“I love my new MM mouthpiece. The gold plating is so smooth and soft on my lips and doesn’t have all the annoying nicks and scratches that my old mouthpiece has. The sound is much bigger and brighter and I have found it really rings out in the orchestra. My new 3 PA mouthpiece is also great. I did a performance of the Hummel on Eb trumpet the other day and found it so much easier in the high range. I would recommend Denis Wick mouthpieces.”

Next week Bella Tromba have a recital at Swinburne Hall for the Colchester Institute. Once again we’ll be performing Hugo Ribiero’s Gestures III (premiered at Deal Festival this summer), which uses mutes throughout and makes particular use of the Harmon Mute and its wah-wah effect.

For this event, we have had an original piece of New Orleans/Dixieland tune written for us by Paul Robinson, bass guitarist/french horn player based in Oldham. Also Yazz has kindly arranged some Miles Davies tunes and James Davies has also been arranging some well known tunes for us. Gavin Broom has recently arranged a selection of Cole Porter tunes which we performed at Harrogate festival only a few weeks ago which will be getting another outing.

Come and check us out at the Jazz Festival, we’ll be playing in Bicester Village in the Shopping Outlet at 4pm.

“Make a date in your diary for the 9th and 10th August when Bicester Jazz festival comes to town for the 7th consecutive year. As always there will be a weekend of free Jazz entertainment for all to enjoy.
Popular musicians such as accomplished trumpeter Bryan Corbett and “spellbinding” Esther Miller return to entertain the crowds, whilst Oxfordshire Saxophonist, Ewen Baird, joins a thrilling weekend line-up including dazzling trumpet quartet Bella Tromba.
UK-based New Zealander Brendan Power will be playing for the first time. He’s acknowledged by many as one of the most creative skilled and versatile harmonica players around today.
The event begins on Saturday in Bicester Village at 10.30am and runs through until 8pm, with music continuing throughout the evening in Carluccio’s restaurant.” - continue reading at http://www.bicestervillage.com/Bicester/village/newsevents.asp?vId=10690

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.

Ross Brown is a trumpet player with a special interest in Renaissance and Baroque performance practice. We asked him to compose us a piece influenced by the popular music that was around in Purcell’s time. Entitled Booze, Ballads and Bloodshed, he draws from drinking songs, military tunes and popular airs, some of which are still in circulation today. He also quotes from Man that is born of a woman used in Purcell’s funeral music in 1695 and from Lillibulero, satirical verses set to a popular tune that Purcell composed in 1678. The premiere will be at the Harrogate Festival on the 30th July.

In a different vein the premiere of a new work by young Portugese composer Hugo Ribiero will be at the Deal Festival on 11th july. I don’t want to give away too much but there will be lots of percussion and action from Bella Tromba. Steve Burkes percussion will include a host of different metal instruments with very different sounds. Vibraphone, cymbals to be played bowed and my personal favourate a giant Tam Tam.

Also in Giles’ collection are a piccolo trumpet in F, with no stays but with snakes wrapped round and through the body, a low F/G trumpet, a four-valve F/Bb trumpet, an echo cornet, a trombugel (a weird mixture of tenor horn, flugel, and valve trombone) a valide (trombone with both valves and slide), a gorgeous Webb slide trumpet with crooks in all different keys, a natural trumpet made entirely by hand by Giles and engraved and silver-plated, a large valve trombone with four rotary valves, a Taylor four-valve Phat Boy copper flugel, a dozen or more various trumpets and cornets, a series of Ab posthorns and one in Bb, a cornetto, several piccolos, a newly-designed and made flumpet with copper bell and more flugelly tone than usual, a bell-forward althorn, a soprano and an alto trombone, and so on.

Vickie is hoping to find time to take the whole quartet down to Bassingbourn to give some of the collection a work-out!

We are off to have a coaching session with Bob Farley this week. We feel it is important as a group to get regular sessions with other musicians, helping us to collate an overview of our rehearsal result and often gain different interpretations of various pieces we are working on.

I am looking forward to the Deal festival as Alison Balsom will be playing the evening concert and the group are planning to stay for the day. Alison is performing a few pieces which I will be performing later on in the year at an Arts Festival in Derby, especially looking forward to hearing her play the Neruda Concerto and the “Siete Canciones Populares Espanolas” by Manuel de Falla. I already have my Spanish dress for my performance in September, I’ll post more details nearer the time!

Last weekend we went up to Warrington to the wedding of one of our friends Katie Hodges. Katie is one of our regular deps who covers for us when one of us is unable to be at a concert. Her partner Steve Burke plays percussion with our ensemble from time to time and he will be playing some Purcell and Max with us at the Deal Festival.

Of course the music for their wedding was always going to be spectacular. Clare, Heidi Sutcliffe and Tommy Foster played a fanfare on natural trumpets and kettledrums. I was a bridesmaid so was preoccupied with not treading on Katie’s gown and walking gracefully in new shoes but everyone agreed it was a fantastic start to the ceremony. Later on they had a brass quintet and organ for the hymns and finally finished off with Hallelujah Chorus from Handels Messiah.

With so many trumpet playing friends at your disposal it’s easy to go a bit wild and I have often contemplated having a section of Janaceks Sinfonietta which features 9 offstage trumpets in C, 3 trumpets in F, 2 bass trumpets and a whole load of percussion. Hmm pretty noisy in your average church. Watch this clip and let me know if you think that’s a good idea or completely tasteless.

So Congratulations to Katie and Steve and hopefully they will get to play on one of our gigs together at some point!

Recently I have been doing a complete variety of things, including playing at Cadogen Hall last week, marching (it was supposed to be outside but luckily as it was pouring with rain, we got to stay inside!) as well as many other concerts and putting some of the children I teach through music exams.

As a group we have been up and down the country from Somerset right up to Carlisle with Live Music Now! We have been involved in some very interesting projects lasting a number of weeks in pupil referral units. We came up with pieces with them and Jo even had them playing some Black Eyed Peas! We really enjoyed getting to know these children and working with them. We also played at City Hall last week. After opening the Live Music Now 30th anniversary celebrations, we listened to some of the other musicians and then we had the chance to talk to some very interesting people, including fellow musicians (swapping Live Music Now! stories), festival organisers, MU people and people from within Live Music Now! It was a really nice evening. We are now going to start some work for the festivals coming up, as we have some new pieces to play, as well as some old favourites.

After all this running around I am going to relax over the Easter weekend, put my feet up and eat some chocolate!