London Viola Player, Violinist & Arranger For Hire

Martin Ash LTCL

More studio time than expected

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I’m spending quite a lot of time recording at present for someone who often points out to friends outside the industry that ‘session musician’ is a bad description of what I do.

Not that live is going on the back burner (watch this space for gig announcements concerning Hashtag Opera Co., the Filthy Spectacula, Razzberry Jam, Kindred Spirit and the String Project!). But yesterday saw Elliot Vanderhyde and myself doing a second session for his upcoming folk album (me arranging, improvising and multitracking with viola, violin and mandolin). I think we’ve now dispatched my contributions to 5 of a projected 8 tracks, so there will be at least one more session for me to do.

This morning, meanwhile, I was following up a sudden flash of inspiration experienced by the man known as Mr E (that’s to his friends – his enemies mostly just call him ‘Aarghh!’) by whipping up incidental string parts to another song from the Filthy Spectacula album. I think that takes it to over half the track list drawing on my arranging skills, parts to be recorded (between myself and the cello playing of Stevie Mitchell) on Saturday. Watch out for something probably called Thr’p’ny Upright hitting your ears soon!

Also been exploring possibilities for a networking-strategic appearance at Truck Studios. Meanwhile, back to practising for gigs …

The boys are back

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even filthier than usual

You might not really have noticed The Filthy Spectacula had been away. But it was a couple of months, and a lot of album work and non-performing admin, since we were last on a stage when we headlined Jamboree on Saturday. And it felt like a bit of a comeback.

We’ve played there before, last summer, in scorching heat that meant everyone was sweating before we even got on the stage. And I’m starting to get the hang of some of the distinctive things about the place – besides the Old Curiosity Shop-meets-opium den décor, location inside a gated industrial estate in Limehouse and colourful accent collection of the staff.

Most venues that make any effort with their programming (many do not) try and line up acts that do similar things to each other, and put them in ascending order of quality. So acts with a comic-vintage, ska-punk, gypsy or just plain alcohol-adoring tendency are likely as Filthy supports.

Jamboree plan their bills to shift over the evening, and they seem to know their clientele. So their support acts are usually duos, trios or even solo acts, with semi-acoustic instrumentation and a leaning towards the folk-roots-throwback field. On this occasion, the wonderfully laid-back and genre-unconcerned Dai & the Ramblers (just one Rambler for this gig, making them a guitar and fiddle duo), meandering casually from blues to jazz to Celtic folk to unexpected a cappella spiritual. They had a respectable audience of about 40 to 50, who sat down, listened attentively, tried to only come in and out of the loo between numbers, and  occasionally drummed on their knees (OK, that might have been mostly me). A good setting for their act, and an appropriate response. I enjoyed them.

In the half-hour or so after they finished, a lot more swarthy 20-somethings, dressed not very conventionally for a London night out, showed up and started ordering drinks in much more rapid succession. The venue, without doing anything except let people in, transformed from folk club to v. alt rock cellar. By the time we took to the stage at quarter to eleven (usually what even we would think a bit of a late start for a semi-pub gig), there must have been more like 150 boozy uninhibited oddballs, willing to pogo, sashay, Cossack dance, chorus line and yell their way through as long a set as we could give them. Quite literally – the sound guy announced to us after Dai finished that they had a late licence till 2, so could we just stretch our set out? Till, maybe, 1am? We didn’t manage that, but we did play over 90 minutes straight, missing out just one song of our repertoire (unless we forgot anything scribbling extra titles on the set list). Not bad for an originals band.

This was also the gig where the crowd starting asking for selfies. Quite a lot of them. What it is to be famous. We should start charging. And we should follow up the girl that was considering hiring us to play at her wedding …

Live at Challow Road

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(It’s actually not called that, though it could be; but Challow Park doesn’t have quite the same punning possibilities.)

I was impressed that a good 40-50 people made it through gale-force winds, downpour and rural roads to a location, if not quite as much in the middle of nowhere as some of the London-based performers made out, in semi-open countryside on the outskirts of an obscure south Oxfordshire market town. But really, that was the least impressive thing about last night’s concert.

I’ve already written in probably exaggerated superlatives about Graham Blyth’s completed but as yet sans décor basement concert hall and studio complex. It was with the full (20-strong) string section and timpani as well as organ, and the above-mentioned respectably-sized audience, in the hall that its properties really showed, with a lovely acoustic (subtly but helpfully assisted by some electronic/PA trickery that made it sound even bigger!) and the most dynamic range, expression and convincingness I’ve certainly ever heard out of an electronic organ.

The performance deserves real credit as well. This was what might be termed a semi-amateur concert, and the process was rendered more interesting by rehearsals of London Repertoire Orchestra (usually a drop-in, play-through affair) and of the circum-Wantage guest players taking place separately, so although I was leading 2nd violins, I only got to meet and play with most of my section on the afternoon of the concert!

For that size and ostensible level of ensemble, this was a really impressive concert. The Elgar String Serenade had the balance of pastoral lightness and restrained Romantic fire that is essential to the piece and yet I have heard missed by higher-aiming and higher-reputed performers. From the point of view of a player with a part in front of me, the Poulenc organ concerto, closing the first half, perhaps lost a little accuracy to demob-happiness, but it certainly did not lack spirit (and a great variety of spirit is required for this extraordinarily condensed piece from a wide-ranging master). I was utterly amazed, even having just rehearsed the piece in the afternoon, by the Shostakovich Chamber Symphony. This piece (better known in its original incarnation as the 8th string quartet) demands utter focus, precision ensemble, technique and a high degree of emotional resilience from performers, and there are some senses and parts in which it is probably more difficult in Barshai’s string orchestra arrangement. I do not think it would be an understatement to describe this performance as an epic journey for all concerned.

All in all a more than could have been expected rewarding (as well as challenging) gig. My attention’s now shifting forwards, with the Filthy Spectacula’s return to gigging after album sessions, a St Patrick’s Night guest spot, Hashtag Opera’s Anna Bolena and my first performances with Kindred Spirit all on the radar …

Free sample

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Of my work on Elliot Vanderhyde‘s upcoming album ‘Celt’:

https://soundcloud.com/vanderhyde/halloween-song

You can even pre-order the album, though at least half of my contribution is yet to be recorded so I can’t tell you too much about it yet …

Looking back, looking forward

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Sunday was a fairly musically quiet day as my recent weekends go – I only had one work appointment, and that only three hours of rehearsal.

However, a freelance musician’s life is nothing if not interesting, and there were still a few surprises in store from the afternoon. Chief among them being the venue itself. To someone passing, or indeed looking for a scratch orchestra rehearsal, Challow Park Studios looks like a decaying manor house on the outskirts of Oxford market town Wantage, generally only remarkable for being the birthplace of King Alfred (and therefore naming everything possible after him), with enough of the building site about it to suggest it’s either being turned into something else (probably flats) or knocked down.

What lurks within the house I’m still not quite sure, though I think it contains a recital room as well as being actually lived in. However, the real gem is underneath – a top-spec classical recording, rehearsing and performing facility, with three live rooms, two control rooms (!) and the space we were using, a chamber orchestra-sized performance room with a 4-manual custom-self-built electronic organ.

All of this is the brainchild of Graham Blyth, the soloist in the concert we were rehearsing – who turns out to have started Soundcraft; like you do. (If this doesn’t mean much to you, say it to a sound engineer. You may need to stand back.) He is joining a body of selected string players to perform the ‘Albinoni’ Adagio, Elgar’s gorgeous String Serenade, the Poulenc Organ Concerto and Shostakovitch’s Chamber Symphony Op 110a (a string orchestra transcription of the monumental 8th string quartet).

Which leads me neatly forward from last weekend to next. If you want to discover this literally buried gem (only metaphorically, but appropriately, a gem), the concert is also there, 7:30 on this coming Saturday 6 February. I’m assured Challow Park Studios shows up on Google Maps in its own right so you can find it!

Everyone’s a producer now

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I’m still catching up on the weekend’s music-making …

Perhaps more literally ‘making’ music than usual in the case of the third date of the weekend (we’re now up to Saturday afternoon, if you’re keeping track). This saw me meeting up with songwriter-guitarist-singer-promoter-social entrepreneur-general musical presence and hive of activity Elliot Vanderhyde, of Vanderhyde Records. One of his current projects is a folk-styled mini-album, and so I was contributing acoustic instruments to three tracks for this, captured through the magic of a Zoom self-contained recorder and GarageBand production/multi-tracking software.

A minor-key lament had viola bass notes, fiddle counter-melody and mandolin strumming thickening out its bridges and choruses, me adding to click and guide tracks early in the recording process. An up-tempo country-punk cross-examination of Halloween (sounding like fiery, slightly hyperactive Dylan), the basic parts essentially already complete, gained fiddle chopping reproportioned to a rock backbeat. Finally, though it’s a track I hope we come back to, a socially-conscious narrative ballad (about medieval Oxford town and gown riots) with guitar figuration that could easily pass for a lost Martin Carthy track. On this, we laid down an initial track live with acoustic guitar and fiddle. Vocals and (from my point of view) hopefully some more acoustic instrumentation to fill out the track to come.

I’m looking forward to hearing finished tracks, and indeed to the further sessions (which there certainly will be) on this project. In the meantime it’s already striking evidence of the level of record-making open to hard-working individuals without the services of professional engineers or dedicated studio spaces – though having experienced both sides, I would as a musician always rather have the technicians, producer and studio in the process when possible!

Busy weekend part 2

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So, this weekend’s second professional musical appointment was at ten to eleven on Saturday morning, at some rehearsal rooms in a grubby mews just down the road from the Wigmore Hall. I was auditioning for an orchestral seat in the first part of the ROSSINI 2016 opera festival, and they had asked to me play violin for the audition.

The interesting bit about this particular audition was that I’d had only about 36 hours to prepare for it – alongside finishing the additional string arrangements for the Filthy Spectacula album, and being away from home to test the waters with Kindred Spirit (see previous post).

Now sight-reading Rossini fortunately requires no specific preparation (and my sight-reading is never really allowed to get out of practice as a skill! one of the benefits of a freelance and dep playing career). However, I was lucky that I had the Presto from the Bach G minor solo violin sonata (#1) reasonably well polished up from last weekend’s (very different) audition, and was able to quickly restore it to as happy as I was likely to get performance standard. It perhaps isn’t what I would choose as audition piece for early Romantic orchestral playing work, but at that amount of preparation time neither auditionee nor auditioner beggars can be choosers.

So another application I await the outcome of; which at least brings me to Saturday afternoon and the first directly paid appointment of the weekend. Check back for the next instalment …

4 jobs in 48 hours

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And 3 of them in 24 hours. That’s the headline for my weekend.

So, first off, last night (Friday 29th) I was in Hounslow to meet with Elaine Samuels, singer-songwriter, guitarist and main mover of protean folk-rock outfit Kindred Spirit. And I’m delighted to say that as a result of email correspondence and that meeting and playing, I will be joining them as main violinist, gradually taking over from Gavin Jones, who has been seduced away by more fiscally predictable function residency work …

There is already a heartening list of paying gigs, with line-ups from duo to five-piece full band, in my diary and more arriving. I’m looking forward to getting to grips with a new, stylish and utterly distinctive repertoire; experimenting with effect pedals on the violin; and setting about the gig schedule. Come and catch us soon!