Mulling over money

So, as mentioned in much earlier posts - I'm hoping to complete the Gallay Trilogy with a recording of the Gallay opera fantasias, more about this anon I'm sure...

In a way I've been working through these discs in an economical fashion - starting with the solo works which is probably the cheapest place to start, this though was made a lot easier in having the support of the wonderful Finzi Scholarship which didn't finance the disc but did finance the preparation for it. The next disc involved co-opting my marvellous friends and colleagues in Les Chevaliers de Saint Hubert for the quartet and trios. This got slotted in amongst other work we had in France near a very good venue recommended by our top notch sound engineer. 

Throughout these other projects, at the back of my head was the possibility of recording some of the Gallay opera fantasias. These works are hardly known of as much of the music is not available or even known about. Much digging in archives and libraries around the world plus many hours work in producing new editions of all these works have meant that a new wealth of nineteenth century works for horn and piano have been rediscovered.

These works are typical of both Gallay's compositions and style of horn playing, mixing incredibly virtuosic music with beautifully lyrical melodies deeply influenced by his position as solo horn of the Parisian Theatre Italien. In many ways these works represent a "missing link" in today's repertoire for horn illustrating a sizeable body of works that come between the classical concerti and sonatas of Mozart/Haydn/Beethoven and their contemporaries and the later nineteenth century Romantic tradition typified by Franz and Richard Strauss.

These charming and entertaining works are still capable of captivating audiences in the 21st century and by recording the music and publishing editions of the works I hope to help renew interest in this important period of musical history.

To date we've got an excellent team together, both with musicians, the producer/engineer and technician for the piano plus a great venue and perfect instruments for the period. Period pianos can be hard to source, tune and move. Venues with good acoustics and no risk of external noise don't come cheap. Accommodation, travel, food to eat, all mount up. All this means that to do this last disc is going to cost a far bit when all is added up. We'll be looking at the region of £10,000 and that's with a number of people giving their services for free (controversial at the best of times).

Recently, many artists have turned to crowd funding to raise the much needed capital for projects such as recordings. At the moment a fabulous Australian ensemble, Ironwood, are in the middle of such a campaign on Pozible. This group is doing really innovative, ground breaking work, especially in 19th century performance practice. I was lucky enough to work with them recently and part of the funding they're trying to raise will be to support a recording project with them so I'm keeping everything crossed that they reach their target.

I'm currently investigating running a Kickstarter campaign. I've spent the last few days coming up with the bumpf and the all important "rewards". Actually this part I've found quite fun - I've divided the rewards into four categories:

• Thanks! (quite self explanatory, a donation of £5 gets a thank you email and a track of music working up to donations of £100 getting a thank you in the sleeve notes.

• Hear the music Various options giving donors advance downloads or advanced copies of the new recording through to snazzy "deluxe" boxed editions of the three Gallay CDs plus the Bate Collection recording. I'm a real sucker for elegant packaging so I'm having great fun playing with ideas for this. Ribbons? Deluxe boxed set would also come with a personal thank you in the sleeve notes.

• Play the music. Having done all the research, found all the source materials, made all the editions so that we have the dots for the recording, it would be great to share the music with other musicians. So there are various options to buy sheet music of these works. Like the boxed editions above I've been looking at the various options of getting the music properly printed as it'd be nice to have good editions rather than something dashed off on the home printer. I'm also contemplating getting a small factory line going at home and making some really good hosepipe horns (in F at A440) - inspired a little by the success of the P-bone so people can buy the music then have an "instrument" to try it out on!

• Meet the artists. This has been a fun one to plot! Need to check a few logistical things but we've got options from horn lessons, drinks with the musicians after one of our concerts in 2015, attending one of the recording sessions, through to a private concert at the donors house. But my favourite one here is a possible event involving the wonderful Bate Collection and afternoon tea...

Having dreamt all that up (and gone through to make sure none of the rewards cost so much that they end up negating any donations) I've now spent some time playing with the Kickstarter website plus a bit more time coming up with a emailout for it.

But the big question is this - Kickstarter and their ilk work on the premise that the campaign only gets money if the target is reached. I'm hoping that this is a campaign that will attract the horn playing fraternity and hopefully other music lovers. But with more and more people running these sorts of things have we reached saturation point? Is it like the frequent emails we all receive from our very well meaning, athletic, friends and colleagues running another marathon for a deserving course? It looks like social media and "reach" (how many people you're connected to on Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn etc etc) play a big part in crowd funding - but is it not like a lot of social/political/fundraising things you see on social media i.e. people are trigger happy clicking "like" for things but rarely follow through with a real life action? 

Either way - it's been a long day of beautiful Mozart in Copenhagen, teaching an enthusiastic Masters student, and then looking at a computer screen for way too long trying to figure out funding. At the moment I'm going to sleep on it a bit but in the meantime would be fascinated to know of other's experience with crowd funding - either as artists themselves running a campaign or as potential philanthropists!

This year marks the bicentenary of the birth of Adolphe Sax. Whilst most people will immediately associate the name of Sax with, of course, the saxophone this was but one of very many instruments he invented or developed.


Over the past few months I've been involved with a group of musicians who are delving into the history of another of Sax's inventions - the family of brass instruments known as the saxhorn. This group, The Prince Regent's Band, takes it's name from the private band of the Prince Regent, later George IV,  late eighteenth/early nineteenth century. The original Prince Regent’s Band was an elite ensemble of musicians from throughout Europe and the new group has set out to explore much of the wealth of music for brass and wind instruments from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The Prince Regent's Band decided to mark the Adolphe Sax bicentenary with the reconstruction of a programme music influenced by the Distin Family, one of the earliest and most famous of brass ensembles. 

Founded by John Distin, a former member of the original Prince Regent's Band, the group comprised himself, his four sons George Frederick, Henry John, William Alfred and Theodore, and his wife Anne Matilda Distin (neé Loder). In their earliest formation in 1836 the ensemble included John Distin on slide trumpet, keyed bugle or even "walking stick cornet", George Frederick on trombone with Henry, William and Theodore on horns and Mrs Distin appearing on piano. Over the course of three decades the ensemble travelled the length and breadth of Europe and Northern America giving more than 10,000 concerts and gaining many important and influential admirers.

"Never have I heard wind instruments played with so much splendor, purity, and precision; to add to this, that nothing equals the grandeur of their style" (West Brighton and Cornwall Advertiser, September 19th 1851) 

"The combination of bugles, horns, and trombones in a concert room might be presumed too noisy an exhibition for the tender ears of a fashionable auditory, but such is the beautiful tone and perfect understanding between this family of musicians, that unmingled gratification and delight attend their efforts." (The Musical World, February 9th 1838)

In 1844 the family travelled to Paris where they were engaged to perform for a month. Here they heard the great cornet player Jean Arban performing on a new valved brass instrument by Adolphe Sax in a concert organised by Hector Berlioz. The Distins were so taken with the instrument that they immediately arranged a meeting with Sax from which they came away with three new instruments. The family quickly aquired a full set of five of the new instruments which they claimed to be the first to call "sax horns". These instruments are today the instruments that make up the modern brass band. In keeping with one of Adolphe Sax's main tenets these instrument provided a homogenous group of valved brass instruments from covering all ranges from the Soprano in E flat down to the Contrabasse in E flat providing performers and composers with a new sonic world for brass instruments.

The Distins were resourceful arranging and rearranging popular works of the time, including many works from the genres of opera, ballad and folk song. Their programmes often advertised works by composers such as Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini, Meyerbeer, Handel and Beethoven. Sadly no arrangements by the Distins remain but inspired by their pioneering work the Prince Regent's Band has set about similarly arranging works for sax horn ensemble which are performed alongside similar arrangments from the time.

The group has two concerts coming up:

Holywell Music Room, Oxford. “Oldest custom built concert room in Europe” 

Friday 30th May 2014 - 7.30pm 

Tickets £12 - available on the door or from: www.oxfordplayhouse.com/ticketsoxford

St Cecilia's Hall, Niddry Street, Edinburgh EH1 1LJ 

Saturday 31st of May 2014 - 7.30pm 

Tickets: £14 /senior citizens £10 / students and unwaged £5. 

Available on the door or from the Queens' Hall Box Office, 85-89 Clerk Street, Edinburgh EH8 9JG. 01313 668 2019. www.thequeenshall.net

So I desperately need to get practising this beautiful Courtois alto sax-horn in Eb that I've been lent by the fantastic Bate Collection in Oxford who are kindly loaning us a number of instruments for this project.

It's been a busy few weeks in "Gallay" world.

So...

DISC ONE - Jacques-François Gallay: Préludes, Caprices & Fantaisies" was released last year by "the world's first solely-digital classical label" Resonus Classics and, happily, has received a number of glowing reviews. Resonus Classics provides not only high quality downloads of the album but also free sleeve notes and art work here. But very soon the "physical" disc will be available from the wonderful Bath Compact Discs, a great independent record store doing much to champion the very best of classical music recordings.

DISC TWO (!) - Les Chevaliers de Saint Hubert's recording of the Gallay chamber music for natural horn ensemble is almost finished and will be available from Resonus in october, plus we will be giving a concert at St Olave's Church in London on Thursday 21st of November (1.10pm) to launch the disc. More news on this soon

DISC THREE (!!!) - Can't neglect the wonderful Opera Fantasias can we? Currently concocting plans to record Gallay's fantasias on the works of Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini et al. More news about the fundraising for this very soon!

Quoniaming

Rehearsing the Bach Mass in b minor at the Thomaskirche, Leipzig

Right now I'm in the middle of John Eliot Gardiner's / Monteverdi Choir / English Baroque Soloists Bach tour. As the ensemble is performing various programmes, the only one for me being the Bach B minor Mass, I have a little time on my hands. 

We performed the work in Barcelona a couple of days ago and the next day I had to get up really early to travel to Turin to start work with another ensemble and ended up writing a few words about performing the Quoniam from the B minor Mass. The Monteverdi's have a tour blog to which this was contributed but I thought I'd share it here as well. We'll be performing this work twice more on this tour, Monday 1st of April at the Royal Albert Hall and then the Sunday 7th of April at the Cité de la Musique in Paris.

To quoniam is a strange experience. It is regarded as one of “the” big baroque horn solos, if not one of the biggest horn solos full stop. The most obvious challenge is the first 45 minutes, the ones when you are not doing anything. Nothing at all. Bach doesn’t write a single note for the lone horn player. If you are sneaky you might quietly play along with the trumpets and timpani sotto voce. Then a leap of faith. A jump into the unknown. No time to check whether the instrument is in tune. After pirouetting around with the bassoons and basses of both the string and vocal variety, you’re done. No opportunity to redress any balances later.


Quoniaming...

Horn players normally come in pairs. You normally have a buddy or there is a little gang of four or five. Like minded fellow adventurers. Others who understand exactly what you’re battling with in your day to day valiant attempts to tame a notoriously fickle instrument. When quoniaming, their absence is keenly felt.

Musicians can have a type of gallows humour. Jokes about the Quoniam abound. To be honest none of them tend to be THAT funny but in the idle moments that precede “your bit” they can loiter in the recesses of the mind,

Q. Why should Bach be the trumpet players favourite composer?
Q. Because he doesn’t write anything for them in the slow movement of Brandenburg 2.

I warned you.

Q. Why should Bach be the horn players favourite composer?
A. Because he doesn’t start the Quoniam on the top note.

You see?

Not so long ago I fulfilled a long time ambition and had a flying trapeze lesson. Baroque horn players obviously are often thrill seekers. I once knew one who combined baroque horn playing with being a ski instructor and flying planes. Performing the Quoniam requires many of the same skills as flying the trapeze. When jumping off a 25 foot ledge onto the trapeze I learnt the worst thing you could do was doubt. If you did, you risked the trapeze pulling you out before you were ready and would probably end up tottering on the platform only to slip and plummet to the safety mat. You have to confidently hop off the ledge. Brace yourself, don’t fling yourself over the edge, just step, the trapeze and momentum will do the rest. So long as you are strong enough. Ditto with the Quoniam. Brace yourself and go with the music.

I also discovered that flying trapeze is a team effort. Before you jump, two colleagues have the job of getting the trapeze ready. They pull it in towards the platform and hold it steady for you so you can concentrate. The trapeze wants to pull you out. It takes three people to hold it. Once you jump, you trust others, especially the one controlling the safety harness, that between you everything is going to be alright. If you are really lucky then you start to fly. Again, ditto with the Quoniam. Despite what I said at the start, it’s not really a horn solo. It’s a jostling quintet for bass singer, basso continuo, two tremendous bassoon parts and a horn player. It’s a team effort. And if you are really lucky then you start to fly.

Another bad joke about the Quoniam concerns a horn player who, if memory serves me correct, was also on his way to the Royal Albert Hall. Wanting to avoid the walk from South Kensington he hailed a taxi only to get a particular chatty cabbie. The cabbie wanted to know what was the odd shaped bag and is told that it is a french horn. The horn player patiently explains that he is off to play the great Bach’s Mass in b minor. The cabbie seems nonplussed, Bach and the b minor mass do not seem to register with him. No matter. They arrive at the hall, the horn player pays the fare. As the horn player approaches the stage door he hears the cabbie shout after him “Don’t screw up the Quoniam mate”.

Everyone seems to have a Quoniam disaster story. It’s easy to sit there for the first three quarters of an hour obsessing about all the deadly corners that await. The large leaps, the sinuous runs. Even the relatively simple bits, such as the repeated low notes accompanying the bassoons, can become treacherous when they follow acrobatics. But focus beyond the technical challenges and the music carries you. For me the music in the Quoniam, like so much of Bach, somehow marries a simple, yet authoritative, declaration of faith,”You alone are holy, you alone are most high”, with something euphoric and joyous. The Quoniam should resist being ponderous, heavy and earth bound but instead be a shout to the heavens.

My final story about the Quoniam is often repeated. I do hope it is true, if not, it ought to be. The great horn player Alan Civil appeared on Desert Island Discs and choose the B minor Mass. Roy Plomley duly announced his request and dryly suggested he could guess which bit Civil would have selected and then was shocked to realise it wasn’t the Quoniam but the second half of the work. Civil’s rationale was that he had never heard that bit, he was normally half way home by the time the interval was over. However what he had heard of the first half was so good that he’d always wanted to hear the second half.

I’ve often worked with very well meaning musicians who assume that you will wait backstage and come the closing bars of the Qui sedes will stride on for “your bit”. I’ve always resisted this as it feels nonsensical. The Quoniam is a glorious part of a one of the most astounding pieces of music. As you sit there you are constantly inspired by the wondrous things you hear around you. Last night I sat and relished the interweaving string writing of the opening Kyrie, the woodwinds sparing with one another in the Ex resurrexit, the eloquent violin in the Laudamus te the first trumpet riff at the end of the Cum sancto spiritu. And the singers, to single things out is nigh on impossible but if I have to I’d take the basses in the Sanctus. Actually I’d take the Sanctus full stop. To perform it having not experienced everything either side makes one feel hollow and turns the Quoniam into a circus trick rather than part of something profound.

With JEG we perform the work without an interval. I suppose I could slip offstage in a tuning break but often I’ve made a home for myself somewhere amongst my fellow musicians. Last night I was an honorary member of the second violins, an utter joy. Every time I sit there, a good two hours of music, I hear new things. Details emerging, different, fresh each time.

Contrary to popular opinion, rather than suffering, the horn player in the Bach Mass in b minor really has the best seat in the house.

Almost as good as the third oboe’s seat I’d say. But that is someone else’s story…

The British Horn Society

When I was a young thing the arrival of the British Horn Society magazine was always a huge treat. Whilst I was very lucky, growing up in a vibrantly musical city full of plenty of things to keep young musicians happy and busy, the BHS provided a bit of an outlook on what other people were up to and gave me a taste of things to aspire to.

The annual horn day (in those days it always seemed to be at the Guildhall School of Music) was partly terrifying (going along and rarely knowing anyone, my father quite happily leaving me there for the day to fend for myself) but very inspiring. I still have my copy of "The Business" (a book co-authored by a number of leading horn players on how to survive "the business") which was signed by the authors and anyone who seemed to know how to weald a horn in an impressive style.

I was very flattered to be asked to play at the last BHS event in Cardiff. It had a french theme and I had been asked to play some Gallay. It was an even bigger treat as they had invited Claude Maury as guest of honour so it was a joy to see him.

The most recent edition of the BHS mag arrived on my doorstep the other morning. I must admit to having let my subscription flag for, oh about a decade, but whilst I was at the last BHS bash it came back to me just what good work they do inspiring musicians young and old, and therefore thought I really ought to join up once more and support their valuable work. An added bonus was finding a lovely review of the Gallay disc in the review section which can now also be found here: http://www.annekescott.com/reviews.html

2013 and the Art of Blogging (or not)

I started this new year in a slightly different fashion to normal. Unfortunately I had a nasty bout of food poisoning that kicked in on new years eve and laid me low for all of new years day (aka as my birthday) which was pretty miserable.

It's a funny time of year at the best of times. The evaluating of the previous year and the hopes and aspirations for the following one. The mixture of the hype of NYE plus birthdays is a potent mix so perhaps spending the 1st of January feeling a bit sorry for myself on the sofa wasn't such a bad thing.

January tends to be a quiet month for many musicians. I've got some nice bits and pieces to keep me going but am looking forward to getting on with things that the last few months of touring have prevented me from doing. The tail end of last year was incredibly full on, lots of great concerts, tours plus writing a couple of things, a chapter for a book and a paper for a journal. So it felt that I hardly had any time at all!

A lot of that pressure is off for a while so I'm beginning to remember all the other bits and pieces that I'd been meaning to do. Blogging is one thing, updating my website another. Preparing for the "physical" release of the Gallay Caprices disc (only available "virtually" up until now). Last year my house was rearranged a bit so that my husband and I could each have a room to work in - so I'm now up in the attic (being a fair bit shorter than my husband this suits me perfectly whilst it would have been impossible for him). This is proving a wonderful move, it makes an excellent practice room and it's great to have the time to prepare for performing the Gallay Caprices this coming week.

Préludes, Caprices, Fantaisies – Concerts Cachés

How time flies when you're having fun!

It's curious to think back to when this blog started and why. The original impetus was to have some way of documenting my trip to Paris as part of my Finzi Scholarship and the eventual outcome of that is the album Préludes, Caprices, Fantaisies - Concerts Cachés which has just been released by Resonus Classics.

The disc is available directly from www.resonusclassics.com (where you can also download the sleeve notes - in English, French and German - for free, regardless of whether you buy the disc as well!). It's also available from iTunes and Amazon.

And here is a little video all about Jacques-François Gallay and the pieces on the album.