Deal Festival and Alison Balsom

On Friday we visited the Deal Festival to give a concert as part of their excellent music festival. Deal is a beautiful small costal town with a very English stoney beach and plenty of chip shops. Paul Max Edlin is the Festival Director and a composer who trained at the RCM as a trumpet player. He really understands the variety of repertoire that we enjoy playing and that works best. Our premiere by Hugo Ribiero was a great success with the audience. Someone told me that the opening sounded like a spaceship taking off: we played repeated cross rhythms on harmon mutes and Steve Burke played a cymbal with a double bass bow. The diversity of the music that is written for us is huge and we love knowing that we are extending the brass repertoire.

As an encore we played a collaborative piece by Micheal Mills, the festivals resident composer, and a group of year 10 boys from Dover Grammar School. It had a great tune and could easily be the opening music for next big action film.

In the evening Alison Balsom gave a concert with her ensemble of piano, violin and cello. It was inspirational to hear her play, she is such a fine player. Her Baroque playing was beautiful and I loved her arrangements of Spanish music by De Falla and Argentinian music by Piazzolla.

We are now looking forward to our recital at Harrogate and hope that you can join us.