Just another quick flypast post!I'm playing movements from the Brahms Horn Trio on Saturday, 10.30am, at St. John on Bethnal Green. I'm very much looking forward to it. Whether we play the final movement or not does rather depend on how rehearsals go this week...The summer is mostly flying by faster than I'd like it to. I'm starting to get some chamber music organised, but it's slow-going: the...
I'm still finding it difficult to carve out the time for posting here, I'm afraid.My current daily schedule runs something like this:7.00-8.00 The Joyous Commute (not actually too bad)8.00-10.00 practising10.00-10.30 check e-mail and put out any drastic fires found therein10.30-11.00 physio11.00-12.00 composing or arranging12.00-13.00 lunch13.00-14.00 errands (in practice this is actually a spare...

Nearly there…

Apologies for the recent radio silence. I've been very busy doing all sorts of things, some of which I do intend to document in the near future. I have a backlog of at least five posts waiting to be written, on topics as diverse as copyright issues, my Year 4 project, a local community performance venue I'm likely to end up helping out with, a shiny new instrument that isn't quite what I thought...

Shiny!

I appear to have purchased, on eBay, an old piston horn. I had been wanting to do this in order to play the Dukas Villanelle in my final recital next year, but couldn't quite justify buying an instrument for one piece of music. I had a chat with my teacher about this at my lesson on Thursday, and as it happens, I don't have to buy the piston horn and only use it for piston horn pieces... I don't...

Exam Summary

Now I've had some time to recover, let's see how much I can remember of my exam...The day was rather busy. I had paperwork to print out and as always, this took longer than I expected. I was also playing in someone's 4th-year Composition final: good music, but sadly under-rehearsed and the rehearsal did not go well at all due to missing personnel and rather more set-up than had been anticipated....

Busy

It's been a particularly busy time recently. Classes and performance department rehearsals have stopped for the year, but there's still a lot to do.I mentioned on Friday that I'd joined the tail end of an open-air concert. I didn't mention the horn lesson that morning, or the rehearsal of the Brahms horn trio with shiny new page-turner, or the coaching session. Nor did I mention that by hook or...

East London Cockney Awkestra

Last night on my way to meet a friend for dinner I ran into the East London Cockney Awkestra, playing a free open-air concert at St. John on Bethnal Green. Delightful fun! Apparently they'd been playing since about 6.30 so I got there rather late, but I bought some pineapple juice and sat and listened for a bit, then got to talking and got my horn out. They were tired, I was hungry, so we packed...

Exam Countdown Time

Only ten sleeps until my Performance Assessment. Only one weekend between me and it. The weighting is 50% on one solo piece, to be performed from memory, and 50% on everything else (technical exercises, orchestral extracts, sightreading and transposition). In addition there is a Pass/Fail Technical Portfolio which must be handed in: this will include details, analysis and evaluation of what I've...
This weekend my Singer exercise book, Embouchure Building for French Horn, finally arrived. Also, I broke down and bought the tiniest metronome ever. I'm not entirely sure I like it. It... well, it squeaks. A beep or tick or tock would be so much nicer for someone as frightened of mice as I am. I'm sure I'll get used to it, though.It will be interesting to see what these two tools do for my...