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Fiddler's Farewell
Item Posted: Friday 18th June, 2010
A Fond Farewell to Sarah
Sarah Naylor has been the tutor for Lochgoilhead Fiddle Workshop and FiddleFolk for three years.
In that time she has introduced hundreds of new children in the Cowal peninsula to the fiddle and to Scottish traditional music, and achieved huge success in training our young stars to take part in fiddle competitions. Inspired by her, her charges have been achieving outstanding success in the last two years, and sent a signal out to the rest of Scotland that violin tuition in the Cowal peninsula has been not just alive and well, but of an exceptional standard. This has been as a result of the partnership in schools tuition between Argyll and Bute Council and FiddleFolk, which has been a huge success by any reckoning.
For the adults of Lochgoilhead Fiddle Workshop Sarah has also been an inspiration and a delight. She has inspired the few members who have played for years to raise their game, and instilled a hugely enhanced skills level throughout the Workshop. Above all it has been brilliant fun, the highlight of the week for many of us. Her commitment to us has inspired us to practise, practise, practise, to meet Sarah’s exacting standards.
As a mark of their love for a wonderful tutor, the members presented Sarah with a number of mementos to take to her new life in Germany, where she will become Baroness von Racknitz. You can’t say that many people have been taught Scottish traditional fiddle by a German Baroness-is this a first for Argyll?
Singing Workshops in Cairndow and Dumbarton
Item Posted: Monday 10th May, 2010
DO YOU SING?
If singing yourself is more to your taste than listening to singing, there are two days of singing workshops on offer.
Cairndow Village Hall is hosting singing workshops with Alison Burns. She is a songwriter, music facilitator, educator and community choir director. She writes songs for community and folk choirs, as well as for schools. Her music has been heard throughout the UK - in theatre, public art installations and in the repertoire of many community choirs. Inspiring audiences, workshop participants and critics alike, Alison’s music “shivers and crackles with delicious harmonies”. The List
Alison is a well-respected community musician with an outstanding record of workshop tutoring. She has worked with choirs and singing groups, within the culture sector as well as in mainstream and special needs education. Her innovative instruments and creative music activities offer a powerful way for children to engage with voice and music.
In her public workshops Ali teaches either her own compositions or songs from various traditional song archives around Britain that she has researched and 'reconditioned', finding or writing appropriate tunes, sometimes amalgamating versions to create one song or recreating incomplete songs by studying different versions or similar songs. She has published four collections of new songs and arrangements including a book of children's songs.
“I want to recreate the richness of harmony that makes songs of oral traditions from around the world so satisfying and joyful to sing, but with words that root the work firmly back in my own culture.”
Since 2000, Ali has been researching British folk carols from oral traditions. From this research, she created The Forgotten Carols: workshops and performances celebrating midwinter and Christmas.
In Dumbarton there is another day long singing workshop ‘From Opera to Rock’, run by Petra Maspel. German-born Petra developed an increasing interest in singing in her teens, holds a Postgraduate Diploma from the Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum and concentrated on classical singing for a while, and subsequently enrolled in a Musical Theatre Course in Hamburg, which led to a Certificate in Musical Theatre Performance.
She has over 10 years experience as a performer and singer, both as a soloist and ensemble/chorus-member: Shows, concerts and master classes have taken her to the UK, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and Switzerland.Her true passion lies in teaching voice tutoring from complete beginners to seasoned performers. She is also a keen writer - my work includes writing and translating articles on singing technique and music reviews for magazines.
If you enjoy singing and are looking for a solid start in vocal technique, this is the right workshop for you! You will learn about the all-important vocal basics: breathing and support, vocal tone and placement, rhythm and intonation, and the difference between classical and contemporary singing. You will sing in a group setting, and exercises and songs will be practised together.
Everyone who is brave enough to try a solo is very welcome to give it a go (but no compulsion!) Those keen participants can also work on performance essentials like expression, presentation and style. The workshop is suitable as a starting point for future singing lessons or as an addition to pre-existing voice lessons.
Glasgow Jazz Festival
Item Posted: Monday 10th May, 2010
Glasgow Jazz Festival
The Cowal Music Club and FiddleFolk brought the Tim Kliphuis Band to Cowal last year, and I now hear he is performing at the prestigious Glasgow Jazz Festival. The greatest living exponent of Grappelli's elegantly swinging, energetic violin style, Kliphuis trained at the Amsterdam Conservatory and first came to the jazz world's attention with gypsy guitarist Fapy Lafertin. He has since worked with Les Paul and Martin Taylor and infuses hot club swing with tango, bossa and African rhythms.
The festival has a great line up of key names from the Scottish and international jazz scene, and a jazz fringe where you will find a lot of the up and coming names.
Carol Kidd is acknowledged in jazz circles as "Britain's finest ballads singer". She has secured the Best Vocalist title at the British Jazz Awards on four separate occasions and, in 1998, received the MBE for Services to Jazz. A long line of admirers included Frank Sinatra, who invited her to open for him at a concert at Ibrox Stadium in Glasgow. During his performance he commented "Carol Kidd is the best kept secret of British jazz". This endorsement from Ol' Blue Eyes gave Kidd the confidence to truly make singing her career.
Almost immediately she was invited to appear at the internationally acclaimed Ronnie Scott's Club in London. Tony Bennett was singing in London at the time and he made a point of coming to hear her stating "You are world class, where have you been?" Their endorsements were clearly on the nail, as she has picked up awards galore and ended up with a MBE for services to Jazz.
The Scottish Jazz Orchestra will perform ‘Torah’, written by Tommy Smith in 1999, for American saxophone giant Joe Lovano. The 2010 Torah recordings feature the composer as both lead soloist and director of an orchestra of outstanding talents. The music is robust, crisply written and beautifully detailed, using horns as commentators as well as supporters and a brilliant rhythm section as the dynamic base for Smith’s by turns tender and rugged but always heartfelt improvisations on strong, memorable themes. Encapsulating the first five books of the Bible in an extended jazz composition, Smith has taken the creation story common to the Christian, Jewish and Islamic faiths and created music that, drawing on the jazz and blues traditions and without harbouring grand ambitions of healing spiritual division, is highly approachable, stimulating and ultimately rewarding.
Another highlight of the festival will be the finals of the Young Scottish Jazz Musician of the Year competition, presented by the Scottish Jazz Federation and the Glasgow Jazz Festival, hosted by Stephen Duffy and broadcast live on BBC Radio Scotland’s Jazz House.
The Glasgow Jazz Festival runs from the 18th to 27th June. For more information please go to www.jazzfest.co.uk