Onwards & Forwards

A huge congratulations to Becky Chalmers, who has been selected by Guildhall & the Montserrat Foundation (UK) as the next music education specialist to be based full-time in Montserrat for a year. Becky, also a Guildhall postgraduate, is a major in orchestra studies with flute as her principal instrument.

Becky previously trained as a chorister and has extensive experience leading choirs. She also plays the piano and has musical directed productions with Newcastle University. I am excited to see her carry out the continuation of education and outreach work in Montserrat and I am sure her presence will be a huge inspiration to students and the wider community!

Becky will also be maintaining her own blog about her endeavours in Monty, so stay tuned!

Bonfire & Fireworks

While In Montserrat has been a great success, and on that evening we managed to raise nearly EC$4,000 for our efforts to go to the Montserrat Foundation (UK). Guests were treated to an eclectic line-up of musicians and student performers, including Jo who did a brilliant first half of classical repertoire from Schumann and Prokofiev, amongst other works. Filipe did more than just visit Montserrat when he also took to the piano, and both of them were immensely well-received.

Filipe & I revisited our days in Guildhall when we also performed some four-handed works on two pianos, one of which was collaboratively composed during his stay here in Montserrat and the other completely improvised. The MSS steel pan did an amazing debut appearance, playing Buddy Tom and Hold My Hand, and the Montserrat Youth Choir shone as usual with a few amazing soloists standing out in particular.

I will be posting up for photos and videos up here once I get hold of them.

The past fortnight certainly has been particularly busy - apart from planning this recital, I had Filipe and Jo over from London to visit. And to perform as well, of course. But apart from all that, we also went about to take in the sights and sounds of Montserrat, including a bit of diving, venturing into the destroyed capital Plymouth, and catching the transit of Venus across the sun on the MVO helipad.

Being the week of the Queen's diamond jubilee celebrations, Montserrat as a British overseas territory certainly wasn't left out either. There were fireworks and a bonfire last week, a jubilee medal reception for the fire and police servicemen and women, and of course, the recital itself.

Fireworks & bonfire at Little Bay.

Sunset on the evening of the Venus transit.

Filipe & I heading off to dive at Rendezvous Bluff.

The extended beach at Plymouth.

Venturing into the destroyed capital.

At the jubilee medal reception.

And with barely any time for a breather, exam period at MSS quickly approaches. I, however, have managed to somehow squeeze in time to write all my exam papers, and now with that out of the way, I am certainly looking forward to a quick weekend sojourn in Antigua with Jo this Saturday.

Next week, I will be back in London for a job interview. If any prospective applicant for this project placement would like to have a chat with me then about the work being done here, please do get in touch.

Steel & Pans

Having travelled quite a fair bit for work and performance over the past four years has presented me invaluable opportunities to pick up a wide myriad of different instruments from different cultures and amalgamate them into my performance practice and teaching methods. For example, during my time in Guildhall, SEZENYŪM travelled to Palestine for professional development and creative exchanges with local musicians. There, I fell in love with the darbuka and picked up a bit of playing and technique on that.

More recently, during my stint in Gordonstoun, I was completely enthralled by the bagpipes and picked it up as well. And now, living in the Caribbean, how could I possibly avoid the steel pans! My first foray into arranging for Volpanics has turned out well - we can now crack out a pretty good rendition of Big Spender, which certainly isn't a common tune for steel pans. And riding on that, I have decided to set up a steel pan ensemble for MSS students. However, instead of just focusing on Caribbean classics (and a few indispensible Bob Marley tunes, of course), I will be arranging music less commonly heard on steel pans. What exactly? I'm still mulling over it. But as I'm typing this, Lady Gaga's Born This Way is playing on MFR, and I'm thinking this might be a good one to tackle.

Anyone interested yet? All are welcome!