London Viola Player, Violinist & Arranger For Hire

Martin Ash LTCL

Monthly Archives: March 2018

Busker solidarity

Big shout out to fellow London National Rail busker (and a newbie at that) Esther Turner! While waiting for me to finish my booked stint in a draughty Liverpool Street entrance hall (and a long wait she had of it too), she bought me a coffee to warm my hands up – which may have been the only thing that kept my fingers able to negotiate Irish reels and jigs at something like authentic speed to the end of 2 hours; at the time valued much more highly than any cash donation (not that I expect money from fellow buskers anyway, that would seem kind of going round in circles … ). I would say I’d failed to allow for just how cold it was that morning, but I know from experience I can’t play in tune with even fingerless gloves on my left (fingering) hand anyway.

Hmm, probably should have moved my violin case out of shot before taking this photo for her promo / social media channels …

So thanks again Esther, welcome to the station busking circuit and good luck with everything (including new single releases!).

Early-ish

Saturday 24th was a fairly rare orchestral violin outing for me.

Curiously, given the major strand of my art music violin playing lately has been with La Folie, this was also with a largely modern-instrument chamber orchestra specialising in period performance, namely Ashford Baroque Ensemble. I was balancing up the numbers in their second violin section for a concert accompanying Spelthorne Choral  Society.

A great many choral society concerts are built around Romantic warhorses (like Mendelssohn’s perennially popular Elijah, which I will be playing viola in for the third time with as many choirs / orchestras in June); these demand large orchestral forces even while many choirs find their numbers dwindling or, for similar reasons, their sheer volume declining as the average age rises. In contrast, the repertoire for this outing allowed us the orchestra to take to the stage with very small numbers, thankfully removing the frequent necessity to artificially stifle the orchestral volume even in choral tutti.

Emmanuele d’Astorga is, it appears, a highly obscure figure. I particularly like the fact that he disappears out of the historical record and the date of his death is estimated from when he is last heard of! Musicologists apparently esteem his secular vocal  chamber music highly, but the only work of his to be in the regular performance repertoire is the Stabat Mater we were performing. Its style is solidly that of the late Baroque (probably a little old-fashioned when it was written), with the deliberate backward glances common to most church music from the seventeenth through to the nineteenth centuries – the approach would be familiar to anyone who knows the Vivaldi Gloria, though it is of course a more muted work given the more funereal text involved. Chorus roughly alternate movements with various combinations of a quartet of soloists (it was a pleasure to have an excellent counter-tenor singing the alto part; with all due respect to female contraltos, the composer would definitely have had male alto in mind), supported only by strings (we had 11 of them) and continuo (supplied by (electronic) chamber organ). One movement is for solo voice and continuo only; there are a couple of tutti fugues; and static-pitch intoning is referenced in a couple of passages in which the choir make their way through text in rhythmic unison on a single chord.

This piece seems to be undergoing one of those waves of popularity that constitute a peculiar form of (particularly amateur) classical music fashion, and particularly given the relative smallness of the Baroque choral repertoire as represented by most choirs, it is definitely well-deserved. There are charming sparkling solo passages; some yearning suspensions amid much deft use of minor tonality; and the contrapuntal material is satisfying.

Haydn’s ‘Nelson’ Mass requires much less introduction. It is, of course, technically (and in terms of musical style, very definitely) too late for a soi-disant Baroque ensemble. However, this makes a welcome change from Classical (and even Baroque) repertoire being performed in the late-Romantic manner which is still the received mainstream performance style, particularly for string players! The only growth of the orchestra here from the d’Astorga was the addition of trumpets and timpani – interestingly and almost certainly authentically, keyboard continuo was retained.

The sheer capital investment required (unless and until I discover a mythical personage willing to loan an instrument for virtually free) continues to effectively debar me from period-instrument work and therefore a lot of contact with high-level early music specialists. However, it was gratifying to find, playing with a specialist ensemble, that most of my instincts regarding bowing in particular in the d’Astorga aligned with those of the regular members; and my ideas about how to handle an urtext edition in performance! (The particular pitfall here is the ‘lazy composer’: manuscript has various phrasing / performance marks only in the first instance of some material, as the composer expected the typesetter and/or performer to then apply them analogously to repetitions and variations; this seems fairly evident but I have been in rehearsals where it was taken as justification for interpreting the first instance differently to the rest!)

I’m unsure quite when I’ll be coming back to orchestral early music. However, next month (April) sees me occupying two musical theatre pits (using violin in both, plus viola in one), and renewing my connection with Lincolnshire Chamber Orchestra on viola for a largely Romantic programme. Plus I’m trying to get back to work on some really representative classical viola promo material. As ever, watch this space!

In theatre

Last Friday (23 March), Kindred Spirit took a gamble.

Or rather, I should really say the gamble was taken several weeks earlier, when we took a booking at the theatre space in Twickenham’s still quite new Exchange arts / education / community space. It was the first time they had booked a local live band; there was no promoter as such and we were doing it as the only act on the bill, so we knew it was largely down to us to bring a crowd; it is a seated venue as well as being only a few months old and so perhaps not the natural setting for a rock band, certainly not somewhere anyone will wander to by chance.

I think it’s safe to say the gamble paid off. Thanks largely to Elaine and family’s sterling efforts online, in person and through the older-fashioned method of posting something like 1500 flyers through letterboxes (though it should be noted I actually had friends at this gig – a rare high point! Thanks Aga and fiancé for making the trek out to Twickenham), we had enough of a crowd to make the 300 ranked seats feel adequately filled, to comfortably exceed the tipping point from what we had asked the venue to underwrite as a fee to where splitting the ticket take made us both more money anyway, and for venue staff to say it was the best-attended show they’d yet had.

It was an audience with a lot of friends in the band too, of course. This meant an attentive response and an appreciative one, even if inevitable seated audiences are a little less rock-n-roll than ones stood on the floor and so at liberty to dance whenever they feel so inclined. As you can see above, we made use of the opportunity to have some fairly spectacular projected backdrops, particularly this one for (of course) ‘Dragonfire’:

And just because the audience were sat down and I couldn’t jump off the stage (it’s a studio theatre-type layout with the audience ranked upwards back from a level-fronted stage space) didn’t mean I was compromising the energy and irreverence now expected to surface during my rock band performances; I’m pretty sure this is from either ‘The Hunger’ in the first half or ‘Feed the Fire’ in the second:

Not only did this gig constitute, as mentioned above, a rare instance of a music colleague / friend showing up to see me doing something different from where she (on this occasion) first met me – and saying some very gratifying things about my performance and the band’s work as a whole! – it also produced my nearest experience yet to being famous, when on Sunday afternoon I was walking pretty much past the venue (it’s between home and the centre of Twickenham!) and was congratulated on the gig by a passing woman I completely did not recognise (in fairness, theatre lights in our eyes meant we couldn’t really see anything of the crowd beyond the front row … ). I guess the next step is intrusive photography and viral rumours about my personal life!

Some serious action

For those of you who don’t plan your years around the seasonal work prospects of jobbing folk, function, rock and indeed classical musicians, 17th March is St Patrick’s Day and a date on which pretty much everyone who can play something Irish has a gig (especially on years when, like 2018, it falls on a weekend).

This year, it not only saw a very unseasonal snowfall care of the Beast from the East part II, The Russian Empire Strikes Back (apparently part III, Return of the Global Weirding, is set for Easter weekend), but also Ireland winning a Grand Slam in the Six Nations at Twickenham stadium – approximately 5 minutes’ brisk walk from where I live, and only about 2 miles further from the Kindred Spirit Duo pub gig in Isleworth.

Unsurprisingly then, by the time I arrived to set up (after some tangling with changes to the bus service – a necessary coming of age process of my first major match day as a Twickenham resident), the Swan Inn was already crowded with very cheerfully sozzled Irish of all ages and sexes (though mostly men from about 20 to 60). And indeed the music had already started, including the most rowdy, drinking-song-like rendition of that melancholy anthem of oppression ‘The Fields of Athenry’ I have ever heard.

I’m not going to give a blow-by-blow account, but here are my salient experiences of playing to a mostly actually Irish crowd at their most uninhibited (and therefore probably most authentic):

  • They love music. For sheer response to no more than a recognised intro, few or perhaps no other crowd I’ve played to could match this.
  • The Irish knowledge of their own traditional culture puts the English vastly to shame. Most of the songs they were singing along to and requesting were either actually ‘trad anon’ or songs written into that idiom and style and long since absorbed away from their individual recorded / written original versions. Not a single request for Sex on Fire, Mr Brightside, or ‘any Ed Sheeran’ all night. And every time I play a gig to a really Irish crowd I’m astonished by the way ordinary punters – not musicologists or even musicians – know which county specific songs hail from, their lyrics tie them to, or they are generally associated with. Maybe it just speaks to rivalry and fiercely local identity, but it implies a startling depth as well as breadth of knowledge.
  • In case you hadn’t noticed, music is a totally participative experience for the drunk Irish. Probably the only (rock/folk) gig I’ve played where the crowd were louder (and specifically singing louder) during the band breaks than when we were playing!

Turning up to start playing viola in Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’ Symphony in a conducting workshop at 10:30 the following morning was one of those simultaneously refreshing and bewildering shifts that characterise my musical career!

Time for something completely different

Thursday 15 March saw the Kindred Spirit Duo – that is, myself and songwriter/singer/guitarist Elaine Samuels – out in the Surrey village of Claygate, playing a set entirely of Elaine’s original songs. Now that is somewhat unusual, since our duo gigs are usually bar or function jobs geared heavily towards covers, folk songs and the odd fiddle dance tune; the original material is usually interpreted by the full five-piece Kindred Spirit Band; as in tonight’s (Friday 23 March) full-length concert at Twickenham’s Exchange arts centre, for which I believe tickets are still available at time of writing.

However, I’m not going to write much about our performance, except to say that one song of it is captured on video here, and offers a pretty good snapshot of where my non-jazz improvisation (what would you call this? folk? acoustic rock? singer-songwriter?) has reached by early 2018 in an expansive but relatively understated musical context.

The really something different was the headliners, to whom we were only playing a relatively short support set. Gryphon had their first incarnation on the interaction of 1970s psychedelia, folk-rock and prog. I gather from guitarist and founder member Graeme that they reformed around four years ago, and have been (gradually, it would have to be said) re-establishing themselves, both as a live act and with a forthcoming album of all new material.

The line-up is the most obviously unique thing about this group. The reason, I believe, we supported them as a duo was lack of physical space, PA channels or soundcheck time for another full band once their armoury had been dealt with – even with them having a staff sound engineer. The foundation of drums, bass guitar and (mostly fingerpicked) acoustic guitar is not that exceptional; although even by prog-rock standards, the drum kit expansions were numerous, including (that I was able to note) bongos, tambour, triangle, bell tree, woodblocks and foot-operated sleighbells! As was the presence of the drummer as lead vocalist on several numbers.

The ‘front line’ (in roughly performance terms, regardless of usual roles) is where things really get involved. Sat at the centre of the band was the band’s other Graham (yes I know they’re spelled differently), mostly on keyboards (producing samples from harpsichord to pipe organ and beyond) and violin, but with occasional excursions to mandolin and harmonica.

It is the two wind players that really define the Gryphon sound though. Their newest acquisition commanded a range of instruments that might make even a pit band reed player blink, through various fife-type small transverse flutes, clarinet, soprano sax, treble crumhorn (Google it if you aren’t familiar with crumhorns … ), concert flute and a hybrid instrument produced by exchanging the flute head-joint for a tin whistle type mouthpiece. Meanwhile, main frontman and evident single most driving personality of the band Roger really brought the early music timbres, as well as an enormous proliferation of white hair from all cranial angles and a dress sense no tamer for the passing of four decades since pre-punk rock-n-roll …

Besides some ventures onto lead vocals and additional keys, he visited during the evening [deep breath]: four sizes of recorder (I believe he avoided the much-misused and maligned descant, instead using sopranino, treble, tenor and bass), soprano saxophone, trombone and his evident signature instruments, bass crumhorn and (particularly) bassoon.

What, you might reasonably ask, does one perform with a line-up like that? This is, again, where conventional genre labels rather fall down for Gryphon. They are rather like the folk-rock concept applied to medieval and Renaissance music – particularly instrumental dance pieces. About two-thirds of their set was instrumental. The songs I think all involved original musical composition, with either also-original words or the text appropriated from folk songs. Of the instrumental pieces, several were derived from traditional, anonymous or known-composer old pieces; but even those were re-arranged into the band’s distinctive idiom: challenging, complex (they must have had a different solution to knowing their parts in the 1970s, as all of them had iPads with notes in front of them this time!) but also energetic and performed with great energy as well as musicianship. Probably slightly more instrumentals were original compositions, often of a length, multi-sectionality and uninterrupted diversity unashamedly ‘prog’. What was notably absent were the guitar-centric strophic original songs of post-Dylan folk-rock, and the folk tunes as we know them (the jigs, reels etc of the Irish, Morris and so on traditions) incorporated into the Fairport stream of the genre.

A good, if extreme example, of Gryphon’s musical personality was the closing number of their first half. Ostensibly an arrangement of a medieval English ‘Estampies’ (some kind of high-energy dance form), this contained a very extended bassoon solo in the middle, accompanied only by drums. I noted in passing quotes from the Rite of Spring, the ‘shave and a haircut – brown bread’ ending tag, Glenn Miller’s ‘Chattanooga Choo-Choo’ and the James Bond theme music; I am assured by those who were not just alive but old enough to take notice at the time that most of the rest was a tissue of references to 1970s TV sig music of many sorts.

The audience response proved one thing above all I think, something which many musicians might take note of: you can deliver apparently inaccessible, bizarre and even wilfully hard-to-understand music and get a fervent audience reaction, if you deliver it with musicianship and conviction, coupled with good humour and an infectious understanding of the music’s intentions.

Although, if your music formed a significant part of most of the audience’s adolescence, that probably helps too …

Laying it down

Last Friday (9th March), I was back at Skyline Studios to do five hours of recording, alone in a live room. That covered almost all of my parts for the Kindred Spirit recording currently in progress, and it became a day of all acoustic instruments.

First off was mandolin, as above, a brief overdub (but it will become certainly my most public outing on that instrument!). Then came violin as joint lead instrument on all 6 tracks – recorded with my good acoustic instrument and a nice mike, but that doesn’t stop us from applying filthy rock overdrive for the final album, as achieved with electric instrument and stomp-box in gigs. Finally, my parts in my backing arrangements – first and second violins, double-tracked, for two tracks, and viola for two (but not the same two, confusingly). Tomorrow (16th), I need to go back and do a couple more background viola parts. Then I can pretty much sign off (though I think I will be joining the choir for their one song on Sunday (18th) as well), leaving guitar, vocals, flute, saxophones, bass and cello to be added respectively, over coming sessions.

Recording is always draining, particularly solo tracking where there is absolutely nowhere to hide, and I was glad I didn’t have to do this for much longer in the same day. Although the times were actually set by when engineer Jez had finished tidying up the drum tracks for me to dub over, and when I had to leave in order to manage the other half of my double whammy day – Oliver! in Chesham, which I also did twice (matinee and evening) the following evening.

Those double headers seem to be getting more common – today (Thursday 15th), I busk in Victoria over lunchtime then support Gryphon as one half of the Kindred Spirit Duo; tomorrow I finish Kindred Spirit recording and then play an evening gig with Dream Logic; Saturday I record and film a promo set and play a St Patrick’s Kindred Spirit Duo gig. Sunday’s one musical commitment and Monday’s driving test may seem comparative rests!

Extreme performance

Full marks for generosity, creativity and tenacity have to go to one passer-by in Victoria Thursday gone (8th March).

I was busking, and in the middle of John Williams’ main title theme to Schindler’s List, when an elderly gentleman with superb white hair approached me brandishing a £10 note. I thought he was simply drawing my attention to this (very generous! – the typical amount per punter is £1 in my experience) donation, then briefly wondered if he wanted to take some change from it (which wouldn’t have been unreasonable – in this era when few people have pocketfuls of coins, I’m always surprised more people don’t drop in a note and grab a few pound coins back). In fact, he was simply concerned it might blow away if dropped in my violin case. (I appreciate the problem – when I am given notes, I try and scoop a couple of coins on top of them at the end of that number.)

I know this to be the case because, when I simply nodded appreciatively and kept playing (I wasn’t going to interrupt the flow of what is more or less a piece of classical music if I could help it), he carefully folded the tenner in half and inserted it in the cuff of my left coat sleeve, mid-phrase, while I kept playing. Of course, once he was engaged in this I could do no better than make sure I didn’t waver musically until he finished, in a spirit of cooperation.

Besides doubtless being bizarre to watch, this gives me the notion of a cabaret double-act involving essentially one person playing, preferably fairly impressively, while the other carries out various careful operations on them – picking their pockets, changing their shoes, stuffing things into their clothing, adding hats, etc. What do you reckon? Better prospect than trying to get onto the freelance professional orchestra circuit?

Et in Arcadia ego

Last Saturday (3rd March) saw a slightly unusual and nice freelance job, for a variety of reasons.

One was that it was an excuse to go back to Oxford – and remember how conveniently tiny the place is compared to London’s sprawl, and how spoilt rotten Oxonians are for pocket-sized chapels and churches with excellent acoustics and well-maintained organs, as well as excellent musicians.

The real pleasures though were the musical ones. I was playing viola in a Biber (not Bieber!) Requiem setting. Of itself, this counts as unusual. I for some reason rarely get to combine my loves of viola and fairly authentic early music performance; getting to do so in a one-to-part near-chamber setting with off-the-beaten track repertoire is an extra bonus.

Biber belongs to what might be termed the middle Baroque; several decades later than Monteverdi transitioning out of the Renaissance but a good generation older than the late-Baroque core repertoire of Bach, Handel, Vivaldi and Telemann. It’s an era that only fairly rarely crops up in concert programming and stylistically sounds relatively unfamiliar (alongside, to my subjective impressions, late medieval polyphony, the galant / very early Classical transition of the mid-18th century, and most composition from about 1920 to the 1960s). Sacred music, of course, clung to heavily polyphonic textures much more than the secular move to chord-based sounds at the start of the 17th century; the result is that a lot of this setting sounded fairly genuinely halfway between, say, Tallis and Bach. The original scoring is for two violins, continuo, optional trombones doubling the alto, tenor and bass voices, and treble, alto and tenor viols, besides voices; we were using a very light transcription which moved the viol parts over to three violas, and dispensing with the trombones.

The unexpected delight of the day really for me was the choir however. Arcadian Singers are a chamber-sized outfit, numbering 15 on this outing, mostly young though not explicitly a student ensemble. In the first half, when I wasn’t playing and could listen with undivided attention, they sang two Romantic pieces with decidedly non-straightforward twists and turns of chromaticism. Not only did they navigate these apparently completely unfazed, they produced a dependable, confident sound across a dynamic range from a controlled piano to a still-sweet-toned body of volume that would be beyond many choirs several times their size (even if the scale and acoustic of Brasenose College Chapel were in their favour).

The Biber is scored for SSATB soloists plus chorus. The choir shared out the solos among themselves (in general solo or multiple-soloist sections alternate with chorus, rather than the soloists singing over the top of the choir) and again fared admirably. It was particularly notable that the conductor had been at understandable pains to get us instrumentalists (one to a part strings, but on modern instruments, and chamber organ continuo) to play down during rehearsal before the choir joined us. In fact in performance this proved more or less unnecessary, the singers balancing a normal playing volume comfortably.

This appears to be the Lent of Baroque authentic performance. I have seen (and had to pass up, equipment lacking) multiple adverts for period-instrument players, mostly for the Saturday before Holy Week; however, I am managing to join authentic performance, modern instrument group Ashford Baroque Ensemble on 24th March to accompany Haydn’s ‘Nelson’ Mass and d’Astorga’s Stabat Mater.

Meanwhile this week I have been recording band parts and string and mandolin overdubs for the Kindred Spirit album, and playing in the pit (an actual orchestra pit this time!) for half of a run of Oliver! in Chesham. The contrast could hardly be greater – if variety is the spice of life, mine’s a vindaloo …

Hard at work

Two new bookings within the last few days have this month (March, snow and -3 in London notwithstanding!) set up to be a very busy and enjoyably varied one for my performing career.

Tomorrow, Saturday 3rd, I’m back to familiar territory in Oxford – joining the Arcadian Singers at Brasenose College Chapel for Biber’s Requiem in F minor, plus a couple of other choral pieces. That will be one for layering up if my experience of other medieval Oxford chapels is anything to go by!

On the 9th and (twice) 10th, I’m doing half of Panda Players’ run of Oliver! at the Elgiva in Chesham. I’m looking forward to reprising the violin cadenzas in ‘Reviewing the Situation’, and hope this Fagin has as much fun with them as the last one …

A rare weekday gig on Thursday 15th sees Elaine and I playing an originals set as Kindred Spirit Duo (itself a pretty rare occurrence), supporting (re-formed) notorious prog-early music-folk-rock outfit Gryphon at the Claygate Festival. We believe it’s a duo booking largely because of how much stage space and how many PA channels their rampant multi-instrumentalism requires!

The following night, Friday 16th, my viola takes up electronic company as part of a live string quartet helping realise the ambient / contemporary classical compositions of Dream Logic, aka Adam Fulford. It’s a support slot for VLMV‘s album launch gig (interestingly also to feature a string quartet!) at Archspace in Haggerston.

17th March is, of course, St Patrick’s Day and Kindred Spirit Duo are once again helping celebrate it with the Irish-oriented version of our folk and covers act at the Swan Inn in Isleworth. Expect much singing along and dancing and my infamous Shane McGowan impression on a slightly out-of-season ‘Fairytale of New York’ …

On the 20th, an unusual format of the Parlour Room project contributes to Conway Hall‘s La Belle et la Bête night with our ‘Requiems’ experience. This sees founder Sarah de Winter move from her usual cello seat to soprano solo for operatic arias accompanied by (my arrangements for!) string quartet, combined with digital projections in a multimedia performance that pushes well outside usual UK conceptions of what opera can be. We hope to carry it much further, but be there and say you saw it before it was trendy!

Kindred Spirit‘s first 2018 gig as a full band is on 23rd March at Twickenham’s Exchange arts and community venue (coincidentally about three minutes’ walk from my new flat!). We’ll be previewing tracks from our next album (my first with the band – recording under way now!) and delivering a full evening’s entertainment in this new venue, hopefully setting a trend for it promoting local bands and original music. Tickets can be bought and seats reserved online here, or at Twickenham’s Eel Pie Records (who are also doing a special deal on the Kindred Spirit back catalogue!).

On Saturday 24th, I head a little way further out to the south and west of London, to stiffen the forces of Ashford Baroque Ensemble accompanying Spelthorne Choral Society at St Peter’s Church in Staines. We’ll be performing Haydn’s well-known ‘Nelson’ Mass and the much more obscure d’Astorga’s Stabat Mater and I’m looking forward to deploying my authentic performance practice skills again (sadly not period instrument, until I find myself able to make a rather massive investment in that niche area of my career).

That brings us to this year’s early Easter, and to another month’s gigging. But I hope to see you before then anyway!