Tuesday already! How did that happen?
Aug. 16th, 2011 10:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustI've been busy, but in a good way. A visit from my brother and sister-in-law (hereinafter known as 'the Bears') overlapped with the end of the Folkworks summer school in Durham, which tends to produce more music than it can consume itself.
Both of the concerts we went to involved tutors from the summer school getting together to put on some sort of show, whose impromptu nature was not concealed by a too-clever-by-half title. On Thursday![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
durham_rambler and I went to "Out of the Box": Amy Thatcher and Ian Lowthian on accordeon, Andy Cutting on melodeon, Alistair Anderson on concertina. We went on the strength of the latter two, and nothing we heard during the concert changed that (BoyBear comments that the accordeon is an instrument which tends towards jazz, which neither of us likes, and yes, I noticed that). But it was fascinating to see four musicians who know each other's work but don't habitually play together (and who had had two hours before the concert to rehearse and get something to eat) feeling their way into the pieces they played. Amy Thatcher did some fine clog dancing, too.
On Fridaysamarcand came to dinner, and we sat up late talking, so he was still with us on Saturday morning when the Bears arrived, and there was more sitting around talking over breakfast, which was all very agreeable.
Then on Friday evening there was another concert, designed to celebrate the music of the region "From Tyne to Tweed". MC Mike Tickell was tactful enough to spot that this excluded the evening's venue, and started off with an 'everybody join in' rendidion of The Lampton Worm (and since the majority of the audience of both of these concerts were people who had been attending the summer schools, people did join in). I enjoyed the concert, but the majority of the performers didn't make much impression on me, and I can think of two reasons why this might be the case without being their fault. The first is that they had, after all, just spent a week tutoring quite intensively. So singer Kat Davidson had an agreeable voice, Claire Mann played some jaunty tunes on the whistle (I found her flute playing too breathy and her slow air too slow for my liking, though both of these things are presumably a matter of taste) and Anthony Robb played the pipes, which is always a good thing. The second reason why none of them impressed me much is that they were followed by Tom McConville. I've heard some of his music on the radio, and would have told you I knew what to expect, which was some very good fiddle playing - but live he swept all before him. There was lovely rich music and catchy tunes and songs and funny jokes and the time flew by and it was over and I felt slightly dazed. So that was fun.
The weather hadn't been great on Saturday - not as bad as it has been, but not fine enough to lure us out to hear any of the music in the Market Place. But Sunday and Monday were sunny and bright, and we had visitors, which is always a good excuse reason to go out for the day.
So we had a day at Gibside, where the grounds are extensive enough that by the time you've walked from the classical chapel via the monument to British liberty to the stables and back through the woods, you feel you've had a respectable walk.
And yesterday we made use of our annual tickets to visit Beamish museum. This was the fourth visit of the year fordurham_rambler and me, and we told the Bears "You won't be able to see everything in one day..." - but we did think that we'd managed it in two (well, two and a half). Yet we were still finding new things. The museum staff - the people who 'inhabit' the various locations - are excellent, so inevitably you have different conversations. On a previous visit we'd seen this 'farmer's wife' pursuing a bunch of chickens who didn't want to be rounded up at the end of the day, but yesterday we caught her having much greater success with these magnificent Cochin chickens (the breed was very popular, she said, in the 1870s, the period illustrated by the Home Farm). But different visits made it possible to visit different places: earlier in the summer we'd seen sweets being made at the confectionery shop; now, in the school holidays, the room was too packed to get in, but there was someone on duty to let us inside the winding house at the colliery, and explain how the lifts were raised and lowered.
The Bears headed south after an early breakfast, and I've spent the day trying to catch up with work and housework and a little light LJ. I don't claim to be entirely up to date with any of these things: if there's anything I ought to know, it'd be safer to tell me...
Both of the concerts we went to involved tutors from the summer school getting together to put on some sort of show, whose impromptu nature was not concealed by a too-clever-by-half title. On Thursday
durham_rambler and I went to "Out of the Box": Amy Thatcher and Ian Lowthian on accordeon, Andy Cutting on melodeon, Alistair Anderson on concertina. We went on the strength of the latter two, and nothing we heard during the concert changed that (BoyBear comments that the accordeon is an instrument which tends towards jazz, which neither of us likes, and yes, I noticed that). But it was fascinating to see four musicians who know each other's work but don't habitually play together (and who had had two hours before the concert to rehearse and get something to eat) feeling their way into the pieces they played. Amy Thatcher did some fine clog dancing, too.On Friday
samarcand came to dinner, and we sat up late talking, so he was still with us on Saturday morning when the Bears arrived, and there was more sitting around talking over breakfast, which was all very agreeable.Then on Friday evening there was another concert, designed to celebrate the music of the region "From Tyne to Tweed". MC Mike Tickell was tactful enough to spot that this excluded the evening's venue, and started off with an 'everybody join in' rendidion of The Lampton Worm (and since the majority of the audience of both of these concerts were people who had been attending the summer schools, people did join in). I enjoyed the concert, but the majority of the performers didn't make much impression on me, and I can think of two reasons why this might be the case without being their fault. The first is that they had, after all, just spent a week tutoring quite intensively. So singer Kat Davidson had an agreeable voice, Claire Mann played some jaunty tunes on the whistle (I found her flute playing too breathy and her slow air too slow for my liking, though both of these things are presumably a matter of taste) and Anthony Robb played the pipes, which is always a good thing. The second reason why none of them impressed me much is that they were followed by Tom McConville. I've heard some of his music on the radio, and would have told you I knew what to expect, which was some very good fiddle playing - but live he swept all before him. There was lovely rich music and catchy tunes and songs and funny jokes and the time flew by and it was over and I felt slightly dazed. So that was fun.
The weather hadn't been great on Saturday - not as bad as it has been, but not fine enough to lure us out to hear any of the music in the Market Place. But Sunday and Monday were sunny and bright, and we had visitors, which is always a good So we had a day at Gibside, where the grounds are extensive enough that by the time you've walked from the classical chapel via the monument to British liberty to the stables and back through the woods, you feel you've had a respectable walk.
And yesterday we made use of our annual tickets to visit Beamish museum. This was the fourth visit of the year for
durham_rambler and me, and we told the Bears "You won't be able to see everything in one day..." - but we did think that we'd managed it in two (well, two and a half). Yet we were still finding new things. The museum staff - the people who 'inhabit' the various locations - are excellent, so inevitably you have different conversations. On a previous visit we'd seen this 'farmer's wife' pursuing a bunch of chickens who didn't want to be rounded up at the end of the day, but yesterday we caught her having much greater success with these magnificent Cochin chickens (the breed was very popular, she said, in the 1870s, the period illustrated by the Home Farm). But different visits made it possible to visit different places: earlier in the summer we'd seen sweets being made at the confectionery shop; now, in the school holidays, the room was too packed to get in, but there was someone on duty to let us inside the winding house at the colliery, and explain how the lifts were raised and lowered.The Bears headed south after an early breakfast, and I've spent the day trying to catch up with work and housework and a little light LJ. I don't claim to be entirely up to date with any of these things: if there's anything I ought to know, it'd be safer to tell me...
