Maiden Voyage

In answer to the anonymous commenter

What no more blogs. Are you still practising?
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Posted by Anonymous to All Souls Musicians' Grade-1-a-thon, a muzo blogs... at 3/1/2005 08:06:29 PM

Haven't been doing much over the last 10 or so days - been a bit ME-ed, but am feeling better now (actually, a very late night out partying [schoolfriend's 30th birthday party] on Saturday seems to have had the opposite effect to the one logic dictates it should have, I've felt much better since!).

anyway, because of the being off work quite a bit, my poor little tenor has been languishing in a corner of the office. That turned out to be a good thing, as tonight was Prayer Gathering night at All Souls, and I joined Noel and played - nothing unusual in that - except that I played on sax (tenor variety)!
:)

I'd written out transposed versions of the melodies on Sibelius so that, although I was busking off of piano parts [obviously written at concert pitch] I had a failsafe-fallback in case my brain went into spasm and lost any abilities in the arena of transposing.
It was fine - and Noel very sweetly offered to do the last song, Lord, Be My Vision, in concert E-flat rather than concert E. That meant I could forsake the great joy of playing in a key signature with 6 sharps in it for one with one flat. No contest. I don't like E major on the viola or violin either. Silly guitarists' key.

Noel seemed impressed by my progress thus far - at least I managed not to crunch any horrible, horrible mistakes, the sound was ok, and I managed to busk, play tunes, and even do an intro on my own.

Janet was in the congregation (not sure how long she was there - we often say that she has a cloaking device that she activates when in All Souls as part of a congregation!) and said it was okay & that noone would know I'd only been playing since 31st January (a month now!).
She also said that that size of room was better for sax playing in than a small music room in a domestic dwelling. Funny that! James Cornford (a 'cellist in ASO), and Mary Tatlow (half of a truly inspirational older couple in All Souls) both said it was nice and that it had enhanced the sung worship, adding in colour etc, as I left, lumping my case with me. That was nice. That was the idea (enhancing the sung worship by adding colour, texture & stuff) - so that's good :)

Anyway -

• I like playing the saxophone
• I intend fully to carry on with it
• And I want to do it well
• And I want to do it lots

so there!

I'm meant to be leading the viola section at Prom Praise at the Royal Albert Hall on 12th March - first of the three orchestra rehearsals is this thursday. Have I played a viola/violin (apart from when teaching, and then even the more challenging parts of the kids' duets aren't too much of a stretch) since the saxes entered my life?
nope, can't say that I have.
Maybe I need to do something about that before I pitch up to rehearsal at 7pm on Thursday evening and play like a big purple mo0O0ose...