A relatively brief round-up this time out... or maybe not...
I mentioned last time that the Brighton Guitar Quartet had pretty much wrapped up our 2024 season, but we do/did in fact have a couple of "pre-season friendlies" lined up. Around Christmas every year our director Gregg Isaacson puts on an informal concert for all his students to play to each other at the delightful Bombanes in Kemptown, and this year played a short set there (and I even threw in a solo piece, my first solo outing in over a year). And we'll be playing another short set at Jon Rattenbury's excellent bi-annual Platform event. I'll also be playing in a trio with Paul Dallaway and Shaun Bullard (we're tackling Roland Dyens' "O Trio Magico") and I'll be giving my duet "The Aleph" another outing with Shaun. And it will be nice to hear pieces by three of my fellow New Music Brighton composers - Guy Richardson, Martyn Adams and Chris Gander - getting another outing following the Brighton Guitar Group's NMB concert earlier this year.
However, what I'm really excited to announce is that we're now lining up the first gigs of our 2025 "season". On Friday, March 14th (3.30pm) we'll be playing at Hove Library as part of their ongoing Live Lounge series. A month later, on 24th May we'll be back at St Laurence, Falmer for a late afternoon concert (exact time TBC). And on June 17th we'll be playing a lunchtime concert (for the third year running!) at Christ Church in Worthing. We'll also be putting in an appearance at the annual Springboard competition in March, which this year is adjudicated by the brilliant guitarist and arranger Gerard Cousins. As ever, all the details are on our website; more to add soon. Once again, thanks to Ruairi, Olivier, James and of course Gregg, for sharing the BGQ journey this year. I'm psyched about 2025!
On the subject of Gregg, I should note that I've just clocked in at 10 year studying with him! Lots to write about regarding that, and hopefully I'll get around to that in my next round-up post, but for now, I just want to log my deepest gratitude to him in public
While I'm on the subject of classical guitar, I had a great time at the third instalment of Guitars By The Sea in October. Put on by Jon Rattenbury and Steve Gordon, the weekend is a kind of festival-come-workshop, and this year feaured Mark Eden of the fantastic Eden Stell Duo as guest workshop leader. The dazzling young guitarist Kianush Robeson gave a concert on the Saturday night, with lots of 20th Century works, including Reginald Smith Brindle's little-heard Three Etruscan Preludes (regular readers will know that I can never pass up an opportunity to mention Reggie). The weekend culminated in a student concert at St Luke's Church in Seven Dials, featuring two ensembles, the whole group playing as an orchestra and some solo slots. Oh, and Shaun and I premiered The Aleph, of course! Thanks to Jon and Steve for all their hard work in putting on such a great weekend. Here's to GBTS4!
I also mentioned last time that I had my piano piece "Johnson & Johnson" played by Karen Kingsley at a New Music Brighton Concert at the Friends' Meeting House. I'm delighted that I now have some audio of the performance. Thanks to Roger Harmar for his excellent recording.
I was also thrilled that Karen went on to play the piece at a concert at Portsmouth Cathedral earlier this month. Sadly a bad case of man flu meant that I couldn't make it, but I gather from a couple of my fellow NMB members that the piece went down well.
On a related note, I finally finished off my next piano piece, "A Prayer, Offered Lightly" and have submitted it for possible inclusion in a Malcolm Lipkin memorial concert to be given by Nathan Williamson next March. Fingers crossed; in the meantime here's a score video of the piece (MIDI only at this stage, but not a bad approximation!)
And talking of New Music Brighton, I'm honoured (if slightly daunted) to have been appointed chair, as the excellent Guy Richardson is standing down after nine years in the role!
I've made it along to a few gigs since I last posted. After some initial doubts, I was after all able to get along to see my son Frank do his first show of the year at the Waiting Room in Stoke Newington. It was a cracking set, running to almost 90 minutes and in front of a full house. Thanks to various friends for coming along and supporting Frank. Frank and I have also started doing some recording together, working on somewhat longer-form ambient pieces, with me adding guitar parts to Frank's beautful textures and harmonic progressions. More on that soon, I hope!
Anyway, others shows I got along to included: The Musicians of All Saints in Lewes (including the premiere of a great piece by Guy Richardson); the fine pianist Yoko Ono at the Chapel Royal in Brighton (with another NMB premiere, a beautiful Hokusai-inspired piece by Barry Mills); jazz pianist Joni Mayraz at the Jazz Cafe in Camden (thanks to Marc Jaffrey for getting me along to that); and the soul jazz quintet Butaxca (featuring my great buddy Steve Morgan on piano) at the Brunswick in Hove. I also went to a screening of Oleksandr Dovzhenko's masterpiece Earth at the Attenborough Centre in Falmer, with a beautiful live soundtrack provided by pianist Roksana Smirnova and guitarist Misha Kalinin.
Some reading/listening/viewing over the last few weeks, with the usual apologies to readers who might not share (all of) my interests and sensibilities:
The Rest is History's brilliant series on American politics in 1968
Ted Gioia: Is This the Worst Month Ever for Legacy Media?
Joan Bakewell interviews Marcel Duchamp for the BBC in 1968 (file under "different times, people")
Olivier Messiaen - The Music of Faith (The South Bank Show, 1985) (ditto)
The amazing jazz keyboardist Hiromi plays an NPR "Tiny Desk" gig
Charles Ives Society: Improvisation and Ives
Ted Gioia again: What You Can Learn from Just Seven Pages by Hannah Arendt
Ian Pace: Why Christian culture is essential to education
Spiked: The myth of the population time bomb
Matthew Crawford: Anti-Humanism and the Post-Political Condition
Chris Snowdon for the IEA: Not Invented Here #4 - Smoking
John Gray: Trump and the triumph of illiberal democracy
And more from Gray, this time on Jordan Peterson
Brendan O'Neil Show: David Goodhart on how we're failing to care for the young and old alike
Sebastian Milbank: London has lost its soul
Sam Harris: Is History Repeating Itself? - A Conversation with Simon Sebag Montefiore
Anyway, enough of that. Here's a snapshot of what I was listening to in November:
In my next post, I'll be doing a wrap-up of the year. Bet you can't wait. As ever, my eternal gratitude to my wife and soul mate Sarah for endless support with all of this. Oh, and I just had to get in a crate of this for Christmas: