Music and the Thames

I am a member of the Royal Society of Musicians of which Handel was a founding member. The society holds many musical archives, including a copy of Handel's Water Music in the earliest extant edition. As part of celebrations for the Queens diamond jubilee, it is being lent to the National Maritime museum for their exhibition "Pageantry and the Thames" which is open from the 27th April to the 9th September. Its exciting to remember that Handel wrote the water music and the Royal fireworks for similar events.

Watch this!

I love this!

I just came across this fantastic retro ad!. I love it, and it reminded me of our trip to the Hohner factory a couple of years ago when we went to the World harmonica fest. I had a melodica for Christmas, and am hooked!!!. The Shrimps have been playing quartets for harmonica, Melodica, Ukulele and bassoon. (awesome!). I have done arrangements of old swing numbers, some cafe house music and some tangos. We have a booking for a friends wedding, to play during afternoon tea. I haven't been so excited about playing in an ensemble for ages!. Harmonicas and melodicas would be such good instruments to put together for wider ops ensembles.

Red Hot Song Library Folksongs.

This is the new addition to my song library. These are traditional folksongs with a lively twist, and because there are easy second and third parts, I think they will be really useful for choirs or classroom singing. Its such a shame that a lot of our traditional songs are being lost because the repertoire that many of our young people are singing is based on popular songs. I really wanted this to be a fun way to re introduce these songs...really hope it works.

The product of an evening on youtube

Avril Dankworth teachers days.

I have just come across some old photos of Avril dankworth leading some teachers workshop days in the 60s. Avril was a great innovator in her time and became well known as a music Educator all over the world. This photo shows some of her home made instruments. The photo is damaged unfortunately,but it looks as if the gong she has made is expolding!.

The photo below looks scarily like the one I posted in the next post of me doing a teachers day in berkshire recently...spooky!!

Berkshire teachers day

A really nice day today in Reading with eighty Berkshire music teachers . I lead some workshops with ideas for "First access" ( wider ops) group teaching. I really enjoyed my day and met a lot of "Kindred spirits". These pictures are from one of the group sessions.