Sunday 31 January 2016

What happened to the end of 2015?

So much happened in the last few months of 2015 - here's an attempt at summarising!

Remembrance Sunday; the day/week when every trumpeter ends up playing the Last Post somewhere - Department for Education at Westminster for me!

Engaging Audiences/Supersonics Workshop; prepared and performed a 40 minute interactive concert to a class of primary school children as part of the Reception & Interpretation module as a second year at Conservatoire.

RAF in Concert; I got to see my favourite band performing at Cadogan Hall again!

Album Release; played in the backing group for Dave Bilbrough's latest album release in Brick Lane.

Admin task; I was employed by my Head of Department to complete an admin task involving orchestral excerpts and a LOT of printing, I'm glad that's over!

Recording; the band "Little Blue Light" asked me to record the trumpet line in one of their tracks for the new album. Lovely group of people, nice tunes!

Tchaik 6 concert; on the same day as the recording I helped out University College London (UCL) in their symphony orchestra concert where we performed Tchaikovsky symphony no.6 (my favourite symphony by Tchaik!) at St Pancras Church.

Carol concerts; the December carol concert total this time was 9...2 in brass quintets, 2 as solo trumpet & organ, 1 in the local church mix of brass and woodwind, 1 in a brass band and 3 where I was allowed to be part of the audience/congregation! I think I did my fair share of carols. Oh, we also went carol singing around the village to raise money for Save the Children!

Luckily things calmed down a bit after that and I was able to relax after Christmas before returning to the mayhem of London in the New Year! I've noticed that a lot of what I ramble on about actually isn't Conservatoire stuff directly, but it's all related right? Hope you've enjoyed this whistle-stop tour of my trumpet student life during November and December and I'll get you up to date with January very soon!

S x

Friday 22 January 2016

Back in the swing of things

Wow I didn't realise how long it had been since I'd posted! So much has happened since November as you can imagine so the next few posts will probably be a bit disjointed or working in reverse chronological order - hope you can keep up!

Performing Trumpet Tune at
 Carols by Candlelight with
Philip Wilby
Yesterday I had my orchestral excerpts exam (mid-year minor assessment) and I'm very pleased to say that it went fairly well. The extracts I played were; 1812 Overture - Tchaikovsky, Ravel's Bolero and his Piano Concerto in G major, Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel Overture & "Ralalala" and Beethoven's Symphony no.9. Now if you remember, back in November I was looking for a D/Eb trumpet to purchase and I'm delighted to say that a great deal popped up and I jumped at the chance so I was able to choose and play excerpts on my new D trumpet! It's been challenging but very exciting learning to play a new instrument relatively quickly and it means I can expand my repertoire and range of styles further. Over the Christmas period I was also fortunate enough to perform with Philip Wilby at a few local church events. His daughter had arranged "In the First Light" for choir, piano and D trumpet (signifying the angels), in which I was asked to play. Philip and I also performed Handel's "O had I Jubal's Lyre" and Purcell's "Trumpet Tune" for trumpet and organ along with some descants to the carols during the services - quite a lot of playing in the end! It was a joy to work with someone as talented, professional and down to earth as Philip, whose brass band compositions I have experienced on several occasions.

Before I start waffling on even more, I'll let you know that in a few weeks I will be starting a new blog about my CoLab project (15th-19th Feb) called "Dans le Noir" so look out for that!

Now then, what else to tell you of the many things I've been up to? I suppose the biggest thing to do with Conservatoire life currently is that I've applied to the Erasmus scheme which means I may be studying abroad for a term next academic year! I had an interview today with the programme leader to find out if I'm a suitable candidate and apparently I am (yay!) so the next step is to create an impressive recording and send it with an application to my 3 choices. Aarhus in Denmark is my favourite place from the research I've done, hoping to study under Kristian Steenstrup whose Breathing exercises and teaching methods are said to completely change your outlook on playing the instrument. There are loads of ensemble opportunities and the Academy regularly plays with the Resident professional symphony orchestra as well as a military band who are always asking for student deps (ideal for me as I want to join a military band after graduating!). It would also be sooo cool to live in Denmark for a while and experience the different culture and no doubt they speak better English than we do... Hopefully you'll be hearing more about this so I'll make sure to keep you updated with where I'm at! For now though, I need to practice something that's not excerpts to return myself to a relatively sane state. You'll hear from me soon!


S x