Alan Coady’s Musical Blog

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

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 remember with some fondness my old Amstrad PCW and how it obliquely encouraged me to generate a huge body of work in few episodes. This was due to having to load the operating system from a floppy disc and then each individual programme – the loading of one necessitating the disappearance of the last. So, once set up, the temptation was to bash on.

Such was the feeling yesterday when I had hoped to make a start on recording videos of ensemble parts for this year’s Showcase Concert repertoire. I thought I’d do two or three, call it a day and set aside some time later. However, once the camera was set up, and the school nearly empty, I found myself repeatedly saying “just one more” and pretty soon all 14 were finished. It was my ambition to do each one in “one take” and I stopped only three times – once when the phone rang and twice when the weekly fire bell test took place. Miraculously, all three events conspired to take place in the closing bars of largely error-free takes – thanks guys!

The funny thing was the set up. I asked a 6^th year pupil to line up the Flip Video so that the frame would be pretty much filled with the fretboad – since fingering and articulation were the main points of interest. Somehow, I imagined that my head would be out of shot, but this was not true – and I didn’t ask. Consequently, the videos have the nature of someone being filmed unawares. I have to confess that I look quite bored throughout the process, but nothing could be further from the truth – it’s simply a mix of concentration and the paradoxical endeavour to remain relaxed under pressure, in order to avoid re-takes. I must remember this the next time I suspect a pupil of less than 100% engagement. Techies might notice that the music is (sometimes) being read, in Sibelius, from a laptop screen, which refreshes only at the very end of a page/section. This doesn’t really add to the chances of a relaxed performance as you can’t look ahead – but what’s life without a little challenge now and again

The films, which are all embedded in a new Video page, are pretty much a temporary affair - hence the lack of subtle editing. The East Lothian Showcase Concert, in which these pieces are to be performed, takes place in The Brunton Hall on Friday 27th Mar at 7:30. After that date there will be little use for the videos - unless any other similar ensemble would like to play the arrangements.

Armed with a Flip Video Camera, I asked a pupil to record over my shoulder while changing two strings on a guitar – one bronze-wound bass string and one nylon treble string. The idea of this view was that it would be the same as someone changing their own strings.

On reflection, I think a more scripted affair might have been better - and less savage lighting. However, this is an experimental phase and, should a better recording emerge, I will replace this one. Thanks to Callum in S4 at Knox for agreeing to have this camera-work sprung upon him.

However, for drama, I can't compete with this

How many inspirational people have you come across in your life? How many have succeeded in realising what, to most, must have seemed the impossible? Were the vision, passion and necessary humility obvious when they spoke? These thoughts ran through my head when I watched José Antonio Abreu , founder of Venezuela’s music education programme, El Sistema, and one of the winners of the TED Prize 2009.

Here he movingly explains the philosophy behind, and the history of, El Sistema as a prelude to announcing his TED wish.

There is also gripping performance by the Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra (national high-school-age orchestra) conducted by one of El Sistema’s meteoric stars, Gustavo Dudamel.

Further links:

interview on EncontrArte website (in Spanish)

acceptance speech upon winning the Right Livelihood Award (in English)

These few thoughts began as a reply to a comment of David Gilmour’s on a post. As is often the case, the search for one illustrative link unearthed enough to necessitate a discrete post. The initial aim had been simply to launch one more ingredient into the mix of reflections on literacy currently taking place in the profession. In essence, the question was which, if either, is more literate: reading fingerings off the page or reading the movements of a hand on a video?

Although an ardent fan of traditional musical literacy I’ve lately begun to wonder if pupils might benefit from a supplementary option - watching the hands in a close-up video performance of pieces they are preparing – specifically ensemble material, where the moves they are required to internalise account for only a fraction of the overall sound. Preliminary canvassing of a few pupils suggest that they feel that this might be helpful.

I began to wonder about the role that mirror neurons might play in this and, in my search, stumbled upon this explanatory video. In the year of Darwin’s bicentenary, the question would seem to be, “why look an evolutionary gift-horse in the mouth?”

This train of thought is something of a slow burner, as this letter to New Scientist about this article in Feb 2001 might suggest.

A pupil, who has no problem with musical literacy, would like more detailed fingering on an ensemble part – with nothing left uncertain.

Which of the following two appraoches (if either) would you say is a better example of literacy on the part of either the pupil or the teacher?

Option A:

Include comprehensive fingering on the written part.

Option B:

Upload a supplementary video in which pupil can see the teacher play the part against a recording of the ensemble piece.

Answers on a PC

p.s. the title of this post is a nod to David Crystal  - author of Txting: The Gr8 Db8. 

Read his blog here.

I decided to spend the last day of this week off attending a CPD event laid on by ELC. Delivered by Park Sims Associates, the course was entitled Read Faster, Read Smarter and its stated aim was to help “all who want to get through their reading at work faster and smarter.”

I was hoping that there would be some straightforward ocular content as this would surely be transferable (to some degree) to the reading of music. I was not disappointed in this respect and hope to share that (and this) with colleagues at Monday’s In Service.

I’ve no wish here merely to post online the content of a course honed over years by fellow professionals, so let it suffice to say that it was as good an example of active learning as I’ve seen. Many of the tasks had been cleverly designed to highlight a particular point by stealth, so that the habits of a lifetime, which often conspire to impede us, might be circumvented.

Well presented handouts were abundant, allowing us to concentrate on the task at hand which, I think the 16 delegates would agree, was at times very challenging. However, no-one in their right mind, would expect a physical skill to fall into place in a matter of hours. Like most skills, speed reading consists of a variety of strategies and an intuitive application of the appropriate one comes only with experience.

I look forward to developing what I learned today and, hopefully, to exploring further the parallels with written music. Having had some intensive concentration on visual intake, I feel now may be the time to seek out a book written by one of the presenters of Tune-In: Music with the Brain in Mind - “The Eye: A Natural History” by Simon Ings.

Now that YouTube is unblocked in our schools, I decided to have a look for footage which might support pupils in their understanding and enjoyment of music. Before long it became clear that there was a wealth of invaluable resources. But how are these to be passed on? By word of mouth, simply when we happen to recall something interesting? In the (temporary?) absence of another source I’ve created a new page entitled YouTube links – general (as opposed to the guitar-based one). The form and categorisations may well change when more useful links crop up.

Firstly, thanks to Ewan McIntosh for flagging up ScreenToaster – a free screencasting application. I decided to experiment by creating a short “how to” video, showing how to convert Sibelius files into PDF files using Open Office – a free, open source program. You can see the video here.

I can see some potential here for distance CDP/In Service. Moreover, there are videos in a variety of languages in the ScreenToaster archive, so you can kill two birds with one stone.

In case anyone wonders why someone who already owns Sibelius would want to do this, here are a few reasons:

• scores/parts can be shared with people who are not Sibelius users

• they can be printed out even in a location where Sibelius is not installed

• parts for pupils can be emailed to class teachers in primary schools – the majority of which do not have Sibelius

• scores/parts can be saved in a format which prohibits further editing - by unauthorised parties

• files can be uploaded to blogs - allowing pupils with sufficient curiosity to see what others in their ensemble are playing