London Viola Player, Violinist & Arranger For Hire

Martin Ash LTCL

Monthly Archives: December 2015

Rolling on

Besides the String Project‘s two January gigs, my other big news for the start of 2016 is one of my rare delves out of live performance:

The Filthy Spectacula are recording an album!

You heard it here first (unless you follow our Facebook page very loyally). I’m not going to give too much away, but recording will start in a little over two weeks and this is going to be the real full-length deal, chocker with live favourites and studio-specific touches. Watch this space …

… and have fun tonight, whatever you’re up to!

Ring out the old, ring in the new

By the way, I heard (for the first time in a long while, if ever) the whole of the Tennyson poem which that line comes from at a wedding last week – I seriously recommend you to look it up and read it.

Anyway, the String Project are first off the mark claiming attention for activity in 2016. And our gig on the 8th of January contains more Oxford music scene institutions than you can shake a tremolo arm at.

First off, the night is hosted by Phil and Sue of the Mighty Redox as part of the truly legendary Klub Kakofanny. All four (Phil, Sue, Redox and Klub Kak – come on, keep up) have been around for longer than anyone would care to admit and influenced more musical careers than could possibly be counted, my own included.

Headlining are the Shapes, who may be just about the comparative new boys of the evening as far as date of forming are concerned (I’m not kidding) but are certainly an Oxford staple, combining many cumulative decades of classic rock-n-roll and Americana experience between their members (one of whom happens to be my neighbour!).

Before them are our very good selves; at five years on the go, pretty much every major venue in Oxford under our belt and a slightly eye-watering list of former members (most of them left the county or even the country to get away from us; new addresses include London, the Irish Republic, Indonesia, and Cambodia, besides the sometime keys player headed to Canada this coming summer), we must surely have earned institutional status by now. Anyway, it’s our second Klub Kak slot, so bite me.

Opening up a long bill for a pub gig are two long-term associates of the Redox-centred scene (in its more hippified incarnations): Moon Leopard, whose guitarist Jeremy practically incarnates unreconstructed hippydom as found on and around the Cowley Road, besides being one of the most expert instrumentalists to be found in his field; and the Mark Atherton Band, who among an ever-changing lineup, oft-shifting instrumentation and gradually evolving repertoire are responsible for pulling me out of the obscurity of open mike solos to start roaming across Oxford’s gigging band scene. You might say that the rest is history.

All in all, you could hardly get a more thorough cross-section of my home city’s unsigned music scene in its idiosyncratic eclecticism. Be there or, as the saying sometimes goes, be an equilateral rectilinear quadrangle.

Merry Christmas everyone!

.. from Lincoln, where I spent this morning at Lincoln Cathedral, playing Mozart’s ‘Coronation’ Mass with the Lincolnshire Chamber Orchestra as part of Christmas morning Communion. Suffice to say I think it was everything a cathedral Christmas morning service should be.

Enjoy the rest of the day, which I’m definitely taking off, and stay tuned for advance news of happenings in 2016 …

Post: modernism?

There is a different post or several to be written on the fact that the mainstream of classical music has shifted in the last hundred years or so from being chiefly music written in the previous few decades to excluding it almost entirely; how this comes to be, and what its impact on performers, composers and audiences might be. But I’m not going to write that today at least.

Suffice to say then that playing new ‘classical’ music is a relatively rare experience for most performers, and that when such (whether new is world premiere or 20 years old) does happen, it is in a context determined largely by much older compositions.

The Philip Sawyers concerto premiered at my last orchestral gig could even be said to be not getting a fair hearing, since it was more of a dry run (with an amateur orchestra, albeit a very good one, and a correspondingly – middlebrow perhaps? – audience) before being performed with the orchestra involved in the commission. Nonetheless, what is interesting is that it went down very well, certainly with the orchestra and as far as I recall and could tell with the audience as well (though the audible response of British traditional classical audiences is a difficult metric for their actual feelings).

So what made the piece work? It certainly wasn’t a neoclassical or populist throwback – while the programme notes claimed an identifiable key centre of D minor for the first movement, there were no key signatures and most of the structural motifs were derived very closely from chromatic scales, the most direct route to atonalism open to Western pitching.

Evident virtuosity is an appealing musical feature, and the technique and possibilities of a soloist using a modern valved trumpet but with the mastery of register and high range implied by also performing as a soloist on the natural trumpet were used widely in the true concerto tradition. But I think there were more structural and essential musical features to the piece that won over its hearers and indeed players.

Mood is one. Chromatic melody, atonal harmony and the musical trappings of post/modernist composition are no bar to emotional expression, and each movement of this piece had an identifiable and sustained emotional positioning (with some internal shifts). Allied to this somehow – at least to the notion of consistency and sustained expression – is the presence of ongoing, largely stable, musical movement; and I think the presence of (meaningful, non-token, not often-changing) time signatures in this piece is as key to its nature as the absence of key signatures.

Finally and controversially, structure. Of course, neither most audience members nor most players sit working out a structural analysis of a piece in their heads as they hear or play it. But I would argue that they are nonetheless aware of a structure being worked out, if it is reasonably evident – and that the lack of any perceptible structure is therefore disconcerting or off-putting, even if at the same sort of subconscious level. The Sawyers concerto has identifiable thematic units (mostly very short cells, but they are there) and passages which it is not inaccurate to label as exposition, development, recapitulation and so on. It would in fact be reasonable to consider its three movements as being in recognisable – albeit not tonally dependent and genuinely modernist – versions of respectively sonata, ternary and rondo forms. And this creates another level of accessible para-narrative, alongside mood and pulse, which hearers and players alike succeed in following, and therefore in finding satisfying.

As a complete outsider to the teaching of composition, and an ignoramus of Sawyers’s career to date, I am intrigued to know how much of this is taught and how much discovered, and what approaches to putting music together are in fact advocated in advanced composing tuition – if there is any uniformity or trend whatsoever. Not that it makes much difference to my work, except that a piece will be played better, and stand more chance of being communicated to its audience, if all of the players ‘get’ it – classical players may be slaves to ‘the dots’ in some senses, but it would be a bad mistake to assume we are human MIDI controllers who don’t benefit from involvement in the music.

Gender sans agenda

Last Saturday’s programme involved a lot of work, importance and exposure for the timpanist. Mendelssohn’s ‘Trumpet’ overture features timp interjections as much as trumpet ones. Haydn’s ‘Drum Roll’ symphony speaks for itself, by nickname anyway. The concerto, a premiere, Philip Sawyers’s Concerto for Trumpet, Strings and Timpani, has this much in common with the similarly-titled Shostakovich Concerto for Piano, Strings and Trumpet that the part carefully labelled not a solo by being placed after the string ensemble in the title nonetheless has in fact a near second-soloist role.

It so happens that the principal (on this occasion, only) percussionist of the Surrey Mozart Players is a woman. This is still sufficiently unusual in orchestral circles, even in the 21st century and with the diversity of ensembles I encounter as a roving freelancer, that I commented on the fact to her as something positive and unusual.

Her response was interesting, amounting essentially to ‘well, for most women, the amount of carrying and heavy lifting would be difficult or downright impossible’ (she is no international rugby forward – I worked with two retired ones of those at Oxfam – but certainly tall and in reasonable proportion).

Now that makes more sense as an argument than almost any amount of spiel about gender stereotypes and glass ceilings – and I say that as someone who has produced a lot of that spiel about the music business. But it does beg some questions.

When I was in county youth orchestra, the tuba player was a girl; and I’m aware (through my sometime brass band playing and always brass band aficionado brother) that the brass band movement is increasingly taking on a female-dominated aspect, though it does tend to largely be from the upper (and more portable!) instruments downwards.

Harp is a notoriously unportable instrument – six foot tall, requiring to be slotted into some sort of trolley to be moved at all and then needing a largeish car to be transported more than a hundred yards or so. It’s probably the second most inconvenient instrument (after percussion) that is never usually provided by the venue / organiser (OK, unless you’re a background / restaurant pianist, in which case requirement to bring your own stage piano and PA is, yes, becoming normal … ). And yet almost every harpist I have known has been female, slight, petite and Pre-Raphaelite-looking (exceptions for one bloke who I only very belatedly discovered played harp as well as viola; and my university friend who has just become Mrs Harriet Hanson, who as a teenaged harpist was presumably female, slight and arguably Pre-Raphaelite-looking, but about 6′ tall).

Situations are never straightforward; practicalities of manual labour might explain a paucity of female percussionists, but there isn’t much difficulty involved in carrying a baton (conductor’s scores of Bruckner might be a different matter … ). No one thing explains everything, but people with my kind of mind need reminding every once in a while to see the trees as well as the wood.

Hired hands and unpaid additions

I think I commented in an earlier post that my gig Saturday before last was stiffening an amateur orchestra’s string section. Despite which I was being paid, at certainly within professional range of rates, to be there, and had been hired by advertisement for a pro.

There are a few angles from which this is noteworthy. Firstly, most amateur orchestras are desperately cash-strapped. Their concerts lose money by the time venue hire, music hire (usually), bringing in a concerto soloist, and perhaps some kind of honorarium to conductor and maybe leader too are offset against usually very thin and sometimes undercharged audiences. Subscription fees from the members, though often coming to thousands of pounds per term in total (think about it – £30 or so per term at a membership of 50 people or more for many orchestras … ), do little more than close the gap and perhaps cover tea and biscuits for rehearsal breaks. So it is a sign of an orchestra of unusually high standards (and perhaps unusually good cash flow) to be willing to hire any bump musicians at all, rather than begging, persuading and calling on students and sixth-formers who could do with the experience.

Secondly, I was playing viola. Now there is a great deal of music in which none of the wind, brass and percussion parts is truly indispensable. So if you lose your second clarinet, there will be problems caused to chords, textures etc. if the gap is not plugged. But, while this was a chamber orchestra, it was far from being on a one-per-part scale. I do not think the violas ever divided in more than two (though they did that a lot), and I was one of five (having been initially hired to play violin, and then transferred later in the same evening, being the one before the concert). There were no notes that were going to get actually lost if I hadn’t been brought in; it was purely a decision to improve volume, balance, sound, etc.

So an unusual hiring then. And unsurprisingly a significant proportion of the orchestra members that I spoke to thought or at least hoped that I was a prospective (ordinary, amateur) new member, rather than some extra hired muscle.

And did the result justify the decision? Well, it is difficult for me truly to be objective about this. I was concerned with my own playing rather than rating the rest of the section, and in any case so many stereotypes are opened up by critiquing an amateur viola section that it would fit the metaphor used by one of my old lecturers about applying literary criticism to children’s books: ‘Like kicking a tiny puppy.’

But, even while my attentive watching of bow-arms to try and keep as much in up-down sync as I reasonably could, and double-check my counting, betrayed no serious musical errors in the rest of the section’s playing, one of the front desk spontaneously said to me that having me playing (this only for final rehearsal and concert, mind) had made ‘all the difference’.

The critical point here may be the follow-up comment, something about it ‘sounding supported’.

The viola has a Cinderella reputation both as always stuck in supporting roles and for actually sounding plaintive and unspectacular. Played with little energy, and particularly if the instrument is small and violin-like (but easy to play), it can fulfil the reputation rather too well, producing a somewhat thin middle-texture sound uncomfortably dominated by the depth and vigour of the cellos on one side and the brilliance of the violins on the other.

The viola that caught my attention trying it out, and continues to be possibly my favourite of the various instruments I own, is largeish rather than huge as they go. But size (the range is roughly a quarter again the length of the smallest) is far from all there is to the differences in sound, and it is certainly a big-toned, loud and gruff viola, albeit I think still mellowing, settling and becoming more responsive now, three years after I bought it. That general character suits my approach to the instrument, which is to differentiate it from the violin as much as reasonable – seeing it much more as a sort of pocket cello than an alto violin.

I was paid before playing the other weekend, so I have no real way of knowing (beyond verbal thanks from the leader) if the orchestra thought they got their money’s worth. But I can just possibly see how the extra firmness of sound from happening to bring in a ‘countercultural’ violist of the nature described above could not only punch above its weight as an addition, but actually be a real help to the cohesion and confidence of the rest of a section if it was one otherwise given to being tentative and woolly.

With apologies to Heinz, niche musical skill #57 at your service for a reasonable fee …

Empty room paradoxes

On Friday, I was doing my first full-blown audition in quite some time.

I’m not a big fan of auditions and performance exams (I’ve found the two to be very similar) at any point. This one was rendered, not worse, but certainly stranger, by the context.

I was auditioning to a comedy / media organisation. Their plan is to get inhouse writers to write a bundle of short comic bluegrass-styled songs, and (which is where I potentially come in) form a group to record and film them so they can be used as part of an online campaign.

So I was there in an empty pub gig room at about half-two on a December Friday afternoon, with no equipment set up except a video camera on a tripod, on a brief to convey as much comedy, energy, fun and performance as I could in one bluegrass / country song. And bring ‘as many instruments as you can carry’.

The thing I don’t like about auditioning is the examiners being so bleeding poker-faced and the lack of any other audience. I draw so much from the crowd’s response that it actively puts me off. On this occasion, when I was deliberately hamming up the old bluegrass spiritual Will the Circle be Unbroken to the max, including yelps, exaggerated ‘Hallelujah’s and a whole chunk in the middle where I taught the chorus to the imaginary audience, it arrived at being less off-putting than actively surreal. The most satisfaction I got in the more or less automatic quest for audience response was a bit of smiling and foot-tapping from the woman making occasional notes from the other side of the room (so about 20 feet away), and forcing the cameraman to start furiously swivelling and refocusing his lens when, unfettered by microphones, wires, bandmates or spotlights, I started roving around the stage and left the spot the camera was evidently close-focused in on.

Despite all of which implausibility, I feel like it went fairly well. I was prepared enough, didn’t suffer from a sudden voice fail, memory lapse or breakdown of musical continuity (all real risks doing voice and fiddle solo, when there is really nowhere at all to hide!), and I think I met the brief pretty well. I have almost no way of judging the competition of course. But I’m kind of hopeful for contact back next month.

And for the laughs, I’m more than half tempted to ask for a copy of the audition video …

Smell of greasepaint, roar of the crowd

It’s always a good sign for my work life (if possibly not for my sleep cycle) when my rate of gigs outstrips my ability to find a bit of time in a day to write about them.

For the moment, my musings on various things connected with last weekend’s gigs are getting pushed to the back of the queue by more recent work.

On Wednesday night, I was in Port Talbot with the Welsh Musical Theatre Orchestra, for my second viola job with them and their last gig of the season. Now Port Talbot is possibly not quite core territory for getting ticket buyers for an orchestra playing musical theatre and soundtrack material; from my impressions, maybe more stand-up and fairly mainstream tribute acts.

However, while the audience was numerically quite a bit smaller than that at my previous gig with the ensemble, in Carmarthen, they were also a lot more enthusiastic (in other words, louder between songs). Which certainly helped me keep giving full effort and indeed keep enjoying the evening more despite being rather more sleep-deprived and coach-weary than the previous time.

I think this illustrates something important about audiences and performers: pretty much anyone who actually enjoys, rather than tolerates, performing, will find a totally empty room hard to ‘feed off’ successfully. But above a very low minimum threshold, a smaller, more responsive audience will help a lot more than a bigger group that are unengaged, or even just reserved. (We’re not mind-readers, however well we work a crowd. Or don’t.)

Obviously, if you’re ultimately on door share, or running the event yourself (which is pretty much the same thing), then the bigger the crowd the better for purely practical (and therefore very pressing reasons). But on a flat hired musician’s fee, I’d take the smaller and more energetic (including if that means tipsier) crowd any time.

Stay tuned for auditions and casting my mind back to last weekend’s orchestral gig, whenever I get round to my next post …

Hold that thought

When I got up on Friday, I was pretty sure I was winding down towards a more-or-less break over Christmas (ignoring the fact that I’ve had playing on Christmas morning itself in my diary for months). After a long string of at least one gig (often a recording or something as well) per weekend, plus whatever else in between, I finally had a gig-free weekend in view – a mixture of relief and slight disappointment as I also contemplated the cost of Christmas shopping.

By the time I went to bed 16 hours later, the shape of my weekend had changed substantially (as, to a lesser extent, had my girlfriend’s, who puts up with a lot for my music career). I had taken on a carol service Sunday evening in Streatham (singing bass), and then a very last-minute call for an orchestra concert in Guildford on the Saturday (agreed about 20 hours in advance of the concert, initially asking for violin but changed to viola that evening).

Both were interesting, distinctive and enjoyable gigs that I’m going to write about more another day (when I’m less tired). But the fact of getting hold of them illustrates a few things about the sometimes through-the-looking-glass world of freelance music:

  • a lot of jobs still go on speed of response as much as qualifications. A smartphone, not living in a signal blackspot and being across the room from a computer can help as much as an instrument masterclass.
  • despite the general vast oversupply of musicians (of almost all kinds) relative to demand (of all kinds), there are still some organisers who find themselves needing, or at least very much wanting, to pick up some extra bodies at a couple of days’ notice or even less.
  • the first bullet point notwithstanding, the last-minute jobs can be helpful openings to fairly new starters in the business with flexibility and quite open diaries (or the right level of financial and professional desperation!).
  • it’s hard to examine, evidence or advertise, rarely talked about explicitly, and a vanishingly infrequent concern of high-standard teachers or conservatoires, but the ability to make a good job on one rehearsal and little or no personal practice, without making a fuss, is perhaps the single most important skill of the freelance musician.
  • flexibility is invaluable. The more offerings you can put on the table, the more useful you are, as well as the more jobs you can apply for. Narrow specialisation is a luxury unaffordable to the blue-collar musician.

Watch this space for reflections on postmodern composition and structure, female orchestral percussionists, carol services and anything else this weekend prodded me to …

Back in blue

On Saturday night I was back at Stone’s in Eastleigh, playing bass again with 2Blue. It was another fun and successful night I think! This time I was packing a bit more bottom-end punch to get round gigging without a PA as such, using a solid-body 5-string bass run into a  chunky floor wedge. There was certainly no problem with feedback this time, though arguably even more power would have been preferable as I had all the volume controls and some of the EQ all the way up for the whole gig! Either way it did the job and it’s another nice ongoing musical working relationship to cultivate.

Still on the to-do list: final video cuts of the new showreel and various overdubs (violin, backing vocals, possibly viola) on String Project tracks; then a week tomorrow a Welsh Musical Theatre Orchestra concert. Don’t expect a slow-up to Christmas round here!