Free Game for August - Fish and Chips

I love gigs within cycling distance and last night I played at Will Giles' Exotic Garden, a fabulous place near the railway station. The event was a party for Norwich's Green Party which, never having wielded power of any kind, are still considered cute and cuddly and immune from the opprobrium that is traditionally heaped on the spenders of public money. Ironically I had a puncture on the way and, looking for a safe place to put my bike on a Friday night, left it outside the Plantation Gardens, another favourite haunt.

There was enough stone and brick-work at Will Giles's place to make for a good acoustic. It's built on the side of a steep hill so there's a sense of being in an amphitheatre when playing. Although amplification was technically forbidden Andy still managed to sneak his battery powered Pig behind a palm leaf to enable a reasonable balance with the clarinet. Our mix of klezmer and jazz usually hits the spot and this was no exception.

I have just posted a new Game of the Month for August on the website. Fish and Chips was taught to me by a group of ten year olds earlier this year but I believe its appeal is universal by both age and geography. In case you are wondering, chips are deep fried lengths of potato, roughly equivalent to North American fries and what the French call pommes frites. By all means substitute a food item with which your players will be familiar. If you are playing in Spanish please try the word 'paella' and let me know how you get on.

The game is perfect for bonding as the individuals in the group have to listen closely to each other. I hate to say it, so early in the holiday season, but it's a perfect 'back to school' game.

Talking of holidays, this is my last post for a couple of weeks. I'm off to a couple of camps to play live music for various dance forms and will tell all on my return. May the sun shine on us all but especially on my tent.

What makes music special?

I have met people over the years who are only to pleased to impose whatever degree of instrumental talent they may possess on anyone within earshot. They will do this in any place and at any time and although. My own response is always akin to having witnessed them spit in a railway carriage (which used to incur a £25 fine) or fail to clear up after their dog on a public footpath (£100 and climbing). But I realise that many do not share my opinion and actually enjoy the experience, at least for a short while.


Secretly I wish I were more thick-skinned. I envy these transgressors their opportunity to practise at any time in any place, even on the most shrill of instruments. Some become very good and, needless to say, uninhibited performers. For my own part I need to be asked to play in public, the request implying permission. Even then I must suppress the knowledge that, whatever the feelings of the majority, someone at least will be wishing I'd just shut up. And that is the person for whom I have most sympathy.


As the teaching season draws to a close the opportunities to perform have increased to fill the void. July is a time for village fetes and other outdoor events but the most recent spate of gigs for the Eastern Straynotes kicked off at Blackfriars Hall in Norwich, playing at the graduation ceremony for Norwich University College of the Arts. The building, once part of a mediaeval friary, has a wonderfully flattering acoustic – "like singing in the bath" as one of our number put it. It has wooden flooring, presumably laid on stone, stone walls and a high, steeply pitched wooden roof all contributing to the reverberant sound that survived filling the room with excited, champagne drinking graduates with their friends and families. This was just as well as we had been asked to play without amplification.


On Saturday, as well as playing at the first fete held by Norwich Steiner School in their new premises, the Straynotes performed in the wonderful Plantation Garden. I have mentioned this in previous postings but, being 'built' in a former quarry it seems to mirror the towering, century old gothic, Roman Catholic cathedral next door. We played at the far end (from the entrance) and again the acoustic was very supportive. A walkway climbs out of the hollow through flint-faced terraces that create a reflective semi-circle behind the 'stage' (a patch of grass on this occasion). A very singular acoustic, only enhanced by birdsong. The other band, a duo called Solto Sueños, comprised Spanish guitar and a woman who sang beautifully in Spanish and the flint backdrop, along with steep sides of the garden, helped her voice carry to good effect.


On Sunday we played again at the Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts. Another high-ceilinged venue but one in which the sound always seems to disappear into the distance to be lost without trace. In spite of a sensation of playing into cotton wool, that takes some getting used to every time I play there, it is a real privilege to play in such a wonderful building in the presence of so much, and so much variety of, great art from all times and places.


So what makes music special? What all these places have in common is a sense of being somehow sacred and of being places in which, I hope anyway, only the incurably gauche would venture to play unbidden. Blackfriars Hall has existed for several centuries and began life as part of a religious community. The Plantation Garden, although one Victorian gentleman's vision and passion, has come to mean a great deal both to those who have helped restore it and to those who visit for the very real peace it brings in the middle of a city. And the Sainsbury Centre, also a place visited for reflection and the calm it retains regardless of school visits or other events, plays hosts to artefacts that have been deeply significant to people in ages past. All these factors have a bearing on the way I play.



For me, to be invited to add sound to such places is very special indeed. For all the mistakes I might make performing in these venues, the music sounds far better than a perfect rendition during a rehearsal at home.

A Festival Event

The annual Norfolk and Norwich Festival is taking place at the moment and last night I went to the Theatre Royal to see Philip Glass perform some solo piano works. As you might expect for such a big name the audience was an even mix of people who were into his music and others just curious as to what the fuss was all about.

To the untutored ear the music is much of a muchness and I found my thoughts beginning to wander as the same note patterns and chord sequences seemed to be reworked in successive pieces. Not being a piano player I had never attempted any of his work but watching his fingers move I realised this was music composed by and for the piano. Add or take away a finger from either hand and it would all sound very different. Change from a piano to an electric guitar or a bassoon and he would have made another music altogether. And then I couldn't help thinking that although he's not a bad player himself he's hardly a concert pianist and that perhaps someone else might have performed it all with more technical accomplishment. And somehow I don't think he would disagree.

At some point I realised I had been immersed in, was still immersed in, a wonderful feeling of calm introspection brought about by the music. And the performer's demeanour was so warm, matter-of-fact, unassuming and yet tremendously respectful of his audience that I was enjoying that connection to the music that only the composer can give. The concert wasn't about technique, it was about intent and communication.

At the end he did the obligatory encore; that part of the set that is really the final number but which is saved for after the applause because that's what the audience expects. After further enthusiastic applause he played what I believe was a genuine encore, an extract from the soundtrack to The Thin Blue Line. I am not sure how well be had prepared for the piece. It ended abruptly with a loud staccato chord from nowhere as it to say 'enough's enough'.

The Sainsbury Centre

The Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts, designed by Norman Foster, is a wonderful building and one of my favourite 'unusual venues'. I love the height, the light, the best hot chocolate in Norwich and of course the art collection it was built to house. On the first Sunday of every month there are free activities for the children, free newspapers for the adults and free music for all. This month the music was provided by Eastern Straynotes, a trio in which I play clarinet. We do klezmer and jazz and the mix seems to go down well with old and young. We are still settling in new girl Sandra on double bass and were pleased with how well it went.



It's not an easy place to play. The sound gets lost in the hangar-like space. Not only that but the audience can feel dwarfed by the enormity of the setting and takes some warming up. However, we did extract a fair amount of applause and foot-tapping. And there were plenty of dancing children for whom we must be just another strange phenomenon in a building that's full of them. A lot of people left when we stopped playing and I like to think it was the music keeping them there.



We were very fortunate that a musician friend, Tom, who does live sound from time to time, turned up and could give us some pointers on the mix. I made a point of photographing the mixer settings at the end for when we next play there in July. I find myself wondering what the weather will be like then. We had warmth and sunshine last weekend and in the break I wandered out onto the grass to look at the lake and the University of East Anglia's famous ziggurats.

Playing in a space with no electricity

Do you enjoy listening or performing in unusual venues? I've always been drawn to them. They bring their own challenges of course. Access, space, light and power for a start. And then acoustics and audience sight lines. A few Fridays ago I played in a mud building based on an Iron Age round house, deep in the Norfolk countryside. And when I say deep I'm not just using a cliché; the mud promised to be deep and sticky and it didn't disappoint. And, usually for a venue, there is no outside light. So, a dark, muddy access. But the space inside is lovely with a wood burning stove that throws out a good heat. And there is no electricity – just candle light – and I just love that. The acoustic is warm and only slightly reverberant on account of wooden dance floor. The musicians stand on the stone flags by the wood burning stove and, while the dancers learn the steps for the next dance, they attend to the mulled wine.

So that just leaves sight lines. I feel I've used the word 'unusual' a little often but, except for a pit band at the theatre, how often are the musicians placed at a level below the dance floor? On this occasion the audience is there to dance, not to watch the band. Circle dancing to be precise. And I just love playing for dancers, too.