Northern Lights Wind Quintet visit Orkney

Preparations have begun in earnest for our wind quintet trip to Orkney for the St Magnus Festival. We'll be making an excursion to Flotta for an afternoon recital on Tuesday 25th June - and recently heard that it's sold out! Our programme is as follows:

Carl Nielsen - Wind Quintet Op.43 A classic work for this combination of instruments. Nielsen wrote this piece for the Copenhagen Wind Quintet, with the intention of capturing each player's personality in the music.  

Modest Mussorgsky - selections from Pictures at an Exhibition (arr. Lisa Portus) A familiar favourite, this piece was originally written for piano, and has been arranged for a number of different settings, including orchestra, brass band, and now wind quintet. The music is based on a number of paintings by the composer's friend, Viktor Hartmann, and, with its Promenade movements, 'walks' the listener around the exhibition in question.

Berio - Opus Number Zoo Now for something completely different... This piece is in four short movements, each capturing a scene reminiscent of a children's fable. "A fusion of wicked and whimsy", each player is required to narrate the music with monologue and rhythmic speech, telling the following animal tales: a barn dance between a fox and a chicken, a fawn listening to 'the cry of bombs...the scream of distant fields', a grey mouse mourning the loss of her youth, and a David and Goliath-style battle between two tomcats. 

Christopher Gough - Durham Scenes We'll finish the concert with a world premiere by our very talented horn player, Chris. This three movement piece is based on fairytale-themed pictures created by a friend for an exhibition in Durham this year.

As well as our public concert, we'll be visiting five community venues, delivering participatory performances for Live Music Now. Graeme (bassoonist extraordinaire) and I have an extra day in Orkney, for an additional project with Drake Music Scotland and St Magnus Festival. It features newly-composed music for local schoolchildren with additional support needs, who will be performing using Figurenotes notation, skoog and soundbeam technology. We'll be playing two pieces alongside the children, clarsach player Fiona Rutherford, and BBCSO trumpeter Martin Hurrell.

It's going to be an action-packed few days!

Australia

Admiral Fallow returned - ever so slightly wearied - from Australia a couple of days ago. It was a great trip; we managed to do and see a lot while we were there, and it was brilliant to be supporting Frightened Rabbit again. Here's a few snapshots of our time there, variously stolen from Kevin, Joe and tour manager Davy. The worst quality ones are mine. Kev's first (and last) foray into the world of Instagram

An ibis strutting its stuff in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney

Basement Records, Melbourne

Familiar faces

Some local heritage

It was vastly hotter in Brisbane than this picture suggests

Tyne bridge

Had to be done

Bondi Beach on our last morning 

Folklub photos

So now it's one day until Australia! Thought I'd share this before we leave. Just been sent these marvellous photographs of Folklub last Tuesday, taken by Sean Purser:

 

I had a lovely time that night! Kristan Harvey & Sean Gray, and the Ross Ainslie & Jarlath Henderson band were all fantastic. Big thanks to everyone involved, especially David Foley for organising the night and Jack Smedley for his new-found compering skills! I was lucky enough to be joined onstage by good pals and two of my favourite musicians, Jennifer Austin and Fiona MacAskill.  Our usual guise is as a trio, Wildings; we've been plotting to make a recording sometime this summer.

Admiral Fallow in Australia

Two days from now, I'll be sitting in the illustrious surroundings of Glasgow Airport waiting to go to Australia for the first time! Admiral Fallow have some shows supporting Frightened Rabbit (see Gigs page for details), so we'll be there for a couple of weeks. My attempts at photograph-taking are usually pitiful, but I'll make a proper effort this time.. See you in a few weeks!

Folklub

On 23rd April I'll be playing a solo support slot at Folklub, a monthly event at Stereo, Glasgow. The main act is the Ross Ainslie and Jarlath Henderson band, and you can check out all the details at Folklub's Facebook event page here. And 'like' the page while you're at it! Really looking forward to the night, and I may get some pals to come and play too.