ReedPlay’s launch concert is on Monday 8th February 2010 at the Purcell Room. Their programme includes works by Handel, Schumann, Busch, Schulhoff and Alwyn, as well as no less than three world premieres by composer-performers, Jeffery Wilson and Tim Watts, and by the winner of the 1st ReedPlay Composition Prize, Paul Foster. Tickets £12 (£6).
The first ReedPlay Composition Competition has been won by Paul Foster with his Scherzo for alto saxophone, bass clarinet and piano. The panel, which included Delia Triggel of Brasswind Publications and Jean-François Bescond from Rico, were impressed with what they felt to be an exciting and characterful piece, which justifies musically the challenges it poses to the performers. According to the composer, the work’s four sections “look at the nature of musical sharing, approached in four different ways”, working through “conflict”, tentative exploration of each other’s ideas, fragmentation and remixing, and, finally, in “equally balanced” combination.
The result was announced at the end of a public workshop of the six shortlisted works at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. ReedPlay thoroughly enjoyed getting to know the works of all the finalists and would like to thank them for their involvement. The shortlisted pieces were Priory Arch by Tim Eaton, Tarantella by Peter Marshall, Passage of a Dream by Alexander Woolff, Myriads by Keri Degg and The Trill of the Rhapsody by Harry Style. Bravo to all of them!
ReedPlay are looking forward to premiering Paul’s piece in their Purcell Room concert on 8th February 2010.
To celebrate their launch at the Purcell Room on 8th February 2010 ReedPlay are holding a competition for a new trio composition. Three works will be chosen for public workshop at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama on 14th November 2009 and the winning piece will be premiered in the launch concert.
ReedPlay are:
Compositions…
… should be for trio and may use any combination of the above instruments (including doublings).
… should be between 4 and 8 minutes in duration.
…should not have been performed in public.
The Prize
In addition to the Purcell Room premiere the winning work will be awarded a cash prize of £150 (supported by Environ Music), recorded and considered for publication by Brasswind Publications.
Please submit two copies of the score and a completed application form to:
ReedPlay Composition Competition
5 Church Green
Boreham Village
Essex
CM3 3EH
The deadline for entries to be received is Friday 30th October 2009
The jury will comprise the performers, a representative from Brasswind publications and an independent adjudicator (tba). Composers selected for the November workshop will be required to forward a set of parts within one week of being notified of their selection. The finalists will be invited to attend the workshop (at their own expense), after which the winner will be announced. The competition is open to composers of all ages and nationalities.
A PRACTICE REGIME
by Jeffery Wilson
Long notes and ’slow’ scales
The warm up part of a typical practice session should really involve the relaxing, almost contemplative, aspect of long note work and slow scales. The object here is beauty of tone, evenness across the range, gradual and sudden dynamic control and careful listening. (The ears being the musician’s best critic!).
Slow scales should help in preparation for work on pieces if there is some relevance to the actual music, for example, should you be working on the Weber Concertino then the key of ‘ f ’ is relevant and the scales major and relative minor and the dominant and diminished sevenths should be explored.
Repertoire
Here is where most people start of course and indeed where a great many problems arise due to inadequate preparation i.e. warm ups! We are all challenged by repertoire since this is at the very heart of what we do but there is an approach that I feel could help us all ……. ACHIEVABLE GOALS. Quite recently an advanced student was surprised by own approach to methodical practice over a short yet quite demanding passage. I worked in a disciplined way not until it was right, but until it could not go wrong! By setting yourself attainable targets of short-ish duration and working in a slow and diagnostic way, much can be gained.
The musician should hear first the way a particular musical line should sound and have an artistic ‘ideal’ in mind, which can be worked towards. Microscopic attention to detail, sloth-like speeds, physical and aural awareness and musical sensitivity should all come into play. The total removal of TENSION will be the result of careful, patient, relaxed, thoughtful (even contemplative) practice of SMALL elements of your repertoire. Using your memory rather than depending on notational reference can be most liberating AND allows the musician to focus on the most important issue of HOW IT ALL SOUNDS!
The Diagnostic Approach
Quite often one encounters particular technical and musical issues in a piece that make specific demands of you. Let us say that ‘fast staccato’ becomes a small problem; in this instance I would advise departing from the actual music and working on the issues raised by designing appropriate exercises and/or moving towards other music of an ‘etude’ type (e.g. Kell 17 stacc. Studies for Clarinet). We can borrow from the aesthetic of our warm up exercises in terms of a slow and methodical approach here.
Very often the difficulties we have with challenging moments in music are in fact only a tiny physical idiosyncrasy, the diagnostic approach can so helpfully focus us on the small issues of our playing.
‘My hand bumps the instrument between registers, upsetting my legato’
‘I am concentrating so much I forget to put air into blinking thing’!
Sightreading
This is where musical literacy is promoted and deficiency and capacity revealed.
Since this vital musical skill features in every single lesson that I give (and every personal practice session) I feel that it can be usefully integrated into your own regime.
Putting new and diverse music under your eyes reveals the amount you have assimilated into your playing.
Try recording your first efforts and listening back with the gift of hindsight ears! Most revealing! Repeating this exercise can be a worthwhile therapy.
The aim of a good musician should be to express with fidelity the notated music, incorporate the details of the more expressive qualities either notated or implied, to maintain a relationship with the pulse/rhythmic qualities and to offer something of a personal reading.
I could not conclude on the matter of sightreading without saying that doing this exercise with an accompanist and/or duo partner is perhaps a 200% better experience than the above!
Exams…Concerts…etc.
Working towards a goal of this kind can be a stimulant of a most positive nature and long term practice schedules can be designed to meet these challenges. Many of my students are very busy with their music making and so a practice regime is not so much a luxury as a necessity.
Balance is important here and every musician is different, so be mindful that the demands you place (or have placed) upon yourself are related to your ability to respond as you would wish.
Improvisation
It is not just the dedicated ‘jazzer’ that benefits from this area of musical expression.
You could go so far as to say that inventing some variable articulation exercises in scale playing is a kind of improvisation. With the wealth of ‘play a long’ CD’s and tapes available today the musician has little excuse for not ‘having a go’ in the privacy of their own home!
Extemporisation, the ‘off the cuff’ invention of a melodic phrase is an ancient musical skill and one that is coming back into use and fashion. Try simply ‘meandering’ around chosen key centre, at first by step and in breathing phrases, move on to development of themes by listening to your original idea and recording yourself, playing against the original improvisation, composing little riffs and ‘hook phrases to bounce off’. All of this can be developmental and of course…….fun!
Next month marks ten years since the death of the composer Howard Ferguson. Victoria and Tim recorded his charming and beautiful Four Short Pieces on Semplice Clarinet. We hope the excerpts below whet your appetite to hear the rest of the disc and to get to know more of the music of this distinguished composer.
Howard Ferguson: Four Short Pieces, op. 6 (1932-36)
I – Prelude
II – Scherzo
III – Pastoral
IV – Burlesque
Semplice Clarinet and Semplice Saxophone are recent releases from Clarinet Classics and Saxophone Classics respectively. They seek to prove that early grade music deserves to be performed with as much care and concern for appealing programming as any other repertoire. Including many of the pieces encountered by the beginner or intermediate student, both discs also include new works by ReedPlay composer-performers, Jeffery Wilson and Tim Watts. Both discs are available for online purchase with a discount available when they are bought together.
Both discs were recorded in the wonderful surroundings of Champs Hill, East Sussex, a place to which Jeffery pays tribute in his piece, for two alto saxophones and piano (completed between recording sessions!) which concludes the saxophone disc.
Wilson: Champs Hill
Handel and single reeds don’t often go together, for obvious reasons. Although he appears to have written for the clarinets precursor, the chalumeau, at least once, the clarinet itself and certainly the saxophone came too late for the master to write for them. We aired Tim Watts’s arrangement of one of his oboe sonatas at the 2009 Clarinet & Saxophone Performance Course held at Bath Spa University. Handel’s writing for oboe d’amore transfers brilliantly to the not dissimilar waveform of the soprano saxophone, while bass clarinet proves ideal as a continuo instrument. This will feature on ReedPlay’s Purcell Room programme on 8th February 2010. We hope you enjoy these extracts and come to hear the piece in full next year.
Handel: Oboe Sonata in C minor HWV 366 – 1st mvt
Handel: Oboe Sonata in C minor HWV 366 – 2nd mvt
Handel: Oboe Sonata in C minor HWV 366 – 3rd & 4th mvts
We are delighted to welcome you to the official website for ReedPlay.
Over the coming weeks and months you will see this website develop into an exciting and informative resource.
In addition to the One Day Performance Course and concerts which we offer, we’ll also be including a forum for sharing information on concerts, courses and events together with hot tips for practice and educational support. We are also excited that ReedPlay will be host to new compositions both published and unpublished, some which can be downloaded free.
In collaboration with its creative partners the ReedPlay website will keep you informed of brand new releases, products and special offers.
Finally we value the input of visitors to our new site and look forward to hearing from you.
Currently you’ll find a lot of empty spaces on the site, but this will be changing over the coming weeks, so do please bookmark this site, and visit again soon.
Meanwhile we look forward to receiving entries for our composer competition.
Enquiries contact: Launch Music Artists Tel: +44 (0)7739 455339
Email: philip [at] launchmusicartists.co.uk