Hectic weekend

Spent the bulk of last Saturday at the Brass Band provincial contests.  I'd mentioned in a previous post how I was supposed to be playing Variations on a Welsh Theme, and how the soloist had had to pull out.   What was the first piece I heard on arriving at the competition?  Variations on a Welsh Theme, being played (and very nicely too) by someone else.

As has been the case with most days recently, it was beautiful and hot on Saturday, and many of the brass banders would have been happy to have sat outside relaxing, I think, instead of having to perform before audiences.  Still most of them survived, and we had some good placings amongst the folk I played for, including two or three firsts.

In the evening my wife and I went to a 6 pm showing of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel which has a cast that most directors would die for: director John Madden somehow managed to corral them all together for this relatively slight piece that's made enjoyable because of the people in it.  It concerns a disparate group of oldies who independently decide to take up the offer of a particular Indian hotel to accommodate them in what is effectively an old people's home without the use of that phrase.

Judi Dench takes a leading role, along with Tom Wilkinson, Bill Nighy, Maggie Smith, Celia Imrie, Penelope Wilton and Ronald Pickup.  Dev Patel, from Slumdog Millionaire, is the hotel's young proprietor, a man with more ambition and ideas than commonsense.   Of course all works out well in the end - for him, anyway.  One or two or the oldies come a bit unstuck in the process.  Penelope Wilton, unfortunately, is saddled with the role of a whining woman who just never shifts from that position.  It's not far from her rather petulant mother in Downton Abbey, and it would have been nice to see her in a different kind of role.

Sunday, after church in the morning, I went to the rehearsal for Grimhilda!  Things are a long way from perfection, but we're getting there.  I've been acting as répétiteur (the common name for rehearsal pianist, but used less now than it used to be) for the rehearsals, and it's interesting to find that even though I wrote the music there are times when I don't seem to be hitting the notes too well.  Of course, when the music was being written, I was playing it all the time.  Now that the writing is some months behind me, it's becoming like any piece of music does when you don't practice it regularly: a bit slapdash.  Still, répétiteurs commonly don't play all the notes, so I'm not doing anything unusual!


At the rehearsal last night I took a photo of the Parrot in his (still to be slightly amended) costume: you've no doubt already noticed the photo.  It's not the best picture, and we'll get some better ones done in due course - this is just to give you a taste of the colour of this particular costume...


On Sunday evening, I had to play for a local singer, Sarah Oliver, in a concert put on by the NZ Foundation Youth Pipe Band.   The band was doing a very quick tour of NZ (four rather scattered centres) and then heading off to Sydney for an Australian contest.  Sarah was a guest artist, as had been other singers in other centres.   The rest of the concert consisted of performances by the NZFYPB - a group of young pipers and drummers from around the country, some dancers and a local pipe band from John McGlashan College. 


Sarah and I ensconced ourselves in a small dressing room, with the door shut, because the noise of the pipes in a theatre that size was pretty loud and made its way through all parts of the building.  The pipers were a talented bunch, there's no doubt, as were the drummers.  Very sharp and accurate and in general a credit to New Zealand.  I hope they're doing well in Oz. 


I got home about 10.30 feeling as though I'd done my dash for the week....

Variations on a Welsh Theme

Years ago, when I first began to accompany brass band soloists at their competitions, I was given a piece called Variations on a Welsh Theme to play.  The theme for the variations is the beautiful melody, Watching the Wheat.  The soloist at that time was a youngish Eb cornet player - this is the instrument with the highest range in the brass band - and the soloist was superb.  (Unfortunately, family and work commitments have gradually forced him to put aside his work with the band.)

I really loved playing this piece.  At the time, most of the band accompanying I was doing was with hackneyed pieces that everyone had heard for a hundred years, or old-style variations with accompaniments that were tedious to play, to say the least.

However, these Variations seem to have been written for a soloist and piano, rather than the latter being a transcription of the full brass band accompaniment.  Which meant it lay under the fingers well, and could be played to full effect.  Apparently the composer, Peter Kneale, was an accomplished pianist, as well as having been a brass band conductor for a number of years.  He developed tinnitus and gave up conducting but carried on as a teacher until his retirement.

He grew up in the banding world, coming from an Isle of Man family with a great enthusiasm for brass bands.  He also had an interest in jazz, and some of his compositions reflect this.   He has published songs, but seems to best known for his pieces for brass.  Jazzamatazz, which started out life with a different and less striking name, is one such, and Blue John is a piece for trombone.

Anyway, all this is an introduction to the fact that tomorrow I'm accompanying several soloists at the Otago Provincial Brass Band competitions, which are in Dunedin this year.  (They were in Roxburgh last year.)  One of the soloists was going to play the Variations, and we practised it, and then she texted me a few days later to say that it clashed with a test (presumably a University test) and she'd had to pull out.  Very disappointing.  There aren't many pieces in the competitions that are written with a piano in mind, though some of them are still quite satisfying to play.  The piece I played in Sydney last month, Rustiques, by Eugène Bozza (photo at left), was also written for a brass instrument and piano, which made a big difference to the level of skill I could bring to playing it.  When the accompaniment is a transcription, you're often forced to leave out various notes because the human hands just can't manage them all, and often the sound the piano produces isn't ideal for playing the particular piece.  


So sadly, I won't be getting another go at the Variations at the moment.  Pity, it would have made my day!  

Schizophrenia and Sibelius

Occasionally someone sends me a request to include something in my blog, and usually I'll reply in the affirmative, since people help me and I like to help them.

Of course, I check first that it isn't spam. However, most spam goes down the spam tube at gmail.com, so if it is there's a distinct possibility I'll never see it in the first place.

Today I received an email from Suzane (yup, that's the spelling) Smith. She told me that she was wanting to promote an article called 10 Myths about Schizophrenia, which appears on her blog. The site is on is actually called X-Ray Technician Schools which a blog itself, but has a section called Articles, which is where you'll find Suzane's piece, but a number of other similarly well-written posts on a variety of health-related topics. This part of the sight is called X-Ray Vision-aries, and they explain it thus:

WHAT IS X-RAY VISION-ARIES? X-Ray Vision-aries is a blog designed with non-health nuts in mind and written by a group of guys and gals who are excited about self-improvement through diet, exercise, and overall health improvement. In our blog we deliver what we hope are enthralling and at times even educational articles about health, welfare and better living. We try to bring you a forward looking vision of health and health care in a light-hearted manner that makes learning about and improving one’s health and life accessible to everyone. Enjoy!

The post/articles vary in subject matter quite extensively, which makes them worth checking out. Regrettably I'm just off to play Settlers of Catan with my wife and daughter, so I'll have to check them out tomorrow! (Today I've been busy re-scoring the Brass Band suite I wrote back in 2008, which I played through - on Sibelius - with a friend of mine from the brass band days. He's a lecturer in composition at the Varsity, so is well up with what works and what doesn't, and in his opinion the pieces work. They needed a bit of re-scoring because I'd missed including a couple of instrumental lines in my original versions. Bit fiddly, but satisfying!)