So here we are, Saxophone Orchestra and Choir woven into one! Our new music, composed by Ben Lunn, is written in celebration of William Thom, the ‘Inverurie Poet’. Thom lived and worked in our part of Scotland in the 19th century as a hand-loom weaver and his poetry depicts the real hardships of life as experienced by himself and by the folk around him.
The day we have chosen for our recording session turns out to be between the two storms, Dudley and Eunice! We have to get Richard up from London, our sopranino player, Mike, up from Edinbugh and composer Ben up from Airdrie. Players are coming from Glasgow, Perthshire, Moray and all over Aberdeenshire. While Richard endures a 28 hour journey from London, Ben Lunn takes over the conductor’s baton until Richard arrives. Amazingly, apart from Lisa testing covid positive in the morning, we all manage to get to Inverurie and start on time.
The Acorn Centre is a beautiful little venue for our recording. The manager himself has been out early in the morning shovelling the deep snow off the car park so that we can get in with our instruments and the sound engineer can get in with all his equipment. It’s a very intense day of recording. Our music consists of prelude and seven movements and lasts nearly half an hour when played through. So we do really well to get this all recorded in 4 hours. Richard is nearly dead on his feet by this time after the travelling but we enjoy the experience and our two groups finally get to socialize over lunch. We can see how well we would have got on together if it hadn’t been for the pandemic keeping us apart. Never mind, we’ve nearly got there in spite of all difficulties.
Kommentare