Derby Piano Quartet 8 hands on 2 pianos This Friday, 6 October, 7.30pm at Ecclesbourne School, Duffield

Are you free to come to our 8 hands concert on Friday? It was cancelled earlier in the year because of a faulty electricity cable! We didn’t need electricity, but can you IMAGINE a concert without tea and coffee? And no electric doors? …so we all had to go home then…but on Friday the lovely Jane Ford, Gillian Bithel, Richard Hodges and me will treat you to a fun and eclectic mix of weird and wonderful things…might see you there! Wouldn’t work without the wonderful Karl Dumelow helping with bringing my Kawai grand in and the school providing us with their Daneman grand.  Thank you to Music@Duffield and Len Jenkinson for sticking with us and rearranging.

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Duffied Arts Festival 23-24 September

On the day after the Wirksworth concert various musical pieces will happen in the Duffield Arts Festival. Richard Hodges and have a stack of duets to entertain you with, mostly of a lighter nature, including the WHOLE of the Sound of Music, and yes, you can sing along! I will also play some of my favourites, and so will John Hobbs and I am still hoping for one or two duettists to come forward. If you would like to take part, please contact me.

For more details visit the Festival Website

Wirksworth Festival Concert, Saturday 23rd September, St Mary’s Church, Wirksworth.

Its Wirksworth Festival time again. And as every year it seems I have the HUGE pleasure of playing a piano concerto with Jonathan Trout and my friends in the Derby Chamber Orchestra. This year it will be Shostakovich’s 2nd Concerto with THAT beautiful second movement…! Hope you can make it. Bookings via the festival website DO work, I am told!
Do remember, its Open Studios weekend in the Festival this coming weekend.

You can buy your tickets for this event here: Festival Concert

Fund Raising Concert Friday 15th September, The Ecclesbourne School, Duffield

You may have heard of the young music teacher Chris Toon (sax, clarinet and flute) who had a dreadful motorbike accident and is now paralyzed. He is currently in the Spinal Centre in Sheffield Hopsital learning how to live with his disability. This concert will help him as he and his lovely girl friend are readapting his house. He will be brought by 2 nurses from Sheffield Hospital and attend the concert, in a wheelchair. I will be playing Chopin’s 3rd Ballade and a fiery dance by Ginastera. The programme will be such a fun mix of things and styles, as that is what Chris was – and is!

If you cannot make the concert, but would like to make a donation, please visit his Crowdfunding page

EPTA UK Conference 31.08.17-02.09.17

Just back from a wonderfully inspiriting EPTA UK Conference in the beautiful deVere conference Centre in Nottingham. Bright and spcaious modern architecture, lush hotel rooms and delicious, plentiful food gave the frame for inspirational talks and concerts under the leaderhsip of the Piano Teachers Course (PTC). All very hands on and relevant. I am in typical fashion getting people to sing ‘Viva Viva la musica’ as I find a crowd waiting irresistable in that way. They were just getting ready for the photo. A few delegates had left, but in full swing we were about 100 people…!

For information about next year’s Conference visit the EPTA website

 

Rhapsody in Blue in Belper July 14,7.30pm

If you enjoy good choral music come to this lovely concert – Mitchell Holland is a super conductor who has really inspired the Belper Singers! The piano is a super small Young Chang grand which was donated, brandnew, to the Strutts Centre who are taking extremely good care of it! So from Schubert I go straight to Gershwin. I rememeber finding a copy of this solo version of the Rhapsody in Blue in a second hand music shop in Tottenham Court Road thinking at the time that one needed a big orchestra to perform this piece…but no! He wrote this solo version  himself and it is an absolutely super piece! Not far round the corner (in fact we have the first run through 4 days before this concert) is Shostakovitch 2nd piano concerto which will happen with the Derby Chamber Orchestra on September 23 as part of the Wirksworth Festival.

Schubert in the Cathedral, Friday 16 June at 1.00 -1.45 pm – FREE

The poster below says it all – I am playing this piece (Schubert’s wonderful last sonata in B flat major, D960)  for the first time again after 30 years because I knew I would be in the right frame of mind for it – after 2 very busy festivals of a different sort I wanted a calm and wide piece I could really sink into, with the mood carrying me forward…I have also missed very much playing a ‘Lieder’ recital with one of my wonderful singer colleagues in Belper Music Festival as in previous years. The attendance for those had just been too poor to justify putting another one on. But what better excuse to play piano music by Schubert, the master of songwriters, instead? So there is my reasoning – and I have enjoyed every minute of practising this wonderful music. It is passion with depth and tenderness – just a wonderful combination. If you are coming do tell me what you thought…