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Monthly Archive: November 2010

Aviles

Posted on Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Just back from giving a workshop & concerts in Avilés in Northern Spain, courtesy of the amazing new Niemeyer Center which is due to open officially in December and looks set to do for Aviles what the Guggenheim did for Bilbao. Here's me with the fabulous deputy director of the center and all round philosopher, Joan Picanyol.

We'd just been up a rather precarious scaffolding tower to reach the still unfinished gastronomy center, where, as Joan told me, gastronomy will be 'curated' just like other art forms. Sounds good to me!

We performed Gumboots with Sarah Beatty and Carnegie Hall's Academy players (who have linked up with the Niemeyer center) at a couple of venues in the region:

and most shocking of all, I made it to the front page (along with, it has been noted, discussion of the pope's condom advice)

Update

I just received this photo of the ACJWers performing Gumboots in a local bar the night before I arrived:

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Gumboot month

Posted on Tuesday, November 2, 2010

A quintet of Gumboots performances this month:

The wonderful Art of Elan in San Diego on 30th Nov
My dear friends at ACJW perform in Avilés, Spain on the 20th. I'm being whisked out there courtesy of the amazing-looking new Niemeyer Center to give a pre-concert talk.
Ikarus Chamber Players give two performances in New York
The Third Millenium Ensemble perform in Rockville, MD
The talented young clarinettist Alex Morris performs with his group at the Australian National Academy of Music

I'm also really happy that my old friend and collegue Matthew Hunt has confirmed he will be performing Gumboots with Ensemble 360 at Sheffield's Crucible next April. Matt played on my first two mini-operas for Tete a Tete and I can still hear some of the lines he played floating around in my head. I popped along to hear Matt play the Mozart Quintet with the excellent Sacconi Quartet last night at St John's Smith Square and was left speechless all over again by the exquisite beauty of his tone, his sensitivity of phrasing and the wonderful conversational interaction with the quartet. As I said to him, it was like watching him float gentle delicate frisbees across the ensemble.

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