Spring Thoughts

It's been a while since I last updated my diary. I wasn't well over the Easter holiday, which was all over the place because Worcestershire schools were on holiday over Easter but Gloucestershire ones waited until those had gone back and THEN they broke up!

We have now completed making all the Level 3 videos and are just in the process of editing the bits and pieces necessary for the last one of the four to go on sale.

It was a good thing we did the filming before Easter. On Good Friday I sang with the Holgate Ensemble, conducted by David Barclay, in Stainer's Crucifixion in St Michael's Church, Tenbury Wells. It was freezing cold in there - no heating inside the church, snowing outside and windy both inside and out! In the middle of the last hymn, I started to cough and finished up having an asthma attack - which went on to become a bad chest infection and, as is usual with me in those circumstances, I lost my voice for about three weeks!


The week after Easter we went to London to see the Tutankhamun Exhibition, which was very interesting. We also visited the wonderful GLOBE THEATRE, worthy of a mention as I am writing this on 23rd April (the Bard's Birthday!)

and


ST PAUL'S CATHEDRAL where I found myself getting very upset. It costs £10 to get in to the building. There were two of us. If we had gone to Westminster Abbey as well, that would have been a total of £40. I am a member of the Church of England. I don't mind supporting .... but £40?? What annoyed me most was that they actually had the tills INSIDE the church. John 2:13-17 and Matthew 21:12, 13 came to mind. A den of thieves indeed. I was apalled. I'm sure if I had said I just wanted to pray, they'd have let me into some little quiet corner for the purpose and to salve their consciences. That would not have been enough.

I wanted to see what Wren had done for the Glory of God. I wanted to have a look at the organ. I wanted to see where my late friend Bishop Kenneth Woollcombe used to work and preach. I would even happily have paid a fee to be allowed to take photographs - none permitted.

Our heritage. Our heroes' graves. God's house.

Should we be forced to pay? I don't believe we should.

We did!

Then I sat in the nave and cried.

Anyway - back to music, which is what I should be writing about!

I've just had a happy week playing for the wonderful Great Witley Operatics Society in Trial by Jury and The Sorceror.

Next month, CHANDOS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA starts rehearsals for Verdi Requiem, to be staged at SYMPHONY HALL, Birmingham on Sunday 8th June.

There are a lot of notes in the cello part - better go and do some more practice!

January brings the snow...and the rain...

January - Back to routine after the Christmas holidays and "The Bug" - nasty one, that!!

Dates are piling up in my diary - well, they would have been! But my diary is contained in my Palm Tungsten E2, which revolutionised my life when Stephen bought it for me two years ago. In recent months it had begun to have a high pitched scream (not the best thing when you are trying to teach music!) and over the holiday it gave up the ghost altogether.

Now I had a problem. It was all backed up on my computer, but I no longer had a dairy to take with me around the schools.

You see it isn't just a diary and an MP3 player. Under each person's name, address date of birth etc, there is a space for making a note. I always use this to write down everything I have covered in each lesson. This clever little device also has "Documents to Go" which allows me to use Excel spreadsheets and Word documents - so I have my registers and timetables for each school handy at all times too.

Needless to say I was going to be pretty lost without it!

Stephen to the rescue! His Palm Treo mobile phone also does all of the above AND is a camera. It is his pride and joy - he used to work for the people who invented Bluetooth and he just loves gadgets and gismos.

But he was prepared to make the umltimate sacrifice and lend it to me until I could get a replacement. Well, of course, I have been bitten by the Treo bug and have ordered one of my own - in RED er... "cranberry" officially! ...as opposed to Blackberry I suppose!

This means I won't have to carry a separate phone, camera and electronic diary! Wonderful stuff. I like gadgets and gismos too!


Dates for YOUR diary!!

Saturday January 26th all day at Malvern College is the
Chandos Young Musician Competition. This link takes you to the timetable for the day.

Sunday January 27th Chandos String Workshop. Vaughan Williams Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis and Variations on Dives and Lazarus.

For my next trick...

As well as having music theory lessons for sale on the internet, we now have some sheet music for sale from my shop!

"The Old Sea Dog" - a piece I wrote (for my boyfriend at the time) when I was about 18, incorporates lots of sea-shanty type melodies with original material.

It was published in 1996 in "Bass is Best!" book 2 without my permission and without my knowledge. For the last few years it has been on the Associated Board syllabus for Grade 3, presumably helping sales of the book along nicely but I haven't ever had a penny from the publishers.

So now you can buy it direct from my shop instead for a fraction of the price - legally!

Also available is an arrangement of Albinoni's Adagio for piano solo. This was arranged for one of my pupils, who, although he would have difficulty coping with the simplest of pieces, given something which captured his interest, would gobble it up in a couple of lessons. He learned Beethoven Moonlight Sonata first movement from memory, yet would have had difficulty passing Grade 1! This was the next piece I gave him after the Beethoven.

To find these in my shop, click here

For Sale

A couple of smaller size cellos have come up for sale in the past few weeks. If you are interested in them, please send me an email from this website. See the "for sale" page click here

1/2 size cello, Korean, very good condition and good tone, with bow and soft case,

£350


3/4 size cello Stentor student model, good condition, with bow and soft case

£280

Level Three Begins

If you have been waiting for the next in my series of Theory videos, many apologies for the delay.

The good news is that we have now started filming the next set of modules - Level 3 Module 1 is now finished and being edited. There will be three more modules for Level 3 and we hope to get on with those very soon.



Moving house has certainly been an interruption - but it has also been a blessing in that it has given us the opportunity to make the videos in my music room. So it's a change of scene for all of us!






CHANDOS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

This weekend Chandos provides an evening of English music. Walton Portsmouth Point - exciting and boisterous, not to mention very tricky rhythmically; Britten Violin Concerto and Elgar's First Symphony.

For a snippet of our rehearsal, see here;

CHANDOS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA REHEARSAL

Sunday 11th November 7.45pm in Malvern's Forum Theatre.

Oh wad some power the Giftie gie us, To see oursels as ithers see us!

Sometimes the kids I teach just take the wind out of my sails.

I was working with a young girl last week who had just started at the school. It was her first lesson with me, she didn't know her way round the school or where she should be next and she spent most of the lesson saying negative things like "I'm not very good at this" or "I won't be able to play that".


At the end of her lesson, one of my older pupils came in. I turned to her and asked her to reassure the little one that I am not in the habit of eating my pupils.

"No" she said, "you...just...well...you sort of... fluff them up!"

Wow!!