End of Day 7: BP Tour

After breakfast this morning, I attended a workshop "Chord Chart Basics" taught by Deborah Henson-Conant. I really admire this Grammy-nominated artist & it was really great to see how she presented the material. I think I'm going to show her handout to Dr. Davies to see if he might find any of it useful for his Theory classes.

After lunch, I loaded my gear into the ballroom to get ready for Bronzewood Paedeia's 5:30 concert. After setting up & warming up, we had a sound check with Rick, the sound guy. We couldn't get the receiver for my wireless mic to power on, so we used one of his mic's, a tiny, tiny little thing that could barely be seen - you'd have to know where to look!!

The concert went well. I think we played quite musically & we got lots of compliments on our ensemble. Many people had never seen bells, or solo bells before & told me how fascinated they were with watching me. :-) We played our version of Deborah's "The Nightingale" which the audience really enjoyed. Deborah seemed to like it, too, and told Kevin that we should publish our arrangement of it. I think it would be a lovely addition to the solo bell repertoire!

After dinner was the evening concert. Tonight was a harp & guitar duo all the way from Cornwall, England. The guitarist managed to break 3 strings (1 just before the concert & 2 during!), but they dealt with it with aplomb & grace. Lovely! (I wish I could remember their names, but I don't have them at hand right at the moment, sorry!) Their names were Sarah Deere-Jones & Phil Williams.

Next was Harper Tasche, who ended his set joined by a cellist for 2 lovely pieces. Harper has lots of books of arrangements published & today I bought 2 books that feature C instrument descants. I am looking forward to trying some of them out!

After Harper was Sharlene (can't remember her last name) Wallace from Toronto, eh? I saw her play at Somerset Harp Festival a few years ago & she's always awesome with a quirky sense of humor which also infuses her playing.

Finally, Nicholas Carter closed the concert with a set on Paraguayan harp. He grew up in Paraguay & played some traditional tunes as well as some original pieces. As with Sharlene, Nicholas' quirky sense of humor made him a joy to listen to.

Tomorrow, Kevin & I will teach 2 workshops: "Try Your Hand at Bells", in which we will do 10 chime-along songs, plus singing along while Kevin supports us with his harp. (Sometimes attendees play harp along with us, too.); and "Harp & Handbells", in which we talk about resources for harp & bells music, some ideas for arranging your own, then have the class help us create 1 or 2 arrangements right there!

Kevin picked out some simple tunes for this - at least, I hope they're simple since I've never played through them, LOL!!

Sorry there's no picture with this post. I didn't take many today & those I did take have already been transferred to my laptop so they can be uploaded to Flickr.

Anyway, time for bed; I am *exhausted*!!!

-Michèle (sent from my mobile phone)<