Blog 11: Revolting Rhymes, Rehearsing and Recceing
Hello everyone! Another new blogger this week! I’m Cat, the bassoonist of Magnard Ensemble - new to blogging and also the newest member of Magnard. Just a very quick bit about me! I’ve been playing the bassoon ever since I perfectly matched it in height - please see the attached photo of a grinning loony, in a spectacular outfit pushing the boundaries of fashion… This photo may be a gratuitous public embarrassment of myself, but I think it also demonstrates how exciting music can be, especially when it’s very new to us! Which leads me on to another point about myself – like Mana and the rest of the ensemble I’m really passionate about the outreach work we do, taking really high quality music to new audiences. I’ve done many short outreach projects before but I’m especially excited about working on a long-term project with Revolting Rhymes and Marvellous Music this year, as we have such wonderful material to work with it would be a real shame not to share it as far and wide as possible!
As it turns out such a project also takes a lot of organising and this week has been a particularly busy one, planning various aspects of it! We were extremely excited to start work on Martin Butler’s ‘Dirty Beasts’ this week. This piece is a really fantastic setting of Roald Dahl’s ‘Revolting Rhymes’ - The Pig, The Tummy Beasts and The Crocodile – which will play a central part in our Revolting Rhymes and Marvellous Music tour. I’m sure the infamous Crocky-Wock the crocodile has struck fear into the hearts of many of you and Butler’s gritty, visceral and driving rhythmic music does an amazing job of realising the rather gruesome bits of the poems! I’m particularly excited that Team Bass doubles for this piece, as Joe plays bass clarinet in it - unsurprisingly with such grisly poetry the bass features very heavily! We also love Suling’s literally beastly score for the piece, so beautifully modelled here!
Finally a big shout out to Joe for his fantastic work on our website this week – do explore, and check out the new sections at www.magnardensemble.org/revoltingrhymes.
That’s all from me for now!
Maggerz love,
Cat xxx
PS. One last tenuous analogy for my ridiculous picture… My manic grin very nicely sums up my feelings about joining Magnard- it’s an absolute delight and pleasure working with them and I’d like to thank them all for being so welcoming!
