performance by Perhaps Contraption who were playing on the temporary bandstand.

 It really did pour!  We had come especially because they tantalised us last night saying that they were going to perform a version of John Adams' Short ride in a fast machine, which is so cool (I played this with my gamelan group and posted about a couple of years ago). Luckily, before we headed off, we heard it.

 The next stage was heading to Snape Maltings for the main festival building.  We went first to hear a performance by school children from Suffolk performing their reactions to Benjamin Britten's Prince of the Pagodas, his only full-length ballet which was a reaction to his visiting Bali and seeing the Gamelan.

The concert was really interesting, the teens and children had been working with choreographer Sarah Lewis and beatboxers Testament and Jason Singh presented their own response to the ballet in an event titled Rebuilding Pagodas.  They did brilliantly and I loved seeing the collaboration of different art forms and traditions.

In between, I ate a mountain of Eton mess and we went for a wander around the marshes.  There are various artworks dotted around and we had a mess around trying to play our own 'gamelan-inspired' music on the sculpture above, to the amusement of people around.

Finally, we headed into the concert hall for the final concert of the festival:  the Britten-Pears Orchestra, who are talented music students from around the world who performed Prince of the Pagodas under the baton of Oliver Knussen.  In addition to that, I was hideously excited for the first piece in the concert which was Tabuh-Tabuhan by Colin McPhee  which was a piece showing his reactions to the 10 years he lived in Bali.   I heard this piece as part of my elective module at university, Indonesian Music Studies, and fell in love with it.   I've never heard it live before as it is not performed very often and it was just as magical as I remembered from the recording.

The third piece in the programme was Gunther Schuller’s Seven Stories on themes of Paul Klee. This was SUCH a witty and clever piece of music combining an eclectic mix of influences from Aarbic music, blues, Jazz, minimalism and yes, Gamelan!  In addition, in a poignant tribute, the conductor, Knussen, talked to the audience about the composer, his friend and teacher, who had died earlier in the week.

It had been a fantastic weekend and I will definitely return to the Aldeburgh festival next year.

Interestingly, today, we are off to another festival, this time a folk festival called Village Green Festival in Chalkwell Park, Southend.