10th May 2010

In short, the year has been a round of school and community music workshops, ceilidhs with The News of the Victory, Beatroot, Hodmedod and an almost Hodmedod line-up for an apprentice clergypersons gig last Saturday while Hoofbeat has been gearing up for a short rural tour which kicks off this week. The Hoofbeat tour will see us playing village halls in
Hindolveston, Norfolk - 13th May at 8pm
Coddenham, Suffolk - 14th May at 7.30pm and
Welborne, Norfolk - 15th May at 7.30pm.
The shows will feature our mix of new and old, far and near music. We'll be including some of my compositions ("Junkanalia", "Was It Ever Like This", "Ray's First Day" and "The Culinary Terrorist") and some of Jane Wells' compositions and arrangements ("On the Hoof", "Too Way Too", Kurt Weill's Mac The Knife and Tango; medieval composer Machaut's "De Petit Po" and "Dame, De Qui Toute Ma Joie") as well as popjazzical music by other local composers and music from the Caribbean, South Africa, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Venezuela and India.

One of this year's projects, Rural Rhythms, has been devised in conjunction with Norfolk Music Works and The City of London Sinfonia. I've been working in Mundesley Junior School and we are busy preparing a piece that we'll showcase in the area's Griffon Festival at Knapton in Norfolk in June. As well as working with pupils in school time there after school group also includes families and children from the first school next door.

Since the beginning of the year I have also been working at Woodlands Primary School in Bradwell, near Great Yarmouth on a project sponsored and supported by Creative Partnerships. Apart from the developing music side of this project I have had the chance to work with artist, film-maker and animator, Matthew Harrison and Dr Ken Farquhar who is a science/maths/performance practitioner. If you aren't sure what one of those is, think street theatre with guerilla science. It is always great fun working with others and I look forward forward to working with both Matthew and Dr Ken at some point in the not-too-distant future. The pupils and teachers at Woodlands have been fortunate to enjoy some amazing activities, including dinosaur hunts, building a huge pyramid and creating animated stories with musical soundtracks.

Not related to music, but I have just returned from a trip to New York with twenty-three school students from Haute-Savoie, in France. We stayed at the International Youth Hostel in NYC and experienced the delights of free music performances in Central Park, Washington Square and Battery Park, saw the streets and venues made legendary in folk, jazz and popular music and paid a visit to the amazing Museum of Modern Art. The trip was unexpectedly extended through the activity of Eyjafjallajökull, but we were only five days late returning our young charges to their grateful families. If ever you find yourself in New York I have to recommend breakfast at the Moonrock Café!