Gatton Music Zone 2009

Last Saturday, I got back from going to the Gatton Music Residential Course for my third time. Once again, I greatly enjoyed myself and was surprised at how much a group of musicians can achieve in just a few days. I was, naturally as I play the cello, in the Symphony Orchestra, and the week brought a refreshing break from the endless work and revision that I have found myself in over the past month in the run-up to my GCSEs.

Once again, there were thirteen cellos in the orchestra. Now I'm not superstitious, but for the second year running the cellists suffered a minor bout of problems. The cellist next to me was tuning her cello when her a-string snapped. Fortunately, I had a spare one which I gave her, and she paid me back very promptly. And then there was the girl who I warned about propping her cello up against THAT chair, who got angry with ME when it fell over and needed at least ten minutes attention to get it back working again!!! :O

The previous two years that I had been to Gatton, the food had been awesome right the way through. However, this time, the first meals we had were horrible (no offense). There was pizza with a base like cardboard, a the toppings looked and tasted like food scraps just piled on top of it. I was glad to find that the food would improve over the week, with some good pasta, dumplings, and English breakfasts.

We seemed to have less rehearsal time than usual this year, which was a shame in some ways, but we still spent 21 and a half hours in rehearsals (in the school chapel with appalling accoustics) and sectionals (in a boiling hot classroom). Somewhat surprisingly, I found myself in the principal cello seat, and it was very useful almost to have the conductor's baton waving under my nose at times. In sectionals we spent a lot of time (maybe too much) sorting out bowing, which was important, especially seeing as in the concert we would be very squashed together and so coordinated bowing in desks would be essential.

For obvious reasons, I chose not to spent my free time doing jazz or wind chamber music. I also chose not to do the string chamber music, as I normally play in a small string orchestra anyway, and they probably didn't want a bottom-heavy chamber group. Instead, I played numerous games of pool or table tennis, watched 'The Inside Man', and even had an exhausting game of 3-a-side touch rugby!! :D

I have always been a morning person, and I was very glad I was, as I did not have to suffer the agony of being wrenched from slumber by the house waking bell. Unlike the annoying clanger of other years and other houses, people were reluctantly awoken by the sharp sounds of trumpets or a TUBA! On Thursday morning, we even got a rendition of the theme tune of The Empire from STAR WARS. Being already awake, I was able to enjoy these musical murderers with amusement and appreciation.

Once again, there was a distinct lack of violas in the Symphony Orchestra. (Two more than last year, but that still only made two altogether). I was impressed by the violinists who were gutsy enough to learn to play the viola in a week, so that the viola section were always well represented in our pieces. As violinists and violists were constantly changing seats for each different piece, we had the amusing situation during the concert of coming onto the stage with one leader, and leaving with another!!

In the final concert at the H. G. Wells Centre in Woking on Saturday afternoon, we playing the following pieces:-

1. Overture from 'The Marriage of Figaro' by Mozart. - This was very intense for the cellists, with lots of difficult runs thrown in here and there. However, I thought this came of very well, and I can't wait for the CD to see just how effective the contrasting dynamics were. My dad in the audience said that this got better as it went on, and the musicians warmed up.
2. An English Folk Songs Suite by Vaughan Williams. - These three movements were very different, with solos dotted all over the place. We played superbly, and I personally was relieved that I counted my cello solo correctly. I also had to memorise parts of this so that page turns wouldn't upset the flow of the music. My favourite movement was the third one, a very light-hearted one with some very fast arco-pizz changes and vice versa.
3. The Carousel Waltz by Richard Rogers, arranged by Custer. - Once I had all the tempo changes sorted out in my head, and when I remember to go to the coda, this was relatively simple to play. It had a strange beginning that was most un-waltz-like, but it soon got going, and it was enjoyable to play, and hopefully to listen to as well.
4. The Allegretto from 'Palladio' by Karl Jenkins.- I had played this all-string piece twice before, but this time, when playing in a much bigger orchestra, there was so much more to think about and the somewhat-monotonous cello part became almost exciting.
5. Hoe-Down from 'Rodeo' by Aaron Copland. - This was an explosive piece, with an awesome trombone solo and some horrible rhythms. However, it kinda got a bit ragged at the end, and I made a howler in the final bar. (I don't think the audience noticed much but I know the conductor and the musicians around me did. I'd like to apologise profusely for my stupidity!)

The acoustics at the H. G. Wells Centre were really very good, and I was surprised at first to hear how clear the rehearsals beforehand there sounded. It made a great contrast to the appalling acoustics of the chapel for the Symphony Orchestra's rehearsals and the Friday evening informal concert.

In the Friday evening concert, the string section as a whole performed an arrangement of Andrew Lloyd Webber's 'All I Ask of You' from 'The Phantom of the Opera'. Whilst I am sure it sounded good, I felt it went on too long and was too slushy for the situation. (This was also the opinion of the non-string-players that I was sharing a room with). There was a lot of noise that evening, as brass and percussion players took turns or combined to make ear-splitting dins made worse by the shape of the chapel. There was however, an impressive, if loud, rendition of Brooklyn, that seemed to leave the air vibrating for a while afterwards. Also, various smaller groups performed items, such as a pair of flautists, a string chamber group and a solo trumpeter.

I would like to offer my deepest thanks for everyone at Gatton, whether tutors, house staff or participants themselves, for a most enjoyable and profitable week. A number of pictures of the final concert can be viewed on my Facebook profile. I was once again staggered by the amount that groups of dedicated young musicians managed to acheive in just a few days.

Christmas is coming too soon!!

One second, someone said that word. Yes, just as November melts into December, someone said Christmas.

That one word is far too powerful in our society today. It has the power to make the general population to fork out millions each year, and the power to make them shudder at the prospect of an ever-growing list of preparations that must be done this time around.

Less and less subconsciously each year, we are hyping up to the effort and exhaustion that is the Christmas break. Whilst we may groan about that longer Christmas card list, or that person who we can never think of anything to buy for Christmas, we still continue plugging along with what Christmas has become.

Sometimes, the preparations for a Christmas service is all about the mince pies afterwards, and not really about the real meaning of Christmas, that through God's love for us and His plan, He sent His Son to become man and eventually die for us.

Christmas has come too early, and it's mainly because we add too much to the list of jobs to do.

English Coursework (again)

Guess what! I've got more English coursework, and right when I should be enjoying myself.

Firstly, I have to do a second draft of my Sherlock Holmes essay (see previous post) , when all my teacher can say is refer to the question more, and indent your paragraphs. That's not really going to give me much inspiration to redo my coursework, is it? The best way to start hating a book is to write coursework on it, I have concluded.

Also, I have to write an essay on Macbeth, when I don't really have a clue what is going on in the play. We shouldn't study Shakespeare in ENGLISH as it's not really ENGLISH is it?

This work all has to be done for the other end of half term, that is, half-term holiday. I've made this point before (again, see previous post), but this time it's worse, as it's getting hot now and I want to enjoy the sun.

Between now and the holiday, I've got work experience, which would have been fun, except for the fact that I now have to fill in some silly booklet about it. Also, I have to do some French coursework about it, how annoying!

The NUT - Truly Nutty (but thanks for the day off school)

Well, tomorrow, Thursday 24 April 2008, I will not be going to school. That is a happy truth. The reason behind it is that the NUT (National Union of Teachers) are going on strike.

But why is this Trade Union going on strike?

My brother's form tutor is a member of NUT, and she says something to the effect of:

"Those in the NUT not striking should be ashamed of themselves for not doing so"before adding, "We have no reason to strike, but the NUT have called a strike, so I'm going on strike!"

Hmm. . .

English Coursework

Surely there must be a law against English Coursework, especially against having to do hours of hard slog when you really should be outside, inside, having fun because you're on holiday.
But no, someone somewhere has missed the point of the word 'HOLIDAY'.
That someone is an English teacher and department, that somewhere is my school.

At first, I thought that I was going to get away with not having to do any coursework at home in my free time, as my first piece of coursework just 7 weeks into Year 10 was done at school, during lessons on the computers. It was a piece of travel writing, so it wasn't that bad, and I wrote about my trip to Ypres, Belgium with my grandparents back in 2006. We went to the trenches, museums, and memorials there of the First World War. That particular piece was not too bad, as I just wrote it as it was, without having to make stuff up about a story in order to get any decent marks.

Then along came Spring Term Half-term HOLIDAY. The teacher set us an essay for coursework on a Sherlock Holmes story: 'The Speckled Band'. She gave us some sheet telling us what needed to be in the essay, with references from the story. Typically, the references were given column numbers, and were from a different publication of the story from the one I was using, so that was no help at all. To tell the truth, the sheet did help me a bit, but it also meant that my essay was an awful lot longer than it would have been without the sheet, and so it took more time and wasted more of my precious holiday. In the end, I wrote a load of stuff to analyse the story that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle probably never meant to happen. He wrote the story for people to enjoy, not to pull it apart!

And now I'm re-doing a piece of coursework that I don't even need! It is meant to be an alternative for my travel-writing piece, but I got a good mark for that and I was happy with it. We were told to write a 'Locked Room Mystery', so I did. I wrote a really short one, about 400 words and I did write a mystery; I left it unsolved! :D Then my teacher said it wasn't long enough, so now I have to do it again, over the Spring Holiday, and I've written nearly 3000 words now. It's a sheer waste of everything! [:(

P.S. No, it's not good exam practice; no-one can write 3000 words in an hour by hand.

Gatton Music Zone 2008

During the first week of the Spring school holiday, I went on a residential music course near Reigate, London at a boarding school called The Royal Alexandra and Albert School. Just as last year, I had a whale of a time.

I play the cello, and I was in the Symphony Orchestra. We rehearsed in the school chapel (totally massive, modern and plain weird-looking) whilst the Jazz band rehearsed in the Activities Hut and the Wind Orchestra rehearsed somewhere else. The Symphony Orchestra must have had about 70 people in.

Apart from the first day (we arrived at 11am) and the final day (concert day) we had about 7 hours of rehearsals a day. We would have had about 23 hours of rehearsing in all between Tuesday and Saturday. It really was hard work but I thoroughly enjoyed it and I feel that I made a great improvement on the cello. I also enjoyed the opportunity to play in a full orchestra, as my normal orchestra back home is just a string orchestra, which whilst great fun and very profitable, is not the same as being part of the overall effect of strings, wind, brass and percussion. It was also very different to be playing in an orchestra around 4 or 5 times the size of my string orchestra, and I was certainly not accustomed to having a brass section blaring away right in my ears. As the conductor of the Symphony Orchestra put it, the trumpets were not allowed to make the skin peel of the cellists' ears, and that singing our hair was an adequate noise. <:( Between rehearsals, we had large amounts of free time, and at least six eating opportunities a day. The food was delicious and I'm sure all instrumentalists there would agree, suitably filling for the ravenous stomachs of those who had been slaving for long periods of time. During the free time, I played large amounts of table tennis, pool and PS2, as well as playing tennis and indoor football. Also, we watched Liverpool destroy Arsenal on TV, and then laughed at the Gunner's fans who were claiming to be the better team!

The music we played was quite hard, but I managed to learn it all well in time for the concert. It amazed me how I could comfortably play complicated passages at the end of the week that I could only imagine doing at the beginning when the music was first put in front of me. I was tremendously helped by the two sectionals we had on Wednesday and Thursday, so thank you very much to the cello tutor!! :D

We played. . .

• La Seraglio by Mozart- This was really fast, the cellos had quite a bit of tune.

• Slavonic Dance by Dvorak- This was very complicated note-wise but fun to play.

• Schubert Symphony No. 8 (Unfinished) first movement- I loved playing this, it was very exciting and mysterious, and I had to count like mad. I kept nearly missing C# though.
  

• Swan Lake third movement Czardas (Hungarian Dance) by Tchaikovsky- This was probably the easiest of the things we played, but I had to cope with a tempo change and a page turn at the same time.

• STAR WARS by John Williams- I absolutely loved playing this, it was noisy, quiet and exciting. Favorite movement- Jar-jar's theme. I think the whole audience greatly enjoyed it.

As we set up for the Friday morning rehearsal, I got my cello (called Rufus) out of the case to find that my C string had unravelled. I sat down and began tuning it, then the other three strings all unravelled as well. At this point I went and sat away from the orchestra so that they could start rehearsing whilst a tutor came over to help me sort out my cello. As she was doing so, there was a great "CRACK" and I looked to see that my bridge had snapped clean in two. I think that the wood must have slightly warped or something, and it was not used to having all four strings radically tuned together. I thought that that was the end of me making any more music that week.

Then I was informed that there was a shop for string instruments just down the road in Merstham and I felt much better about the situation. The tutor rushed my cello off there, and I was soon informed that I could expect it back with a new bridge by the end of the day. Only a short while later in the rehearsal, one cellist said that she wasn't feeling well and needed to sit out, so she let me borrow her cello for the remainder of the morning (she was feeling ill until the afternoon). I would like to thank her for that (not for being ill, but for the lending of the cello). That same day another cellist's strings all went funny and during the concert yet another cellist had to slip out and was sick. Someone had the audacity to suggest that this was all because there were 13 cellos in the Symphony Orchestra!!!

I got my cello back in the afternoon, just in time for a rehearsal for the Friday Evening Informal Concert. Thank you very much to both the tutor and the conductor of the Symphony Orchestra for their helpfulness in getting my cello repaired swiftly and efficiently.

In the Informal Concert, the strings played a Sarabande and the Master and Commander Theme. In the Master and Commander Theme, I had to play a lot of stuff in the tenor clef, when I'd only seen the music once before. I don't know why it was written in the tenor clef, it didn't go very high, and I would have probable felt more comfortable if it had just stayed in the basic bass clef. I think I coped though! :) Also, the lead cellist had arranged a piece by Rodriguez called La Cumparsita for four cellos, and I performed in that. It was syncapated. Well done to her; it sounded really good!!

I thought that the bassoon group and the pair on the 5-octave marimba were very good and impressive and well done everyone who played in that concert.

On the day on the concert, we had to been out of the boarding house at 9am, as Dave (the guy looking after the people in our house) had to go on a course for something. Those in the Symphony Orchestra had to wait till 10am for their coach to arrive, so that wasn't much fun.

Once at Leathehead Theatre, we had to lug heavy luggage up two floors to somewhere it would be locked up. Then, whilst the Jazz Band were rehearsing, we went out and bought lunch. I had a very interesting sandwich labelled Red Leicester and Spanish Onion, that seemed to contain numerous other ingredients as well. It was nice, though, so I'm not complaining.

During our pre-concert rehearsal, I realised that we were going to be squashed a bit. We manouvered as much as we could, always trying not to fall off the stage. In the concert, I kept knocking into the viola on my right.

We were first on in the concert, and I think we performed really well, and got progressively better as we went on. It was quite an experience being part of a great big orchestra playing in front of a massive audience stretching far back on the tiered seating. My particular congratulations to the violinists who succeeded in picking up and learning to play the viola as there was a lack of violists in the orchestra (none)!! :D

Thank you to all the house staff, cooks, music tutors, string repair man and all the other musicians as well for giving me a superb, beneficial week!!!