Tag: Core Skills Brass Tutor Book

  • Rain Does Not Stop Play

    It is good to be back into the school term after the summer holiday because I am beginning to find my routine again. Having said this, it does mean that my diary has suddenly filled with dates for concerts and all my weekends are spoken for until November. This is good. It means there is…

  • Summer Draws to an End

    This last few weeks have been an almost complete break from anything to do with writing music, or even making any serious plans for new pieces, but I do think I needed to take some time out having completed a major project. I had hoped for a trip away this summer, however events conspired against…

  • Where are they now?

    I have been working hard on completing two pieces over recent weeks in between everything else in life that demands my attention, and I have been successful in getting the work done. Something that has been at the forefront of my mind recently has been memories of my time as a student. I have been…

  • Keeping it Simple

    It has been a bit of a tough project, but I am pleased to have completed my choral work. I became bogged down in one of the movements and it eventually became clear that the problem wasn’t the ideas, but the key. I had aimed for a I, II, V, I key structure for the…

  • Show Time

    This time tomorrow night we will be in the process of performing Tchaikowsky’s 1st Piano Concerto in the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall at York University. This is where all the York Symphony Orchestra concert’s take place, and what a venue! It will be quite the test of endurance though because we are also playing…

  • All Change

    I shall begin with an apology. I am sorry I have been quiet in recent weeks. Things took a turn for the worse after Christmas when my wife became very unwell with a dose of flu (compounded by a pulmonary embolism and a collapsed lung) which left her laid low for a considerable length of…

  • Floods, F.O.M.O. and Email

    One of the most frustrating things about running a website is all the snake-oil merchants who flood your inbox with promises of improving your website for just the price of an arm and a leg. It has become so bad that I am seriously considering closing down the email part of the website and relying…

  • Fresh Magic

    Like all good crescendos Christmas begins quite a long way before the actual time of the loudest part. As any good musician knows, it is wise not to peak too soon otherwise you are left with nowhere to go. I am a little concerned that Christmas has arrived before I was ready for it. We…

  • Too Many Irons in the Fire?

    What a week it has been out and about performing at a friends leaving party, playing with the town band at the local Agricultural Show and Gymkhana, and being generally busy with practising and rehearsing. I have also been preoccupied with matters non-musical, but that goes with the territory when you are a church steward…

  • Busy Performing

    I played a charity gig with my rock band I.N.C.A. last weekend at the Deanery in Ripon in support of a campaign to save some local trees from destruction, tonight I’m playing solo using my looper at a party to bid farewell to our Methodist Minister who is relocating to pastures new. Tomorrow I’m playing…