We had a 2 part concert at Ovingdean, the first part in the beautiful 11th century church, St. Wulfran’s in the village of Ovingdean and the second part back at the school. We hoped the concert would raise a little bit of money for the school, especially to help towards the new drama studio which is almost finished. So as part of the event we also arranged a raffle. Jonathan Myall from Just Flutes sent Adam down with a fabulous display of instruments, music and his new range in mugs and he also donated a blue flute as a raffle prize.
For the church concert we played ‘Hodie Christus Natus Est’ (a little Christmas Fanfare) by Jerry Randalls. Tis piece, in 3 parts will be in your winter magazine. Everyone learnt this from memory and Abbie played a solo line from a balcony in the church. It was very atmospheric. Then we had the 3 ensemble pieces that I told you about yesterday. To conclude this part of the concert we played ‘Cossack Ride’ or ‘Canon of Peace’, again from memory. You should be able to find this on our website, it makes an excellent concert item.
Back at the school we played ‘Casper the Friendly Ghost’ – well it is Halloween, followed by the 3 ensemble pieces so the flute players could learn about the different acoustic properties of the church versus the dining room in the school. We ended the concert with Brian Boru’s March – from memory, of course.
Did the audience mind hearing the same pieces twice? Maybe people who were there could let me know.
After this we had tea and cake and the raffle was drawn. who won the flute (I can’t remember who won the other prizes – there was a bottle of wine, a teddy, some smelly stuff, a James Galway CD and a £25 gift voucher from a supermarket). The blue flute was won by Vicki, I must ask her for a photo.
The best news of all is that we raised £510.50!!!!!!!!!!! Amazing. Thank you all so very much.
I think I’m just about recovered from our course at Ovingdean. It was amazing, one of the best. It was made so special by every single person who took part in it – young flute players and staff equally. The staff team was superb – Sandy, Jerry, Dave, Stephen, Abbie, Chris, James and Andy. The course members were also superb, they all worked hard and I only had one teeny, tiny thing to complain about (rubbish!).
The flute choir members arrived to rehearse on Thursday afternoon and stayed over until Friday afternoon. We are getting ready to go to Slovenia. I’ll be letting everyone know about rehearsals next year in a day or so. There is still time for people to join us.
Then on Friday afternoon a few people went home and quite a few more arrived. It’s always good to have some new faces around amongst our favourite flute players. Everyone got on with each other really well from what I could see.
We did lots of ensemble work on this course plus a little bit of jazz. Alongside the ‘big’ ensembles, everyone was put into one of three teams to rehearse a small ensemble:
Team Abbie played La Caccia by Telemann; Team James played Magic Bells by Mozart and Sheep May Safely Graze by Bach was studied by Team Chris. And they all got very competitive! Who won? Well, that’s for me to know and you t find out.
On Saturday night we played a very frightening game with Abbie and Stephen all about witches and murder. What fun that was!
I’ll tell you the wonderful news about the concert we had later or tomorrow – just so I can post another photo.
Recently I’ve had loads of people telling me about physical problems they have when playing their flute. It isn’t good, it’s very worrying.
Coincidentally, someone I know in Australia, Karen Lonsdale, is doing some important research in this area. Would you be willing to help her by completing her survey? It is part of Karen’s DMA (Doctor of Musical Arts) studies at Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University.
The survey takes very little time to do and you will be helping yourself and others. Karen has offered to write us an article, or a series of articles for the magazine. Let me know if you decide to do it. The link is below (if it doesn’t work for you, send me an email:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=FWSgOGyKE 2baBSSrdzfmP5kA 3d 3d
OK, you’ve waited long enough. This is a photo of the framed picture Erich sent me. Isn’t that a really thoughtful present?
I’ve got loads of work to do for our course that starts on Thursday. So you might not hear much from me for the next few days. Please feel free to talk amongst yourselves – a talking point might be this new TV programme about classical musicians. Have you see it? What do you think?
So this is what you all want to know, what was in my lovely parcel from Erich. The first thing I found when I unwrapped it was a card with the purple cow on the front. There was a large parcel wrapped in manuscript patterned paper. Stuck to the front were some coins to the value of £2.30 (there were instructions in the card what I have to spend the money on). This was obviously money that Erich had left from his trip here.
The next thing I found was a Wicked fridge magnet. I took Erich to see Wicked in London when he was here and my family also collects fridge magnets (that’s a bit of a story which I might tell you about one day) – so that explains the magnet.
Now to the main present – do you remember the poem I like about a purple cow, we’ve used it on courses to create improvised pieces? It goes something like:
I’ve never seen a purple cow
I never hope to see one
But I can tell you anyhow
I’d rather see than be one.
Well Erich remembered this poem ad he searched really hard to find me the perfect gift. It’s …..
oh sorry, I’ve got to dash out, back tomorrow with the rest…………..
