Day 27 - New pieces and a concert

I have just got in from a concert and am leaving a late blog today and this morning's harp practise seems a long while ago now. I had my first 'Nonline' donation, using traditional payment methods rather than through the justgiving site. It came from Maggs, a clarinettist who has been with the band for a year or so now. Maggs is one of the few adults happy to work through the performance grades. Keen to go further than grade 5 she is also working through the theory grades and has admitted in private that she enjoys the theory! Don’t worry Maggs, your secret is safe with me! The session for Maggs was straight after breakfast. I couldn’t leave the practice until later as I had a concert with afternoon rehearsal at a venue I’d not yet been to. My mind was partly on that, but I did a little more on Rondo and scales. Flicking through Harpe d’Or I discovered some additional pieces. One of them, The Ball, is another grade 1 piece. It is rhythmic and finishes with a glissando from top to bottom I suppose as the ball falls down and rolls away. I had some fun with this and will do some more work on it over the next few days. This would be an alternative to Sounds the Trumpets which is by far the easiest piece but The Ball is more fun. The final piece is called La forêt mysterieuse (The Mysterious Forest) and has loads of special spooky effects like rubbing the ball of the hand up and down the metal strings, knocking the sound board and plucking strings near the sound board. I really liked the sound of this so will keep this one going to add to my repertoire.


The concert was a great success. The venue was The Apex, a medium sized concert hall in the middle of a shopping centre in Bury St Edmunds. New refurbished it looks very smart and has great acoustics. The East Anglian Chamber Orchestra are a fairly new group but make a great sound and the programme was varied and interesting. I was only in one piece, Milhaud's La Creation du Monde but I listened to the rest of the programme. Several grade-1-a-bees were performing (on their usual instruments) and special mention must go to one of the GOAT organising team, Maurice Hodges, who gave a beautiful performance of Faure's Ballade for Piano and Orchestra, and played in two of the other orchestral pieces. Afterwards I asked Maurice how he managed to prepare for this concert and keep his horn practise going. I was told he had skipped the piano practise this week. That's how important the Grade-1-a-thon is!