Hey, guess who’s moving to England! Spoiler alert: it’s me! I’m going to be the new librarian (well, “Head of Learning Resources”) at Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester. And I’m super looking forward to it. Okay, sure, I’m a bit nervous, but I’m mostly excited. It will be a chance to combine my enjoyment of music librarianship with a person-facing role, which I think will be great.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve very much enjoyed working at the National Library on their Music Retroconversion Project. I’ve learned so much about music librarianship and cataloguing and libraries. And it’s been fun to work on a project that has a definite endpoint and final product. I was also given the opportunity to write three blog posts about the project for the National Library’s Blog – which was really cool. However, I did miss getting to interact with library patrons – they make every day different and I like helping people find what they’re looking for.
Moreover, working in a music school library has kinda been a background totally-never-gonna-happen-fantasy dream for me since university.
Tag Cloud Schema
When I was studying my ILS Masters at the University of Strathclyde, we were assigned to create “schema” (i.e. different models of organising knowledge) for a set of 10 items. I chose a collection of showtunes for solo voice with piano accompaniment, and arranged them in ways that would best suit a hypothetical Musical Theatre School Library. It was one of my favourite assignments because, aside from the obvious perk of working with showtunes for uni credits, I found it really interesting to think about what information would be needed by the school pupils if they were looking for audition pieces. I enjoyed the problem solving aspect of arranging my schemas to suit that. Things like key, range, time-signature, tempo, voice type, number of bars, etc. didn’t obviously fit into the standard bibliographic categories, so I chose models that gave me the freedom to customise.
This was the first spark that made me think it would be really cool to work in a music school library, but I didn’t seriously think that could happen, since there are very few such jobs in the country. Therefore, imagine my delight when JUST as my National Library contract was coming to an end, the position at Chetham’s School of Music was advertised!
Chetham’s Library
So, obviously I applied and was pleased when I progressed to the interview stage. I travelled to Manchester by train for the interview, and it was my first visit to Manchester ever. I was so excited. I went down the day before and stayed at a nearby Travelodge. That evening I had a sausage supper from the local chip shop, and the staff there were super friendly and wished me luck for my interview. I completed the interview while wearing a mask (which was definitely an experience). And the people at Chetham’s were all very lovely and the school was this really pretty castle-like building in the centre of Manchester. What’s more, the school shares a site with Chetham’s Library, the oldest free public reference library in the English-speaking world. I didn’t get the opportunity to visit it because it’s currently closed, but I will at some point because it looks just like something out of a fantasy story. I’m sure there’s all kinds of magical tomes and cursed writings and probably a ghost or ten hiding among the stacks!
Anyway, shortish story shorter, the people at Chetham’s School liked me and offered me the position and I start in November! How utterly, awesomely, amazingly super is that?!! Yay!
I was very pleased and excited to have been awarded a bursary to attend the International Association of Music Library (IAML)’s 2019 Annual Study weekend, which took place back in April. The report that I wrote about the experience is here, so please do check that out. As always, I never want to JUST plug my writing on other sites here, and like adding something extra to this blog when I do shamelessly promote myself. So, for that reason, please enjoy this rundown of all the awesome foodstuffs provided at the conference. Firstly, look at the quaint pick-n-mix that was made available. The sweets were in little flowerpots and the bags were tiny paper cones. How adorable is that?
This cake was not a lie. It was delicious.
There was also a rainbow cake to celebrate 20 years of the Cecilia database, which contains information about all of the different music collections in the UK and Ireland. It’s a potentially really helpful tool, that I’m hoping might assist me in my future job searching. And the cake was really lovely – it tasted like vanilla.
I did not get a picture of any of the conference dinners or lunches that were provided. But they were pretty nice, too. I did learn very quickly, after the first night, that, as a fussy eater who doesn’t like to eat slabs of meat, I was better to request the vegetarian option. It meant I got to eat a wide variety of different risottos, and there was a very nice (if a little hard to cut) chocolate tart at the fancy conference dinner party.
I got a little nervous when it came to the dinner party. Everyone was beautifully dressed up, and I didn’t have anything special to wear (and I also wasn’t sure whether the bursary had provided for the dinner, so that was also a little stressful before it was sorted out). Everything turned out fine, though. And one of the waiters joked that I was very posh for drinking the Bottlegreen Elderflower Cordial with (gasp) sparkling water!
Briefly relaxing before dinner.
Although I don’t drink alcohol, I was quite proud of myself for being sociable in the bar at the end of each day. It was a little noisy, but I really enjoyed talking to the music librarians, who were all really nice and friendly. I did stay up quite late both evenings, so I was super tired from all the excitement and socialising. It was quite nice to have a little break when everyone was getting ready for the dinner party.
The staff were also really nice and let me take some of the complimentary berry teabags to my hotel room. It was really relaxing to unwind in the early hours of the morning, watching Poirot with my fruit tea before going to sleep.
All in all, it was an awesome conference and the food was generally really nice. But for my proper thoughts on the conference from a music librarianship perspective, do check out the report I wrote for IAML.
Gosh, is it Piano Day again, already? Last year, I celebrated with this post about joining the Henry Ford Band. So much has happened since then!
I played keyboard with the Henry Ford Band, and they’ve released their album on Spotify, Amazon and iTunes! My acquaintance with the bassist then led to my being asked to play the piano for Carla and Seana’s art exhibition at Glasgow Skypark, which I really enjoyed and wrote about.
I’ve written four dance reviews with Bachtrack, and honed my skills at writing reviews that are less enthusiastically complimentary that many of my others. I do find writing negative reviews harder because I don’t like being mean, but I think it’s important to be able to critique constructively, so it’s a good skill to have practised. I don’t think I’m alone; I’m sure it’s a common challenge for many critics who value being fair and genuine.
I finally got around to actually sitting (and passing) the ABRSM Grade 8 piano exam, which makes applying for certain jobs considerably easier. Plus, it’s nice to have the official certificate – it’s very pretty!
I also went on a one-day course at the National Library, where I learned a bit about how the Library is organised and the features it offers. I saw all sorts of old manuscripts, including some medieval choir books, in which the monks had drawn funny faces to amuse the altar boys during long services. I also read some very cute correspondences between author Muriel Spark and her artist friend, Penelope Jardine. These two were such avid fans of a British TV soap drama that, whenever one of them had to miss an episode, the other would write a detailed description of the programme, including describing the advert breaks!
I’ve been back at university doing a Masters in Information and Library Studies (yesterday was the last day of teaching), and it’s been absolutely fantastic. I’ve made many new friends, learned all sorts of skills, and become a better person. Yesterday, as a fun, last-day exercise, we were asked to take what we’d learned from the course and, in groups, create a design for a library, assuming we had unlimited resources. My group decided to create the University of Mars Academic Library. It included anti-gravity elevators, a virtual reality holodeck, vacuum partitions to block sound waves and allow for quieter study areas, book-retrieval drones, lots of plant life for oxygenation and a scream-into-the-void balcony for finals week! It was a super fun activity, and I’m a little sad that the course is practically over (except a few final submissions and the summer dissertation).
“In the University of Mars Library, no-one can hear you scream”
As part of my Masters, I also completed a placement in the Music Library at the Edinburgh Central Library, where I was reclassifying their collection to follow Library of Congress subject fields. It was really fun, and I got the opportunity to attend a staff meeting and design a display for International Women’s Day. The reclassification project is very time consuming, and it wasn’t possible for me to do the full collection within my eleven-week placement. But, excitingly, they have agreed to keep me on to continue the project, so I get to continue gaining Music Library experience, which is totally awesome!
It seems a little surreal how many amazing experiences a single year can offer. I am excited to discover what the next year holds!
I was recently invited to play the piano for an art exhibition at Skypark business centre in Glasgow! How did it happen? Well…
If you remember, a wee while ago, I played keyboard for the Milngavie-based Henry Ford Band on their debut album, The Angry Young Man. That album’s available to listen to on Spotify, by the way, and to purchase on iTunes and Amazon music. At some point I believe there will be a CD released, although I’ve yet to hear further details about this.
Anyway, a couple of local artists, Carla Faulkner and Seana Doherty, were looking for a pianist to play a baby grand piano at the opening of their new exhibition and Geoff Foord, the Henry Ford bassist, suggested that I might be interested, and gave them my details.
Happily, I was available that evening, and since the artists were perfectly willing to give me free rein choosing the music, I felt that this was a feasible task and amazing opportunity. I selected a collection of twenty-or-so Pamela Wedgwood pieces: mostly New Age, smooth jazz background music with a few more upbeat jazzy numbers thrown in, for contrast. They are all pieces I already knew and regularly play for fun, so didn’t require too much preparation, the most difficult being Grade 6 level.
The day (Thursday 31st Jan) arrived, and I was excited. After university finished for the day, I walked along to the Skypark – and, thanks to Google Maps, I only got lost once! The foyer was beautifully decorated with Carla and Seana’s artwork, and the baby grand was lovely. Having had less experience playing grand pianos than uprights, I always find I need to adjust my playing for them. The keys on grand pianos tend to have more resistance and the sound comes from further away, making the instrument trickier to play fast and it is slightly harder for me, as the player, to hear the music in a noisy area. But the grand piano also gives a fuller sound and (as another less relevant point in its favour) is easier to record because you just have to set up microphones at the holes in the soundboard.
I played for almost the entire three hours of the exhibition, with a ten-minute break midway though to warm up away from the door (it was snowing outside!) and eat one of the delicious cupcakes that were provided. Even although I knew the pieces well, playing in a public setting is very different from playing at home. I tried to retain my concentration, but kept getting distracted by the action in the room – it’s probably just psychological, but I felt that any time a person came over to view the pictures behind me, I had to concentrate more to avoid making mistakes. There were also some little children at the event who were excited by the piano, which was adorable!
I did discover that my playing stamina has deteriorated slightly since I finished practicing for piano exams. Where before I was able to play non-stop for five hours, on Thursday only playing for three was pretty much my limit. A couple of songs before the end, I was finding my eyes were struggling to focus on the music and when I got home I fell asleep almost instantly.
That said, even although the playing was intense, it was an amazing opportunity that I really enjoyed. I’ve always fancied the idea of playing background music; I love it when there’s a pianist at restaurants, it makes me want to join in! Having now had the opportunity to try it out, I’ve developed a greater appreciation for the endurance of those players; but I’d also like to play in a similar setting again at some point. The event coordinator at Skypark did ask for my details, so we’ll see if anything comes of that, I guess.
All in all, the experience was super fun and a really great night. Thanks to Carla and Seana for inviting me, and to Geoff for advocating for me in the first place. I’ll leave you with a Pam Wedgwood piece I recorded earlier. Enjoy!
So, I just learned that today is the 88th day of the year, which can only mean one thing… today is Piano Day! Celebratory glissandi all round!
In all seriousness, though, I’d never heard of the day until I saw it mentioned on the ABRSM Facebook page. Doesn’t surprise me that it exists, though. If earlier this month we observed Pi Day and in May we’ll get to celebrate Star Wars Day, then why not have a Piano Day on equally tenuous grounds? There are 88 keys on a standard piano, Piano Day falls on the 88th day of the year; it’s not like we were using the 29th of March for any OTHER purposes…
Besides, it gives me a good excuse for talking about a super cool and exciting piano-related thing that is going on in my life at the moment.
I’ve been working as a Cultural Assistant in museums and libraries in East Dunbartonshire since September. It was while I was on my first shift at the Lillie Art Gallery in Milngavie about a month ago that I met a lovely creative gentleman named Geoff Foord, who is a member of the Milngavie Art Club. More pertinently to this story, he is also a musician in a band, the Henry Ford Band, that he recently created with his friend, John Hendry.
We were small-talking at the front desk, and I mentioned that I play the piano. It was lovely to have a nice conversation on what was otherwise a fairly quiet weekday, but I didn’t expect anything grand to come of it.
Imagine my pleased surprise when, a few days ago, I received a very courteous email from Geoff, asking me whether I would like to play the piano to accompany the band on a few tracks of an album that they are recording! This isn’t like anything I have ever done before. Sure, I’ve accompanied live singing, both privately with friends for fun and more formally while at university, and I’ve recorded piano videos for YouTube using my phone, but to get the opportunity to play in a real recording studio for an established band would be a super amazing experience and, while undoubtedly will require work to make a good job of it, I expect it will also be a lot of fun.
Having talked to Geoff yesterday, it also transpires that, rather than being given sheet music to play from as I would have been used to, I will be given track demos to listen to and, with creative input from the band proper, will arrange an accompaniment around that. This will be a completely new playing adventure for me, but I think, also, it will be a very valuable experience and useful skill to learn and practise.
It’s still in the early stages, with regards to my participation, but I am really excited about this wonderful opportunity that has been offered to me. Provided everything goes well, and they like what I do, this will be great fun and really cool. I’m totally psyched!
If you like, you can have a wee listen to my current favourite song of theirs. I think it has a kind of Razorbills quality, which I really like:
Imagine sitting on a couch next to a stranger, surrounded by arcade games and Nintendo wall decorations, staring into the face of a paper mâché mounted smilodon head, while a string quartet plays a mashup of medieval chant and Jimi Hendrix. This was the unique musical experience that the Mancunian string quartet Echo Chamber offered four nights ago (Monday 6th) at the MegaBYTE cafe in Glasgow.
An arcade cafe might, on the surface, seem an odd choice of venue for a classical music concert. Similarly, Jimi Hendrix and Kanye West are not necessarily the most intuitive musical companions to Franz Schubert, Arvo Pärt, or Pérotin. But Echo Chamber, although still very new on the music scene, is eager to challenge some of the social mores that have sprouted up around classical music.
The choice of venue was a result of the quartet’s association with the company Groupmuse, an organisation that provides a platform for people to set up classical music concerts in small, unlikely venues. Quite often, that even involves a member of the public arranging a concert in their own living room! The idea, which has already taken off in the States, is to build a community of like-minded people who really enjoy classical music and listening to it in unexpected places. As violinist Stephen Bradshaw put it when we talked after the concert:
Chamber music is very much a tradition of friends coming together to play music. It is often described as being like a conversation. As soon as you take that out of a small room and put it in a big concert hall, some of the more salient elements of that are lost.
This is very true. Although a concert hall’s acoustics may be better, this particular experience really invokes the salons of, say, Haydn and Mozart, friends who occasionally met to play string quartets together, or the 19th-century Viennese parlours that Franz Schubert gathered in with his circle. Although, perhaps an even more fitting analogue there would be the Schubertiads, established after Schubert’s death, which often involved fans of Schubert coming together in drawing rooms to celebrate the music they loved in an informal setting in the company of others who shared their passion. This practice fell out of fashion eventually; even as early as 1946, the music critic Alec Robertson was bemoaning the loss of these cosy gatherings. But perhaps Groupmuse’s house concerts will inspire a resurgence.
If such a renewal is to take place, Echo Chamber’s unique style is perfect for the situation. Their repetoire, inspired by listening to songs on shuffle in Spotify and the Radio 3 show Late Junction, is vibrantly innovative. As Bradshaw pointed out, there’s no rule that says you can’t pair 13th-century music with Kanye West, so if it sounds good together, why not go for it? The unconventional musical juxtapositions are interesting and engaging and during each performance there’s a sense of a shared joke between the players and the audience, which is enhanced by how close everyone is gathered. The cello was less than an arm’s length away from where I was sitting.
This was an unforeseen addition to this particular evening’s arrangement (even for the players!). After the first piece, the quartet’s artistic director, Leo Mercer, suggested we all moved to sit around one table with each member of the quartet situated at one of the four corners. Personally, my initial reaction was intrigued bemusement, but I was pleasantly surprised by how relaxed the rest of the concert turned out to be, given its intimate nature.
I think also, this was a really positive inclusion for a concert of this style, where the individuality and variation from concert to concert is a big attraction. The quartet also includes improvisation for the musical transitions, and these are completely different each performance. For example, Monday night’s transition between Pérotin’s Viderunt Omnes and Jimi Hendrix’s Purple Haze featured a lot of powerful, dramatic tremolo that was fantastic, and all the more impressive for having been made up on the spot. During the interval, when the performers came and chatted with the audience, Sophia Dignam (viola) was laughing about how she started the tremolo, unsure whether it would work out well, and the others followed her lead and they just went for it – and I have to say, it worked brilliantly! Mercer, the artistic director, even mentioned that he thought it was their best transition to date! It was lovely that all of the group were so open and willing to talk about the performance; they were all really friendly and it enhanced the whole atmosphere.
It’s a somewhat unusual setup for a string quartet to have an artistic director, most quartets operate as a purely democratic unit, but here Mercer is very much an asset to the group, always coming up with new ideas to encourage both the audience and the players to experience and think about the music in new ways. Bradshaw described to me the group’s rehearsal process. Generally they will spend about forty-five minutes rehearsing the music, then Mercer will come in and “do his artistic directing thing”, for example:
He might get us to think about different lines of music as different characters in a play, or get us to move around the room, sit in different parts of the room, try and experience the music in a different way in order to get us to play in more kind of fresh and exciting ways. […] He has a very unique style of artistic direction, and he’s constantly trying to take us out of our comfort zone, which is a really good thing. Classical musicians have the worst comfort zones, and we’re just used to doing a very specific thing within a certain set of confined rules. And Leo’s all about taking us out of those comfort zones, taking us out of those “echo chambers” and getting us to try out new stuff all the time.
Echo Chamber’s house concerts are not Mercer’s only out-of-the-box production. He’s written an opera called The Marriage of Kim K, based on Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. Again combining classical and contemporary, the opera will feature reality-TV style aspects alongside music from Figaro as well as newly composed material. Echo Chamber will actually be providing the music for the production at the Edinburgh Fringe in August. It’s an intriguing idea, and judging by the surprises of Monday’s concert, I’m not sure what to expect, but I imagine it will be distinctively special.
Bradshaw told me about what the quartet hoped to achieve with their concerts:
We really want people to experience classical music in a non-pretentious way, and that’s probably one of the biggest features that we do as a quartet. Making classical music less about turning up, smartly dressed, and not clapping between movements and more about just coming and enjoying the music you like, with a drink in hand, with friends. That’s what we want people to take away from this. Yes, a sense of community, a sense of – not necessarily classical music being cool – but making it something accessible, something you enjoy going to listen to. Have fun, have fun going to a house party but one where you listen to your friends playing classical music! Simple as that really!
I think they have accomplished that goal. Everything about Monday’s concert was crafted to make the experience as unique, friendly and hospitable as possible. It was a relaxed and enjoyable evening, with very talented, thoughtful musicians and their beautiful music in a small retro cafe. And although the word is frightfully overused, I’d go as far as to say the evening was “hygge”.
Kirsty's Keyboard 