New Year Impetus

I have some impetus to start getting out and playing again. Maybe it's a new year thing? Anyway, I'll be down at the Blues Kitchen in Camden on Sunday evening (12th) to play at the Blues Jam. All the info about the place is on the link below. About time I shook off some cob webs off the sax. Would be great to see you there. Happy New Year! Blues Kitchen Info

Second season syndrome

http://londonjazz.net/ai1ec_event/ealing-jamopen-mic/?instance_id=

Will be playing at the North Star pub in Ealing, West London as part of their blues jam on the evening of Tuesday 10th September. First time playing in public for a while, excited to get back into it, which is now my second year in London. My priorities have changed but my love of  music (and all things related to music) has not. Therefore I will be playing and posting less frequently.

If you can get to Ealing it would be great to be with you that evening.

Big shout out to those who have been following my blog over my quiet summer period. India, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Bahrain and Vietnam your views haven't gone unnoticed!

http://londonjazz.net/ai1ec_event/ealing-jamopen-mic/?instance_id=

end of year 1

It's coming up to a year now since I moved to London and this whole music adventure started. Taking a summer break and will be back playing sax and blogging in September. 

Thank you to all that have been following my music adventures.

An even bigger thank you to those that have come out to see me play sax in London (and in Munich). You know who you are (but I prefer the personal touch). Many have come out, many more said they would but never did. So thank you (in no particular order to) Christy, Helen, Maria, Nick, Emily, Frank, Sharon, Tracy, Karen, Fred, Nicole, Jenny, Andy, Emma, Bianca, Owain, Jim, Ryan, Rhys, Colm, Sunny, Rhian, Megan, Philip, Nikki, Michael, Esi.

Also got to meet a lot of interesting people and some very talented musicians along the way. It really has been a year of musical education. Will be refreshed and ready to go again in September.

Roots

Recently, I was served a reminder of how much childhood, family, religion and hometowns can be huge musical influences. I visited an exhibition in the Jewish Museum in Camden, North London called "Amy Winehouse - A family portrait".

There were several childhood artifacts kept by Amy Winehouse (school ties, old records, essays written, family photographs) as well as set-lists, early tour posters, dresses she wore, stage passes and her first guitar.

What was very clear from this exhibition is how her roots shaped her music and how despite all that happened to her with the life choices she made, she was essentially the same girl she always was. The strength of her desire to perform, to be heard right from her early years to her late years was consistent. These were displayed in many of her quotes. The most telling of which was an essay she wrote when young writing about how she wanted to remembered and what she wanted to do when she was older.

As I've written many times in this blog, Amy Winehouse is a massive hero of mine. She wrote and performed incredible music.By all accounts she was an incredible young girl and incredible person - reminds of a young version of my sister somewhat. Both her albums, as well as her posthumous album "Lioness - Hidden Treasures" are incredibly true to her roots. The nine-year-old Amy would approve, I'm sure.

Studying your musical heroes was one of many stellar pieces of advice given to me by Professor Livingston Taylor. It gives a special insight the journey of how their music came about. This I find fascinating.

This experience has heightened my awareness of the impact of my own childhood, family, religion and hometown has had on my musical output.

In a very reflective way, I dug-out my own memories, memorabilia and the music I listened to when young. It made for a very interesting, very personal realization. Maybe one day I'll have my own exhibition, hopefully that is a long way off, but I'm excited to share bits of it in time with the people closest to me. 

For those interested, I've posted a link to the exhibition site. It runs until September 2013.

http://www.jewishmuseum.org.uk/Amy

Be jamming

Less of an article and more of an advert.

Going to be playing saxophone at Jetlag bar in Fitzrovia this Wednesday (10th) from 8pm.

Looking forward to returning to this place - one of the first venues I played at in London.

Come join the jam night and support live music jam nights in London.

The blues jam community needs you.

http://www.jetlagbar.com/index.php/home

Hmmm... vitamins

I love a good cover version of a song I do.

Favourites include (in no particular order) 

Amy Winehouse doing the Beatles' "All my loving"

Jamie Cullum doing Pharrells "Frontin'"

William Orbit doing Samuel Barbers "Adagio for Strings"

There is a group out on the west coast of the States who have got the whole make-a-song-your-own thing locked down. So locked down in fact that they don't just stop at covering tracks but whole albums. And it isn't cheesy parody either.

Ladies and Gentlemen I present to you...

The Vitamin String Quartet
http://www.vitaminstringquartet.com/home

Covering everything from The Strokes to Adele, Mumford and Sons to Red Hot Chilli Peppers, if its big, chances are they've done it. They release songs at a pretty prolific rate too. Their most recent album is a selection of Sigur Ros' greatest hits.



Inspired by VSQ, I wrote string-trio cover of a pop-song. I wanted to pick a song or an artist from the 21st century had not received the VSQ treatment. I settled for the London-based band "Athlete" and the last song from their 2nd album "Tourist" called "I Love".

It's up there in my top ten favourite songs of all time as it holds some brilliant memories of special times. It's one of those rare songs where the entire song has a strong connection with me, not just a hook, the chorus or one clever line.

Anyway, I've attached my string cover version which you can download on the link below and a copy of the first page. You can check out the original song "I Love" by Athlete on iTunes, Spotify or wherever else you source your music

"I Love strings" string trio arrangement of "I love" by Athlete

Music therapy

Music as a form of therapy is nothing new. Ancient thinkers such as Plato, Galen and Pythagoras (him of the triangle theorem fame) all wrote about music as a therapeutic agent.

Music therapy fascinates me. The song-writing process is extremely therapeutic for myself. Getting over the death of my grandad, I poured myself into writing music. That's how I dealt with the grief. And a symphony came out of it. That's how deep the grieving was.

Having a guitar is fantastic for me when writing songs about trying to make sense of the world, girls and life. I'm a baby at the guitar so I haven't developed my guitar playing skills and technique to match the level of my song-writing and musicality. A lot of practice is needed beforehand to match them up.

One guy whose guitar/singing skills match up to his song-writing (both to a high level) is Frank Turner. If you've heard any of Frank Turner's latest album "Tape Deck Heart", you'll know what I mean. This is an album written as therapy for the song-writer, a lot of the songs (if not all), are deeply personal, autobiographical songs. I really take my hat off to him to be so bold as to share the songs on that album, because the writing and the playing of those songs is clearly deep therapy for him (he indicates as much himself when I heard him interviewed on the Zane Lowe Radio 1 show).

That's all active music therapy i.e. the music acts as therapy for the player/writer. 

Then there is passive music therapy i.e. where the music acts as therapy for the listener.

Here are a couple examples of passive music therapy. The following video was forwarded to me by a colleague in my previous work place. I'm very grateful to her for for sharing this powerful video. Click on the link below to watch it.

http://youtu.be/fyZQf0p73QM

If you are interested in cases of musical awakening such as these, I recommend highly a book by Oliver Sacks "Musicophilia". It's full of similar and equally fascinating examples.

On a personal note, getting to play music live as a form of therapy is extremely fulfilling - even when the audience can not express themselves (e.g. people with advanced forms of dementia).

I was blessed to play saxophone and piano on a few occasions for residents of a nursing home I used to work at. Nothing as magical as what happened in the video above occured when I played (or at least to my knowledge it did not), but there were special moments especially at Christmas time and at a  leaving do when I got to play sax for the residents.

I recently returned there to play again and received this note and two bags of popcorn (the popcorn is an in-joke with the staff). Whatever the level of therapy I provided to anyone that listened, I was delighted to play and I will treasure this note for a long time, such is the therapeutic power of music and as the video showed, musical memories can be the deepest memories.