Another week, another tour!

Another week, another tour! Well, that’s what its felt like this last month. Not that I’m complaining, it’s great to be so busy. We’ve spent the last week in lovely Yorkshire on a mini tour for Live Music Now doing 2 to 4 concerts a day in various special needs schools. Exhausting work but incredibly worthwhile.

Anyone that’s done any outreach work will tell you that children can often be the toughest audience, making no effort to hide boredom or displeasure! They really make you work for your applause (and money!), however the opposite is also true, when they’re enjoying something they really let you know. The work we do for Live Music Now is some of the most satisfying and rewarding work I have ever done, nothing beats the sound of raptous applause but in a special needs school you also often get cheering, dancing, hugs afterwards and even the odd autograph!

Live Music Now concerts are also an excellent testing ground for new pieces. If the kids like a piece you can be pretty confident that it will go down well with most audiences. This week we tried out two new arrangements by our friend Lewis Birchenough, Toccata and Fugue by Bach and Nimrod by Elgar. Nimrod went down very well everywhere, especially as a ‘calm down’ piece, by the last chord the room would normally be so silent you could hear a pin drop (bit scary when your chops are going in the fourth concert of the day!)

In August the quartet is off to Dartington International Summer School for a week. We’ll be attending Paul Archibald’s masterclasses again and also rehearsing as a group a lot (I’m sure Jo will be cracking the whip!). We have some new pieces which we’d like to test out for recitals later in the year including ‘Fanfare for Carintha’ by Peter Maxwell Davies.

Who knows, I may get to spend a week at home sometime soon…I think my flat mates have forgotten what I look like!