Nobody wants me to play tuba these days, it seems like ages since I last played a tuba in performance; that's not to say that I haven't been playing, I have had my fair share it's just not on tuba. Of course for the Brass Band I am the stick waver, a position I am still surprised and honoured to hold, and at the Croydn Symphonic Band I am currently on Bass Trombone. We have had a bit of a change round in the heavy brass section, still looking for a regular Euphonium player we have a "friend" who plays with us when ever he can, on top of that we lost one of our bass players and our bass trombone. The first trombone is very committed to other things and finds it hard to make every rehearsal, so that leaves our new bass player, just back from Cardiff University, and me.
Having said all that we will be having a full section of three trombones, euphonium and two basses at our concert on Wednesday as well as for the National Concert Band Festival on the 1st of April. The concert on Wednesday is at the excellent hall at Trinity School, we have played there a couple of times, and the only draw back it has as a venue that I can see is the lack of a bar. The whole Croydon/Bromley/Sutton area has a real problem in that there is no suitable venue for amateur music outside of school halls. We have the wonderful Fairfield hall, but this is simply too big, an audience of two or three hundred will just get lost, everything else is a theatre, very good theatres but they all have a presidium arch which causes acoustic chaos for some of us. What we want are halls like the QEH and the Purcell Room.
Showing posts with label Royal Academy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Royal Academy. Show all posts
Sunday, 5 February 2012
Sunday, 4 December 2011
CSB Strike Gold
Last Sunday the Croydon Symphonic Band, played at the Colchester round of the National Wind Band Festival. Despite an absolutely horrible journey (for me because of my bad back, for others because a lorry shed it's load of Christmas Trees on the A12) we all arrived i decent time, had a run through ad then hit the stage.
The consensus of opinion in the Band is that we played as well as we could have, and quite possibly as well as we have. I am glad to be able to say that the adjudicators seem to have agreed and given us a Gold Award. couple of years ago BASWE introduced an extra, higher, standard of a Platinum award, and now it is only Platinum award winners who get an automatic invitation to the finals, gold award winners have to wait. Given the standard of our performance we are hopeful of an invitation to the finals, which we are especially keen to be at this year, since they will be help at the Royal Academy of Music in London.
Well we followed that with a fund raising concert lat night (Saturday) for Ifield Church. As well as the program we played at the festival we added a few repertoire numbers including my favourite show selection - Les Miserables. I get a tremendous kick out of playing with this band, I have been with them for well over 30 years now, and I think that overall we are better now than at any time in the past. However we are short on numbers in the heavy brass, a shortage that is about to become critical as our first trombone is leaving due to a change in his work. In consequence I don't know what part I will be playing when we start up again after Christmas, at various times this term I have played Bass, Bass Trombone, First Trombone and Euphonium. The only one of these I would not be happy commit to would First Trombone. I am not a tenor player, I never have been and never will be I just can't play up there.
How many Tuba players does it take to change a light bulb? None we can't reach that high.
The consensus of opinion in the Band is that we played as well as we could have, and quite possibly as well as we have. I am glad to be able to say that the adjudicators seem to have agreed and given us a Gold Award. couple of years ago BASWE introduced an extra, higher, standard of a Platinum award, and now it is only Platinum award winners who get an automatic invitation to the finals, gold award winners have to wait. Given the standard of our performance we are hopeful of an invitation to the finals, which we are especially keen to be at this year, since they will be help at the Royal Academy of Music in London.
Well we followed that with a fund raising concert lat night (Saturday) for Ifield Church. As well as the program we played at the festival we added a few repertoire numbers including my favourite show selection - Les Miserables. I get a tremendous kick out of playing with this band, I have been with them for well over 30 years now, and I think that overall we are better now than at any time in the past. However we are short on numbers in the heavy brass, a shortage that is about to become critical as our first trombone is leaving due to a change in his work. In consequence I don't know what part I will be playing when we start up again after Christmas, at various times this term I have played Bass, Bass Trombone, First Trombone and Euphonium. The only one of these I would not be happy commit to would First Trombone. I am not a tenor player, I never have been and never will be I just can't play up there.
How many Tuba players does it take to change a light bulb? None we can't reach that high.
Tuesday, 24 February 2009
Bysantium
The other day I went to the excellent Byzantium exhibition at the Royal Academy. http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/ There was some truly beautiful stuff on display, and the whole thing was very interesting. Certainly as well as enjoying some lovely works of arts I learnt much about the Eastern Empire, and the development of art, especially Christian art.
In particular the whole thing with icons made me think, about how we represent historical religious figures, how we use images in our worship, how figurative art is uniquely Christian within the Abrahamic religions. While on a purely visual level I enjoyed the pictures I did find it disturbing
to find that the images themselves were acknowledged as having religious significance, indeed many were accredited with having miraculous powers. This seems to me to be an obvious case of setting up Idols, directly against the second commandment.
4 "You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing love to a thousand {generations} of those who love me and keep my commandments." (Exodus 20:4-6 NIV)
Because God has no physical form, any Idol intended to resemble Him would be a sinful misrepresentation of Him. Since other gods are not to be worshiped (the first commandment!) making Idols of them would be equally sinful. Clearly then the veneration of images is just a big no no, but how about some of the wonderful Christian art that has been used to illustrate the Bible, Michelangelo's David, any number of "Madonna and Child" paintings and statues, pictures of Jesus, these are representations of God when He was in physical form, so can they in themselves be sinful - I think I am coming to the conclusion that it is the attitude of the viewer as much as that of the artist that is important in this. Therefore we should ensure that we only worship God, in all His glory, not any images, not crosses, not alters, not stained glass windows, not TV or bloggers. All these things and others can remind us of God's glory, like books they can help us, but they should not in themselves be worshiped.
Don't get me wrong I love art in all (well most) of it's many forms, and I would deplore the idea of anything like the destruction of religious art that followed the reformation in England, I just found the the whole Iconoclast / Iconaclist thing rather challenging.
All bit heavy for a rainy Monday morning, but if you have been - thank you for reading and please do comment.
Paul
In particular the whole thing with icons made me think, about how we represent historical religious figures, how we use images in our worship, how figurative art is uniquely Christian within the Abrahamic religions. While on a purely visual level I enjoyed the pictures I did find it disturbing
to find that the images themselves were acknowledged as having religious significance, indeed many were accredited with having miraculous powers. This seems to me to be an obvious case of setting up Idols, directly against the second commandment.4 "You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing love to a thousand {generations} of those who love me and keep my commandments." (Exodus 20:4-6 NIV)
Because God has no physical form, any Idol intended to resemble Him would be a sinful misrepresentation of Him. Since other gods are not to be worshiped (the first commandment!) making Idols of them would be equally sinful. Clearly then the veneration of images is just a big no no, but how about some of the wonderful Christian art that has been used to illustrate the Bible, Michelangelo's David, any number of "Madonna and Child" paintings and statues, pictures of Jesus, these are representations of God when He was in physical form, so can they in themselves be sinful - I think I am coming to the conclusion that it is the attitude of the viewer as much as that of the artist that is important in this. Therefore we should ensure that we only worship God, in all His glory, not any images, not crosses, not alters, not stained glass windows, not TV or bloggers. All these things and others can remind us of God's glory, like books they can help us, but they should not in themselves be worshiped.
Don't get me wrong I love art in all (well most) of it's many forms, and I would deplore the idea of anything like the destruction of religious art that followed the reformation in England, I just found the the whole Iconoclast / Iconaclist thing rather challenging.
All bit heavy for a rainy Monday morning, but if you have been - thank you for reading and please do comment.
Paul
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