England finally has some long-awaited summer sunshine as I write my latest blog!
In April, I was invited to play for a wedding open day at beautiful Brympton House, a nearby venue. These events can be unpredictable: you perform for several hours in the hope that someone will like your playing enough to engage you. Sometimes bookings come flying through at a rate of knots, other times there is little interest, either because the wedding couples in attendance have already made their plans or because they are keeping an eye on their budgets. However, I did get a booking on this occasion!
It was great to play the piano for the wedding breakfast of a lovely couple at Larmer Tree Gardens in Wiltshire during the latter part of May. And it was lovely that the piano was a Blüthner baby grand, an instrument which I am very familiar with. It had a really warm, singing tone, so typical of these pianos. The couple’s choice of music was diverse – pop across several decades, classical, jazz and film music.
In June I was also invited to play for the guest arrivals of another wedding at one of my favourite venues, Brympton House in Somerset. The couple had requested that I include a song by Randy Newman which was used in the film, “Toy Story”! I never know what I will be asked to play for weddings, that is what makes this work so joyful and interesting.
It is always good to see emerging artists perform live. One young pianist, whose recital I attended locally, presented an ambitious programme, including the Liszt Sonata and Chopin’s Sonata in B Minor, two hefty works which require a solid technique and great stamina. It is important when I see an artist perform, that I have absolute confidence in their playing and am not wondering when the next “cracks” might occur. On this occasion, not all the notes were fully under control, which was a shame as there were many good things in the performance. It reminded me of how much preparation is required to learn such difficult pieces, commit them to memory and perform them in front of a paying audience: it takes a lot of hard work, experience and nerves of steel.
Unexpectedly, I was invited to provide two hours of piano music at Westlands Theatre in Yeovil in July. I jumped at the opportunity as it meant playing on a beautiful Yamaha concert grand piano. The instrument did not disappoint: it had a cracking, beefy bass and a range of musical colours across the registers, which I had great fun with. I played a lot of different music: pop, jazz, blues, classical, film and TV music. It was a lovely evening and the audience was really appreciative so I am hoping for a return visit. The great thing about being classically-trained is that I have the ability to play virtually any genre of music. I subscribe to the view that music is simply either good or bad, regardless of its category. I love many different types of music: heavyweight classical, light classical, blues, pop, jazz, folk, film and ambient music and enjoy playing it all on the piano, either from a score or from my own arrangements. Some of these pieces I play with music and some from memory, which I feel enables me to give a more authentic performance and connect more fully with the audience.
I made my customary visit to the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall in July. This wasn’t to see a classical Prom: it was a celebration of dance music played by the London Concert Orchestra. It was such a joyful and colourful evening with many superb classic tracks from the seventies which really took me back to my teenage years in London!
Two of my pupils took their piano exams this term, a Grade 6 student who was awarded a Merit and a Grade 2 student, for which I am awaiting the result. A third student is to take her Grade 8 exam before she goes off to university in September. My exam preparation will continue into next term with pupils working for Grades 1, 5, 6, 7, 8 as well as the Performance Diploma.
The new ABRSM piano exam syllabus is here! There were some odd choices in the previous syllabus, sometimes not very inspiring and, in my opinion, not always grade-appropriate. So it is good to discover that many of the new pieces across the grades are attractive and rewarding to play. They are certainly more ethnically diverse and several are written by more female composers than ever before. Having said that, I believe that music should be evaluated purely on merit, not on the basis of gender, so I won’t necessarily be opting for those pieces for my pupils, unless I feel that they have genuine substance and are the right choices for individual pupils.
Finally, let us hope that the new British government takes the Arts more seriously than the previous one. The music sector is always one of the first to suffer in tough economic times: we need politicians who appreciate and openly acknowledge the many benefits of learning an instrument and the potential benefit to the economy. They must ensure that music in schools and our great musical institutions is adequately funded and supported. I was dismayed to hear that the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama close their Junior department due to financial pressures. If this happens it will be yet another act of cultural vandalism in this country.
Now I am looking forward to my summer break, after a busy but immensely varied few months of teaching and performing!