Sitting on an Easy Jet flight from Edinburgh to London (working off-line of course!) this is the first moment I’ve had to write about a lovely concert I was involved in on April 21^st at the beautiful new Perth Concert Hall, under the auspices of the Hebrides Ensemble.

This was part of a series “curated” by the percussionist Colin Currie during his current residency at Perth. Originally from Edinburgh, Colin now enjoys an enormously successful international career as a soloist – it’s a fact worthy of note that this small nation has produced in two of the world’s foremost percussion soloists, and it is very heartening that both Colin Currie and Evelyn Glennie are not only proud Scots, they both do as much as possible for the music of their home nation.

All of the pieces in this program featured Colin on marimba, but he deliberately chose pieces by American composers which allowed him to blend into a small ensemble setting, rather than concentrate on solo virtuosity. I found the entire program both delightful and stimulating, but my main purpose here is to talk about Shiner by the New York based Sarah Kirkland Snider.

This was my first encounter with Ms. Snider’s music, and this piece is a little gem – effectively a one movement trombone concerto for marimba, viola, harp and trombone. How can such a chamber piece be described as a “concerto”? Well, it was Colin who described it thus, and I fully agree – the ensemble creates a continually shifting, shimmering texture that weaves through modal relationships, sometimes quite surprising in their juxtaposition, always full of light and shade, whilst the trombone carries the principal melodic lines, evading any notion of Romantic virtuosity, but singing the line and then commenting upon the material.

The trombone writing is “other” whilst the ensemble is completely unified and organic. Very sympathetically written for the instrument, this is a most rewarding addition to the solo & chamber repertoire, and one which is within the practical reach of advanced students and professionals. The depth of texture is astonishing given the tiny forces involved – Jane Atkins’ viola seemed to encapsulate an entire string section, whilst the harp and marimba interlocked to create all necessary rhythmic & harmonic colours to render the piece completely satisfying.

After the concert I immediately wrote to Ms Snider to tell her how much we all enjoyed performing her music, and I’m delighted to report that she is willing to expand the piece, possibly by composing two more movements. If this comes off, I very much hope that the Hebrides Ensemble will be able to premier and record the results – I can think of no group of colleagues with whom I would rather embark on such a project.

The concert ended with Colin directing the rest of us non-percussionists in a performance of Steve Reich’s seminal “Music for Pieces of Wood” which really had us all concentrating with an intensity none of us ever experience these days on our own instruments. To hold rhythm and colour static on such simple instruments over such a long period of time poses unsuspected difficulties to musicians not used to controlling tiny impacts through their wrists and hands – if the combined concentrated energy generated by the five of us could have been harnessed and converted to electricity, I’m sure we could have lit a small town!

The program was:

• Joe Duddell - Parallel Lines (Piano marimba)
• Kimmo Hakola - Five Clips (Clarinet & marimba duo)
• Sarah Kirkland - Snider Shiner (trombone, harp, viola, marimba)
• Sarah Kirkland - Snider Thread and Fray (bass clarinet, marimba, viola)
• Anders Koppel - Tarantella (Violin and marimba)
• Steve Reich - Music for Pieces of Wood: quintet of claves & woodblocks

Performers:
Colin Currie, marimba; John Kenny, trombone; Yann Ghiro, clarinet; David Alberman, violin; Jane Atkins, viola; Helen MacLeod, harp; and Simon Smith, piano.

Last weekend, on April 12th & 13th, the Conservatoire Maurice-Ravel, in the Levallois district of Paris, hosted a French national trombone festival. In two days packed with recitals, lectures and discussions, this delightful event amply demonstrates that the French continue to treat the trombone very seriously, and that their traditions of excellence in teaching and virtuosity in performance remain second to no other nation. I was very curious to know whether I would notice any strongly marked national characteristics throughout the performances, since although I have performed so frequently in France over the past 25 years, I have virtually never performed with other trombonists there, and I have certainly never had the opportunity to listen to so many fine French trombonists play one after the other, in so many styles and periods.

Well, I must conclude that yes, there IS still a distinct characteristic of French trombone playing, and to my ears this was discernible in every style and period of music performed. Logically this should be expected, since most players generally start when young simply learning to play the instrument with no specific leaning towards any particular style or period of music – that specialisation, or preference, emerges later. What IS surprising is that these characteristics continue in spite of the high mobility of contemporary life, and the increasing standardisation of equipment, as well as internationally available recorded media. I find this most encouraging – how sad and boring it would be if we all started to sound the same, all over the world!

So what are those French characteristics? Well, a particular lightness of articulation, sweetness of tone, delicate use of vibrato, and a shaping of notes within a phrase that is simply different either to Anglo Saxon or Germanic styles. The level of technical proficiency was stunningly high throughout – but the level of technical achievement has risen enormously internationally over the past 30 years. The real difference is an expressive sensibility, as palpable as the air and light of Paris, Gallic language and humour, cheese and fine wines!

The perfect illustration of all this came with the performance of Henry-Michel Garzia, accompanied by his wife, Brigitte. In the Wagenseil concerto, an arrangement of the 2nd movement of Rachmaninov’s Cello Sonata, and finally the concerto by Gräfe, Henry displayed all the assured virtuosity of the seasoned performer and teacher, blending power and flexibility with perfect intonation and impeccable phrasing. One felt that this man could never make a course or crude sound on the trombone – always in control, and debonair this was playing in the very finest French tradition. Of course, it was also a great pleasure to listen to a duo, as opposed to a soloist with accompanist – Brigitte Garzia is an exceedingly fine pianist, who always judged the balance of tone and colour perfectly to support Henry’s singing lines and rapid articulation. Superb!

I arrived just in time on Sunday 13th to hear my old friend Benny Sluchin performing a recital of duos for trombone & ‘cello, with Pierre Strauch, solo ‘cellist of Ensemble Intercontemporaine. Both men are founder members of Boulez’s pioneering group, and both are masters not only of their instruments but of the widest reaches of contemporary technique and idioms. Works by Antonio Pelleggi & Ricardo Nilni (a world premier) presented both players with enormous challenges of balance, as they strove to match articulation and tone quality across the full range of both instruments. For the trombonist, these pieces also made enormous demands of endurance – the audience was not disappointed! One of the great things as a performer at this sort of event is hearing music that one wishes to have a go at oneself – and I am determined to have a go at these pieces as soon as I can find a ‘cellist crazy enough to join me. Benny & Pierre had obviously put in an enormous amount of preparation, and their long professional association in Ensemble Intercontemporain shone through their performance, in an object lesson on wordless communication.

My own performance came towards the end of Sunday, when I unleashed my solo music theatre entertainment La Belle et La Bête on the unsuspecting French trombone world. Since this piece relies for its effect partly on racial linguistic stereotypes, there is always the possibility that someone might get offended – and also that I might injure myself (as I did recently in Glasgow) doing physical gags that I probably should stop messing with at the age of 50 – but, well, we only live once! Anyway, the audience were most generous in the appreciation, setting me up perfectly to perform my Sonata for Unaccompanied Tenor Trombone which is quite an old piece now. I find it hard to comprehend that I wrote it 25 years ago – Tempus Fugit! Apparently, the piece is often performed in competitions and final recitals in France, which I take as a great compliment.

For details of the complete program of the festival, please go to http://coulisses2008.spaces.live.com/

The last two days have been spent rehearsing in my favourite German city, Munich, with two old freinds: poet Grantly Marshall & pianist Paul Flush. Since the release of my CD The Marshall Plan, we have been surprised at the interest show by German audiences in the concept of English language poetry blended with music. The CD is very rich in textures, integrating the spoken word into music combining variously trombone, didgeridu, recorders & ocarinas, harp, bass, piano, drums, violin, and of course sung voice. However, for these performances in Germany we simply go out as a trio, Grantly’s poetry interspersed with duos from Paul and I. It’s great fun for us, and the audiences seem to love it - I never cease to be amazed (and gratified) by the German love of other languages, particularly English, Of course they are also the world’s greatest consumers, per capita, of musical culture, which tends to make German audiences not only willing, but also knowledgeable.

Last night’s show was in Dillingen, a beautiful old town on the Danube, where the association of Bavarian English Teachers were holding a conference in the beautiful 16th Century Lehreschule, a great baroque courtyarded mountain of masonry attop  he old walled fortress town. 250 teachers packed into a well apointed theatre, with a beautiful new grand piano, to take in a 90 minute program of semi improvised music and American English poetry, and gave us a standing ovation. CD sales are always a good litmus test of appreciation, and my suitcase is considerably lighter at check-in today.

A gentle spring morning walking in the magnificent English Gardens, watching wet-suited lunatics surfboarding on the giant waves of the Isaar Wiers in the city vcentre, and listening to the virtuosso strains of a Rumanian busker playing Paganini violin solos topped off this trip perfectly. On to Paris, and “Les Coulisses dans les Etoilles”!

The Cry of The Wolf is the title of a solo carnyx piece I wrote whilst on a solitary walk through the extraordinary, isolated glacial flow country of Cape Wrath on the extreme North Western tip of Scotland. This is truly one of those places in the world which strike one forcibly as “Ultimo Terra”. I personally subscribe to no particular religious affiliation, and I accept the wonders of the natural world and our rapidly increasing knowledge of cosmos and micro cosmos as sufficient reasons to delight in our existence – and yet I also remain open to a mysticism that is firmly rooted in organic existence; The Living Planet.

The Cry of The Wolf is an intensely personal reaction to that environment: the music seemed to flow into me from the air and water and light – all I had to do was to capture it, to try not to let my intellect get in the way, and not to let this essence evaporate in the “real world” before I had a chance to record it. In this sense of such a strong, almost hallucinatory connection with the environment I have described the piece as “shamanic”. It can be heard on my CD Forest~River~Ocean.

Ever since I began to work with the carnyx people young and old, from every strata of society, and in many different nations have expressed very strong emotions upon their first sight and hearing of the instrument. Sometimes the emotions are fearful, disturbed, sometimes exhilaration, sometimes joyful. Just twice I have encountered people who react very strongly against the very idea of the carnyx as a serious musical instrument – no doubt there are others I don’t know about, but both of these people were classical musicians in important positions, and both were offended by it, almost as if I were committing an act of sacrilege by performing on the carnyx in a conventional musical environment! However, the vast majority of people express delight and pleasure at the experience – which is very encouraging.

This strong reaction from listeners – both positive and negative – is far beyond anything that I have experienced as a concert musician in any other situation, in any style. Obviously, fellow musicians who have collaborated with the carnyx have also witnessed this reaction and some of them have also found the instrument deeply moving. One of the deepest reactions came from my old friend Mike Dunning.

Mike is a wonderful bass player, and one of the most original jazz musicians Scotland has produced in the past thirty years. He also used his art to work extensively with people suffering from a wide variety of physical and emotional disablement, and eventually also trained as a craniosacral therapist – a true polymath. He now lives and works in the USA.

Mike was a member of the free jazz group Scot Free that I put together in Edinburgh a few years ago, and for our inaugural gig he wrote a piece called “Taxus Baccata” for carnyx & bass, which sprang from his deep meditations on and within the ancient Tyninghame Yew. Mike’s piece is truly spiritual, and captures perfectly that deep feeling of connectivity that I try to reach in my own solo piece. Go to Mike’s own site to see pictures of that extraordinary tree, and to read about his own experiences. Here is an exerpt:

Yewshamanism and Craniosacral Biodynamics
Michael gradually became aware of his shamanic ‘calling’ over the period of a few challenging years following an encounter with a powerful elemental spirit in the far north of Scotland that almost took his life. Several years later he was struck in the head by a bolt of light that seemed to have come from the sky. Immediately after this event he became extremely disoriented, exhausted and confused, and was very soon unable to live a normal life. He felt close to death. At this point he began to experience visions, as well as out - of - body states and intense physical pain. He was finally rescued by a friend who happened to live in a small cottage close to the yew tree. This marked the beginning of a ten-year shamanic initiation and healing that took place under the vast enclosure of the sacred 2000-year-old yew tree. Michael believes that the spirits at the yew tree were passing on a sensory and experiential knowledge involving the inherent healing powers of the yew, that was known to the indigenous healers and ’shamans’ of Scotland. An account of Michael’s shamanic initiation can be read in the book ” Soul Companions-Conversations with Contemporary Wisdom keepers. A Collection of Encounters with Spirit.” by Karen Sawyer. Michael now leads shamanic workshops and events throughout New England, and teaches and practices as a Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapist.

Chris Houlding’s first solo album is long overdue, and I warmly recommend it to all my readers as a fascinating example of British trombone playing at its best. Chris’s years as professor at the Royal Northern and Chethams have made him one of the UK’s most respected and sought after teachers in the UK, and in the past few years his reputation has grown internationally, which makes it even more vital to hear such an authoritative voice as an interpreter.  His playing career has been almost entirely spent as principal trombonist of the Opera North, where he has been since the establishment of that company over 25 years ago – but when we were students in London Chris was known as one of the most fluent trombonists of his generation. If the direction of making a career as a soloist had seemed realistic at that time, Chris would certainly have been a player we would have expected to attempt that route.

An additional point of interest – and I don’t know whether Chris planned this or it’s just a coincidence – is a through line connecting teachers and composers at the Guildhall: Dennis Wick taught both Chris Houlding and Eric Crees at Guildhall, and three of the composers represented on the CD – Simon Wills (Lucifer), Eric Crees Flourish), and myself (Fanfare), are all currently professors at the Guildhall! For my colleagues and I this is certainly a happy coincidence, because Chris gives masterful interpretations of our pieces, but I also see this as particularly fitting because I have always regarding Chris, perhaps more than any other leading British player, as the natural torch bearer of Denis Wick’s enormous influence on our national style of playing. Indeed, on this recording he performs on one of Denis Wick’s new style mouthpieces – and although I am not normally given to recommending equipment to my colleagues, I have to say that I think these mouthpieces are superb. It certainly suits Chris’s style and sound.

Chris’s interpretations of the classics Elegy for Mippy by Bernstein, the Sulek Sonata, and Hindemith Sonata are essential listening for any aspiring trombonist and here’s your chance to hear Hindemith’s notoriously difficult and thickly scored piano part played with a wonderful lightness of touch and sensitivity by Ian Buckle; the 2nd movement is a particular joy. 

Anyone interested in performing my own short Fanfare should be very interested to hear an extremely different interpretation from my own (which opens my own CD Amaterasu). Not only is the sound of the two trombone players very different, the quality and weight of articulation, and tempos and phrasing, are all completely individual. Interestingly, there is also one note at variance: the last note of bar 9 in Chris’s performance is a D natural, whereas in my own it is a Bb. This arises because there are two versions of the piece out there – at one stage a wrong note crept into the published score, which I didn’t pick up on when proof reading! Warwick (to my amazement) sold a lot of copies of the piece, and the first I knew of the wrong note was when it started to arrive in the hands of students. The piece has subsequently been re-issued with that note corrected – but there are a LOT of copies out there with the D instead of Bb. And you know what – I like it both ways!! I have no objection to there being two versions – the only problem may arise if the piece is performed in a competition or exam, and the adjudicators are not aware of the alternative note!

For me the particular highlight of this CD is the demanding virtuoso solo work Exito Quod Evenit by the Northumbrian composer Peter Swan. This four movement piece pushes conventional playing to the limit without crossing into extended techniques, and succeeds in being both highly expressive and mysteriously dramatic – it deserves to become a staple of the solo repertoire.

Edinburgh is a wonderful place to live – I moved here in 1986, and I still don’t take for granted the great privilege of living in a beautiful city. There are not many beautiful cities in the UK – our industrial revolution, the bombings of the 2nd World War, and the even great vandalism of misguided arrogant town planners have conspired to make too many of our urban spaces depressingly ugly and chillingly hostile to anyone not passing through in a car, or out on the streets late at night. Fortunately, we also still have some wonderful towns and villages – and Edinburgh is an ancient capitol city little bigger than a market town, surrounded by magnificent hills, bordering miles of clean sandy beaches, and within reach of secluded wooded river valleys to north and south. Add to this an extraordinarily varied and cosmopolitan cultural, the finest concentration of independent cinemas in Britain, and excellent schools – and you might appreciate why I chose to leave London to make my home here and bring up my family.

THE Edinburgh Festival is of course the best known arts festival in the world, taking place in August each year. Many people don’t realise that the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, which runs parallel to the International festival, has actually grown to many times the size and diversity of the original “high arts” event – the two are now completely complimentary. In addition to this throughout the year we have three jazz festivals, the Edinburgh Book Festival, the Edinburgh Film Festival, The Edinburgh Science Festival, the Edinburgh International Story Telling Festival, and two folk festivals that have just taken place over Easter: the Edinburgh International Harp Festival and the Bodhran Festival (a bodhran is the Irish/Scottish round frame drum familiar to anyone who listens to Celtic music). After all that, it’s not surprising one needs a golden dram and a bit of peace to contemplate such riches – and you can have that, too!

I’ve already written about my own performance at the Harp Festival – yesterday I went back to give a workshop on the history and reconstruction of the carnyx, and then stayed on to listen to the evening’s performance by harpist Ruth Wall & her composer husband Graham Fitkin – I’ve been hoping to hear these two live for some time, and I wasn’t disappointed. Graham is an excellent “straight” composer, but in this context he is working with electronic instruments and live sampling of Ruth’s performance on a variety of acoustic harps. Ruth is undoubtedly one of the UK’s finest harpers, and what makes this performance particularly interesting is the use of fine historic and folk instruments sampled and set into the context of jazz & dance music inspired textures. I thoroughly recommend everyone out there to check out their latest album “Still Warm”.

After the show I met up with an extraordinary man called Andy Lowings, whom I first met at the same festival five years ago. Andy is a harpist and musicologist who has spent year fighting to reconstruct the Golden Lyre of Ur. As you can see from the attached photograph, this is an astonishingly beautiful work of art – but it is also one of the most important musical treasures of the Western World, created in what we now call Iraq about 4550 years ago. The US lead invasion of Baghdad, which has brought about such appalling human suffering and piled such injustice upon lies, has also lead to the destruction of many priceless and irreplaceable artefacts from one of the earliest Western civilisations. Andy’s struggle has been to reconstruct this astonishing instrument as authentically as possible to allow us to hear the sounds that come to us from before the Pyramids, even before Stonehenge! Please go to: www.lyre-of-ur.com and check it out for yourself. Astonishing!

Over the past three years one of the projects I’ve had simmering away has been the gradual development of a new repertoire for the unusual combination of trombone, harp and string quartet.

There is an increasingly rich repertoire for trombone with string quartet, and I have had the pleasure of performing and recording with some wonderful string quartets around the world – and there is also a small but very fine repertoire for harp and trombone duo.

However, to the best of my knowledge these two elements have not previously been brought together. In fact, it was not initially my idea to do this – the English composer Peter Swan wrote a piece for this combination, and Chris Houlding (Professor of the Royal Northern College of Music & Drama) suggested that I should take the piece on, and I owe Chris a debt of gratitude for that suggestion!

As soon as I looked at Peter Swan’s music, I realised that this was not only a very fine piece, but that it opened the door for the development of a completely new combination – so I decided to set about commissioning new pieces, and there is now a sufficiently large repertoire to merit a CD recording, which will hopefully be achieved this summer – title: “Embracing The Unknown”, which is the name of a piece composed for the album by my old friend Etienne Rolin. The disc will be on BML, and should be out this autumn with Hugh Webb on harp and the Edinburgh Quartet.

Last night at the Edinburgh Harp Festival I had the great pleasure of performing one of these new pieces with the Edinburgh Quartet, and the stunning French harpist Isobel Moretti – stunningly beautiful, and mesmerising to watch and listen to. Edward McGuire’s “Guest Sextet” is a 16 minute, one movement piece in which the string quartet is conceived as a community into which strangers are welcomed – thus reflecting the tradition of hospitality to strangers which has always formed a fundamental character of most peasant communities, and which was certainly a feature of the Highland and Irish crafting community. The music contains echoes of both Celtic and baroque music, and sets the trombone and harp magnificently into the string quartet textures.

The Great Hall of Merchiston Castle was packed to capacity, largely with harp enthusiasts no doubt – so it was particularly pleasing that they took this piece so much to their hearts. Isobel will be giving a workshop at 18.15 on Tuesday evening – unfortunately at exactly the same time that I myself will be giving a carnyx workshop! However, I think we may join forces briefly to find out what carnyx and classical harp can do for eachother…

The Newark Brass Festival, whose patron is Denis Wick, is a new event which will take place at the Palace Theatre, Newark, Notts, on January 24 and 25 2009. It will comprise education workshop to be led by students from the Royal College of Music, a competition for players aged 11 to 30, minimum standard grade 5, which will be judged by top professional players, and a gala concert.

Trio D’ART (Paul Archibald, trumpet, Helen Reid, piano & John Kenny) will be in residence given masterclasses, judging and performing at the festival.

 for more information visit the Newark Brass Festival Website

This weekend sees the next stage of my ongoing collaboration with The Edinburgh Quartet, this time joined by the stunning French harpist Isobel Moretti in a performance of Edward McGuire’s “Guest Sextet” at the Edinburgh Harp Festival on Sunday evening.

Last autum the quartet and I performed this piece twice as a quintet, and in that form the trombone sits wonderfully within the textures of the string quartet.

McGuire, of course, is an old friend, and an experienced writer for trombone – he has composed a fine concerto for me, as well as Zephyr for trombone & string quartet, which I have performed and recorded in many nations. His earliest piece involving me was for viola, trombone & tape: Wild Woods – which I premiered in Glasgow with the veteran viola virtuoso James Durrant. It will be interesting to see how we solve the inevitable balance issues which will arise between the concert harp and trombone!

After that Xenakis performance I had just enough time to throw back a glass of complimentary wine at the post concert reception, and then dash to catch a train to Cheltenham, where I spent the next two days working with artist Sean Harris and recording engineer Jim Brook on the latest of our series of short animated films, each of which takes ancient  artefacts from the collections of various museums in the UK, and places them into what might best bre described as “invented mythologies”.

Sean and I first met some years ago when I was touring with the Northumbrian piper Kathryn Tickell. He invited me to perform and talk about the carnyx at a tiny community in North Wales, where he had worked with groups of children to create magnificent maps and illustrations to a section of the Welsh epic, The Mabinogion. It was a magical event, and I suggested that he ought to take the work forward into animation – which was the start of an extremely fruitful collaboration which has seen us work with the archaeology departments of the National Museums of Scotland, Wales, and Ireland to produce four films to date.

The current film is our fifth, and will go on permanent display at the Derby City Museum – it deals specifically with the transition from the late stone age to bronze age, and the Peak District is an area particularly rich in evidence of the cultural fault line in human society brought about by this transition.

Making these films is an extraordinarily intense business: Sean works with groups of children and archaeologists in the region to be studied,  and develops art work with them over a period of months, which is eventually incorporated into the animation. Jim and I go in later to conduct sound workshops, and to collect environmental sound samples, and then all this is woven into a dense sound and vision “tone poem”.

A project last autumn on the Isle of Anglesey saw us working with over 40 children in a reconstructed Bronze Age round house – the sounds produced by this impromptu chorus have proven to be incredibly rich, and have thus been incorporated into the sound track of a film about that explores Celtic & Roman slavery at the western edge of the Empire.

It is quite rare for me to be invited to perform within a major symphony orchestra these days – which is a pity, because I love it! I guess this is probably simply because I’m not normally considered by my colleagues to be “in the market” for orchestral freelance work; if they think of me at all, then they probably pigeon hole me either as a soloist, or as being in a different field – so I was surprised and delighted a few weeks ago to get a call from the Philharmonia asking me to perform Thallein by Xenakis.

The call came in whilst I was walking along the windswept Morray coast at Findhorn, taking a break from editing my film Secret House, which is the last act of my residency at Gelnfiddich. With nothing to write on, and freezing fingers unable to enter any information into my mobile, I was none too sure the call was genuine!! However, it turned out that this piece was scheduled for a 6pm performance at the Royal Festival Hall on March 13th and that the orchestra had also to perform Mahler’s 5th Symphony later that evening.

Not surprisingly, one look at the Xenakis set alarm bells ringing in the brass – this piece is makes extreme demands on all players, but for the brass in particular it’s definitely in the category of extreme sport, and if I had been required to perform Mahler the same night I would most definitely have done the same thing: get a deputy, quick!!

Thus it was that I found myself in the company of my old friend Bruce Knockles on trumpet, and an extremely fine 4th year student from the Royal Academy called Francesca on horn, ready to do battle in this early evening skirmish on behalf of “the big guns” who were keeping their powder dry for the evening’s main assault.

Bruce and I are both old hands at this sort of European contemporary chamber repertoire, having performed together many times in Ensemble Modern – but I was knocked out by the cool confidence and technical command demonstrated by a player of Francesca’s  youth and relative inexperience. She did a superb job, and I’m pretty sure she will become a leading player on the London scene over the next few years.

For anyone who doesn’t know the music of Iannis Xenakis, this is an excellent introduction. He was a remarkable man: freedom fighter in the French Resistance during WW2, world class architect, and a remarkable composer – undoubtedly one of the giants of the 20th Century Avant Garde, who’s music is recognisable within a few seconds. It features angular, highly rhythmic structures, harmony dense in microtones, often exploiting multiphonics, and invariably reaching into the most extreme areas of range and dynamics. What makes the music so difficult to play is that Xenakis uses such extremes utterly without regard for the normal technical parameters of the instrument – in the case of brass players, this means rapid and angular leaps of up to three octaves, apparently impossible mute changes, and rapid tonguing, flutter tongue, and breath phrases that verge on the impossible.

The effect is extraordinary – for me his music combine extreme modernity with the impression of something truly archaic, even primordial. His structures are massive in an almost megalithic sense – they draw upon a geometry that has more to do with archetypal natural observation than the computer age, and perhaps this is because Xenakis was an architect as well as a musician: and a Greek architect at that! 

In spite of all this, under the baton of the urbane, witty, and extremely laid-back Diego Masson we were able to pull this monstrously difficult piece into shape in under three hours of rehearsal, and performed to a very large and appreciative audience – which I found extremely encouraging, both because when I lived in London it would have been most unlikely that one of the major symphony orchestras would have attempted to program such a piece, and if they had it would have been to a very small, exclusive public. Times have changed – and much for the better, it seems.

From February 29 to March 2nd I had the privilege of being invited to teach and perform at the Brass Surround Festival in Torrent, Spain, organised by Spanish Brass. This was a long weekend of intensive master classes and workshops on all brass instruments, located in the beautifully appointed new conservatoire of Torrent, which is a small town on the outskirts of Valencia – which also boasts a beautiful new concert hall.

An international line-up of teachers included the extraordinary Norwegian tuba player Øystein Baadsvik and English euphonium virtuoso Stephen Mead, both of whom enjoy hugely successful international solo careers, as well as several of Spain’s top brass teachers and performers such as trombonist Carlos Gill (professor at Valencia) and trumpeter Luis Gonzalez (professor at Barcelona). Of course, the members of Spanish Brass were also coaching throughout the festival, when not rehearsing for one of their daily recitals.

Over the past ten years I/we have seen a succession of fine Spanish students passing through the Guildhall, and this was a chance for me to see the high standard and excellent level of commitment of 20 young trombonists who came from all over Spain to participate.

During eight hours of contact time each day, enthusiasm never flagged – and it was delightful to see that every student also attended both of the recitals programmed each day. These recitals were hugely varied – from impeccable renditions of standard repertoire such as Guillmant’s Morceau Sinfonique performed by Carlos Gill, to Flamenco/jazz euphonium performed by Juanjo Munera, the stylistic content of these recitals was a “shop window” of the riches on offer from brass players as recital performers. 

Spanish Brass themselves are, of course, a stunning group – possibly the finest brass quintet in the world today, they have dedicated themselves entirely to playing brass quintet. That’s their job, and their passion – and they do it all with a complete lack of pretentiousness combined with outstanding musicality and precision. For me, two of the highlights of their playing during the festival were an enormous, 1 hour long octet for brass quintet and three percussionists, Cosmogonia, by Dani Flors and a completely glittering performance of a Tartini trumpet concerto arranged for quintet with solo piccolo trumpet, performed by Luis Gonzalez.

Dani Flors is a free-jazz guitarist and composer based in Valencia, and Cosmogonia  brings together the power of various ethnic percussion styles, minimalistic use of mallet percussion, gamelan, and brass writing which demands power and great technical fluency, as well as improvisational skills.

The Tartini, by absolute contrast, was an object lesson in perfect tuning, balance, and restraint – featuring the use of two flugal horns, often extremely high, to interpret the string writing of the original in a manner which seemed so perfectly natural that it was hard to imagine why I have never heard this combination exploited before!

Spanish hospitality wrapped us in a warm embrace each evening with communal meals taken at a local hostelry, loud and smoky, but with gallons of character (not to mention wine!) during which the conversation ranged far and wide in several languages. This was a chance to renew old acquaintances and make new friends – and I will write more about these characters over the next few days.

Right now my train is pulling into King’s Cross, and I have to walk to Guildhall to start teaching, right through until late this evening when I will finally wend my way up the Northern Line to the home of veteran sound designer John Whiting and his wife Mary, who generally put me up on my London visits. Since John and Mary are both members of the Guild of British Food Writers, and superb cooks, the thought of dinner tends to sustain me through the hours of teaching!

After an extremely hectic past couple of weeks, I am now writing on the train from Edinburgh to London, travelling down the spectacular East Coast along the cliff tops overlooking Lindisfarne castle and priory, taking advantage of National Express’s civilised free wi-fi policy.

How much nicer it is to travel by train! Sadly, after 15 years of travelling down to London regularly to teach at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, in the past year I have been increasingly forced to fly – because the cost of train travel has risen so steeply, and economic fares become so hard to get, that plane travel is frequently less than half the cost of the train.

This is clearly an environmental nonsense – but it is also a drag at a personal level: From my door in Edinburgh to the teaching room in the City of London takes me 5/12, on foot to and from the stations. This also gives me 4.45 of uninterrupted, comfortable time during which I can read, write, relax, and listen to music – as well as stare out of the window!

Air travel by comparison is a miserable succession of standing in line to check in, pass through gruelling security, waiting to board, a brief flight, then more waiting for baggage (which may have been delayed or damaged) and a battle in or out of London on one of the most inefficient, over crowded, dirty, and thoroughly unpleasant public transport systems in the “first world”. Useful time: virtually zero. Time saved in comparison to the train? 30 minutes maximum! Comparative damage to the environment? Massive – and yet pricing policies actively encourage us to travel by air.

As an individual paying my own way, I can ill afford the luxury of paying double the cost to take the train – surely the thousands of us being forced to make such a distressing choice feel the same way. Why are we allowing the building of yet more runways, instead of actively discouraging unnecessary air travel? The problem is lack of investment and sensible pricing policies are actually making air travel the more economically viable option for so many of us.

The long time cost of such stupidity is frightening to contemplate.

As part of the Celtic Connections festival, John Kenny will be performing with the carnyx in a truely unique ensemble:

“Imagine a trans-Continental Unusual Suspects, uniting French hurdy-gurdies, Swedish nyckelharpas, Armenian duduks and Spanish bugles with bagpipes from Serbia, Slovakia, Galicia, Asturias, Ireland and Scotland, plus brass, strings and an international battery of percussion – and you’ll maybe be halfway there: La Banda Europa must truly be heard to be believed.”

Saturday 26th January 2008, 8.00pm
The Glasgow Royal Concert Hall : Auditorium

For more information about La Banda Europa

Last week was spent performing at various venues throughout Aberdeen, as part of the wonderful SOUND Festival. This event runs for over a month in October & November, bringing an eclectic assortment of music and musicians to the North East of Scotland, ranging from world famous soloists such as ‘cellist Rohan De Saram to young Turks such as percussionist Joby Burgess & The Elysian Quartet, performing conventional chamber music, jazz cross-over, electronica, multimedia projects, and much more.
 
My own involvement included a performance of my own piece DORIC, plus Morris Pert’s epic electro acoustic tone poem ANKH in the magnificent, vast and resonant atrium of Aberdeen University Hospital’s new Institute of Medical Science, a recital of music for string quartet and trombone in the intimate and delightful Woodend Arts Centre, Banchory (with the Edinburgh Quartet), a late night bar gig with the afore mentioned star percussionist Joby Burgess and the Gong Kebyar Gamelan Ensemble (housed at Aberdeen University) and finally - and this was the gem of the week for me - a performance of “The Mouthpiece of The Gods” at the tiny and isolated Migvie Chapel, near Tarland.
 
It took me a while to find this ancient little church, perched on a hillside behind a farm. From the outside it looks like a barn - but inside it is a beautifully renovated and interpreted space of light and white, Pictish carvings, poetry incised onto the walls, modern stained glass, and finely restored stonework. I didn’t expect more than a handful of people to turn up - but by 7.30, all 65 seats were occupied, and people kept coming, so the organisers went to collect cushions and deck chairs. All these good people then sat patiently for 90 minutes without a pause, and gave me a rousing reception, before being generously plied with wine and whiskey by the organisers.
 
Earlier that day I had climbed Aberdeenshire’s magic mountain, Benachie, and gasped at panoramic views over the Moray Firth, westwards to the Cairngorms, and northwards right up to Caithness. SOUND gets my vote as one of the most diverse and thoroughly worthwhile events in the UK calendar, run on the perennial British shoe string, and depending upon the imagination and commitment of a small group of extremely open minded and highly literate directors. More strength to their elbows!

If you are around in Aberdeen for the Sound festival from tomorrow, do drop by for one or more of the Carnyx & Co. events listed below:

Tuesday 13 November 2007, 5.30pm
The Institute of Medical Sciences, University of Aberdeen, Foresterhill, Aberdeen
 
John Kenny: The Voice of The Carnyx
John Kenny: DORIC
Morris Pert: Ankh
 
John Kenny: trombones, carnyx, alphorn, didgeridu, conch, percussion.
Peter Stollery: electronics
Tickets: Admission free (donations)
 
Thursday 15 November 2007, 7.45pm
Woodend Barn, Burn O’Bennie, Banchory

John Kenny: trombones
Edinburgh Quartet

John Kenny - Fanfare, solo trombone
John Kenny - Sonata for Unaccompanied Tenor Trombone
Corrado Saglietti - Suite for alto trombone & String Quartet
Etienne Rolin - Quick Sands for solo trombone
Edward McGuire - Guest Quintet (trombone version)
Philippos Tsalahouris - Quartet No 2 . Op 26
Beethoven - Quartet in A Op 18 no 5

Tickets: £10, £7.50 concession and WMS members, £2 students and over 12s, free for 12 and under
To book: 01330 825431
 
Friday 16 November 2007, 12pm
MacRobert Building, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen

John Kenny demonstrates and lectures on the carnyx
 
Friday 16 November 2007, 9pm
The Lemon Tree, 5 West North Street, Aberdeen

John Kenny: trombones
Joby Burgess: percussion
University of Aberdeen Balinese Gamelan

Two of the world’s stunning virtuoso performers join forces with the University’s Gamelan for a wonderful evening of meditation and improvisation. Programme to include Ametarasu by John Kenny and Ian Willcock’s For the Republic, for alto trombone, percussion & electronics.

Tickets: £7.50, £5 conc, £2 students and children
subject to booking fee
To book: 01224 642230 or www.lemontree.org
 
Saturday 17 November 2007, 4pm
Migvie Church, Migvie, Tarland, Aberdeenshire

John Kenny: The Mouthpiece of The Gods

Part recital, part lecture, part detective story…The world’s only player of the great Celtic war horn, the carnyx, explains how it was discovered, forgotten, and eventually reconstructed, and how it has risen to take its place as an exciting contemporary musical instrument.

Fanfare John Kenny
Ancient Voices arr. Kenny
Song of Rangi & Papa Polynesian arr. Kenny - conch shell
Yidaki Aboriginal Australian, arr. Kenny - didgeridoo
Ran Na Madadh-Allaidh (The Cry of The Wolf) John Kenny, carnyx solo
Sonata for Unacompanied Bass Trombone, John Kenny
The Voice of The Carnyx John Kenny, carnyx solo
Morgens Lied, trad. Swiss, Alphorn solo
 
Tickets: £5, £4 conc, £2 children
To book: 01330 825431 

RWE Pavillon - Philharmonie Essen
18th September, 8:30pm

Carnyx Youth Brass Ensemble
Brendan Musk, Trumpet
Peter Longworth, Trumpet
Helen Beauchamp, Horn
Patrick Kenny, Trombone
John Kenny, Bass Trombone and Musical Direction
Shiori Usui, Piano

The Carnyx Youth Brass ensemble  united under the direction of John Kenny together with the Pianist Shiori Usui and new compositions for Brass Quintet and piano on a sound expedition into the united kingdom in which lends a completely new sound to the term “very British”

The first “YOUrope Together” concert in September presents modern music from the United Kingdom and shows with British “spirit” that this country is beyond the fame of Benjamin Britten or Edward Elgar and accents this in the international culture of the 21st Century to set the record straight.

Following the debut of Carnyx Brass at BBC Proms in The Park on 8th September, Glenfiddich composer in residence John Kenny is now rehearsing with the performers and composers of Carnyx Youth Brass in Dufftown.  The Carnyx Youth Brass Ensemble will be giving an evening performance next Tuesday at the Malt Barn coffee shop and Whisky bar on site at the Glenfiddich Distillery

Brendan Musk:   1st Draught
Peter Longworth:  In Bergamo
Shiori Usui:   Two pieces for brass quintet & piano
Helen Beauchamp:  Brass Quintet
Patrick Kenny:  Brass Quintet

Carnyx Youth Brass Ensemble performance
The Malt Barn Coffee shop and whisky bar.
The Glenfiddich Distillery. Dufftown
Tuesday 11th Sept 6 pm

Admission free.

John who is the first composer/musician to participate in the award winning residency programme, which has been held at The Glenfiddich Distillery each summer since 2002. Will be in rehearsal with the ensemble at the Glenfiddich gallery, and at the West Church Hall, Dufftown, prior to giving the performance on Tuesday evening.

The Carnyx Youth Brass Ensemble offers talented young brass players in Scotland the opportunity to perform both contemporary chamber music and established main stream repertoire, combining talented school and university students who frequently compose and perform their own music. Directed by John Kenny, professor of trombone at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London and Royal Scottish Academy, Carnyx Youth Brass is a continuation and development of the highly successful brass ensemble which he has directed at St. Mary’s Music School, Edinburgh, since 1997.

The ensemble are soon to travel to Essen in Germany, where they will premier four new works for brass quintet by members of the group, and a sextet for brass quintet and piano by the Japanese composer Shiori Usui. This concert will take place at the Essen Philharmonie on 18th September, and will be recorded live for West Deutche Rundfunk.
 

John Kenny with the Carnyx will feature at this year’s Proms in the Park, an event that boasts an audience of 20,000 and is broadcast live on BBC 4 and Radio Scotland.

The theme for this year is Scotland’s music, with the Carnyx exhibited as Scotland’s oldest instrument.  John will make a dramatic entrance to open the second half, playing ‘Voice of the Carnyx’ he is then joined by Mark O’Keefe and Etienne Cutujar for the world premier of ‘Balvenie Castle’ for trumpet, horn and Carnyx - a piece especially commissioned by the BBC for the Prom.

Also featured is the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, with Jonathan Lemalu and Julian Lloyd Webber; the National Youth Choir of Scotland; and the Peatbog Faeries.

Saturday 8 September
Glasgow Green
Entertainment onstage: 7.45pm
Carnyx onstage: 9.05pm
Concert concludes: 10:45pm approx

Proms in the Park, Glasgow is now fully booked, however, there will be a limited number of tickets available from the on-site box office from 6pm on the night .

The European Trombone Ensemble (ETE) made its debut at the  Beijing International Trombone Festival on 21st August. In addition to our two performances as a quartet, all members (Benny Sluchin, Niels-Ole Bo Johansen, Albert Zuijderduin and me) also directed Chinese student and professional workshops and performances throughout the four day festival, and Niels-Ole and I also performed as soloists. As a finale to the opening recital, the ETE joined forces with the Continental Trombone Quartet (USA) and the China Trombone Quartet - the picture above is our dress rehearsal, showing all 12 trombonists working together. This festival was the first of its type to be hosted in China, and  has been hailed as a resounding success on every level, bringing trombonists from China, Europe and Asia together in a spirit of mutual exploration and co-operation. We found that China is undergoing a veritable explosion of interest in the trombone, with students and professionals attending from all over this vast nation - and it looks as if we’ll be back in 2008!

It has been my pleasure and privilege for the past five years to teach and perform at the Dartington International Summer School and Festival. What an extraordinary, unique event this is - every summer for five weeks an array of the worlds finest musicians are brought together to teach and perform in at the magnificent Dartington Estate, the centre piece of which is the Great Hall with its quadrangle of beautiful ancient stone buildings. The acoustic of this hall is one of the best I have experienced for chamber music anywhere in the world. The student participants range from beginners of any age to the highest calibre young professionals, and all live and work together for a week in surroundings of serene beauty which offsets the continual musical and social activity. Good food and wine, good music (three wonderful concerts a day) good company and conversation, and an environment of unsurpassable beauty make this a highlight of my year.

In 2006 I joined forces with my old friend and colleague trumpeter Paul Archibald and pianist Juliet Edwards to give the world premier of a trio for trumpet, trombone & piano by Michael Lester Cribb. Reaction to our recital was so positive, and we all enjoyed it so much, that we decided to make a permanent group - and this year we gave our inaugural performance as Trio KEA in a program which included music by Damasse & Per Norgard. This is a wonderful and little explored combination to rival the traditional string & piano trio - our intention now is to generate a new repertoire, working with composers to include Stephen Montague, Juraj Filas, David Robertson, Sally Beamish - and perhaps even John Kenny!

John Kenny, currently in residence at the Glenfiddich Distillery as part of the 2007 Artists at Glenfiddich programme, will be teaming up with three other equally talented musicians, Benny Sluchin (Pierre Boulez’s Ensemble Intercontemporain) Niels-Ole Bo Johansen (solist & Head of Classical Music at the Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus) and Albert Zuijderduin (bass trombone of the Residency Orchestra, Den Haag)

The quartet, who collectively can be considered to be some of the finest trombone players in Europe, have only recently been brought together by John and will be making their debut at the Beijing Festival later this summer, where John is featured composer.

The quartet will be at The Glenfiddich Distillery for three days at the start of August, when they have kindly agreed to stage an open door rehearsal in the Glenfiddich Gallery on the afternoon of the 2nd. The afternoon will be part rehearsal and part performance and members of the public are most welcome to drop as they wish. As the first of two shows exhibiting new work created by the other resident artists will open to the public on Saturday 4th August. It is likely visitors to the performance will get a sneak preview of the work as it is prepared for display.

John Kenny said:

“One of the wonderful things about the Glenfiddich residency is the time and space the programme offers which allows for this kind of creative activity. One of the pieces which I have been working on as part of my residency is a trombone quartet which takes inspiration from a Shakespeare sonnet, for the European Trombone Ensemble to perform in Beijing. Obviously, with this line-up rehearsal was always going to be tricky, to say the least. When we discussed trying to get together before Beijing, and I told the guys I would be here on a residency, they all said “OK - we’ll be there”. So, we are going to rehearse that Beijing program intensively over the three days they are here.”

Andy Fairgrieve (Arts project manager at The Glenfiddich Distillery) said:

“At Glenfiddich we like to make every year count and so for this year we decided to broaden the scope of our well established artist programme beyond the world of purely visual arts to include other forms of creative expression. To these ends we are delighted to have in residence this summer a musician of John’s calibre.”

There is no need to book in advance and entry as always is free of charge.

I am now in my third week as Glenfiddich composer in residence, in the company of six wonderful visual artists. The gallery here at Glenfiddich will open shortly with an exhibition of work created during the past two months, including installation music of my own, performed with and recorded by guitarist Jim Brook in the gallery itself at the end of June. More work will be exhibited throughout the summer.

PUBLIC EXHIBITION #1: Saturday 4th August – Sunday 19th August. Thursdays through to Sundays 12.30 till 5.30

Featuring new work by Godfrey Majadibodu, Yao Jui-chung , Johnathan Kaiser & Luis Bisbe, with music by John Kenny.

PUBLIC EXHIBITION #2: Saturday 25th August – Sunday 16th September. Thursdays through to Sundays 12.30 till 5.30 pm

Featuring new work by Romeo Alaeff, Johnathan Kaiser & Luis Bisbe with inclusions from Ding Jie

VENUE: The Gallery. The Glenfiddich Distillery, Dufftown, Keith. AB55 4DH

For details contact: andy.fairgrieve@wgrant.com.
Further events featuring completed works by John Kenny and Ding Jie are planned for late September. Details to follow.

This week I have been treated to a wonderful welcome at the Glenfiddich Distilery on Speyside, where I have a three month stint as composer in residence (spread over the rest of 2007). In addition to a wonderful meal and whisky nosing, I met fellow artists from the USA, Taiwan, South Africa, Spain & China who are all currently working on artist residencies in Dufftown. This is an extraordinary collection of artists - all the others are visual artists, I myself being the first composer to be offered this opportunity.

It’s fascinating to be able to interact with artists in other disciplines from such varied backgrounds, and I intend to work on a variety of projects during my time in Dufftown, both “conventionally” notated music and multi-media work.

During this first week I invited animator Sean Harris & guitarist/sound engineer Jim Brook to join me for an intensive workout which has led to 70 minutes of music to be combined with animation and video material which will be installed in a grain Silo (yes - one of those cigar shaped structures that dot our landscape) at the National Eistedfodd in Wales, and also hopefully up in Dufftown in a gallery space. 

Effectively, we will make a Tardis type performance and exhibition space which we can “land” in any established or non established arts space, interior or exterior, and control our own miniature world inside.

Our original expectation was to make three minutes worth of music this week - instead we have made an album! It must have been that wonderful whisky (did it really happen…..?)

John Kenny, Hugh Webb and the Edinburgh Quartet performed the first concert in the series of concerts (named “Embracing the Unknown” after one of the pieces performed) on Saturday 9 June 2007 at the University of Glasgow’s Concet Hall.

This Concert, a showcase of several new works commissioned by Carnyx & Co. for the unusual combination of Trombone, Harp and String Quartet, was a wonderful example of the exciting and interesting developments happening in contemporary composition.

Embracing the Unknown will continue in the future with further commissions from Nigel Osbourne and John Kenny and an album release on the BML Label.

Carnyx & Co. would like to thank the Scottish Arts Council for their generous support for this project.