Sacred Steel at Sacred Heart and a Little Planning Workshop at Northen Ballet

It was the last week of term, and the last time I will do a concert at this fab school. Year 6 were in two halves for this. We played,as ever, steelpans, djembes and glocks and we played one tune each: Twinkle Twinkle  [easy to sing and do the signs for, and deceptively difficult to play [quick changing chords]] and Sledging [a Russian folksong from my Foxwood Songbook: Kids Two, quite obviously difficult to play with its rocking fast chords and melody].

I have no pics from this lovely event, but I wanted to give it a mention. Important concerts aren't just  the big public events. Here in schools is where they are and where it all starts.

After the concert it was to Northern Ballet for a Planning Workshop.  We were me, Keisha, Xolani and Philippa. We ran through some ideas for the summer school, and I was so pleased that Keisha wanted to feature the Sparrows' version of Swan Lake in some way. Although this did seem to involve me having to play the melody live. Hmmm. Speaking as a life-long ensemble player, scary. [The steelpans in the mirror pictures look like Viviane Westwood skirts on us].

Steel Pan Workshop at Cellofest Ipswich

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well, Debs, does this happen in Science, I wonder. I have just done four gigs in four days with the least number of players ever. Would you ever do the most number of experiments with the least number of test tubes? Exactly! I thought not.

hands up in the hall

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Russian songs.Mmmm

Well, no time for reflection or despair. I am off to the Royal Hospital School at Holbrook near Ipswich. Here I am to spend five days teaching steel pans to the loveliest teenage cellists in the world, plus some of their parents and a lot of their teachers.

 

 

Now that panic attacks don't include ordinary roads, Rick is horrified to find that, having driven me down all the way to Ipswich, I have purchased a rail ticket for him, and at Ipswich Station he has to bale out, and then I drive on to the Royal Hospital School in Holbrook on the banks of the Orwell. Slumming it, man!

 

Slumming it at the Royal
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here I am meeting up with Tess, Liz, Reuben, Katya, Penny, Jenny, Carey, Ana, Richard, Helen, Jane, Clare, Margaret, Alex [though actually I work with Alex in Leeds!], Fiona and Fiona again, and others new: Margaret, Sam, Ollie, well too many. Rachel, Dave and new-born later.

 

 

I have been given the Howe Common Room to set up the pans in. As Louie, Libby, Ellie, Finlay, Rachel, Alec and all the other wonderful stewards help me unload and set up, I find that I have brought 22 separate steelpans [ie 29 separate ex-oildrums]. I just lost count loading. [My  friend, Max was helping me. It was just too easy to keep loading!] There was a huge pot plant at the side of the room. I thought it would look nice in the middle.

 

Bex only left me for 2 weeks & I buy more buckets

This is the routine. Get up at ridiculous o'clock [7am], breakfast at 7.30, start teaching at 8.30 then teach, watch the concerts, teach, lunch, break, teach, teach/playtogether, dinner, concerts, maybe teach a bit more, or first time go to Ollie's wonderful samba workshop. By which time, as my parents used to say, the sun would be over the yardarm and time for a glass of sherry. [Well, maybe not sherry.]

 

 

wet back

Reuben overdoes the makeup!

The big joint number this year is the Lion King, and Reuben has the music ready for me. I should probably have listened  to it at least once in situ, but it was parents' pans during the Playtogether [that's my excuse]. Luckily Louie and Libby have a handle on the pans bit, so Rhiannon, Barney and I mime our way through the piece, maybe playing the odd right note. We all get our faces painted. Reuben goes over the top and enters the final performance made-up and dressed as you can see, wielding a dangerous broom and teeshirt.

wet front

 

 

 

This year they are selling t shirts. I buy one, hunt down needle and thread and set about losing the sleeves and changing the neckline. This takes nearly two evenings, and I proudly wear it to the Thursday evening concert. As the concert finishes the heavens open, and the shirt is consigned to the drier, i.e. hanging it up overnight in my room in the south-east of England [i.e. a whole load warmer than Leeds] 

 

 

 

 

 For the Talent Show the stewards play Somewhere Only we Know, and the parents play Go Tell Aunt Rhodie and  Gimme that Old Time Religion. Ace. The we all play This Train is Bound for Glory, at which point the entire audience congas out of the room. So if the pictures look like there's no audience, they are actually somewhere else dancing! Love it!

 

The stewards do impressions of the staff at Talent Competition, and I was very honoured to find Louie with blue dyed hair,  rolling up his sleeves over the shoulders, and holding up different coloured chairs going "orange orange orange, blue blue blue".

 

huge mayonnaise. Mmmm

The five days were over all too quickly. The food this year was exceptionally good. The stewards lay the pans out in front of the main building in a sea of cases. Then down to the bottom of the steps where I so busy photographing them as I reversed that . . .well I didn't hit anyone.

 

Rick arrives and we head back to Leeds. He isn't sure that lions will get served at the motorway services.

 

Lion surveying a sea of pans

 

 

in van mirror

 

 

in 4 days trashed the desk

 

Steel Pan Workshop at the Beamsley Project, near Skipton

setting up the pans

I love that moment during workshops where the I Can light bulb switches on. Sadly it inevitably preceded by the I must load this van moment, aka I wonder if Rick will help me load this van moment.

four jams

In short, in order to achieve the I Can moment, you must put in years of thought and testing things out, persuade your local music service to buy lots of steel pans, persuade your friend and pan-tuner to create lots of new single pans [and double basses], convince the general public that you can open up the wonderful world of steel pan to them, and only then are you ready to to fill the van with tons of heavy delicate metal.

Sheelagh holding up colours

at ease

 . . . .and drive to the Dales when Diane, Pat and Tom are giving the Leeds Schools Choir a residential. Filling in the risk assessment forms has cost Diane several working days and quite possibly risked her mental health. I know what this feels like and that is why I have not taken any students away since 2009 [sad really as, at Foxwood School I used to do at least two residentials a year; I even went to Lille with 60 Seacroft kids and several youth workers . .  now that was beyond the call of duty, and totally unsuitable for this blog!].

I digress.

The secret of any good musical event is the in detail. One detail was provided by Pat - the food, commented upon most favourably by children and adults alike. Above is a pic of toast with four different types of Pat's home-made jam.

soprano pannists eyes down

However this a steelpan blog so I will leave the choir activities to it, and say that the workshop was ace; at least one person has since joined the Music Centre Beginners' class; we played mini In the Hall of the Mountain King [arranged by Paula, not the version the Sparrows went on to wow Harrogate with, arranged by myself and Dave Gudgeon years ago] and You Raise Me Up.


After that, they all helped me re-load the van, and I went back to Ilkley and then home.

Pat and Izzy loading in da food

pans stashed away the night before

Leeds and York

Dear Debs, in real life I am a peripatetic teacher and head of my department, but my casual attitude to earning a wage led me several years ago into the uncertain world of part-time permanent employment and a constant need to find extra weekly work.

It goes from one adventure to another. A few months of travelling round the Welsh valleys setting up the pans round Newport and Chepstow; a year getting to know opposite ends of Bradford; a term at West Leeds High School; a year at Primrose High School; a year in York, and of course workshops at conferences round the country, from Sunderland to Bristol, from Yarnborough to Sheffield and Stevenage. These thanks mostly to Carole Lindsay from the SMA [Schools Music Association] and to NAME [National Association of Music Educators].

It also led to a decade of very happy one or two days a week at City of Leeds High School. I was acting head of Department for half a year in 2004, but, with with the two Not-So-Smalls in Years 8 and 9 it just wasn't appropriate to stay on full-time. Anyway I managed to hang around there nearly for ever part-time and continue with my regular whirlwind tour of Hyde Park, Chapeltown and Armley.

This led me on Monday to spend the day with Carrie-ann and City's Yr 10 BTEC class. Students have to learn about such as setting up instruments, mikes etc and deciding repertoire and arrangements, and even wardrobe. So it was down in the Drama studio for the pans and the mikes and the amps; the students had changed into the agreed outfits [and Debs we, in Foxwood spent years wearing red and black!].

They were amazing: singers, guitarists; pannistes; drummer. Credit to Carrie-ann [from City] and Sophie [from ArtForms] for the singers. And these group of students come from Lithuania, France, Holland, Czech Republic, Poland, Sudan, Malaysia, Portugal, and of course some come from Little London and Chapeltown. Some only came to the UK during this their Year Ten. Ah, the power of the language of music.

Next day Tuesday I am in a school in York, for world arts immersion day. To cut down costs I was both driver and teacher. Then back to Leeds for Sparrows then Tuesday Steel evening class. Left home in Leeds at 7.30 am, got back home at 8 pm. [Failed miserably to upload a pic from my phone]

Next day Wednesday back to the day job and catching up. Debs, I am shattered.