I'd like to say a few things in tribute to the brilliant musical director & vocal coach Kate Young, who died far too young last week. Even fellow musical theatre folk may not know what a trail-blazing talent she was, so here's my story of Kate (thread)/1

I first met Kate at a rehearsal for Wayne Sleep's 1983 touring dance show DASH, for which I was composer. What struck me first about her (apart from the poetic lilt of her warm, Edinburgh accent) was the impeccable care she was taking playing piano for dance rehearsals /2

(believe me, & I mean no disrespect to lovely dancers & choreographers but playing piano for dance sessions isn't called REPETITEUR for nothing and many repetiteurs switch to auto-pilot at the keys. Kate never did. Her playing was always immaculate)/3

We hit it off immediately & had long, ranty discussions about how we wanted to change musical theatre, like young people do. We had specific aims to do with the way singing was taught & shaped for the stage. /4

We wanted the singing to be much more text & meaning-focused, for actors to have the confidence to sing as well as trained singers & for the sound to be more nuanced, more plural in style & less belty & samey (tbh not sure we won that battle..) /5

I think Frank Edwards needs to hire a team to do major work sanitising and building a better digital experience for his music, his digital trail and everything else in between

I say this out of need to the larger lesson to creatives, i'd hate to restrict this to Christians alone

I love Frank Edwards, his songs form a huge part of my morning worship routine. But for the past two weeks, I've been looking for a song that I used to play a lot in my first/second year of uni and couldn't find it until I searched a random part of the lyrics and went as far as..

The 6th page on Google search. Yes, that's how badly I wanted it.

Even when I found the name of the song, the song was available as a lyric video on YouTube and published by someone entirely different from who I wanted to give streaming dollars to, that's if it counts for much.

Hit another bump. I want to subscribe, and I realise there's over 11 Frank Edwards on YouTube. Each with huge and growing subscriber numbers, that was worrying.

It was not until this morning I found one with 250k subscribers and I thought... Ah this has to be him.

I search on Google for Frank Edwards and his entire discography isn't listed on Google and it in fact worried me.

Now I am moving to upset because this is someone I love deeply and hate to see how there's so much low hanging fruit that he isn't taking advantage of.

"Music, Sense and Nonsense: Collected Essays and Lectures", por Alfred Brendel.

Capítulo: “Conversations - On Schnabel and Interpretation with Konrad

En esta conversación de 1979, Alfred Brendel y Konrad Wolff, autor de “The Teaching of Artur Schnabel. A Guide to Interpretation”, discuten sobre ciertos puntos en los que Brendel no coincide con Schnabel.

Para Wolff, Brendel es el primer pianista desde Schnabel que ha gozado de plena autoridad en la interpretación de Mozart, Beethoven y Schubert. Además, en su opinión, su enfoque tiene mucho en común con el de Schnabel en los detalles de fraseo, tempo y dinámicas.

Sin embargo, hay varias opiniones en las que Brendel difiere de Schnabel. Para Brendel, las frases son como curvas que no necesariamente se miden por compases: “Very often for me the art of phrasing consists in forgetting about bars, ignoring bars and seeing large units”.

Por su parte, de acuerdo a Wolff, Schnabel veía las frases en función de la respiración y del énfasis al principio o al final: “he wanted to know how far he was to play before there was a breath (…), a phrase begins and then goes from there, or else it ends and goes to there”.

Boxerman
----------
(Sung to the tune of Wellerman)

[A Musical Thread]

🎵
There once was a plan for an AFV
The name of the plan was the MIV
There’s more to the tail than you may know
Brew that bivvie boys, brew
🎵

(Hurr! 💪)

🎶
Soon may the Boxerman come
To bring us armour and tea and gun
One day, when the fightin’ is done
We’ll take our wheels and go
🎶

🎵
They must deploy two kay from shore
Fit two to a Herc or maybe more
We envied all that Soviet Cav
And soon was born MRAV
🎵

"Music, Sense and Nonsense: Collected Essays and Lectures", por Alfred Brendel.

Capítulo: “Conversations - Talking to Brendel with Jeremy

Ya casi llegamos al final de este maravilloso libro. En esta sección, Brendel comparte varias entrevistas. La primera de ellas fue en 1972 con Jeremy Siepmann, músico, locutor, articulista y autor de varios libros sobre música.

Si bien después de 377 hojas ya tenemos una buena idea sobre las opiniones de de Brendel sobre la música y el quehacer musical, en esta entrevista revela varios puntos de vista.

Sobre si disfruta interpretar música, Brendel responde que sí, sobre todo en los últimos años, “when I’ve had the impression that much of what I do comes across. Of course, one very rarely knows if the right things come across)”.

Sobre si los intérpretes existen para vincular al compositor con el público, Brendel afirma que le interesa más la relación del intérprete con el compositor que con el público: “What fascinates me is to make sense of a piece of music while it sounds”.

Reason for high repeatability for songs is due to connection with old memories !

"Music, Sense and Nonsense: Collected Essays and Lectures", por Alfred Brendel.

Capítulo: “Conversations - Bach and the Piano with Terry

En 1976 Terry Snow entrevistó a Alfred Brendel sobre sus puntos de vista acerca de la obra de Bach para teclado, la cual hasta ese entonces Brendel había evitado ejecutar en sus conciertos.

Brendel cambió de opinión en esa época. Al haber sido alumno de Edwin Fischer, quien transmitía la música de Bach de una manera única y con poderosa autoridad, le tomó tiempo considerar que estaba listo para abordar a Bach en sus propios

En un principio, Brendel no se sentía muy convencido por las ejecuciones “históricas”. Sin embargo, para él la obra de Bach es menos dependiente de los instrumentos contemporáneos que la de Monteverdi, Domenico Scarlatti, Purcell, Rameau y Couperin.

Entre las ventajas de interpretar las obras para teclado de Bach en piano, Brendel considera el hecho de que este es más adecuado para las salas de concierto modernas. Además, para Brendel dichas obras están llenas de posibilidades

One of all time favourite motivational song & I listen to it almost daily😊

Underrated song but a true nasterpiece with amazing lyrics & music👌🏻

https://t.co/Omhz4gyJqI

Let me know if you had heard this song before & how did you find it!

#music #inspiring