Alan Coady’s Musical Blog

Here is a list of links to concerts in the Fringe featuring solo guitar, guitar duo, guitar in mixed ensemble & guitar/vocals. These links will take you to their entries in the fringe programme – giving details of dates, times, prices. Many of these artists have their own websites, or MySpace sites, where you can hear samples of their playing.

Antonio Forcione (acoustic)

Bach For Breakfast (featuring Sean Shibe on classical guitar)

Bert Jansch (acoustic)

Bon Iver (acoustic)

Camera Ritmata (featuring Simon Thacker on classical guitar)

Classical & World Guitar (featuring Neil Wilson on classical guitar)

Classical Guitar Recital (featuring Spyros Dendrinos)

Classical Guitars & St. Cecilia’s (featuring Luca Villani)

Claude Bourbon (acoustic)

Darren Dutson-Bromley (jazz)

Electric Avenue Band (world/rock)

Flamenco Jazz Late Night (featuring Ricardo Garcia)

Guitar Fiesta (featuring Luca Villani)

Guitar Music – Transatlantic (featuring Stefan Grasse)

Guitars at St. Cecilia’s (featuring Gordon Ferries - baroque)

Jonathan Prag (classical)

Lotte’s Gift (featuring Karin Schaupp – classical)

Mayhew: Live – Free (featuring classical/folk guitar and more)

Preston Reed (acoustic – unusual technique!)

Spanish Spectacular (featuring Sorros Duo – Phillip Thorne & Selina Madley - classical)

Tony Cox – Guitar, me and South Africa

Two-five-one (featuring Duncan Findlay & Adam Bulley – jazz)

Wingin It (acoustic/traditional)

 

This afternoon I was proud to take part in a performance with 9 guitarists and 2 singers from Knox Academy & North Berwick High School. Organised by Health Scotland, the theme was mental well-being and the idea of the performance was to allow delegates to see the benefits conferred upon young people by engagement in positive activity. This resonates with my own view (not mine alone, of course) that involvement in something, which is both meaningful and bigger than oneself, is one of the key ingredients of good mental health. Music and sport provide many and varied opportunities for the natural occurrence of this phenomenon.

Impromptu MC, I was keen to highlight the relevance of the way in which much of the music had been put together to the themes of the day. Many of the pupils had been on exam leave for several weeks and, nevertheless, were game to take on new material for public performance at very short notice. One example of positive attitude was to be seen in two pupils who agreed to join in the accompaniment of two songs only yesterday. Another was in the willingness of the whole group to perform a blues put together in a few minutes with neither notes nor overall plan written out. Four individuals volunteered improvised solos in this blues, and I was keen that the audience enjoy the quality of living in the moment, which always adds an immediacy to performance. I decided to dedicate this blues to Carol Craig of the Centre for Confidence and Well-being who was seated quite near the group. Her talk on well-being at the 2007 Scottish Learning Festival was one of those rare events where someone appears to be articulating inchoate thoughts you’ve had for years.

Our final item, an arrangement of The Average White Band’s Pick Up The Pieces, seemed apposite. The young people playing have most of their lives before them. Things are bound to go wrong in the remaining decades but the thing is to pick up the pieces and keep on keeping on.

Thanks to everybody involved* for representing East Lothian in general, and these two schools in particular. The audience seemed both engaged and moved and the organisers were very grateful to the pupils for providing exactly the positive effects they had envisioned.

* the day had kicked off with a performance by some hip-hop dancers from Dunbar Grammar School – unfortunately this was long before we arrived for our lunchtime slot.

 

I received a publicity email today from former Knox Academy pupil, Simon Thacker, alerting me to forthcoming concerts with vocal virtuoso Daisy Chute.

It seems pointless to paraphrase the content, so I’ll simply paste it in below. Just let me flag up an international project of Simon’s scheduled for later this year - the Nava Rasa Ensemble.

DAISY CHUTE & SIMON THACKER
singing star and virtuoso guitarist
 
Tuesday 9th June, 7.30pm
Loretto Chapel, Loretto School, Musselburgh, East Lothian EH21 7RE
Tickets £10 (concs. £6)
Tickets: 0131 653 4433 or e-mail: jsmith@loretto.com
 
Wednesday 10th June, 7.30pm
The Osprey Music Society
Boat of Garten Community Hall
Reidhaven Park, Craigie Avenue, Boat of Garten, PH24 3BL
Tickets: £13 (£11/£5/£2) call 01479 831213 or email glenavonhouse@aol.com
 
Friday 12 June 2009, 8pm
Inverurie Music, Kemnay Church Centre
Church Lane, Kendal Road, Kemnay, Inverurie. AB51 5RN
Tickets £9.00, £7.00 (concession), £1.00 (children & full-time students)
available at the door or call (01467 624629)
 
www.simonthacker.com
 
 
Virtuoso guitarist Simon Thacker joins forces with Brit Award nominated All Angels’ star singer and recording artist Daisy Chute to perform passionate and colourful classical, Latin American, jazz and folk influenced music of remarkable range and stylistic diversity.
 
Their programme includes beautiful classical and exuberant popular Brazilian music, itself a merging of European, native and African cultures, Martini’s much loved romance Plaisir d’Amour, masterfully arranged North American folksong including their unique take on Babe I’m Gonna Leave You (popularised by Led Zeppelin) with digital delay, Spanish renaissance songs, a result of the fusing of Moorish, Jewish and Christian influences, Cuban song and a flamboyant Mexican Fiesta for guitar. The programme will display Daisy’s stunning voice, radiant stage presence and remarkable abilities to interpret music of diverse origins, whilst also featuring virtuosic guitar solos. Guitar and voice is one of the most intimate and affecting combinations and this promises to be a special concert featuring two acclaimed musicians.
 
Daisy shot to fame with the female vocal quartet All Angels, whose debut album reached the top 10 in the national pop album charts and number 2 in the classical charts, earning a platinum disc, Classical Brit Award nomination and making them the fastest selling début classical group of all time. All Angels were watched by 10 million TV viewers when they sang in front of the Queen at the Festival of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall and have appeared countless times on peak time BBC and ITV. Their performances include Blenheim Palace, Sandringham Last Night of the Proms and Proms At The Palace at Scone Palace. Daisy has sung at the Wigmore Hall and released a critically acclaimed solo jazz album at the amazing age of 15, championed by Humphrey Lyttelton on Radio 2.
    
“I could listen to her fantastic voice all day”, Howard Goodall, composer and television presenter
 
Simon’s fleet fingered fretwork, imaginative programming and emotionally charged interpretations have earned him acclaim from London to Havana. He was recently appointed Honorary Fellow in Music at the University of Aberdeen and nominated for a Royal Philharmonic Society Music Award, the highest recognition for live classical music-making in the UK. In 2006 he was a winner of the 50th Park Lane Group Young Artist Awards, resulting in his solo Purcell Room debut. He has performed in Cuba and the US, toured the UK several times and broadcast on Cuban TV and BBC Radio 3. Simon is Head of Guitar at Napier University and founder of acclaimed crossover group Camerata Ritmata. He will be leading his ground-breaking nine piece East/West project The Nava Rasa Ensemble, which features nine leading Indian and Western classical musicians, on a prestigious Scottish Arts Council Tune Up tour across the UK later in 2009. 
 
“The guitar is often underrated as a solo instrument, but Thacker demonstrated with startling virtuosity just how versatile and exciting it can be in the right hands.”
The Scotsman

How many countries are there in the world? How many of these have a musical culture of which you’ve never heard a note? Would it strike you as odd if one of these countries was Iraq – a place with which we have been heavily involved? I had never heard any Iraqi music live and so was delighted to discover that Reel Festivals was putting on an evening of Music of Iraq at the Roxy Art House on Saturday. This formed part of their Reel Iraq Festival.

The evening featured Farida with the Iraqi Maqam Ensemble, supported by the Babylon Arabic Band. Both groups were very affectionately received and there was an engagingly enthusiastic, participatory feel. This video will give you some idea of Farida and the Iraqi Maqam Ensemble:

If you’ve never heard any Sufi music from Afghanistan you might like to catch a return visit to Edinburgh of the Ahmad Sham Sufi Qawali Group at the Roxy Art House on Tue 26^th May. I saw this group in a fantastic performance in The Queens Hall last year. Here is an excerpt of the email which alerted me to the upcoming event:

The Ahmad Sham Sufi Qawali group is the most famous Qawali group in Afghanistan at the moment. They will be performing at the Roxy Art House on Tuesday, May 26th. The doors will open at 6.30 and music should begin around 7.30. We aim to convert the Roxy into as close an approximation of an Afghan Sufi house as possible for this. As such we won’t have a fixed price for entry, but will ask for £5 suggested donation. More of course will be much appreciated by the sufi group, all money will go towards covering their costs and any left over will be donated to an Afghan Charity. Last year the group raised £7000, which they donated to widows and children disabled by war.

And here is a taster:

While on holiday last week, I found myself in the Chapter House of Worcester Cathedral. Just walking

 into this circular, stone room it was clear that the acoustic was magnificent – as was the silence. My guitar and Zoom H2 recorder were just across the road in the multi-storey car park, and before long, I was making enquiries about the possibility of making a recording. The cathedral staff, Susan Macleod in particular, were very friendly and accommodating.

These are not magnificent performances by any means (I hadn’t exactly been shaping up for a performance of any sort) but I couldn’t resist playing in this room and was grateful to have the opportunity to be able to direct pupils to an example of the difference that acoustics can make to the feel of a performance.

Prelude from Cello Suite No. 1 BWV 1007 (J. S. Bach) cello-prelude

Now Westlin’ Winds (Burns arr Coady) now-westlin-winds

For Michael (Coady) for-michael

Three Jigs:(Coady) three-jigs

1. Hamish Henderson

2. Dick Gaughan

3. Jimmy Johnstone

 I also messed around with a few notes (and spaces) just to play with the echo: playing-with-chapter-house-echo

 

Haddington’s own Malcolm MacFarlane let me know of a couple of forthcoming Scottish Guitar Quartet gigs:

Fri, 24 April, 8pm, The Lot, 4 Grassmarket, Edinburgh Tel: 0131 668 2019

Sun, 26 April, 8pm, City Halls (Recital Room), Glasgow Tel: 0141 353 8000

David Byrne writes eloquently, resonantly and, in one sense, optimistically about the future of the recording industry in the indented paragraph contained here.

If I feel as nimble as he appears to when I’m 56, I’ll be chuffed:

I seem to have fallen behind with the dusting :-) possibly due to having spent 10 of the last 16 nights in schools. Here are some of the highlights of items featuring NBHS guitarists this evening:

Guitar Ensemble Scottish Medley 2009 scottish-medley-2009

Zoe & Senior Guitarists Ca’ The Yowes ca-the-yowes-live

Zoe & Senior Guitarists John Anderson My Jo john-anderson-my-jo

I was keen to clarify, to the audience, an important nuance in accreditation. The musical arrangements were my own but in the case of the Ca’ The Yowes, Zoe had brought as much to the project as I had in creative/interpretative terms and certainly a good deal more in performance terms. My role had simply been to find the nicest harmonies I could and sprinkle notes, like so many dew drops, around the fingertips of my fine young friends in the ensemble. The melodic variation wrought by Zoe (entirely her own idea) provided, for me, the lion’s share of the transformational and affective content of the performance.

Have a great Easter, everyone!

Christmas is perceived as the busy time of year for instrumental instructors as, every school puts on one or two evening’s worth of yuletide music-making as near the end of term as possible. However, this term has been no slouch either. In addition to SQA practical exams, the last few weeks of term has seen: a Sunday band call, Wednesday dress rehearsal and then 3 nights of Guys & Dolls at NBHS; Campie Musical Evening; East Lothian’s Showcase Concert; Knox Spring Concert (tonight) and NBHS Spring Concert (tomorrow).

These last two clashed with the only two nights of Wallyford PS’s production of Annie and so I took the opportunity to go along to the dress rehearsal last night. I was really stunned by the stage presence, quality of singing, acting, accents and, last but not least, by the traditional Wallyfordesque lack of prima donnability.

It struck me how odd it was to have walked past many of these pupils, so many times, completely unaware of their great talent.

In our enthusiasm for learning through gaming, might we be overlooking one of the oldest games in the world – chess? There is sufficient belief in its contribution to learning in general, that countries as varied as America, Russia and Venezuela include the game – and its study – in the curriculum. Closer to home, Chess Scotland is very active in school life (look for Schools link in menu on left-hand side).

Google Alerts threw a pdf document my way entitled the Benefits of Chess in Education, in which, like music, chess is shown to strengthen other domains – reading, maths, logic, planning, problem solving, juggling options. There appear also to be social and behavioural benefits.

The chess community has not been slow to augment traditional over the board games and analytical books with a variety of hi-tech and online resources: chess computers; software; websites; gaming sites. YouTube features many instructional videos on openings and endgames in addition to more performance-based films such as this amazing blitz game (even the physical co-ordination is impressive – let alone the mental performance):

 

or this simul, in which Garry Kasparov defeats 25 opponents:

Perhaps, though, despite all this, the game of chess continues to labour under the image of being a geeky game? Well, not in South Bronx, where the Dark Knights record against schools which can afford private coaching is very impressive.