Yorkshire Music: News and Updates

It was with mixed feelings last night that I watched the very final episode of Top of the Pops, a veritable monument of British popular music culture. I remember tuning in religiously with my siblings as a child to find out who was this week's Number 1 and in a sense there are lots of memories of some fine televisual experiences. However, of recent years the programme has gone downhill rapidly, replacing the original quirkiness of the studio sets and performances with a more in-your-face attitude to musical journalism.

Of course, the show has been renowned over the years as much for the total lack of ability on the part of its guests as for anything else. Really since it began in 1964 most of the 'live' performances have been mimed and often in the most comically crap manner. There was a period where TOTP, as it has become known, insisted that all their guests at least sing live (with the backing track pre-recorded) but there was very quickly a U-turn on this when they realised that most of the performers on the show simply couldn't accurately reproduce the recorded versions of their songs when asked to do it on live television. Others still took the opportunity to mock the whole thing, such as Kurt Cobain from Nirvana - his classic rendition of Smells Like Teen Spirit (from their 1991 Nevermind album) was mostly comprised of him making grating noises with his throat. He really made no attempt whatsoever to sing the song 'properly', perhaps because of whatever he was on at the time or maybe just because he thought that an appearance on a cheesy pop show for teenagers was somehow beneath what the band was trying to achieve. Who knows : either way, I think he did right!




Then, of course, there are the presenters. Lastnight's final episode of TOTP was presented collectively by many of the past faces, including Jimmy Savile, Tony Blackburn and Pat Sharp. Frankly, though, I found watching Savile mumbling his way through obviously scripted conversations with the other presenters quite disturbing, especially after seeing the documentary / interview that Louis Theroux conducted with him a couple of years ago. In that show he came across as a deluded, paranoid wash-up with an over-inflated sense of his own popularity and an unprovoked defensive attitude to the non-suggestion that he has paedophilic tendencies. A weirdo in my opinion best avoided, especially when relaxing in front of the telly, of an evening!!

I'm often asked why it is that I consider music so important that I choose to make my living from being involved with it, teaching and playing piano on a freelance basis rather than doing something more 'practical' such as office work. My answer comes in the form of another question : why is that we think of music as a purely superficial form of entertainment and yet pretty much every significant event of our lives is marked with the presence of music in some form or other? Indeed, the performance and reception of music is a massively important part of our society and it's power to evoke the strongest of emotions is crystal clear when you consider the way it helps to carry messages from the patriotism of a national anthem, religious faith of hymns to the narrative of a script in movies and television programmes. Music is everywhere and that in itself makes the study and participation of musical activities crucial.

Another interesting facet of music, I believe, is its capacity to remain in the memory as a direct reference or prompt to our feelings both past and present. Hearing a given piece can have the effect of evoking an emotional response that is equivalent to actually experiencing the event(s) that it is associated with.

My personal experience of this is demonstrated every time I happen to switch on the television during the title sequence of Star Trek Voyager - just hearing the main melody of this programme's theme tune takes me right back to a very specific time in my life in late 1998 / early 1999. Not only am I reminded of this period of my life but I internally EXPERIENCE the same feelings that I had at that time. You see, I used to walk home from college to my bedsit in the South Bay area of Scarborough and would often drop in at the cottage where two of my uni friends lived at the time. After a heavy day's study and a calming walk down that long, straight road in the cold, foggy darkness I'd step into the bustling, friendly atmosphere of Rich & Chris' pad just around teatime when their cooking of dinner and endless, amusing chats would be accompanied by the sound of a small telly, hanging from the wall on a metal rack, blasting out the sounds of Captain Janeway and her crew journeying their way across the Delta quadrant! I suppose at the time I found their abode very comforting and this feeling of warmth is poured right through me even now when I hear that string and brass melody that opens Voyager. Of course, it also reminds me of just how much I now miss those days at uni!

Most of the main events that took place during John Lennon and Yoko Ono's famous weeklong bed-in for peace back in late March 1969 were thankfully recorded on film and it was an absolute pleasure for me recently to get the opportunity to watch the resulting documentary, particularly because I was not yet born when the ex-Beatle and his wife pulled off this anti-war stunt in Canada.

The circumstances surrounding their success in getting the peace message out lies in a very cleverly planned chain of events : firstly, at the end of the previous year, John and Yoko released their first album called Two Virgins, which featured a cover comprised of two naked pictures of the couple, then they got married in Gibraltar and informed the media that they would be spending a week's honeymoon in bed, inviting many international journalists to join them over the course of that week. Of course, many people jumped to the conclusion that this would descend into the photo-opportunity of a lifetime : two of the world's most famous celebrities naked in bed together. But, that's where they were wrong - it soon became clear that the Lennons had manipulated the world's press, turning the system on it's head and using their stardom to launch an advertising campaign for peace and, specifically, the end of the Vietnam war.




The basic concept for the Bed-In was to point out that the men of war have all the tools at their disposal to keep their message alive, including control of media based news that continues even today to pump out stories designed to scare the masses into believing that aggression, violence and killing is justified. The Lennon's plan from the beginning was to take away some of this airtime and use it to talk about pacifism - a mindset that they believe is the only way to lasting peace on earth. Interview after interview took place and gave John and Yoko the opportunity to get quoted all over the world's press as saying that acts of war have been used repeatedly as a supposed method of restoring peace and the evidence was such that these tactics were clearly not working. The only alternative was to put down weapons, look for common ground and use non-violent means to settle disputes. Personally, I feel that that message is as relevant today as it was at the at the end of 1969, when John and Yoko launched their "War Is Over - if you want it" poster campaign.

Interestingly, during their week in bed (in the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel, Montreal) John and Yoko also recorded what was to become an anthem of pacifism, the song Give Peace a Chance. Musically, it ain't much cop but I think the message behind it is crystal clear.

I know that a lot of classical music buffs poo-poo the commercial radio station ClassicFM on account of it pandering to popularism and, so, being a bit on the vulgar side. And, to some extent, they're right - ClassicFM do only tend to broadcast short excerpts of very famous classical pieces and these sections tend to be the ones containing the big tunes that everyone knows, like Nessun Dorma and the like. But, it's also got to be said that this is a radio station that has become a national commercial success, reaching out to many groups who would prefer to listen to a bit of the overture to The Marriage of Figaro (without necessarily sitting through the numerous arias and recitatives that follow for several hours) than to much of the output of most other mainstream stations. Even the commercial breaks are geared towards a more delicate listening taste, often using classical pieces as background music and usually advertising charities or expensive luxury cars.

All this said, ClassicFM does tend to cut pieces short and only play short sections of classical compositions that the average bod on the street is likely to recognise. But, at least it plays classical music, unlike this company's other venture : ClassicFM TV, as seen on Sky channel 359. I can honestly say that this was the sole biggest disappointment I had when we first got digital television because it simply doesn't do what it says on the tin!

Not only does ClassicFM TV fail to play full classical works, but even the short snippets it broadcasts are mostly arranged in what can only be described as the most horrifically shiny, over-produced fashion. If you've never had the displeasure to watch this channel, I'll try to help you imagine what it's like : think of the most relaxing, slow and calm pieces of classical music your memory can muster up (I've got Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis in mind), put it through an effects unit to strip out any very high or very low frequency sounds, add an electronically generated drum beat and sprinkle in a few blips and string noises from a Casio keyboard (manufactured circa 1981) and you're getting close to the aural experience. If you can bear to open your eyes, you'll be treated to a visual representation of a very similar ilk : usually a collection of stills taken off the Greek coast or of ruined European abbeys, again filtered to allow that 'dreamy' look and often intentionally over-exposed. There's no other word for this kind of trash than utterly "dire"! How the makers of these programmes can get away with calling it's content 'classical music' I'll never know - it certainly bears no resemblence to the huge variation and complex beauty I know to be the qualities of what most people refer to as classical music. Seriously, if it's not over-produced piano sounds it's Hayley Westenra... I'm not being snobby here : this TV Station just pumps out cheaply made rubbish and targets its marketing in the direction of people who like to tell their friends that they're into classical music (but who wouldn't actually know one end of a bassoon from the other). Beam me up, Scotty!!

No, if you want to watch anything vaguely to do with classical music on your digital television I'd steer well away from ClassicFM TV and go for either the newly free-to-view Artsworld (Sky channel 267) or the Perfomance Channel (Sky channel 271). Better yet, switch the telly off and tune into BBC Radio 3!!

The name Engelbert Humperdinck is most often these days associated with the crooning singer of the 1960's and 70's who had such hits as Please Release Me, The Last Waltz & There Goes My Everything. But few people who aren't into classical music realise that not only is this not the singer's real name but that it was borrowed as a stage name from another musician who lived almost a century earlier : Engelbert Humperdinck the German composer of light opera.




In his day, though, Humperdinck the senior was every bit as famous as his British singing namesake (the latter's real name actually being Arnold Dorsey) and had friends and colleagues who have become household names in the classical music world, albeit for entirely different reasons, such as Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss. Infact, in the early 1880's Humperdinck assisted Wagner with his first production of Parsifal.. although the history books don't tell us a great deal about in what manner his assistance was required - presumably in orchestration and part writing.

Today one work by Humperdinck does continue to be regularly performed. This is his opera Hansel and Gretal that started life as a series of songs and then, due to its obvious potential, became a full scale stage work with orchestral accompaniment. This is a work that often gets performed at Christmas time and, because of it's subject matter, is popular with children. One section of this work that is quite well known and is used occasionally on mainstream television is the Evening Prayer - even if you don't think you know it you probably would recognise the melody!

But, alas, Hansel and Gretal was to be Humperdinck's only really widely celebrated work as in later life his health suffered, firstly in 1912 when he had a severe stroke that left him partially paralysed, and then nine years later with two heart attacks, the second of which caused his death on September 27th 1921. He did leave quite a body of compositions behind, including a series of songs and operas based on other fairy tales, but he perhaps will be most recognised for being the first composer to adopt the vocal technique known as Sprechgesang - a half singing and half speaking manner that still enjoys great use on the musical stage today.

Out of interest, the other Humperdinck, Arnold Dorsey's, website contains some interesting and massively self-congratulatory quotes that might be worth a little snigger at :

I visited my favourite GuitarTabs website today, Guitar Tab Universe, because I was listening to a Bob Dylan song in my car and, although I could easily work out the chords for the song, I wondered if anyone had contributed a tab for the solo guitar parts that appear in the instrumental sections.

This is how Guitar Tab Universe works, you see : it is kind of like a forum where musicians can discuss guitar performance techniques and tell each other how to play many well known songs. This latter part works by people's free and willing submission of guitar parts as they have transcribed them. There's no copying out of published score books (this is actively discouraged by the site owners) but clearly the participants' intentions are to recreate the original songs in as accurate a fashion as possible - songs that ARE protected by copyright law. So, the line between a common sense way of sharing guitar playing techniques and actually infringing the copyright of the original artists and (more importantly) their super-rich corporate publishers is somewhat blurred. Clearly, the way these kinds of sites encourage their users to share information about music that we can all hear freely on the radio has ruffled some feathers in the music world, though : when I hit the Guitar Tab Universe site today the following message was displayed on its front page :


To all "Guitar Tab Universe" visitors:

The company which owns this website has been indirectly threatened (via our ISP) with legal action by the National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA) as well as the Music Publishers' Association (MPA) on the basis that sharing tablature constitutes copyright infringement. At what point does describing how one plays a song on guitar become an issue of copyright infringment? This website, among other things, helps users teach eachother how they play guitar parts for many different songs. This is the way music teachers have behaved since the first music was ever created. The difference here is that the information is shared by way of a new technology: the Internet.

When you are jamming with a friend and you show him/her the chords for a song you heard on the radio, is that copyright infringement? What about if you helped him/her remember the chord progression or riff by writing it down on, say, a napkin... infringement? If he/she calls you later that night on the phone or e-mails you and you respond via one of those methods, are you infringing? I don't know... but I would really like to know. If anyone has information on this, please email support@guitartabs.cc.

Apparently, the NMPA/MPA believes that the Internet may be on the foul side of the legality line they would like to draw here. For me, I see no difference. It's teachers educating students and covered as a 'fair use' of the tablature. The teachers here don't even get paid nor do the students have to pay this website to access the lessons.

An attack on this website is really an attack on every one of you who have told someone (in person, or via the written word, telephone, or e-mail) how you play a song on guitar. And who, especially among small websites, has the deep pockets to fight the NMPA/MPA? They use scare tactics while there is, in fact, no legal precedent on this matter (to the best of our knowledge). If you are interested in expressing your opinion to the NMPA/MPA, contact them via their respective websites. Please do not resort to vulgar language or insults.

Millions of people use the Internet to learn guitar, in one form or another. It appears the NMPA/MPA and their members do not want to support us and help us further our education. To you visitors from outside the USA or UK, can you find your favorite artists' "official sheet music" at your local music store? Even in the United States and United Kingdom, we often can not. The NMPA/MPA have a choice to make: either they support us as aspiring guitarists, or they choose to alienate their customer base. To date, not one sheet music publisher has contacted this website to either inquire as to our activities or to express interest in any type of dialogue or collaboration whatsoever. All we deserve is a cold, indirect, impersonal threat without any explanation? They should embrace new technologies or else become relics of the old economy.

Since I'm now 'worried' about working around tabs at all, I'm in a tough situation! Luckily, I'm fairly confident that if I alone listen to a song and then figure out how to play it by ear, I will then be able to enjoy using that knowledge to practice and improve my guitar playing skills. Is that what is necessary for everyone to do? Work these things out alone? What a sad situation.

Sincerely,
Rob Balch


This is a tricky one - no musician would want to rip off their fellow writer or performer by stealing their work, in whatever form that alleged theft takes place. But, it does seem fair enough that people will always want to share what they know about a given song, show each other how it is played and demonstrate this by using the simplest methods, such as some form of notation / tablature. I can't honestly say exactly where I stand on this argument except to note that those who are against tab-sharing (and, for that matter, more clear-cut infringements of copyright law, such as file-sharing) tend to be the fat-cats who stand to make the most money out of the work of artists who don't themselves necessarily see much return for their labours. For this reason, for the time being at least, I'll be supporting sites such as Guitar Tabs Universe - I think their principles of sharing knowledge and experience are more valuable than the money grabbing motives of the corporate music industry.

I've been getting a lot of ribbing recently about the hair growth I've allowed to take place on my chin.. some have said that I am starting to look like a singer from a death metal band or that the beard puts age on me, others refer to my hairy patch as a "M.O.C." (that's 'Minge on Chin' to those who don't know..) and yet others have been more unkind with their remarks!! Of course, the more teasing I get about it more likely I am to try to grow it even longer! I like to think of the beard as giving my face character - a bit of a bohemian flair, but then the mind's capacity for self-kidology really is quite astounding!!

Anyway, all this reminded me of the silly online game that came out a few years ago, Rob Manuel's 'Name That Beard', so I thought I'd do a mini version myself on this blog : Name That Composer's Beard! So here goes - do you recognise any of the beards below?

I often think about the day in 1955 when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on an Alabama bus to a white passenger, resulting in a mass boycott by black Americans of the Montgomery bus and ultimately in kick starting the Civil Rights Movement in the States (the bravery of that act has come under the spotlight of discussion more recently since Parks' death in October of last year). And one of the things I find most interesting about this period of American history is the hypocritical nature of the way black citizens were treated by the US public at large as both unworthy of sharing schools, transport systems, bathrooms etc with their white peers and also as a form of entertainment. And this being the status quo for decades in a country that now parades itself as the leader of the free democratic world...

Black music did find its way to white audiences, though, and even as early as the days of Gershwin works that were clearly influenced by jazz traditions were repackaged as "symphonised syncopation" and so the branding suggested a safe, white origin to a music that was gaining popularity and would eventually become engrained in the consciousness of the West.

Of course, as years passed many black musicians came to the forefront of the American musical sphere, even when the country was in the grips of what was to all intents and purposes an apartheid - a period that had not yet shaken off the legacy of the forced slavery of West African immigrants. But, as Joseph Taylor points out in his article On the Note: Soul, this development of an interest in music by black Americans actually played a part in changing the perception of black people generally:

A lot of writing about rock as a social force in the '60s has been naïve or self-serving, but I think soul music really did help people change their attitudes about race. At a time when middle-class white kids anointed pop stars as their spokesmen and consciences, quite a few of those stars were African-American. In the late '40s and into the '50s, bebop had shown white intellectuals that blacks could create complex art - - that they could initiate an intellectual movement themselves. Soul music showed relatively affluent white kids that an entire race of Americans had been denied things in life they took for granted.

We continue to celebrate the wonderfully diverse history of 'black music' with awards ceremonies such as the MOBO's, but it does strike me that now might be the time to stop forcing a race-categorisation on the music that comes out of our multicultural world and accept that we in the 21st Century will always have a massive body of musical history weighing down on our creativity and to strive for originality and contextual significance is more important than a composer's / artist's skin colour. This is not to say that there doesn't continue to be a lack of equality in the music and arts fields (as discussed in articles such as Botswana: Women and Classical Music) but I firmly believe that these need to be addressed by concentrating on the art in question rather than the ethnicity or gender of its creator.

If you're into your classical music but don't want to pay the ever increasing prices charged by high street record stores or even 'specialist' music shops that seem to add another 10% to the cost, then it's probably worth looking to alternative places to get the music you're after.

Of course, a lot of recorded classical music finds its way to car-boot sales and market stalls but, not altogether surprisingly, these tend to be 3rd-hand, warped copies of Nigel Kennedy playing the Vivaldi Four Seasons. But there are other more reliable sources, including a thriving trade on Ebay. One other place you might want to look at is Steve Vasta's Classical CD Exchange that he runs via email based sales : his list currently holds some really good recordings for a relatively small charge, including recordings by the LPO, Linda Brava, BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra etc. Of course, many of the pieces he offers on CD can be bought on the excellent NAXOS label but you might be interested in listening to versions other than those performed and recorded by Eastern European musicians - the NAXOS recordings are a really valuable resource but they do tend to have a certain musical 'flavour' unique to this label. You can contact Steve to get a list of recordings he has for sale on Stevevasta@aol.com*

Of course, you could cut out the middleman altogether and just listen to live performances and many great recordings 24/7 on BBC's Radio 3 - still truly a wonderful station for any serious music listener!


* FinishMySong, of course, has no business relationship with Steve or Classical CD Exchange, so any transaction you have with him is conducted at your own risk!

As TFF's next major gig approaches (on Sat July 22nd at The Gasworks) I got to thinking that it is rare these days to go to Bradford city centre to watch a good gig by a live band, mostly because many of the great venues that once were have pretty much shut up shop, presumably due to a lack of passing trade since a lot of 'high-street shopping' has moved out to major centres in the suburbs. There are one or two places left in Bradford that strive to bring the people of West Yorkshire a really new and interesting musical experience, The Gasworks being one, but they are getting to be something of a rare breed.

Of course, we played for the closing night of The Melborn not so long ago - I believe that that venue is now to become some kind of retail outlet - and it was a real shame for the place to shut down after so long, especially with such characters at the helm as 'Brother Eamon' and their dedication to open-mic type events. But another music bar that I think has been sorely missed since it closed some years ago now is Maguire's, that used to be on City Road (just near the junction with Thornton Road). This was a place I spent many years during my mid-late teens visiting to see some of the best in music of celtic folk origin. Maguire's actually became so well known that it attracted many major, internationally recognised artists including the likes of Ralph McTell, The Bothy Band and Blyth Power, as well as being happy to put on stage many more local talents of the genre such as The Seven Little Sisters.

I suppose the place has a kind of personal value to me aswell : some of the happiest times of my life thus far have taken place in that venue, from the odd early romantic interlude to simply sitting chatting the evening away with my brother (who was also a regular visitor to Maguire's) over a couple of pints of cold Guinness with The Pogues or Christy Moore blasting out of the jukebox - it was certainly the ideal venue for such an occasion. I only hope that with the current economic boom in Northern England, a new generation of music-loving entrepreneurs will consider opening more venues of this ilk. Hey, I would even consider it myself!!

A couple of months ago I wrote a blog about the future of Kylie Minogue's career, how I feel that now is the time for her to use the massive popularity she has enjoyed over the past two decades to do something positive to support the rest of those people suffering from horrific, terrifying diseases such as breast cancer, whilst also taking the opportunity to transform her iconic angle from singing pin-up to mature, confident but, more importantly, aware female vocal artist.

Today I believe the first steps towards this goal have been taken in an world-exclusive interview she has given to Cat Deeley for Sky Television. In it she speaks openly and frankly about the experiences she has had to endure over the past year or so since she was informed by doctors that she had contracted cancer. So far only snippets of the interview are available on the internet but the whole thing will be televised on Sunday evening (July 16th) on Sky1 at 9pm and promises to give a real insight into the psychological, practical and emotional impact such illness has on any person, and especially one that constantly commands the attention of the worldwide public.




One of the most startling acts of stupidity I saw in the media coverage of Kylie's initial diagnosis was on the front page of one of the supermarket-shelved women's magazines (I forget exactly which title but you know the kind of thing) : plastered across the cover was a huge picture of Minogue in the back of a car attempting to cover her face with a coat. This was accompanied by a headline saying how poor Kylie was fighting to keep her dignity despite all the photographers taking shots at her while she is so terribly ill. Something of an irony about that....

In any case, I feel that Kylie has dealt with her situation thus far admirably and releasing an interview about her ordeal is probably a good way to start to approach the public sphere again. Certainly, she does still intend to resume her world tour at the end of the year so I personally wish her all the best with that.

You can see my original blog on this subject by clicking here.

One of the founding members of Pink Floyd, Syd Barrett, died on July 7th 2006, at the age of 60.

Comments in the world's press include :

I've spent this afternoon going through the Les Miserables score for this evening's dress rehearsal - the company are doing the School Edition, which is basically the same as the Broadway / West End musical except there are a few cuts here and there to shorten the piece and one or two sections have their key altered by a semitone or two so that it's easier for younger voices to sing... not that the cast at Stampede have anything to worry about on that score.

What gets to me about the music, though, is the number of different changes of time signature that happen in a very short period on numerous occasions throughout the show. There are moments when in three bars the time signature has changed three times, allowing the latter pulse to continue perhaps for one more bar before there are another two or three changes in consecutive bars. This is all very well if your part plays through that section but when you're score is marked with full bar rests it's a bit of a nightmare to count through each bar, particularly if the tempo is very quick or there is no sense of pulse in the music (and the conductor is your only reference to where it lies).

All good fun, though. The way things are coming together there should be some great performances this week.

The management team at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London, have really been working hard this year to bring their productions to a wider audience. In association with BP, live operatic shows have been broadcast around the country to big screens in various popular locations, including the one I went to last night, in Leeds' Millennium Square.

Other places where these programmes have been shown live, with subtitles, and absolutely free-of-charge to any visitor are Aberdeen, London's Canary Wharf, Liverpool, Manchester, Hull, Birmingham, Bradford, Plymouth, Rotherham, Tower Hamlets, Ipswich and Bowness-on-Windermere!

So, really, double-congratulations are in order to the ROH: firstly for continuing to put on first-rate productions of some of the most famous and best loved operatic repertoire as well as newer, less-celebrated works, and secondly for working so hard to bring these shows to the public via today's breathtaking technology.




And, last night's show really was something special. Unfortunately, I was unable to stay for the whole 2h 30m of it but the part I saw and heard of Puccini's Turandot was done wonderfully well. The brilliant colours and textures of the orchestral soundscape could even be appreciated by the remote listener some 200 miles away from where the action was taking place, thanks to the efforts of a crew that had done an outstanding job of capturing and broadcasting these things in crystal clear quality. Truly a professional job.

Well done ROH for providing the show, and to BP and all the borough councils who arranged for their screens to display it.

The Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music has today released the brand new syllabus for their graded piano examinations for years 2007-2008. They provide these in plenty of time so that students who are eager to sit the new exam have a couple of months to prepare the pieces, scales and arpeggios that are relevant to their level of playing.

I have posted the new listings for these exams on my website (as a mirror to their original posting on the ABRSM site) so you can find them with ease. Click here to browse the page containing the new documents.

There are some really interesting pieces on the new lists, especially in the higher-level grades. I look forward to working through some of them with students in the near future.

Last night I went to my first rehearsal for a new performance of Les Miserables put on by Guiseley-based theatre group, 'Stampede', and I've got to admit that I'd forgotten how much I miss doing these things. The performers on stage are all youngsters up to the age of 19 and some of them have great voices and there are one or two in there who I think will make fine actors in the future too. Absolutely excellent to watch them at work.

So, I'm going to be in the pit playing one of the keyboard parts for the show and, again, I'm really looking forward to getting involved in ensemble performance for the first time in a little while... or, at least, it's been a while since I did any group performance that requires this amount of musical discipline. Should be great fun.




Les Miserables is running at Yeadon Town Hall from the 12th to the 15th July and you can get tickets by calling 0700 044 6267.

Well, over the last couple of days I've been 'in the studio' again working on recordings of my playing for the website - to be used as examples of what I might play at your wedding breakfast or other occasion. And when I say I've been in the studio, I mean on this occasion that I've been recording the digital piano in my bedroom with a Tascam Pocketstudio digital 4-track recorder and then mixing down the raw sound files using Cubase on my computer... also situated in my bedroom!!!!

But, I finally think I have a few recordings that I'm happy with and that demonstrate a variety of styles and musical genres for people to have a listen to when they're trying to decide what to do about the music at their party or wedding.

I'm not going to plug it too hard because any visitor to this site will probably have realised by now that I'm available to play piano for any kind of occasion. Hasten to add, though, that you might want to check out the new recordings by clicking below :