During the tea break at a session for Songs Of Praise yesterday, a member of the choir collars me and says, “We were just favourably comparing you to the horns we were working with last week.”
“Oh thanks”, I replied, “who were you working with last week?”
“It was the English Symphony Orchestra, we were doing Beethoven […]

On Friday the ESO’s Beethoven symphony cycle came to an end in fine style at Worcester Cathedral with performances of the 8th and 9th symphonies. To do these two pieces back-to-back, following 5 hours of rehearsal the same day, with no bumper, is seriously hard work for the first horn, but I didn’t do much […]

Olly Green, 4th horn in the Philharmonia Orchestra, died very suddenly a few days ago. He was only 28.
I can’t claim to have known him beyond having met him a couple of times, but the horn playing world is a small one and I know that his loss will be deeply felt within it, and […]

I recently posted this on the SibeliusMusic chat page in response to a request for information about the Wagner Tuba, an instrument which is unsurprisingly overlooked by most orchestration textbooks. I thought I’d put it up here for the benefit of other SibMus users (and anyone else!) in the future. At some point I’ll […]

Well, not exactly, but it feels like it compared to the previous few weeks.I’m sitting on my hotel room balcony overlooking the harbour in a lovely little town called (I think) Langeland, in Denmark. I’m here with an ABBA tribute show that I play in from time to time. Tonight we’re playing at a festival […]

Apologies to regular readers (do I have any of those yet?) for my lack of postings of late. Also for lack of Barcelona photos, which didn’t come out. (Note to self: mobile phone cameras are no good in sunny climes because you can’t read LCD screens in broad daylight.)
I thought I’d take a moment (at […]

I’m in Barcelona.
I wasn’t quite prepared for going to Barcelona. I applied for a job at the Liceu (the opera house here) weeks and weeks ago, and having heard nothing back assumed I hadn’t been invited. But I came back from a gig on Friday night to find the invitation on the doormat. It only […]

I first tried to teach myself HTML during a comfortable but dull Christmas holiday at my parents’ house about 6 years ago. I was captivated by the underlying simplicity of it all, but painfully aware my skills were limited compared to the burgeoning array of clever design that was appearing on the Web in those […]