Have keyboard will travel

Apologies for the silence, things have been fascinating and very busy here.

Been working up to the new orchestra conductor job. One of the problems of combining three different careers is that occasionally they clash. So I've been taking care of my private client base, working to set up the company to run smoothly without my presence, and preparing for the season's work in Scarborough.


If you've been under a stone for the last six months, I've taken over as musical director to the Scarborough Spa Orchestra. It's the last remaining summer season orchestra in the UK, and performs 10 concerts every week for approximately 15 weeks.

Now that's a pretty tough schedule to start with, but because we have loyal followers who attend every concert, each programme is different. Yes, you read that right, there are 150 different programmes each year. Each programme has between 10 and 18 pieces in it.

Now as the musical director it's my job to put the programmes together.

Oh, and did I mention that up to a fortnight ago the library catalogue hadn't actually been computerised? It took the form of four accounts books with only the name of the piece and the composer.

The library has 4,000 items in it.

In a room 3 metres by 2.

Hence the silence (and small amounts of despair).

Fortunately, the orchestra has an excellent librarian, who has spent most of the Spring putting the repertoire on computer (it was finished two weeks ago).

Thankfully, I seem to know a large proportion of the music already, either by having played it or by reputation. But to give you an idea, even with the new system, it still took us four hours to find all the music for the first week of concerts.

So I spent six hours at the piano today playing through some of the more difficult stuff in preparation for the rehearsals next week.

This weekend the Scarborough Spa Complex (where the orchestra is based) has been completely taken over by the British Association of Barbershop Singers. Now as it happens Gillyanne and I have both coached the BABS trainers (and the ladies' equivalent at LABBS), so I was quite comfortable with the situation. However, since every public room was taken, the management had to move the keyboard into an office suite in the back building and put me on headphones for the weekend.

The Barbershoppers are a great bunch of people, but there is one small problem - put them in a conference and they will find any corner to sing quartets in. Which is lovely the first time, but a bit wearing when you've chased off the seventh quartet who find your particular corner.

The Barbershoppers leave the building on Monday, but the Thundercats world powerboat racing championships arrive on Friday.

Never a dull moment...


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