Benslow Music Trust

My half term began with a trip to Benlow Music Trust, Hitchin as Caroline and I were running a woodwind ensemble course there. This was our ninth one and the 20 or so participants ranged from Benslow regulars who attend numerous courses throughout the year to those who are coming for the first time. They all share the same interest and all hope to improve their skills, make music, learn a trick or two and make a few friends. Several of my grade 1 sponsors were there as well as one of my sponsors and fellow grade-1-a-be, Pat, who is a flautist and passed her grade 1 on the trumpet during the grade-1-a-thon. Pat did admit to catching up with the blog from time to time so "Hello Pat!" if you are reading!

View from my room overlooking the main house. Not particularly musical but it's a lovely setting.

All players play in a large ensemble that Caroline conducts and I organise players into smaller groups where they play one to a part. I coach the small groups throughout the weekend and we finish with an informal performance on the Sunday afternoon. For some reason this year the players were very well matched and each of the groups that I formed seemed to gel very well. As well as the five large ensemble piece several groups got through two or three smaller pieces, not bad for less than three days of practise! We had a small but appreciative audience for our little performance, including one of my biggest fans Ziggy the dog!

Ziggy waits eagerly for the performance

This is what I hope to do on the harp if a course coincides with one of my free weekends and I asked the director of music Stephen Pettit if he had any plans to run a harp weekend. Benslow do already run an International Harp Summer School but he hadn't thought there would have been much of a market for a lower level course. I could tell my enthusiasm for such an event had caused a little light bulb in his head to come on, faintly at first, and he did hint that a small course could be organised to see what the initial reaction would be.

I had an email from one of the participants this morning who had a great time but was "still suffering (very badly) at stuffing up" during the performance. I didn't realise this at the time otherwise I would have given some words of comfort then but replied to say that on these courses we like to think of things as 'work in progress' rather that a polished performance. One of the problems these days is that most of the performances we hear, either in the concert hall or on the tv, radio or recordings, are top quality (if you don't include some of the reality shows!) and what we never see are the hours and hours of rehearsal time along with wrong notes, missed entries and squeaks that happen at all levels. The trick is to learn to keep going and look like you know what you are doing, something that some fo the more experienced players are already doing. I sent the player the first page from John Holt's 'Never Too Late' and had a reply shortly afterwards to say that they had laughed out loud on the train and felt a little better!