This is the inside of the 11th century church, St Wulfran’s in the village of Ovingdean. Isn’t it beautiful? When Erich was here I took him to visit it and the very kind ladies who were on duty showing people around, invited any course members who wanted to attend to go along to the church service on the Sunday during our course. I think about 8 people took up the offer and they all really enjoyed the service.
I talked to the Parish Priest yesterday, Canon Andrew Mayes, about the possibility of holding our concert there on the Sunday afternoon of our course in October and he agreed. It’s great to have a beautiful venue to perform in and it also offers us the opportunity to raise some funds for Ovingdean Hall School by selling tickets or having a retiring collection. We are also going to all go back to the school after our performance, play a bit more and have tea and sticky buns and a raffle. What a great way to end a course.
But I’ve a couple of things I need help with. These are – what shall we play and what shall we call the performance? It’s quite a tiny church, so maybe we need to play pieces from memory when everyone is playing. Any suggestions? Should we have a theme? Please let me know your thoughts.
….. but isn’t the weather wonderful? I’m very pleased because we are going on a short holiday next week to Somerset or Devon or somewhere like that. I’m not sure where it is, but I’ll know where I’ve been when I get back.
It’s been a great, very busy summer. I promised someone who reads this blog regularly that I’d mention all the good and interesting bits.
I don’t think we’ll ever forget our course in Croatia this year, it was brilliant fun. Sandy proved he doesn’t like pizza. I think Amy, Isobel and Laura will always remember with great fondness Bill Holcombe’s arrangement of Sheep May Safely Graze, but never want to play it again. Was it 50 or 70 times they managed it? What was that all about with freaky lady? I doubt we’ll ever know. Weren’t the cats skinny and tiny out there? I also learnt that when you go to a cafe/bar and order a coffee, you get 2 drinks for the price of one as they bring you a glass of water as well. Another thing I learnt is that wine does not come in buckets. Also you aren’t allowed to have any batteries in your check in luggage flying out of Split.
Moving onto our summer course at Ovingdean. That was brilliant! What a great lot of new Flutewise people took part (the old ones are all amazing, but it is good having ‘new blood’). I think the biggest success of the course must be the scale challenge. If you took part and you’ve noticed a difference in your scales, please let us all know.
The magazine is now happily printing. I was very, very relieved when it was finished and I hope you enjoy it when you receive it, which should be in 10 days or so – I hope!
I expect you are back at school or getting ready to go back. Congratulations to everyone who did well in exams last term, we had lots of people at the course at Ovingdean who did really well. Good luck to you if you are starting a new school or 6th form college.
I always like this time of year and do envy those of you going back to start a new term, all refreshed after a lovely long summer break and excited about the work to come. It’s always good at the beginning of the academic year to reflect on what you want to achieve during the year.
Many people will do grade exams and the ABRSM have brought out some new products to help us on our way. Flute Exams Pieces 2008 -2013 are going to prove very popular. For each grade, apart from grade 8, there is a book and CD. For grade 8 there is a CD. In the books are 3 pieces from each of the list. I’ve just had a quick look through grade 1 and 5 and now I’m listening to the grade 8 CD. At first look they are excellent, beautifully produced to a very high standard. Thanks have to go to ABRSM. I’ll let you know more about them soon.
My only complaint at the moment is that the titles of the pieces on the grade 8 CD are not on the CDDB database – my plan was to copy it onto my ipod to listen to it on the train, but there is nothing worse than having ‘Track 1″ a thousand times!
Above is a photo of Louise, Sandy, Stephen, Karen and Erich, some of the staff on the last course. We did have fun.
Sorry I haven’t posted much of late, but I’ve been busy finishing the magazine which has now gone off to the printers. It always takes much, much longer than I anticipate. Now I’ve got to give my office a good tidy up.
I asked everyone on the course to send me their views. I’ve had quite a few responses so far, but I can’t paste them into the main body here, so you can find some comments in the comment box. Please comment on the comments!
This is the inside of the 11th century church, St Wulfran’s in the village of Ovingdean. Isn’t it beautiful? When Erich was here I took him to visit it and the very kind ladies who were on duty showing people around, invited any course members who wanted to attend to go along to the church service on the Sunday during our course. I think about 8 people took up the offer and they all really enjoyed the service.
