Blog 5: Horns, garages, jumpers, plans...

New author this week! It's Suzie - flautist with Team Maggerz.

We are still buzzing from last week's wonderful culmination at Wigmore Hall - what a fantastic morning of music! We are now taking advantage of a quieter week to get busy preparing for next year and in particular the fantastical Revolting Rhymes and Marvellous Music tour! From applying for competitions in 2016, creatively programming for these entries and organising an exciting addition to the tour it's not such a quiet week after all for the Elves at the Magnard Grotto! Admin aside, rehearsals continue and, as much as we are missing Suling and Kenny already, it was lovely to have a rehearsal as our ensemble in its entirety - especially as Cat has only recently joined the ensemble. Cat has slotted in so well though - we couldn't have asked for more and are so excited for our future with her! Any ensemble whose personnel have busy freelance careers outside of the group too will know deps are inevitable and this term has been a busy one for us all, meaning any time where we can all rehearse together is extra valuable!!

This week's rehearsal took place at Paul's lovely house in Highgate again and, much to Mana's delight she was reunited with Smurf and Garage the cats again! Our resident cat lady just can't get enough of them- in fairness she is Smurf's favourite, perhaps he was drawn to her festive Christmas Jumper! Garage, however, was more drawn to Jon - check him out getting well acquainted with the French horn!!!

Silliness aside, we are really enjoying rehearsing for our concert in Tonbridge on the 9th January! The programme is an extremely varied collection of works written for wind quintet by European composers ranging from Mozart and Haydn to Patterson and Dodgson. We are especially looking forward to giving the Dodgson a second outing after it was received so well at our summer chamber music weekend in Tisbury. We even had the privilege of meeting Dodgson's wife, Jane, who was in the audience for the performance which you can view in the video attached below!

At the end of the rehearsal we had a great laugh sifting through the amazing pictures from our photoshoot with Ben Ealovega a few weeks ago - what a challenge it was to shortlist from so many brilliant images!! It was such a fun day and this is reflected in so many of the pictures - exactly the vibe we wanted to promote the Revolting Rhymes and Marvellous Music tour and the fun we have working together as a group! Then it came the time to say our Merry Christmas's and goodbyes for 2015 - I don't know about the others but I'm sure it will only take a few days for Maggerz withdrawal symptoms to set in for me!

Maggerz love,

Suzie xxx

#music #rehearsal