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What I do when I'm not writing...

04/05/2012

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Believe it or not, I don't actually spend every minute of every day writing, though I spend nearly that thinking about it. Also, it's been a busy month, what with signing tours north to Seattle and Portland and south to San Diego and the Los Angeles area, followed by Left Coast Crime in Sacramento. In between all the running about, I paused to play in a recorder concert.
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All photos courtesy of Dennis Galloway

If you think of recorders as those things elementary kids play--well, you're  half right. They do, but so do a large number of musicians, a few professional and many amateur.

Recorders come in several sizes, from the 6 inch garklein to the double contrabass (large and elusive, like the Sasquatch--I've never met one in person).

The most commonly played are the soprano/descant and the alto/treble, while tenors and basses are not uncommon. I've played the descant since I was seven years old--with long periods of not playing--and still play my original instrument. I've also learnt to play the treble, but the fingering is different and I don't have time to practise, so I haven't actually played it in a while.
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Sometimes we're joined by viols, also known as violas da gamba, or even viola da gambas!
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We play music ranging from medieval to modern. Recorders went out of fashion by Classical times (Haydn, Mozart). A revival began in the early 20th century, with renewed interest in "ancient" music. My favourite period for recorder music is the Renaissance, especially the English Renaissance from mid 17th century to early 1700s, composers such as Gibbons, Byrd, John Johnson, Anthony Holbourne, Orlando Gibbons, and the all time best, Anon.
This is the group I play with, the Eugene chapter of the American Recorder Society, aka EARS. We meet once a month for a couple of hours, just for fun, about as much as I can manage. There are other more serious groups in Eugene, but we do play serious music.

These pictures are of the Play the Recorder Month concert in March. We played Vaughan Williams' Come Away Death, John Dowland's Now I Needs Must Part, a tango by Astor Piezzolla, Palestrina's Nigra Sum sed Formosa, and others.

It's a lot of fun, exhilarating and exhausting, as making music usually is, and it makes a change from sitting at the computer or behind the wheel.
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Moments Musicals (Musicaux?)

01/24/2010

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Last week was a musical week. On Saturday (17th) I participated in a Renaissance Masque. I play the recorder. A group of recorder-players joined viols, singers, dancers and a Loud Band--Cornets and Crumhorns--for an afternoon rehearsing, followed by a potluck supper and a very amateur performance for a small paying audience. Had to be a small audience as we just about filled up the space. Here's a pic of the same event last year.
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Note yours truly at extreme left
On Thursday I went to the Eugene Symphony concert, one I'd been looking forward to for ages. This season they're doing all the Beethoven piano concertos, under our new music director, Danail Rachev. They played the third this time, with Mihaela Ursulaesa as soloist. She was wonderful, especially in the slow movement, which I don't think I've ever heard better played. As if that wasn't attraction enough, they added Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony, a marvellous supersensitive performance that brought out every nuance of emotion. If it weren't that I didn't want to snuffle, I would have been weeping. The more I hear of Rachev, the better I like his conducting.

Then on Saturday (23rd), when I should have been writing, was the regular monthly meeting of EARS (fortuitous and fortunate acronym for the Eugene American Recorder Society chapter. 8 or 9 of us turned up this month--it varies. Most of what we played was by everyone's favourite composer, Anon. The periods ranged from 15th to 20th century (the latter not Anon but I can't recall his name). It's always both exhausting and uplifting. Just wish I had more time and energy for practising.

Yours musically, tra-la,
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