Five years hard slog in music school plus about 17 years in the profession and what am I doing? Playing with toys under cardboard Christmas trees with children.
Seriously though, they’ll be great concerts tonight and tomorrow. ’Twill include two world premieres by yours truly, one a Christmas song called Ring Out Wild Bells and also a mini concerto for toy instruments called Downsized (geddit? ha!). If you can’t get here in person, you can listen on the interwebs. Ain’t technology grand? Woo!
Who knew my city could look this lovely? Not I…
Get your Yule on Sydney folks. I’m playing amongst this prettiness tonight
I thought I’d post a little seasonal jollity, with added bonus irony at no extra charge!!
Frosty the Snowman: An Inconvenient Truth by Walter “Jack” Rollins and Steve Nelson, arrangement and revised text by Paul Stanhope. Performed by Gondwana Voices and Sydney Children’s Choir dir. Lyn Williams, with pianist Sally Whitwell
I just played “Opening” from “Glassworks” by Philip Glass at a very eclectic Christmas charity concert. Yes, a Christmas concert. I was pleasantly surprised by the audience reaction… people loved it! And they weren’t an ordinary classical music crowd.
Perhaps it’s really got legs after all, this slightly crazy project. Hm.
I had a few minutes to myself before the Voices of Angels Christmas concert last night. So I thought I would take the opportunity to have a little practise of Philip Glass’s “Opening”. I’ll be performing it in another Christmas concert on Monday evening and (admission time) I’ve not played it at all since I recorded it in late November!
Anyway, I was practising away in the orchestra pit in the City Recital Hall at Angel Place, on what most piano players would call a *very* nice instrument, a Steinway concert grand. But here’s the thing… it felt all wrong. I had the sudden realisation that I have *learnt* to play this music on a Stuart and Sons piano which, as I’ve mentioned before, has very specific idiosyncracies. And now that I need to perform it on another instrument, it’s like I have to learn to play the piece all over again from scratch, as it were.
Bugger.
I’m wondering how people are going to cope when I play Philip Glass at Monday’s Christmas charity concert “The Blue Gem Shining Amongst the Stars”? With the kind of crowd we’re expecting, it really could go either way…. eep.
:S
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I’ll be playing some Philip Glass at this Christmas concert “The Blue Gem Shining Amongst the Stars”. (Yes, Philip gets festive). It’s a charity concert raising money for a great cause, the Shelter for Trafficked Women run by the Salvation Army here in Sydney.
Entry by donation.
And if you’re into minimalist composer Terry Riley, we’ll also be playing “In C”!!
