Get ready for Calamity Jane on Saturday October 7, 9.30 – 12.30, Felton Village Hall as usual. There's more info about it on the calendar.
We've sorted out the themes for the next three Drop In Singing Sessions. See the Drop In Singing page for more information. Get in touch if you've got suggestions.
Great concert coming up at Gallery 45 on Thursday, September 28th - Alistair Anderson and Dan Walsh come to Felton - don't miss it!
Don't forget it's Felton Music Saturday this weekend!
Can you contribute any information for the Calendar or the Resources page? Email anything you think should go in to Alison at felton4music@gmail.com. Also, these updates should go out automatically to all subscribers, if you don't receive them - check your spam/junk folder as it may have unintentionally ended up there.
We ended an amazing June and launched a slightly less busy July with our pop-up Pirates of Penzance. What a weekend! It takes a good dose of courage even to sign up take part in the project, and buckets-full to arrive and follow it through. Nearly forty adults prepared to give up a summer weekend to work very hard to put on an instant and very entertaining show.
When I was getting going with music things as a teenager, I was rather snooty about G and S. Maybe I was put off by the performance I was taken to as a child. In my memory it was terribly long, boring and full of screechy women. There were the songs we had to learn in school choir - including Poor Wand’ring One, in order to bolster some G and S concert - more screechy women. There was the occasional orchestral experience - being passed a couple of polo mints by a bassoonist just before two pages of non-stop playing, or the wig which fell from a cast-member onto my head during a difficult bit. I enjoyed playing for “The Sorcerer” at university, but put G and S into the not-me category for years.
Then, when Felton Music was just getting going a few people said they’d fancy returning to their G and S glory days, and, with lots of input from Chris Jones the concept of the instant show emerged, with the Mikado in 2016. It would be a way of afficianados getting their fix, and a fun project for all. This year has made it clear that we’ve got the capability to put on a thoroughly rehearsed show really well, but hardly anyone has the time, so we’ll pop up again in 2018.
I’ve found it all tremendously enjoyable. The more I get into Sullivan’s music, the more I value it. Glorious tunes, and all eminently singable. Scoring the music for our resident band means one really gets to know each piece, and I’m beginning to get a feel for how Sullivan’s harmony works. Yes, lots of tumti-tum, but that allows the words through - and now I find them so funny.
Of course, the main pleasure is working with everyone involved. Those intoxicating qualities of commitment, creativity, collaboration, stepping-forwardness, good humour and generosity of spirit energise everyone. Even the electricity had to good manners to spark back into life when we were ready to start on the Saturday.
It’s been fun for me to do the directing bit. That’s something I did little of in previous existences. Very good for the waist-line too. Easier this time with a larger, sturdier music stand - I’ve bought one for myself and one for Felton Music as well so pianists using the big keyboard at the Village Hall are at less risk of the music capsizing.
I’ve learned a lot from these two G and S celebrations, and look forward tremendously to next year’s - whichever it is. Meanwhile, it’s back to business with a Felton Music Saturday coming up and the end of term Instant-Irish-Evening on Tuesday. I look forward to seeing people there - and at Felton Fair.
Enjoy musicals? Our next one is Calamity Jane on Saturday October 7, 9.30 – 12.30, Felton Village Hall as usual. See the Musical in a Morning page.
See and hear recorder players and madrigal singers at Rock Hall on Wednesday August 30. Oh – and the Handlebards will be doing “A Midsummer Night's Dream” as well! Read more about the event here.
Drop In Singing returns to weekly sessions from Tuesday August 29. See the Drop In Singing page for more information.
Can you contribute any information for the Calendar or the Resources page? Email anything you think should go in to Alison at felton4music@gmail.com
A key job for today is planning a short programme of Elizabethan music. This is going to greet people arriving for the Handlebards performance of “As You Like It”, and perhaps entertain them in the interval as well. If you haven’t been to a Handlebards play before, how do I begin to explain? Spellbinding, funny, creative, utterly professional, zany, motivating you to open your Shakespeare the moment you get home? Bicycle-powered Bard with a cast of four. Take a look at www.handlebards.com for the full story. Our show is at Felton Park, on Friday August 4 and if you haven’t yet got a ticket, Tim Cooper has a few for sale at Felton Fair on Saturday.
August 4 seemed ages away when we thought of putting on some music. What a great opportunity for all the recorder players who are emerging all over the place - some home grown. And for people who enjoy the odd madrigal or two. Now it’s only a month ahead, and the Felton Music machinery creaks into action, emailing all who had volunteered to check their availability for practices. That’s the worst step in the whole process. Everyone is so busy, inevitably at different times - it’s cause for celebration if we find a single time slot that everyone can do.
The recorder players are well away. More and less experienced are going to join forces for a set of eight popular tunes - that’s popular in the early 16th century, but you’d recognise Greensleeves and, if you came to the Regency Ball, Sellenger’s Round. The more skilled will whizz their fingers round a few more pieces as well. We haven’t started the singing stuff yet. It’s just women this time - unusually, few of the men were available this time and the little group who were could have been overwhelmed, so they’ve got the evening off.
The next task is finalising the choice of songs and writing them out on my trusty software. There are loads of wonderful songs from the Elizabethan period - when England (pace Scotland etc) was acknowledged throughout Europe to be having a golden age of music. True, lots are fa-la-la-ish, but when you’re in the mood, a bit of fa-la-la goes down a treat. If you’re not up in this sort of stuff, think “Now is the Month of Maying” and you’ll be in the right zone. Fortunately for us, it was a time when printers and publishers flourished and there was a thriving market for sheet music. That means we’ve still got copies, though they are not that easy for modern music readers to cope with. Nowadays, we’re used to having all the parts in a song written out on the same sheet, one above the other. Handy - you can see what the others are doing. They just had their own part. No bar lines either. We’re told that every educated person was expected to be able to sing and play at least one instrument. Recorders and viols of different sizes inhabited chests and were liberated when people fancied a bit of instrumental music.
This culture of domestic music making will only have involved the wealthy who had the leisure to pursue it. I suppose, in a way, I’m about trying to help recreate that culture, but for everyone, making music-making a normal thing to do.
Welcome to the first blog post on this, our very own Felton Music website! When Emma George, who has steered the website from the start and done all its engineering asked whether there would be a blog I replied airily that, of course there would be. Now I’m staring at the screen and feeling increasingly daunted by the prospect. If you are reading this - no money has changed hands, but there must be an element of expectation. Bit of pressure there.
Not having much of an on-line-life, I have little experience of reading other blogs, so haven’t got models to draw on, or approaches to avoid. There certainly won’t be any pictures of what I had for breakfast, and nothing about the pony unless it’s really relevant - like discovering how many tunes from the Pirates of Penzance work well for maintaining rhythm while riding. She particularly likes “Climbing over Rocky Mountain”, redolent of her Tyrolean ancestry perhaps.
Riding sometimes provides useful thinking time, and a lot of the thinking I do is around how music works and how people acquire and improve musical skills. I’m always fascinated by how different people think in music - not about it but just it. How do they recall a melody, compare one tune with another, imagine how two notes would go together, feel the sound of a flute? The blog could provide opportunities to share ideas and questions about that sort of stuff - encouraging you to think about your music thinking too and feed it back.
There’s the pragmatic side of the blog too, drawing your attention to stuff coming up. You’ll be able to find information about things elsewhere on the site. That’s the main reason for setting up the website. We’ve got a lot going on, and up to now I’ve been deluging people with emails, trying to make sure no one misses out on things. Your in-box will lighten now. You can check on activities at your convenience.
There’ll be celebration of things we’ve done too. The two years since we started doing more music in this community have been amongst the happiest in my life. Music is good, but people are great, especially when they are doing things together. I’ve always liked the fact that the verb for doing music is playing. It’s a privilege to come out and play with you, and I hope we have many more opportunities to do so.