An amazing amount of Admin!

After all the excitment of winning the commission, I've now come down to earth after hearing the amount of admin I have to do before it all goes ahead! Spent ages yesterday phoning/emailing schools in Ireland, trying to fix dates for the composition workshops that Bobby Chen and I are going to do, signing lots of forms, finding out whether I'm insured for personal liability insurance whilst I'm in Ireland (in case I get hit by a flying cymbal in one of the Greystones Orchestra rehearsals?), finding out about bank charges (I'm wishing the UK had the Euro at the moment!), and a myriad other things!

Back home in Cambridge, with a piano concerto to write...

It took about a week for me to hear the result of the interview, during which time I got steadily more and more morose, emailing all my friends telling them how I must have failed...so, was quite a bizarre experience when I had a phone call telling me I'd won! Overjoyed of course, and immediately went to the piano with lots of ideas (when I should have been working on the piece I'm writing at the moment)...

So, I shall start to write the piano concerto in September, after I've finished the piece I'm currently working on, and after my second trip to Co. Wicklow to give a series of workshops with Bobby Chen (pianist).

In the meantime, I'm keen to gather as many comments and ideas as possible about what the piano concerto should be based on/inspired by! Here's the little advert I wrote about the piece again: please post any ideas, however small or however grand!

Ideas wanted! Help to create a new Musical Composition, based on/inspired by Wicklow County (musicians and non-musicians wanted!!)

I am a composer who has applied to Wicklow County Council for a grant to write a 25 minute piano concerto, which will be premiered in Greystones and Bray by the pianist Bobby Chen and the Greystones Orchestra in 2009.

I want to create a new musical work that is uniquely and specifically connected to the county of Wicklow and the surrounding area, and would like to receive any ideas that people have as to what the concerto should contain or be based on/inspired by. Perhaps you are a musician, and love a particular tune that is associated with the area? Or an artist who thinks one of your paintings (or a picture that you have seen) particularly sums up the atmosphere of Bray or Greystones? Or a writer/poet who would like to put some of your work forward to be used as inspiration for the new work? I am open to everyone’s ideas as to what the piece should contain, and these ideas need not be musical: I am open to absolutely every idea, no matter how big or small! Bobby Chen and I hope the creation of this work will give many people a unique chance to be involved in the conception and creation of a new piece of music.

Thanks! Cheryl :)

Immediately post-interview

A (very quiet!) pint after the interview, before heading back home.

Interview day! Going to Wicklow Town

The day of the interview I took an early train, giving me time to look around Wicklow Town....here are some photos!

Walking from Bray Head to Greystones

Walking along the Promenade in BrayBray Head
A view of Bray from the top of Bray Head

The top of Bray Head

I had a free day before the interview after going to the Greystones Orchestral Concert, so decided to take a train to Bray and then walk back to Greystones over the cliffs....Some amazing views!

Some flowers on the cliff walk from Bray Head back to Greystones...

The Greystones Orchestra Concert in the Artane School of Music

The Greystones Orchestra get a standing ovation...

On the 27th May the Greystones Orchestra did a concert featuring songs from the shows. It was great fun (apparently a bit of a departure from their usual repertoire) and they were joined by the fantastic Artane Boys band (shown off to full effect in the Phantom of the Opera medley!)

It was great to meet some of the players afterwards, and the conductor Ronan O'Reilly.

You can find out more about the orchestra from their website: http://homepage.eircom.net/~greystonesorchestra/index.html

Anchors in Greystones...

On hearing that I got to the final round...

About a month after I submitted the application, I heard that I'd got to the final round, where four people would be interviewed, and that I'd now have to submit a developed proposal. The panel had several concerns about my project a) whether I was adequately aware of the standard of the Greystones Orchestra, b) how the school workshops would work, c) whether the concerto would have a life after the premieres in Co. Wicklow, and d) they were concerned about whether there would be enough publicity for the work.

So, first of all I got a list of over thirty schools in Wicklow, Bray and Greystones and phoned them all up: seven were interested in the composition workshops that I had devised, so that was great to back up the application. Then, through a rejigging of the money that I was hoping to win, I managed to budget for the production of 1000 CD's (to be given out free to local libraries, schools, and any audience members who would like one), the recording of the CD's (my good friend Bartosz Klimaszewski, a brilliant composer of electronic music, will record the premiere in Ireland), and the production of 5000 leaflets. I came up with the idea for this blog, budgetted for all the materials to produce scores of the finished work (one to go to every library/school again etc), and so on and so on...basically trying to think of everything that I could to make the projects as well publicised as possible..

I must have sent over fifty emails to lots of different organisations, socieities and groups, and got many enthusiastic replies. I'm even going to have tea with the members of the Greystones and District Active Retirement Club some time in the autumn, where I'll hopefully hear lots of stories about Greystones' past which will provide inspiration for some of the work!

Also, as luck would have it, two days before my interview, the Greystones Orchestra were doing a concert in the Artane School of music (see next post for more info about this). So I was able to hear them first hand (and I was really impressed, the concert was great!), which helped to prove that I knew the standard of who I was writing for. I added an extra two pages about the school workshops, detailing how Bobby Chen and I will help pupils to devise their own compositions/improvisations, to be performed in the workshop, and I also made a case for the work having a life after the premieres. Although the new piano concerto will be based on the ideas of the local people of Co. Wicklow, it won't be some awful pastiche of Irish music, or a cheap rip off of Ralph Vaughan Williams (Wicklow is known as the Garden of Ireland...) and I hope that a concerto for professional pianist and mixed ability orchestra will be really useful for pianists who are beginning their careers and want to play some contemporary music, but are not at the stage where they are performing with professional orchestras yet. Well, that's the aim anyway!

More about the Greystones Orchestra's concert in the next post...

Public Sculpture and Art in Greystones.

Greystones is a small town (population in 2002 was only 7,315 people). For a town of this size it has an amazing amount of public sculpture in it, absolutely fantastic! See here for more info about the town...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greystones

Views from Greystones Harbour

A view of my B&B (Sleivemore Guest House, the White House second from right) from behind some rocks on Greystones Harbour. Taken during a walk along the length of the harbour and back, finding so many lovely stones, including an amazing irridescent grey one which I have on my desk now, and still haven't worked out what it is!

The view of Greystones Harbour from my B&B the night before the final round interview...not the most welcoming weather!

Advert for the Wicklow Piano

This sums up the project really!

Ideas wanted! Help to create a new Musical Composition, based on/inspired by Wicklow County (musicians and non-musicians wanted!!)

I am a composer who has applied to Wicklow County Council for a grant to write a 25 minute piano concerto, which (if the application is successful!) will be premiered in Greystones and Bray by the pianist Bobby Chen and the Greystones Orchestra in 2009.

I want to create a new musical work that is uniquely and specifically connected to the county of Wicklow and the surrounding area, and would like to receive any ideas that people have as to what the concerto should contain or be based on/inspired by. Perhaps you are a musician, and love a particular tune that is associated with the area? Or an artist who thinks one of your paintings (or a picture that you have seen) particularly sums up the atmosphere of Bray or Greystones? Or a writer/poet who would like to put some of your work forward to be used as inspiration for the new work? I am open to everyone’s ideas as to what the piece should contain, and these ideas need not be musical: I am open to absolutely every idea, no matter how big or small! Bobby Chen and I hope the creation of this work will give many people a unique chance to be involved in the conception and creation of a new piece of music.

If you have any ideas that you would like to put to me, or simply want to find out more about the project, please email me at Cheryl@cherylfranceshoad.co.uk. You can find out more about me on my website: www.cherylfranceshoad.co.uk, and about the pianist Bobby Chen at www.bobbychen.org.

I would love to hear anybody’s ideas, and of course would credit every one of them. Please do get in contact and help make our project a success!!

Cheryl Frances-Hoad

Cheryl Frances-Hoad graduated from Cambridge University with a triple 1^st in 2001 and an Mphil (with Distinction) in Composition, also at Cambridge. She has just been awarded her PhD in Musical Composition from Kings College London, having studied with Silvina Milstein and George Benjamin. She began composing at the age of eight while studying ‘cello and piano at the Yehudi Menuhin School, and since then has won several prizes, including the Purcell Composition Prize, The Bach Choir Carol Competition, the BBC Young Composers Workshop 1996, the Cambridge Composer’s Competition, the Robert Helps Prize and the International String Orchestra Festival Prize. She has had two ballets choreographed by Lynn Seymour and Geoffrey Cauley; the second was performed by Scottish Ballet in the Britten Theatre, London. Her commissions include works for the BBC, the Surrey Philharmonic, the Manchester International ‘Cello Festival, the Chard Festival of Women in Music, the Bass Club, Bass Fest, the Almeida Festival, the Schubert Ensemble, the Fujita Piano trio, and the Kreisler Ensemble, and her music has been featured on BBC2, ITV, Radio 3 and Classic FM.

How it all began....

Pebbles on the beach of Greystones Harbour

Several months ago, whilst sitting in front of my computer searching for composition competitions and opportunities, I came across Wicklow County Council's Per Cent for Arts Scheme, which was holding a competition for eight commissions (one of which was for music). The scheme is amazingly impressive, and funds the commissioning of many different art forms, from literature through music to public sculpture. You can find more out about the programme here:

http://www.wicklow.ie/artsoffice/Public%20Art/index.htm

I came up with the idea of writing a piano concerto for Bobby Chen, a great friend and great pianist, and Wicklow's local orchestra, and immediately set about bombarding people in Wicklow with emails asking them whether they would be interested in the project. I received a fabulous amount of feedback, and the success of my application has been helped tremendously by everyone's help and enthusiasm. In particular I have at this point to thank Tony Flemming (Chairman of the Greystones Orchestra), who has replied incredibly quickly to my many emails, which have ranged in subject matter from which train to get on to get to the orchestra' recent concert, to how much to budget for for church hire, piano tuning and even the orchesta's tea and biscuits! I'm aware that it may have seemed somewhat insane, some composer randomly emailing an orchestra in a county that I'd never even been to before and suggesting that they might like a new twenty-five minute piece from me, and I'm very grateful for everyone's willingness to go along with my ideas!

Also high on the list to thank are Dermot McCabe of the Bray Arts Club (see www.brayarts.net)
for publishing my article about the project in the May edition of the Bray Arts Journal, and Grainne McLoughlin of the Greystones Arts Festival for all her help and support (a mini site about this project will soon appear on the Greystones Arts Festival website). Many thanks to the people who have contributed ideas for the piano concerto (more of that later!)...

So, I set about getting an application together...I think the advert that I wrote for the Bray Arts Journal sums the project up, so here it is reproduced below....

Welcome to the Wicklow Piano Concerto Blog!

Hello!

This blog has come into existence to document the composition of a new piano concerto by me (Cheryl Frances-Hoad). I've been lucky enough to win the Music Commission from Wicklow County Council, funded by the Per Cent for Arts Scheme, and as a result will compose the new work, to be premiered by Bobby Chen and the Greystones Orchestra in c. May 2009. As part of the project Bobby Chen and I will also take a series of workshops in schools in County Wicklow in the Autumn of 2008.

The aim of the project is to compose a new piano concerto that is inspired by North East Co. Wicklow (principally the towns of Bray, Greystones and Wicklow) , using local people's ideas, stories, poems, paintings, photos (and anything else!) as the basis for the work. One of the most important reasons for this blog is for people to contribute, so please post any ideas and comments you may have!

This blog will document the entire project, detailing everything from the day to day writing of the piano concerto to the planning and admin (of which there has been a lot so far and I'm sure there will be a lot more!). Please don't expect to read about any innovative compositional techniques: those wishing for great musical insights should perhaps look elsewhere, as in this blog I'll simply be documenting my thoughts about the new piece and detailing how it is progressing.

I shall start the piano concerto in the autumn of 2007, so that's when this blog will really get going: until then I'm keen to hear as many people's ideas as possible, so please post away!

Thanks, Cheryl :)