New adventures in hi-fi live music
Just a quick bloggy posty thingy to let you know that I haven’t dropped off the face of the earth. I have merely been concentrating on my new top secret non-musical-yet-still-creative project. And it’s two months since I wrote that post announcing my NTSNMYSCP, so, you know, at least that proves I have some dedication to it. Which is something.
In the meantime, on the music front over the next few months: I’m going to be doing several gigs at Prism (v lovely bar/restaurant in the City), and am heading back to Dubai to perform at a charity event at the British Embassy. Hopefully this time, I’ll look directly in front of me more, and not up quite so much.
All these gigs are solo ones – and while I don’t play piano like an ex-Guildhall jazz machine (and I mean that in a nice way, all you ex-Guildhall jazz machines), I’m absolutely loving accompanying myself on gigs. It’s something of a new move for me – until the end of last year, all my performances were as a singer accompanied by at least one other person – and I can only thank a) my mum and dad, who had a piano in the house, and encouraged us to have lessons; and b) Isobel Forbath and Peter Wilson, who were my piano teachers as a kid. Mrs Forbath being the ’starter’ teacher every small child needs; and Mr Wilson being the later one, who told me it was OK to write all over my music books if I wanted to – something which it never occured a girly middle-class swot to do – because they were, after all, *my* music books; and who also moved repertoire beyond Chopin, Mozart, etc and into the realms of such gems as ‘Wives And Lovers’, by Burt Bacharach, whose lyrics left me gobsmacked as a becoming-vaguely-radical sixth-former. If you don’t know them, here they are in all their glory, as sung by Jack Jones. This one’s for you, Mr Wilson -
February 23, 2010
