Busy, busy, busy……
(Written 18/11/11)
It’s been a really busy month and a bit with lots of highs and lows. All my vocal groups are back and I’m into full swing again with vocal groups on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. After January I’ll be adding a Friday to that for about 10 weeks but as they say ‘make hay while the sun shines’. Back in October I began to do something about my plan for starting Singing for The Brain workshops in Tayside. Found this great afternoon session that was being run in Paisley, which was exactly what I was looking for. It was interesting and useful and now I just have to get on to it here in Perth. Then the week after that I went down to Hereford to the Voice/Singing workshop training week with Frankie Armstrong and Darien Pritchard which was exactly what I’d hoped it would be: inspiring, fun, exciting, incredibly hard work and the first time in years that I got to spend each day doing the thing I love the most – focused singing – with others who loved it as much as I did. Came back totally inspired both as a vocalist and with ideas of what to do with the vocal groups I already take. Some musical food for a bit more growing. I had a dream that gave me an idea for a project….but I’ll keep that to myself for now. Then I was straight into taking a workshop at the Tollbooth in Stirling as a stand-in for someone who was ill, but they were a really receptive group – the Frankie Armstrong week has filled me up with new ideas, songs, ways of working, but I have a lot of work to do on it. So much information in one week, only one small brain to sort it all out and file it in appropriate places.
Now to the lows. Well, I had a plan and that was that the lovely Soutar project would happen in November and then tour in 2012 – a good plan. However the real world kicked in and although we are doing really well with the funding , the timescale was too short to sort it all out by the 13th November. So I was really gutted when we had to postpone it till new year. With a few weeks to take it in, I now think that it will be the best thing for the project and we can take our time and do it properly – exactly as we want it done instead of any making do decisions. The down side is that it left me initially with a void. I was going to try and do my touring stuff in 2012, and with my current return to work date of June I’m worried that my timelines have gone askew, but I am ‘regrouping’ and will just work on all the other million and one things I am trying to do and be really prepared for the Soutar project when we start it… which we will.
As to gigs… well, did a little slot in the Lemon Tree in Aberdeen – that was lovely. So then I decided that as the 13th November was going to be the Soutar gig night and not happening I would have a house gig instead, which turned out to be great fun. I have a wonderful musician friend that happened to be over from Belfast, pianist Brian Connor, and we had some friends round, set up the PA, and did some Soutar, some jazz and some of my originals. House Gigs rock!
Posted by debrasalem on December 15th, 2011.
Hey Deb
Love your blogging – just reading it from work on the 30th Dec and hoping you have had a lovely Christmas. I love the frankness and honesty of your blog and wish an exceptional year of music for an exceptionally musical person.
Great to meet you on the singing week.
Tanya xxxxxxxx