A look back at yesterdays Early Music Day concerts at the Lynn Festival, a link from this day last year and lots of photographs.
Yesterday was Early Music Day at the Lynn Festival. This featured three concerts, all held at St Nicholas Chapel. This post looks at all three concerts.
CONCERT ONE: AN ORGAN RECITAL
The Organ at St Nicholas Chapel is a truly magnificent instrument, designed and constructed by the London firm of Henry Willis & Son, and completed in 1900. David Flood proved to be a magnificent performer as well, and he chose pieces all of which could have been played on this organ when it was first completed in 1900.
CONCERT TWO: THE ORCHESTRA OF THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT
This concert did not feature a full orchestra, it was a smaller ensemble, all of whom belong to this orchestra. This means that rather than a conductor being present they took their lead from the First Violinist. The concert was excellent, featuring some splendid music.
CONCERT THREE: HARPSICHORD AND VIOLA DA GAMBA
Masumi Yamamoto was on the harpsichord and Ibrahim Aziz on the viola da gamba, an instrument much closer in shape and size to a modern cello than it is to a viola, in spite of the name. The concert both started and ended with them playing together, but each also played solos in the middle. Here are some photographs (quick reminder, all photos can be viewed at full size by lcikcing on them) specifically relating to these concerts…
St Nicholas ChapelThe organ.An information board about the organ.This picture and the the next show controls for the organ.The wooden angels in the inside roof of the chapel presented and interesting challenge.
FROM THE ARCHIVE AND GENERAL PHOTOGRAPHY
A year ago today I published my all time XI of players whose surnames begin with the letter E. Since then a new name has appeared on the scene: Abhimanyu Easwaran produced a succession of big scores in Indian domestic cricket. I am not yet prepared to break up my opening pair of J Edrich and Elgar just yet, but the latter is under threat, especially if Easwaran gets his opportunity to perform at a higher level and delivers. Now for my usual sign off…
An account of the concluding ODI between India and England, plus some thoughts on over rates and some photographs.
This post is devoted to the events of yesterday’s final and deciding ODI between India and England.
THE PRELIMINARIES
England decided to retain both Malan and Livingstone, so Billings missed out. They also opted to replace Tom Curran with Mark Wood, a decision that would have been indisputable had Wood been fully fit, but it rapidly became clear that he was not. India replaced Kuldeep Yadav with T Natarajan, changing the balance of their bowling attack. Jos Buttler won the toss and decided to bowl.
THE INDIAN INNINGS
India got off to a flying start, with Sam Curran and Reece Topley both somewhat wayward. Mark Wood bowled fast in spite of obviously not being well. It took the arrival of the spinners Adil Rashid and Moeen Ali at the bowling crease to stem the flow at all. Rashid accounted for both openers, one bowled and one caught and bowled, in successive overs, while Ali clean bowled Virat Kohli. Liam Livingstone had made his first contribution to the game with a fine piece of fielding out on the boundary that saved two runs. KL Rahul and Rishabh Pant maintained the momentum and for a while it looked like something close to 400 was on for India, but then Livingstone got Rahul, as the batter could only put a filthy full toss straight into the hands of a fielder. Thereafter England picked up wickets regularly, and India were all out for 329 in the 49th over. At that stage it looked anyone’s game, with England possibly favourites.
THE ENGLAND REPLY
For once neither Roy nor Bairstow managed a substantial score, and Stokes and Buttler both also went fairly cheaply. At that stage it was 95-4 and England looked in deep trouble. Livingstone and Malan batted well however and at the end of the 20th England were 132-4, two fifths of the way to the target after two fifths of the overs and having lost two fifths of their wickets. Livingstone was fifth out, having batted well, and then Malan having completed a fine 50 was sixth to go. That brought Sam Curran in join Moeen Ali, with England in deep trouble. At the end of the 30th England were 196-6. Moeen Ali’s departure seemed to be the final nail, but Rashid provided Curran support, and then extraordinarily, Mark Wood, for all that he was obviously not well, continued the support work, while Curran was playing a very special innings. Wood was ninth out, but even Topley, the most genuine of genuine number 11s, did his bit, and at the end of the 49th England were 316-9 needing 14 to win, and crucially Curran was at the strikers end. He did his best, but the task was just too much, and England were beaten by seven runs, with Curran 95 not out off 83 balls.
PLAYER OF THE MATCH
Sam Curran was named Player of the Match for his fighting knock, a decision which Indian skipper Kohli disapproved of. Shardul Thakur with 30 and four wickets was the obvious alternative candidate, and normally I would say that this award should go to someone from the winning side. However, at the point at which Curran came in to bat England were staring an absolute hammering in the face, with a three figure margin looking likely, and Curran turned that around to the extent that the game ended as a nail biter. Also most of Curran’s batting was done with the support of a no9, a sick no10 and a n011. Thus on this occasion I think the decision to give the award to someone from the losing side was justified, although I would not have quarrelled with the award going to Thakur.
OVER RATES
This match was conducted at a tempo that to borrow from the world of music could only fairly be described as ‘adagio molto’ – very slow. 100 overs occupied eight and a quarter hours of actual playing time, with England being in the field for three hours fifty minutes and India for four hours twenty five minutes. This leads me to revisit an old idea of mine in slightly revised form: based on the 15 overs per hour officially required in test matches I would allocate each team a fixed time slot to bowl their overs of three hours and 20 minutes, and for each over they have not bowled in that period the batting team get awarded penalty runs at a rate of ten per over or double the scoring rate, whichever is the greater. Obviously umpires would have to watch out for batters deliberately wasting time in the hope of securing penalty runs. If this was adopted there might be one ODI series/ tournament in which extras had a Bradmanesque aggregate but I reckon over rates would speed up pretty quickly. Here is a very famous slow tempo piece of music, Albinoni’s “Adagio for Organ and Strings”, from youtube:
A second ‘accepting extra walking’ post, this time looking at two very different areas.
As promised yesterday, I am doing a non-cricket post today, resuming my ‘accepting extra walking series‘. For this post, and any others along these line that I produce I will start with a London based example and then move on to something from another period of my life.
LONDON: VISITING THE SOUTH BANK CENTRE
There are many attractions in the South Bank Centre. In my case, with my love of classical music, I was usually going there for a concert either in the Queen Elizabeth Hall or the Purcell Room. From the then family home in southwest London I could take the Northern line to Waterloo or go to Streatham and take a train to Blackfriars (District and Circle as well as various mainline railways) and walk along the Thames from there, a slightly longer but more scenic route than the one from Waterloo. This walking route also takes in Southwark Station (Jubilee). Also, approaching from north of the river one could use Charing Cross (Northern, Bakerloo, mainline railways), from which one could exit direct on to a footbridge across the Thames, and if one was on the Piccadilly line this walk could be extended be getting off at Covent Garden, a short walk away from Charing Cross. Here are some pictures:
The relevant area as shown in my ancient A-Z
The London Connections map of the relevant area.
BARNSLEY TO WOMBWELL
This one comes from my university days. Barnsley had a leisure centre called the Metrodome, but if you actually wanted to swim rather than just splash around Wombwell Baths was a superior option. The basic journey from Barnsley to Wombwell is one stop by rail with a walk at both ends, but I did sometimes walk all the way there and get the train back. From where I was living at the time, on a side road off Doncaster Road the straight walking route was down to Stairfoot, turn right, and keep walking until you reach Wombwell, which does take quite a while. One little bit of cricket content: one of the roads one passes when walking this way is Roy Kilner Road, named in honour of the Yorkshire and England all rounder of the 1920s who died near the end of that decade from an illness contracted while coaching in India. He only played a few test matches, but his first class record (LHB, SLA) saw him amass over 14,000 runs at an average of 30.58 and take 1,003 wickets at 18.45 a piece. He was born in Wombwell, hence having a road there named in his honour, and died in Kendray, also near Barnsley.
An account of how I gained an Arts Award (Bronze Level).
INTRODUCTION
Today was the day I and three other people picked up Arts Awards (Bronze Level) from Trinity College, London, for work done at Musical Keys sessions in King’s Lynn run for autistic people.Â
THE WORK
There were four elements to the work that had to be done to earn this award:
Creating music during the sessions.
Demonstrating knowledge and understanding of how to create that music and being able to share with the group what one was doing.
Providing a record of an arts related event that one had attended.
Providing some information about one particular artist from whom you have taken inspiration.
I am now going to give you access to each of these four areas.
CREATING THE MUSIC/ SHARING HOW THIS IS DONE
My creative work was done using Scratch and Reaper on the computers. I do not have this work available to share at present, but here is a link to an old post which describes the process.
I interpreted this a trifle loosely so that I could use something for which I not only had a record but for which mine was the only photographic record – the time when Number 2 Hampton Court, Nelson Street, King’s Lynn was turned into an exhibition for Heritage Open Day.Â
I selected Maurits Cornelis Escher as my featured artist. Before producing my own offering about him, including three sample pictures I give you a variation on one of his pictures from Anna, titled “Never Ending Blogger“
MauritsCornelis Escher has been a favourite artist of mine for a very long time. His mathematical pictures and impossible constructions particularly appeal to me because I enjoy mathematics, and unpicking optical illusions myself.
MauritsCornelis Escher (1898-1972) is one of the world’s most famous graphic artists. His art is enjoyed by millions of people all over the world, as can be seen on the many web sites on the internet.
But he also made some wonderful, more realistic work during the time he lived and traveled in Italy.
Castrovalva for example, where one already can see Escher’s fascination for high and low, close by and far away. The lithograph Atrani, a small town on the Amalfi Coast was made in 1931, but comes back for example, in his masterpiece Metamorphosis I and II.
M.C. Escher, during his lifetime, made 448 lithographs, woodcuts and wood engravings and over 2000 drawings and sketches. Like some of his famous predecessors, – Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Dürer and Holbein-, M.C. Escher was left-handed.
Apart from being a graphic artist, M.C. Escher illustrated books, designed tapestries, postage stamps and murals. He was born in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands, as the fourth and youngest son of a civil engineer. After 5 years the family moved to Arnhem where Escher spent most of his youth. After failing his high school exams, Maurits ultimately was enrolled in the School for Architecture and Decorative Arts in Haarlem.
Here are the three pictures I selected to show along with this:
“Relativity”, a personal favourite
“The Monks”
“The Waterfall”
TODAY’S PRESENTATION
I had been worried that my health might prevent me from being present to collect my certificate, but fortunately I improved sufficiently to be discharged from hospital AND a care plan was put in place ready for said discharge, and in the event, although I found the experience quite tiring I was able to attend and collect my certificate in person. Here are some photos from today:
Me with my certificate, with Oliver from Musical Keys next to me (the black beanie covers the most visible effect of the intensive chemo)
A brief account of my session at Musical Keys yesterday.
INTRODUCTION
Yesterday was a Musical Keys session, and Oliver who runs Musical Keys put in an appearance. Also, some of our stuff was recorded – we will hear it in a fortnight’s time.
THE JOURNEY TO THE SCOUT HUT
Immediatedly after a light lunch of salami and salad I set off on my journey (I was starting early because I needed to check in on my aunt’s house en route and also intended to take advantage of heading towards that part of the world to visit Gaywood Library). After the few minutes it took to make sure all was OK at my aunt’s house I headed for the parkland and thence the footpath between the two academies, before a diversion to Gaywood Library and a walk along the bank of the Gaywood River to finish. Here are some pictures covering the period between leaving my flat and exiting the parkland at Tennyson Road:
A welcome return of market stalls to the Saturday Market Place.
This cannon ball hangs in the entrance to Hampton Court (near my aunt’s house)
The Red Mount Chapel
The Guanock Gate
A black headed gull in The Walks.
The cricket season is underway in most parts of the country, but Yorkshire and Essex have had no play on any of the first three days of their match due to a sodden outfield. Norfolk has not been battered as much as the north, but this picture from The Walks shows the problem – saturated soil means that there is nowhere for water to go.
The second part of the walk to the Scout Hut provided a few photos as well:
For more on the bird on this picture please visit my previous post.
Once it was time for the session to begin I did not take long to decide what I was going to do…
This Yamaha music system is not quite the equal of the Korg that I jhave used on previous occasions at Musical Keys, but it is still a very fine gadget.
After I had been recorded I spent what was left of the session creating musical words (e.g playing the notes F, A, C and E for face or, C, A, F and E for cafe). For the bit was a recording I used a double pattern – each four note chord I used comprised two pairs of notes separated by two, and with an octave between each pair.
HOMEWARD BOUND
The entirety of my homeward journey took place not only in daylight but under a bright sun (yes, we sometimes forget about it, especially during long winters like the one we are just emerging from, but even here in Blighty we do get to see the sun). I only added one solitary picture to my collection during this journey – a pair of drakes swimming in formation in the Gaywood River…
A brief account of Musical Keys and some bird pictures.
INTRODUCTION
Saturday was a music day, and I have plenty of pictures to share from recent days.
MUSICAL KEYS – THE KORG
These sessions are organised for the benefit of autistic people, so before I get into the meat of this section here is stimtheline’s magnificent Autistic Bill of Rights:
The Korg is a very sophisticated machine (for classical music enthusiasts it looks a 21st century version of a clavichord, but it does so much more). I will let the photographs tell the story (I got most of these by playing with my left hand while using the camera with my right FYI):
BIRDS OF ALL SIZES
We start with the largest bird to be a regular feature of life in Britain – the mute swan:
Next we come to a much smaller species, which I have not previously captured on camera, a little wader called a turnstone (I seem to recall that a few years back The Lynn News had a columnist who used Turnstone as a nom de plume):
Further along the Great Ouse and on the side of the river were a few specimens of a larger bird that is not a regular sight in these parts – the greylag goose:
An account of my Musical Keys session on Saturday and a meme that I created.
INTRODUCTION
Saturday was a Musical Keys day in King’s Lynn. This post shows you what I did during that session.
RETURN TO REAPER
Those who read my post about the session on January 6th will recall that in that session I was on a keyboard, which when you add Christmas in to the equation meant six weeks since I had used Reaper, so I was particularly pleased to get back to using Reaper. Once I had re-acquainted myself with what I had already done I moved on and created another major piece. I will met some photographs of my Reaper screens tell the rest of the tale:
The first five pictures are from the first half of the session.
These last five shots deal with my new big piece.
THE MEME
A number of recent posts on this site have been about or have touched on the themed of “autism acceptance months” (here,here and here). During the weekend I created an #autismacceptancemonths meme for sharing on social media which has had some success, and for the benefit of those of my readers not on social media I reproduce it below:
An account of the first Musical Keys session of the new year and some autism related links.
INTRODUCTION
This post comprises two elements – one an account of the first Musical Keys session of 2018 and the other sharing some excellent recent stuff about autism. Because it is an autism themed post I am using #RedInstead text (scarlet for headings and links, maroon for body text).Â
MUSICAL KEYS
Musical Keys is an activity run for autistic people who enjoy music. Generally speaking it is run fortnightly, with a session for youngsters between 3PM and 3:45PM and a session for older participants from 4PM to 5PM. I had initially been expecting to renew my acquaintance with Reaper (a computer program for composing music – see here for more details) but circumstances dictated otherwise, and I actually ended up on a…
KEYBOARD
This machine can function as a wide range of instruments/voices and in a wide range of styles, and I explored a lot of the instruments in the course of the time I spent on it.
John, one of the two people who run these sessions, showed me how to play chords as opposed to single notes, and I experimented with playing varying numbers of notes simultaneously, and using the whole range of the keyboard.Â
I created a few chords where the notes played could also form words, such as face/cafe, cabbage etc. I enjoyed making the acquaintance of this keyboard and learning something of its capacities.
These notes could form the word ‘cabbage’ (there being 2 as, 2 bs, 1c, 1e and 1g. Kirsten Murray, who helps John to run the sessions, took this picture with my camera.
Here you can see the notes – I played this with my left hand, while photographing with my right.
A close up the central screen.
The screen with more of its surrounds, including detail about the ‘voice’ settings.
AUTISM RELATED LINKS
This section starts with a post from Rhi that I regard as being the last word on “mild autism”, published under the title “Autscriptic: Mild Autism“.Â
I have linked to a number of reviews of Judith Newman’s book “To Siri With Love”, although since I have not read the book I can offer no direct comment about it, and here are a few more pieces about that book:
AN ANTI-AUTISTIC HATE GROUP
MASQUERADING AS AN AUTISM CHARITY
The organisation who are the subject of this little section go by the name of Autism Speaks, who you will also see referred to as Autism $peaks, Auti$m $peak$ and A$ in various places.Â
An account of my recent doings at Musical Keys with a photographic interlude.
INTRODUCTION
A few sessions back at MusicalKeys, an event run for autistic people that I am a regular attender of, I switched from using Scratch to using a different package called Reaper. This Saturday just gone I reached a point at which I feel that my work on Reaper is now worth talking about. Also I have some good pictures that I can slip in as part of the back story.
SCRATCH AND REAPER
Scratch enables one to play notes on various musical instruments and also has some saved sound loops for variation. Effectively therefore Scratch enables one to play music and sounds but not really to create anything beyond the framework within which to do so. Reaper is both less and more – less in that it has no versions of musical instruments, more in that is really all about combining different recorded sounds into a larger whole, and therefore has much more of a creative element to it.Â
BEFORE SATURDAY’S SESSION
I had spent one session assessing the available sound segments, working out which ones I liked and which of those combined well together, and a second session combining shorter segments into longer ones by putting together segments that would or could naturally flow together, but at the start of Saturday what I actually had was a set of useful components that I could start to think about assembling into proper length pieces…
INTERLUDE –Â WALK TO THE SCOUT HUT
I had decided to lengthen my walk to the venue by taking in a stretch of the Great Ouse before rejoining the regular walking route to Gaywood by way of Seven Sisters and the Vancouver Garden, and a quick sampling of the air outside my flat convinced me of the need to don an extra jumper – it was cold, as some of the photos will make very plain. I had also allowed myself time for a visit to Gaywood library, since I would naturally pass very close to it. It may have been cold, but the birds were out in force, especially near the Great Ouse.
Leaving the river by way of Hardings Pits I headed for the South Gate and thence Seven Sisters and the parkland areas…
Among other things the walk through the parkland provided me with absolute proof of how cold it was – gulls walking on water.Â
DECEMBER 9TH AT MUSICAL KEYS
John, who usually supervises the sessions was not feeling well, so having driven the equipment over he spent the afternoon sat in his car, while his assistant Kirsten took charge of the sessions.Â
Once I had opened up Reaper, checked and adjusted the speaker volume (at least 99% of the time it is set too loud for me and I have to reduce it, often considerably – on this occasion it had been set to 70% of full volume and I reduced that to 35%) it was time to put my plan of exploring options for combining various elements to make a larger whole into practice. Before moving on here is a photo I took at the end of the session.
The piece that I called Organ and Strings was one of three background sounds that I used in the bigger pieces, the others being the drum and brass backgrounds. “Ensemble” and “Composite” as those names suggest were medium sized components, while “Horizontal” and “All in” were the two large scale components that I combined to make the final full size pieces. The two big pieces (12 and 16 minutes long respectively) were comprised of “Horizontal”-“All-in”‘-“Horizontal” and “Horizontal”-“All-in”-“Horizontal”-“All-in” respectively. By the time I had listened to the 16 minute piece at the end it was pretty much the end of the session. The next session is on January 6th and I shall work out some way to build on what I have already created.Â
This post will be every bit as varied as its title suggests, featuring a mix of politics, mathematics, music, nature and photography (and possibly more).Â
SOME MATHS RELATED STUFF
I start with one of more recent followers, RobertLovesPi, and I have several pieces of his to share:
I start with the first piece of his that I read, which is titled “The 15-75-90 Triangle” – a graphic is reproduced below:
If the illusion defeats you, you can find out where the circles are by going to the original post.Â
I finish this little section with a nod to the mathematical website Brilliant, which I am a regular visitor to (I am currently on a 64 day problem solving streak). As a sample here is a problem I solved today, rated at maximum difficulty by the site, pretty close to minimum by me:
You can look at solutions to this problem on the website, and I will reveal the answer on this blog tomorrow.Â
My second link is to the petitionsite, regarding a young women in El Salvador who having been raped and then had a miscarriage has then been jailed for 30 years due to the Catholic church influence anti-abortion laws of that country. The screenshot below is formatted as a link to take you to this petition to sign and if possible share it:
I finish this section on a lighter note, courtesy of whyevolutionistrue. This little piece titled “Where is North Korea? Some Americans have no idea” reminds us how unacquainted USians are with that area known as the rest of the world! Here is a screenshot of the opening paragraph:
PHOTOGRAPHS
I usually end my blog posts with some of my own photographs, but this photograph section has an additional feature – as a nod to the principal subjects of many of the photos that follow I offer you a musica prelude – Ottorino Respighi’s “The Birds”:
I did not notice the white bird on the far side of the river until I was editing this one – I think from the shape and colour that is a Little Egret but the image is not clear enough to be sure.
This squirrel is clearly an impressionist – and his meerkat is very good!
aspiblog 