February 28th
I have spent most of the morning rehearsing with the excellent Rock Festival Choir for our concert tomorrow afternoon at 3pm in St. Paul’s Church, Alnwick, directed by Peter Brown. This is a little bit of one of the pieces we’re singing, the sublime Ave Verum by William Byrd. This recording was made by us a few years ago in a “Choral Masterpieces” concert. The picture is of our very own Alan Gidney’s hands playing the organ at Rock Church (this is why we’re called what we’re called!) with the choir in the background. Looks like a bit of Vivaldi on the music stand, but sometimes not everything tees up.

February 27th
Today I have been a soprano in a quartet at a funeral, I have been fretting about and planning workshops, and I have noticed the first daffodil in the garden. This is the chorus of my song “When My Roots Begin To Grow”, which was composed to help some Year 5 and 6 students learn about flowering plants in their science lessons. I am very proud of the inclusion of the word photosynthesize (or perhaps photosynthesise) in the song!

February 26th
It’s been an exhilarating 24 hours with loads of enthusiasm and energetic hard work at Bailiffgate Singers last night and much jollity at Lionheart Harmony tonight, and in between, I’ve been planning my workshops for next Friday’s fairandfunky Fairtrade Conference for Schools in Huddersfield. Here’s a collection of my fairtrade musical instruments and a fade-in from my fairandfunky song! Step, a tiny step, tiny, one at a time. We can make a jot of difference if we step at the same time. All our tiny steps together make a giant’s footprint. We’re recycling giants if we step at the same time! Step, tiny step, don’t throw it away! Step, tiny step, reuse it another day! Tiny step, make something new! Step, tiny step, it’s good for the planet and it’s funky for you!

February 25th
Yesterday I spent the afternoon composing space music with 10 year olds. Today I was looking for something on my computer when up popped this photograph. It’s from 1986: Graduation Day at the Royal Northern College of Music. That’s me and my pal John Challis, a trombonist, who’s playing on this recording of my brass quintet. He was a brilliant player and I wrote a few things for him to play, so I looked for the most trombone bit I could find for today’s fade-in. He died a few years ago, which was a big shock. I’m glad I have these recordings. The last time we saw him, he was playing his trombone in Scarborough, then we all three went and had fish and chips somewhere near the Spa. I wrote him a trombone concerto for my doctorate, but he never had the chance to play it.

February 24th
Yesterday, prior to composing some castle-scape music with two collections of 5-year-olds, we had a discussion about castles. Our guards walked, then stopped and looked before moving on, our King was grumpy and said “Don’t put that water there!”, the Queen was kind and made musical smiles, it was sky high, it was big-large-gigantic-ginormous, and it has those up and down bits. “Castellations!” declared Daniel with a grin. Children do have splendid ideas, eh?! No music from them just yet, so here’s a picture of Bamburgh Castle and a ditty I wrote about the life of a castle butler: Up and Down The Buttery Stairs. The words you can’t quite hear are: A dish of herring and sprats with trenchers, Up and down the buttery stairs! Quarts of beer and wine for breakfast, Up and down the buttery stairs! Beef for cleaving, apples to core, Up and down the buttery stairs Fetch some water to sluice the floor! Up and down the buttery stairs!

February 23rd
Yesterday I spent an exhilarating day composing with families at the Hepworth Wakefield. We achieved four group compositions: two inspired by Hepworth’s Winged Figure, one by her Sphere with Inside and Outside Colour and one by her Winter Solstice. Here is part of the second Winged Figure. You hear our opening “metal sounds” section, then the “rhythmic scrapey sounds” section, then the “stones” section, then the beginning of the “it’s like a clock” section – all ideas from the assembled youngsters and their parents and grandparents. Splendidly creative and happily exhausting day!

February 22nd
Today so far I have organised all my musical accoutrements in readiness for a day of Musical Sculptures at the Hepworth Wakefield. Workshops start at 11, 12.15, 1.45 and 3, if you fancy coming along and being creative with noisy things in an art gallery. First, though I have to drive there through the frost – just a 180 minute commute! Here’s a picture of me facilitating a dramatic stop in an earlier workshop, and it’s the sound of one of my Hepworth songs “The Man Who Suddenly Fell Over.”

February 21st
We’ve been rehearsing for our upcoming Rock Festival Choir concert today – it’s next Sunday at 3pm in St. Paul’s Church, Alnwick. Before then, four of us are singing at a funeral on Friday, so we tacked on a funeral rehearsal at the end of the other one. This is St. Paul’s one sunny morning, with Panis Angelicus which will hopefully not disturb the deceased who, we are told, was a musician.

February 20th
I have spent today taking out modulations. I don’t, as a rule like modulations, but I did succumb to one in an arrangement a few years ago – out of E minor, into G minor, then back again – on account of there being ten verses in a song and thoughts were of variety, but now it’s in a new version, all in E minor. Anyway, I’ve also been making learning tracks for my choir, and this is one of our other folksongs from Northumberland, “O The Bonny Fisher Lad”, with a picture of some Northumbrian fishermen in a coble.

February 19th
Today I have been musically jolly with the very lovely Wooler Silver Singers, standing in again for my pal Veronica, and I’ve been making more choir arrangements and learning tracks for my even lovelier Bailiffgate Singers. However, I was thinking about this arrangement of David Of The White Rock – here for percussion, but previously for recorder ensemble (for which it won a prize!) and also for piano, baritone and flute for a chamber music competition in New Zealand. I think it’s the fours in the time of threes that brought it to mind – we’ve a bit of that sort of thing happening in Whittingham Fair, eh!?

February 18th
Duet. It’s the ending of Robinson Crusoe.

February 17th
Today I have been mostly making arrangements of north-east folk songs for choir. This is one of my favourites from the Durham Coalfields: Rap Her To Bank. I used to do it with the children I worked with in Sunderland, and now with the grown-ups I work with in Alnwick – grown-ups in age, but thankfully not all of them in behaviour! This picture if of this morning’s sunrise along the Felton Lonnen – I’ve tampered with it a smidgeon!

February 16th
I’ve been reading about Purcell today. This is the end of John Dryden’s “Ode on the Death of Henry Purcell”, and also “These Are The Sacred Charms” from “Come Ye Sons Of Art”. The picture is of Fountains Abbey.

February 15th
I have spent today writing a couple of composery blogs. One is taking an inordinate amount of time due to the elderly nature of the files involved, but the other is complete and is about my recent work with the delightful Year 6 classes I may have mentioned! Here they are singing the 2nd verse of The Great Crested Grebe. The picture is of a heron in the River Calder, and the words are: Sundays, Sunday mornings I always went fishing with my Dad on Calder water. Waiting, waiting for hours and hours, I always thought that fishing was quite boring. Then a swan danced gracefully, Then an egret swooped from a tree, Then a heron crash-landed, And the great-crested grebe silently dived out of view.

February 14th
The day for a love song perhaps – the end of my setting of Robert Burns’ poem “Red, Red Rose” for 3-part choir. This picture is of some trees reflected in the bonnet of our dear red Mini, taken last March when we’d only had it for a few days. Today, a terrible thing happened to this car: a man (let’s call him Rice Pudding – I’m trying to think of a thing I don’t care for much) crashed into the back of it at great speed and sent it headlong into a road sign, rendering the front and the back of it dreadfully injured and entangled. It has been towed away to a place of fixers, where it will (we were told by two policemen, a tow truck driver, a taxi driver, a man from Northumberland County Council sent to gather up the scattered debris, and the wife of Rice Pudding) probably be declared a write-off. This is distressing. We were both in the car at the time doing all the right things and are unharmed. Rice Pudding admitted his failings several times, so all in the end will be well, I’m sure, but for now we are very sad and a little concerned about the emptiness of our cupboards (we were on the way to grocery shopping). A BMW is being dispatched to us apparently 🙁

February 13th
I have spent today grappling once more with computer files from 1996, and mostly failing. I had thought to have my Spring Moon blog written today, but all the (plenty of) work I just did on a file has mysteriously disappeared – gone, I’m told, back to 1996 in mid-“save”, and to be honest I cannot face doing it all again right now, so here’s the beginning of Spring Moon 4 with a picture of a spring moon from 1996…well that would have been appropriate, but it’s actually last April. Blog to follow…one day!

February 12th
Today I woke up to find that I’ve had over 11,000 views on my seapieparcel Youtube channel, which was an encouraging start to the day. Then I have been to Wooler as stand-in conductor for the wonderfully enthusiastic and cheerful Wooler Silver Singers. This making music with grown-ups mularky is a splendid thing, I’m learning. Tonight it’s Lionheart Harmony, and in the meantime … well, I may just catch up on some Radio 3 composer-of-the-week – I do believe it’s Henry Purcell. Exquisite! This is the last verse of my most popular song on Youtube, “Slow Down! Red Squirrels!”. The lyrics you hear are: Our squirrels are red and exceedingly rare, With a jumpily, tail-tossy, nibble-me-ree. Squirrel poxvirus and road traffic scares Account for their deaths, so slow down! Take care! As you drive in our green-greeny county. Slow down! Red squirrels! Drivers, beware! Slow down! Red squirrels! As the road signs say, take care!

February 11th
I’ve had a wonderfully exhilarating rehearsal this evening with Bailiffgate Singers learning Purcell and some Northumberland songs. We sang Come Ye Sons of Art at the end of the rehearsal. Alas the microphone was positioned closer to the sopranos than it should have been and we’re still learning, but lots of progress was made and I was chirpy throughout. The picture is of an appropriate window at Liverpool Cathedral.

February 10th
Brilliant, brilliant day with two world premieres including this song of the River Calder with my beautifully talented and enthusiastic Year 6 classes: Mighty Mill Wheel. The lyrics you hear are: Rushing, gushing, rushing, gushing over rocks and crags and boulders, boulders, crags and boulders, Splashing, dashing, splashing, dashing, squeezing through chinks and crannies, chinks and crannies, Dancing, prancing, dancing, prancing, pirouetting, twirling downwards, twirling downwards, Flowing, slowing, flowing, slowing, channelled to a lake then a water race, racing, racing… Mighty mill wheel keep turning, Gather the strength of the water, Machines powered by the River Calder.

February 9th
Today is my brother’s birthday. He’s usually here on a Monday, but he’s gone on a work trip to France, so here are some Camms singing to him in his absence along with Monkey on monkey drums with ladybird castanets from others.

February 8th
Today I have been making a video of my songs Spring Moon 1, 2, 3 and 4. Before I could do this I had to re-create the scores and sound files from 1996 which my brand new shiny computer resolutely refused to open in any available programme. I composed the songs for a Social Studies Conference in Wellington, New Zealand in 1995 where they were given their first performance by me and my friend, history lecturer David Keen, who wrote the poems, and is an expert on Japanese culture. He is not a confident musician, and the whole point of the four settings was to show that they could be tackled by musicians and non-musicians alike. We managed to get the members of our conference workshop to do Spring Moon 4 as a non-singing chorus. This is a fade-in of Spring Moon 1 (at the conference, Dave played the instrumental part on a glockenspiel) and the picture is of me and Dave at his and Lynne’s beach in Otago in 2012.

February 7th
Today has been a day off and we have been to the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, the Laing Gallery in Newcastle and the Tyneside Cinema to see The Imitation Game. Here we are walking up the very resonant stairwell in the Baltic. You can see Jamie, and also a cleverly positioned mirror.

February 6th
Today is Waitangi Day in New Zealand. Here is the choir Saints Alive from St. Cuthbert’s school in Auckland, directed by Megan Flint, singing my song Motu Puketutu. The picture was taken outside Eden Park in Auckland in August 2013 on the day that I visited the school and held the trophy that Saints Alive won for singing my song at the Big Sing in 2012.

February 5th
Today I have spent some time preparing learning tracks for the choir. Here’s the somewhat G-ish tenor part for Come Ye Sons Of Art. The picture is of some hands conducting in Bruges.

February 4th
Today I have been sorting out some of my own music for choir practice tonight. However, I have been slightly distracted by this Henry Purcell round: “Once, Now And Then” which I think will do nicely as a warm-up, and possible transition item between Come Ye Sons Of Art and our Northumbrian collection of songs. The picture is of a Sea Pie Parcel at Warkworth Beach with red up to max.

February 3rd
Again, I have spent much of today in and around trains, this time with a 35 minute wait for my 10th train of the last two days, at Newcastle – time enough to notice again the beautiful curve of the platforms (particularly this Platform 3 you see here) and late enough in the day for this goods train to slowly clickety-clack its way through, unhindered sound-wise by any passengers or their trains. Elsewhere, the two new river songs were rehearsed with aplomb and gusto for next week’s performance. I love these Year 6 classes.

February 2nd
I have spent much of today in and around trains. I took this picture at sunset on Platform 3 at Doncaster. I have also spent much of today in a state of optimism that I would be able to record my Monday classes doing some meaningful musical activity, but once again, this proved impossible for several reasons, mostly that I cannot do more than three things at once (play keyboard, assess rhythmic prowess, keep them from upsetting each other, being the three I plumped for). Instead, I have selected something wintry from my back catalogue, because oh boy has it been cold on all those railway platforms. (As I write it has started to snow in Worksop). It’s the introduction to the brass band and choir version of my In The Bleak Midwinter.

February 1st
Today I have been researching cotton mills in Lancashire and Yorkshire, learning about the courtship dances of great crested grebes and writing new verses for my two newest songs. However, the most exciting thing to happen today was the discovery upon opening a seemingly empty biscuit tin, of a packet of chocolate digestives. This discovery has sustained me though all the other creative stuff.