China Sings! Kuang Junhong and the Iserlohn Festival Orchestra

It was an exciting occasion – the world premier of the first two movements of my concerto “China Sings” – Kuang Junhong played with great delicacy and fiery virtuosity, and the orchestra was superb. Watch this space for all three movements with symphony orchestra.
Iserlohn Festival Orchestra

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Las Meninas Bailan video plus

A couple of videos – the first is the rehearsal of my piece for Organ and Guitar Quartet played by Tobias Aehlig, the Amadeus Duo and the Gruber Maklar Duo. This is in the Oberstdat Church in Iserlohn – sorry the video content is boring, but it is more or less what the audience was looking at! Las Meninas Bailan refers to the famous painting by Velasquez and is a depiction of what happens below stairs! The main theme is a Spanish Christmas Carol, “Riu, riu, chiu” from the Cancionero de Uppsala manuscript.

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Iserlohn 2013 – part 1

It’s that time of year again, and I am in Iserlohn (Schwerte, actually, which is where the festival relocated).
This year there is a large contingent from China – students from Chengdu with their teacher Xu Bao, and also from Shanghai with Danny Yeh. I know most of the Chengdu students from my visit earlier this year

 

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David Russell’s Tips for Guitarists

While I was looking for David’s video of “My Gentle Harp”, I came across his site and David Russell’s Tips for Guitarists which been around for a while, but it took me ages to discover them – they are very simple and wise, and cover a surprising amount of ground with good humour and grounded common sense. I hope you will find these tips from an experienced musician who is also a great artist and human being helpful. Continue reading