Category: Blog

What fun we had. One member brought her husband along to the meeting with his cello, to play “The Song of The Birds” for us , which was beautiful, and gave us the real flavour of this lovely piece of music, which sounded particularly good in the church. He remained for the whole session, and…

A few of us got together for a practice, and to make progress with Corelli’s Christmas Concerto. Our Piece is but a small section of the whole which I have just enjoyed on You Tube. (Dorothea Oberlinger and Tabea Seibert with Sonatori de la Marca) What a magnificent and celebratory Concerto this is! We had…

We are delighted that Richard Warford, Music Tutor, arranger and conductor is going to give us a Mini Workshop on Feb 7th. This will be a great opportunity to address current and also new musical challenges!

Several of us re-visited “Christmas Concerto” by Corelli, and had the satisfaction of coping with the contrapuntals, which was fun. We also practiced “In The Quiet Night” and also the beautiful Polish Carol “Today in Bethlehem”, where the Bass starts, followed by the Tenor, then the Treble, and by bar 5 all 4 parts are…

Please click on the link beneath the photo on the Welcome page. We are playing Sweet Was The Song , a hauntingly beautiful 16th century carol, about the Virgin Mary singing a lullaby to the newborn baby Jesus. Next small group practice Thursday 30th Nov. Next full group meeting Weds 6th December

We worked hard on 8 Carols. Christmas Concerto by Corelli with its 12/8 time signature gave us plenty to get to grips with. We opted to count in 4/4 time, which was fine for the early section! The second half of this piece requires good timing for the full beauty of this composition to be…

Three of us had fun working on split 4/4 , and 2/4 time declaring the session enjoyable and useful, (finishing with Nigella Lawson’s Lemon Polenta cake, with added apple slices!) We mastered the “Boar’s Head Carol”, and enjoyed playing the slow Catalan Christmas song “El Cant dels ocells” (The song of the Birds). The Polish…

Really enjoyable meeting, playing Carols from our extensive playlist. “The Boar’s Head Carol” has a wonderful ceremonial feel to it. We imagined a boar’s head being carried in to a Christmas feast! The split 4/4 time gave us something to work on, which we will return to next time. “I Saw Three Ships”, “I lEst…

We played “Simple Gifts” by Joseph Brackett, “Gartenleid ” by F .Hensel,”Bouree” (Such an enjoyable piece to play !) by Handel, and began working on “The Third Tune” by Thomas Tallis, The three flats and 4/2 time in this, posed a good challenge for us.! We decided to start playing Carols at our next meeting,…

4th October Great meeting. Working hard on timing and keeping together! Big discussions over a cup of tea at the end, re split common time and musical rhythms in dance pieces.