Back home in Cambridge...

So, now that the workshops have finished, the next thing to do is write the piano concerto! The week away gave me many ideas: stories that the children told us, the pieces we composed and performed, and the stories that we heard from everybody at Bray Arts. I've also got several books to read, about the history of Greystones, and the local railways which will all no doubt contain lots of interesting material which might be useful.

However, before I start the piano concerto I've got a string quartet to write for the Cheltenham Festival, and another piano work (this time solo) for Bobby Chen! I'll begin the piano concerto in about June '08, and will be regularly posting here from then onwards...

But there's plenty to be doing in the meantime! I have to book the venues and dates of the three concerts that we will do. Then I have to make sure that the piano gets there in time and is tuned, make sure the concert is recorded, and organise a competition for art work and poetry in the schools that we went to (there will hopefully be a big display at the Mermaid Arts Centre, and the winning painting will get to go on the front of the CD that will be made!). I've got to sign a million contracts making sure that everybody gets the money they need to put on the concerts (the budget is solely my responsibility). And that's about half of it! But it's all going to be totally worth it, as I think this project is going to be fabulous, and I can't wait to get started on the concerto!

Last day

On our last day in Co. Wicklow we went to St. Fergal's school in Bray for another two 45 minute workshops. We again decided to portray walking up Bray Head. The story began with us climbing up the hill (some very good tom-tom playing!), followed by seeing the flowers at the top of the hill (fantastically played by three girls on a keyboard, with a D major chord spanning some five octaves!), and amongst other things hearing the birds singing (the group doing the birds were fabulous, and were really listening and "talking" to each other on their penny whistles. By the end of the second workshop Bobby and I were totally exhausted! After a meeting at Wicklow County Council, we made our move back to the airport, and took off back to the U.K. It had been a fantastic week and we have both decided we would like to do many more workshops in the future!

Three workshops in one day!

Thursday was perhaps our most hectic day! Bobby and I did two workshops at St. Kevin's School, Greystones, and then one in the afternoon at the Bray Institute of further education. The workshops at St. Kevin's were 45 minutes each, not the usual 90, so things were extra hectic! However, we still had a wonderful time and managed to create some great pieces. One piece described walking over Bray Head (a huge hill between Bray and Greystones). Groups of five to six students musically depicted the wind at the top of the hill (bells, and some wonderful coloured tubes of all different lenghts, which you could blow through), the beautiful yellow and pink gorse at the top of the hill (motifs on penny whistles), looking down at the sea bellow, climbing up the mountain (big crescendo's on the drums) and so on!

In the afternoon at the Bray Institute, we met up with another group and made some great music with keyboards, guitars and a few other instruments, The piece we made here lasted 7 minutes, with rhythmic guitar strumming and chords on the piano that spanned many octaves. Representing the arrival and departure of a train through the area, this piece was a great success!

Time for a little more sightseeing...

On Wednesday afternoon we went to visit Glendalough, a village located at the site of a monastery founded by St. Kevin in the 6th Century. You can find more information about Glendalough here: http://www.glendalough.connect.ie/pages/monastic/monastic.html

Here are some pictures of the monastery, the surrounding buildings and the beautiful scenery.

The second workshop at the Glebe School, Wicklow

Our next workshop was at 9.30am in the Glebe School in Wicklow. We followed a similar format in this workshop, and created some wonderful pieces! After handing out the leaflets that I had prepared (which I've attached with this post) we began creating pieces about walking along the beach in Wicklow, depicting all the boats in the harbour with various percussion instruments, and one pupil did a fantastic flute solo (representing a swan swimming calmly over the water (the water being represented by glockenspiels, triangles, penny whistle tones and bells). Bobby's group also did a great performance, which including some acting (very convincing miming of walking up and down the beach).




Musical%20Workshop%20handout.doc

Time for some sightseeing!

After the meeting in Bray, Bobby and I decided to take advantage of the hire car (which by now I'd got used to....it was slightly different to my renault 5, with no power steering, at home!). We set off for Powerscourt Estate (http://www.powerscourt.ie/) and wandered around the amazing gardens there, then we followed the signs to "Johnny Fox's Pub" (having no idea what it actually was) and ended up having half a pint in the highest pub in Ireland!

Visiting the Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray: the venue for the premiere!

After the workshops, we visited the Mermaid Arts theatre, where (hopefully) the premiere of the piano concerto will take place. It was great to see inside the hall: it is a really happening, modern building in centre of Bray with so much going on, from craft exhibitions to classical, folk and concerts and film showings. You can find out more about the hall here: http://www.mermaidartscentre.ie/

Our first day of workshops, 4th December 2007

On tuesday morning we had a mercifully leisurely start (something we would not have for the rest of the week!). We had a huge breakfast at our fantastic B&B and set off for St. Philomena's School in Bray. I was very nervous about the whole thing, having never really done a school workshop before, certainly not for thirty pupils! However, it was soon apparent that we were going to have a fantastic time. All the pupils at the school were absolutely wonderful, and I was so grateful for everybody's enthusiasm and willingness to participate (I know when I was eleven someone would have had to have forced any comment or opinion out of me!)

The workshops had several aims: to get the children's ideas as to what should inspire the piano concerto, and to get everybody creating musical compositions of their own (through group improvisation). To begin, Bobby and I each gave our own little performances, me via a few minutes of my recorded CD, and Bobby captivated everybody with his performance of some Liszt. Then we got divided into two groups, and got everybody talking about what they liked best about their town. Many children sited the beach as one of their favourite places, so in my group we decided to do a piece all about Bray beach.

First of all we set out about thinking about how to represent Bray beach in the different weathers: what could you use to portray the calm sea and the sunlight etc (we decided to use recorders playing major chords and twinkly percussion instruments to represent the sea and the light reflecting upon it), and how would you musically represent a storm (lots of percussion was used, as well as glissandi up and down the piano!).

Half way through the workshop Bobby and I changed places, so we could both work with each group. Bobby's group was already well rehearsed, with their piece called "Freedom Alex". Not exactly based on Bray's scenery, but the piece was based on "light" and "dark" music, and used lots of lovely recorder sounds and melodies.

When we got everybody back together in the main hall, in order for each group to perform their pieces to each other. As the consumate performer, Bobby had managed to put the piece about Bray beach together wonderfully. The piece started with a representation of Bray beach in calm weather, then a storm came over as night fell, and their was an alien landing!!! (my flexitone leant itself to this bit perfectly). Everyone really joined in, and at the end of the performance looked suprised at how well they had done (the two piano players especially excelled themselves, playing notes over the entire range of the piano!)

After all the time planning the workshops, and worrying whether it would all work, it was fantastic to have spent 90 minutes with everybody and to have produced two great performances, and having so much fun on top of everything we learnt!

Our week in Ireland

Everyone enjoying a Christmas dance at the end of the Bray Arts Club meeting

So, on the 3rd December I set out for Bray, County Wicklow. My suitcase got a thorough rummaging through at the airport (due to the amount of metal in my suitcase: two penny whistles, a flexi-tone, and a melodica amongst other things) and it took me three hours to travel the 45 minute journey from the airport to Bray in my hire car (As far as I can remember I did three detours, one in totally the wrong direction, and two through the centre of Dublin in rush hour...), but otherwise things went without a hitch!

So , arriving very late there was no time to relax, and after meeting Bobby Chen at the B&B we immediately sped off to the Bray Arts Club meeting. We were received with such friendliness for which we are very grateful: our presentation about the project went well and we got lots of interesting feedback from the people there. One lady told us about her great-great grandfather who had been a Captain on a Ship, and managed to steer the vessel back to Bray despite a huge disaster at sea. The purpose of spending a week in Co. Wicklow was to gather as many stories as we could about the area, as well as doing the school workshops, so the meeting was very useful as well as fun. Another member told us about the erosion of the Greystones Cliffs (about a mile of land has disappeared into the sea in the last century), which was very interesting, and I think that the second movement of the piano concerto that I will write will be in some way based on this.

We didn't leave the meeting until gone 11pm, and (after briefly exploring Bray's nightlife) we went back to the B&B, and had thankfully little time to think (and panic) about the following day's first workshop!