March Fade-Ins: #reallifecomposer

March 31st
Such a splendid way to spend the end of March, with the cheery Lionheart Harmony as we laugh, sing and chat our way through the last rehearsal before our summer gigs. Next Thursday we’re back at Nether Grange in Alnmouth entertaining the guests before their “last meal”. Here we are trying to get our “hellos” right and the pic is from our last gig on March 12 at Wooler – doing our usual laughing thing.

 

March 30th
We went down the Coquet Valley to look for red telephone boxes. The only one we found was in Warkworth – it had a phone in it. Remarkable. That’s only three left then along the Coquet – the middle one is outside our house and is now a mini tourist information booth. All the villages we looked in during the last couple of days have had the more modern see-through, non-red phone boxes – all with phones, but still it’s a shame that the iconic red ones are gone. Here’s the ending of my piece with the actual three trees in the foreground, and tonight’s rather splendid sunset in the background.

 

March 29th
We went up the Coquet Valley looking for red phone boxes. The only one we found was in Rothbury, and that was empty. However, en route we called in at Brinkburn Priory and found these holy mushrooms. Elsewhere we’ve been making a recording of my new song to help The Bridge Singers know how it fits together.

 

March 28th
Shed Stories 6: An interesting and shapely bit of car battery from Dad’s first car.

 

March 27th
Shed Stories 5: How to make a poker with a nice plastic handle. It really is a nice plastic handle actually – multicoloured. We used to use this item all the time when I was little for our coal fire in the front room. We didn’t use that room much for many years while we strove to heat the smallest portion of the house, but we used to have a see-saw that went up and down and round and round and it was put in that room one winter and Michael and I had oodles of fun in there with no other furniture except a sofa on one wall which we whizzed over the top of!

 

March 26th
Shed Stories 4: Metal Jug. It turns out Dad made quite a few treasures at his metalwork night class in his late teens. This jug was located in the garage – we haven’t tested its water-carrying-and-pouring abilities yet 🙂 Today I’ve taken lots of shed stuff to the Worksop tip…sorry…household refuse recycling depot – two car-loads in fact. A third, full of wood for the burner, is loaded, ready to take back to Northumberland in the morning.

 

March 25th
Shed Stories 3: Bolt with one nut. In amongst all the thousands of nails and screws that Dad has squirreled away in a collection of tins and margarine pots, we found this one. It turned out he’d made it himself at a night class, twixt school and employment. Gives a somewhat un-useful and unattractive object a little sparkle of magic!

 

March 24th
Shed Stories 2: Waterproof Hat Protector. For most of his working life Dad was a postman, both delivering letters and then later in the sorting office. This piece of official elasticated waterproofing was found in one of hundreds of plastic bags in the shed. It was for his peaked postman’s hat when he was on the rounds. Look! It says GPO on the inside! We also found some red GPO buttons as well. By the way, the original wellies from Story 1 are still in use complete with patch, I have now discovered – not stored in a corner of the shed, but a corner of the garage.

 

March 23rd
Shed Stories 1: Old Wellies. I’ve spent several days this week helping Mum and Dad prepare for their new bathroom-in-the-garage. This has mostly been the forced sorting of Dad’s accumulated treasures from the past 80 years so that all of them can be fitted in the shed, leaving the garage free for its upcoming transformation. He’s been telling tales about some of our finds. First up, some old wellies, corroded on the uppers, which sparked off this tale from over 50 years ago. I should point out that these were the wellies that replaced the ones in the story…you’ll see what I mean….

 

March 22nd
I once did a moody Easter project at Warkworth C of E First School – the usual stuff – fickle faces; mood marching; sad scores. I remember that as part of our preliminary activities, we did whole-school misery to the accompaniment of some of Purcell’s Funeral Music for Queen Mary. The culmination of our rather serious outdoor Paschal pageant, at which all of the above was a performed part, was the singing of the world premiere of this song, composed during the week as a result of all that the children suggested regarding the various moods of the Easter story: Scary Quiet. Today I made this recording and video of the song:

 

March 21st
Top rehearsal this evening with much jollity amongst the hard yakka on folky stuff as well as enthusiastically tackling another section of my new piece The Felton Sycamores. We spent about 20 minutes on my arrangement of the mixed-metre Reynard The Fox folksong from East Anglia. Here’s a sound collage of those 20 minutes squashed into just over one. Also, here’s the cover of the new piece and, enjoying our foxy song, two foxes knitted by alto Carol recently while recovering from a winter ailment. Also today: cleaning the fridge!

 

March 20th
Springtime Sunday in Worksop with blackbird and daffodil and sunshine…and cleaning out Dad’s garage accumulation of empty boxes, lengths of string, tobacco tins of rusty nails and 80 years of assorted trinkets that might be useful one day, whilst keeping Dad sweet. Job half done, by the way. Back for more anon.

 

March 19th
A day of Camm family stuff with Michael going back to France for a summer of toil with the Irish, me and Mum buying treats to eat to console us after Michael has gone, and also watching athletics, football, cricket and rugby on the telly, and Dad having naps and occasionally thinking that he should go and sort out his model trains in the garage. Also, my Youtube channel danced over 17,000 views today with this song, Henry Hotspur Percy being the most popular in recent days. It’s three songs in one really, and here is being listened to by Sir John Betjeman at 7.41am at St. Pancras Station. Top clock, eh!?

 

March 18th
Started the day in London, ended it in Worksop. In between: cricket-watching from India with all the right teams winning. This is 7pm at Trafalgar Square last night.

 

March 17th
We went to London to see Akhnaten by Philip Glass at the Coliseum. The half moon was out before we went in, the tuba player had a practice, the conductor was applauded, people nearby kept on chatting, the man in front issued a timely reminder that it had started, there were arpeggios, repeated arpeggios. The aspects of this performance that made the biggest favourable impression were the jugglers, the shadow dancing, the drumming chorus, the hauntingly serene vocal trios, the clever way Mr Glass knows just the right moment to stop repeating the one thing and move on to repeating the next thing. It dawned on me half way through the first of the three halves that getting up at 5 am, driving half way down the country, training down the rest of the country, and wandering energetically around London for a couple of hours, does not lend itself to sitting through two and a half hours of gently repeating, consonant music, and as a result, miniscule noddings off occurred at regular intervals.

 

March 16th
I’ve been working on learning files for my new song for The Bridge Singers – trickier than usual on account of the aleatoric nature of some of the music. I also listened to England lose at cricket to The West Indies – memories of my youth came flooding back as this was the customary state of affairs in those days. I met Clive Lloyd once at Old Trafford…well I saw him on a non-cricketing day. He was doing some filming for the Sooty show. This is a bit more of my song, and also a picture of the engine “For The Fallen” at Durham on Saturday. It’s the most beautiful engine of its type there is, I think, and goes well with this part of the song: “so that has thickened here a grown memorial whose bone-like roots can never quench the thirst of so much weeping, the memory of stumps that cares for no confession.(Tony Williams)”. We also finished off my birthday cake.

 

March 15th
Today: walk in the fog to the sycamores, standing under the bridge with the river rippling by: meeting at the village hall regarding fire safety issues – all before 9am, then rest: a Sudoku or two, some radio podcasts, proper lunch cooking, listening to New Zealand beat India in the cricket, still cake from my birthday, mooching, sleeping. Ready for action again tomorrow, perhaps.

 

March 14th
Last night I finished off my new piece!!! Today – printed the copies and we started learning it at The Bridge Singers’ rehearsal this evening. This is one of the bits of the song we tackled (Tony’s use of Oliver Cromwell’s own words: “I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken!”) I was happy with the response to the piece, having fretted all afternoon while the printer did its thing. We also had a proper go at the new version of Magical Glass, so two of my pieces up and running. We mixed it up with Simon and Garfunkel, and sat in circles to facilitate blending and note-bashing.

 

March 13th
Lionheart Harmony had a gig last night in Wooler as the guests of Veronica and the Glendale Voices. We sang no less than five new pieces in our two sets including my arrangement of the beautiful “Northumberland” by Gary Steward which received the majority of compliments of the evening, amongst which we were declared to be “very good at the blowing”! Lyn, our photographer for the night said, “These photos are rubbish. Do something computery with them!” ….so we have 🙂

 

March 12th
Birthday!!!! This is what we did for all those of you asking: cake; laughing, singing phone calls; train to Durham; cathedral roaming; castle guidedly touring (such fascinating drainpipes, and a new castle for us – only previously seen from the outside); cake; more trains; Lionheart Harmony singing/chatting/laughing; sleeping; composing; cake. I caught the midday chimes in the cloisters at Durham Cathedral yesterday too – one of the bells is so much quieter than the others. Sounds a bit gloomy, but I was happy as anything to catch the longest chimes of the day!

 

March 11th
I still have the melody on my mind and have resolved my dilemma by repeating the melody exactly – three times, but surrounding it with slightly extended harmony, but not so extended as to make my basses throw a conniption. This picture and yesterday’s are from Wallington Hall near Cambo where I had a meeting with the photographer Jonathan Bradley, had a good look round the house, discovered lots of stuff, and had many cheery chats with the room guides – I was the first punter of the day so got the full package.

 

March 10th
Today I have had this melody going through my head….the melody that I’ve composed for the bit of Tony’s poem “And having lost were taken on a tramping way that the world knows well”. It will also be the melody for subsequent bits of poem. Sometimes there are too many ideas and sometimes too few – on this occasion, too many. All my composition teachers (Tony Gilbert, John Rimmer, John Elmsly) have always urged me to be the most creative I can be, and in my mind this precludes me from repeating something exactly as before, but on this occasion I wonder if it perhaps isn’t the best idea, for several reasons, not least of which is the forced march upon which these soldiers are on. Tune in tomorrow for more news on this nutty dilemma.

 

March 9th
This is the misery and plight of those on a forced march. The emphasis on the “ands” in my setting of Tony’s poem make me think of the Et Resurrexit in Haydn’s Nelson Mass. Different mood entirely. That Credo is our song – mine and Jamie’s. We sang it with Karen and the Auckland’s Dorian Choir when we first knew each other and took the scores to practice at Muriwai Beach as we watched the gannets. Jamie’s car wouldn’t start when we got back to it, so there was much waiting around for tow trucks and mechanics with gannets and Haydn ringing in our ears. This photo was taken of the sycamores from a moving car on the way to barbershop after sunset last week. This week it will still be light!

 

March 8th
First thing this morning I strode purposefully up the hill to the sycamores in the dark with the tantalising promise held by a thin strip of burnished crimson on the horizon. Upon attaining said sycamores, the sun was not yet up, so espying a vantage point from the far side of the field and not wanting to trample on the farmer’s crop, I skirted at great speed around three edges, and lo!
Meanwhile, back at the sycamores the song thrush was determinedly at it.
Then it snowed.
Buoyant, I was….and all this before banana.

 

March 7th
Here’s The Bridge Singers being jolly at this evening’s rehearsal during which we alleluia-ed in the Dering manner with gusto, marched with our Civil War soldiers, gobbled a few children as the Lambton Worm and had a bit of a go at this new version of Magical Glass – all while chortling merrily. This is the completely new verse about the historical and recently-restored 19th century greenhouse at Felton Park sung here by multiple Cheryls and Jamies.

Come gather me round, in the Arms of Northumberland
Drink Secret Kingdom and sit round the fire
I’ll sing ye a story of beauty and wonder:
A mystical tale of the magical glass.

Mr Riddell requested the pleasure of my presence,
He ushered me garden-wards, grinning with pride.
What I saw jumped me back: ripened peaches in springtime
With damsons and gooseberries, blackcurrants, and grapevines
Entwining the rails in a glistening palace
Of fish-scales – the Felton Park Magical Glass.

 

March 6th
After returning from the be-curtained Tyneside Cinema and “Hail, Caesar!” chortlement with a boot-full of use-by-today bargains from the Enormously Big Tesco, Jamie declared with further chortles that he would get tea ready – It was a pie made by the Enormously Big Tesco with added side order of sweetcorn for delicacy (I thought of you Anne Marie!) while I tinkered with my 59th Street Bridge Song scores for The Bridge Singers. While pie heated and I tinkered, he cleaned the bathroom. Cleaned the bathroom, I say! He is rather splendid.

 

March 5th
More music orders today including for my Sea Pie Parcel book of songs for middle schools. This is one of the songs in the book. This picture is of the coloured houses in Alnmouth as photographed last Sunday in the glorious winter late afternoon.

 

March 4th
I made a catalogue of my shorter choral works the other day and already this has yielded several enquiries and indeed sales including several copies of some banana music! My catalogue of shorter choral music! Also today I have begun to compose a new song about a telephone box – this phone box, to be precise, which is now a mini-tourist information booth on Felton Bridge.

 

March 3rd
Yesterday morning: song thrush; sycamore; distant traffic; moon.

 

March 2nd
When you discover some performance of your music has happened that you knew nothing of: this is a delightful sensation. While looking for the name of the choir who once sang “From A Railway Carriage” for my updated choral catalogue, I discovered on the Radio New Zealand website a recording of my Three Burns Songs composed in 1994, performed and recorded in 1999, broadcast in January this year. The performers are Rebecca Crabtree, Cyril Lim and Coral Bognuda. Cheryl is in the tree at sunrise on this pic and this is an excerpt from the 2nd song, Scroggam. I remember now that this set of songs won the Philip Neill Prize in 1994 from Otago University, so it earned me a bit of money as well!

 

March 1st
Coffee cake, unknown bird in silhouette chirruping earnestly, early morning trains for all, Flying Scotsman in steam parked up in York with photographers abounding, Worksop, Happy birthday Mum, all the Camms with laughing, evening trains, Flying Scotsman still in steam parked up in York with photographers abounding, fascinating quirks of railway timetables that require going further north then back south to get to Morpeth, Jamie arrives northwards, home.

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