Conductor meets our patron!

As part of his 'day job', our Musical Director and Conductor, Dr David Baxter, took his school chamber choir to central Scotland where they sang in Edinburgh Castle, Dunblane Cathedral and other selected venues. On Monday 2nd July, the final day of the tour, the choir stopped in Glasgow where they were given a guided tour of the  The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and a 'meet and greet' with the Conservatoire's principal, Professor John Wallace, who is of course one of the band's two patrons!

The choir couldn't believe how friendly and accommodating he was, making sure they were ok and being looked after and chatted and spoke to all as though he had known them for years!  "It was a real privilege to meet Professor Wallace", said former band member Rory Jones (tenor), "to think that he was the same person who played at the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana all those years ago.  Lauren Coulter (soprano), was equally enchanted by meeting one of the glitterati of the world's trumpet players. "He was just so amazingly friendly and so modest, especially as they were so busy getting ready for their graduation ceremony the next day!", she added.

John Wallace also inquired about the band, wanting to how it was going and what we were playing.  He was also interested to learn how the various sections were getting on and David enjoyed telling him a few stories and anecdotes about some of the members!

Here is a link (audio) to John Wallace (trumpet) and Dame Kiri te Kanawa (soprano) performing 'Let the bright seraphim' (Handel) at the Royal Wedding of Prince Charles and the late Lady Diana Spencer. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuB1wTjySM0

Just a thought or two . . .

This isn’t really news about the band – more a set of variations on a theme.  The musings were prompted by reading the post on Facebook about our MD and his choir visiting the Royal Scottish Conservatoire in Glasgow (where, of course, one of the band’s patrons, John Wallace, is the principal) while on tour in Scotland.  This started a train of thought about students, teachers, music, musicians and all the links between them.  Plus, of course, audiences, who form a very important part of the mix.

Occasionally members of the band can be heard muttering things like ‘Oh, not again’ when a piece of music that’s been played a million times comes up.  Come on, we’ve all said it!  But probably not all about the same piece, and there’s a clue.  Because who’s to say that someone in the audience isn’t hearing that piece of music for the first time?  And maybe, just maybe, it could change their life – either by inspiring them to find out more about music, or even by motivating them to begin making music themselves.  As someone once said, every performance is a premiere.

You just can never tell when that spark, that moment of magic, will catch and hold.  Maybe it could be hearing a particular piece of music, maybe it could be the performance of a particular musician, maybe the inspiration of a dedicated teacher.  In the band right now we’ve got a wind player who began on the clarinet after hearing Emma Johnson play and a brass player whose entire career path changed as a result of discovering music.

And it works the other way, too.  During the band’s comparatively short existence, seven members have gone on to third-level music studies at both university and conservatory.  The longer-serving brass members will have happy memories of the times when John Wallace, in the days when he was still playing trumpet professionally, visited us for workshops and performances.  Who knows whether one day, some of our current members may find themselves as John’s students, now that he’s heading up the Royal Scottish Conservatoire?