Grittleton 2010 soon

It's been a while since I last wrote in here, and that's because not much of interest has happened since last time. At least nothing that fits well in this format.

This morning I went for a 30km ride in perfect weather. The sky was clear blue, temperature was 12C, and the wind speed was more or less 0.

Grittleton
On Sunday I fly to England for my annual orgy of chamber music called the Grittleton Chamber Music course. I'll be playing with old friends most of whom I met on the course during the past years. I haven't missed a year since my début in 1982.

The course is organised in a rather unusual way. Usually music courses are shorter, spanning just a weekend, and are open to pre-formed groups. This makes the administration of these courses very simple, at least compared to Grittleton.

Every participant plays in two organised groups. These groups, usually but not always string quartets, meet each morning. The first groups meet for a session lasting an hour and a half (I think) during which a coach is present for about 30 minutes. Then there's a coffee/tea break, then the second groups meet for a similar session, again with a coach for part of the time. The coaches are professional musicians, experienced in chamber music, not infrequently active chamber music performers.

For the remainder of the day after lunch everyone is free to play with informally organised groups. A series of session times is delimited by lunch, afternoon tea, dinner and 'late tea'. A few of these sessions are used for organised activities, including a staff concert, the junior course concert, and a barn-dance!

These two aspects, the fact that everyone plays in two organised groups, and the informal groups, make Grittleton very special, and more or less unique amongst chamber music courses. It's through this mixture that one gets to play with a very large number of different people, and a vast range of music! The course is amongst the largest of it's type with about 20 groups, i.e. ~100 players in each of two consecutive weeks.

Up until a change of management some years back Grittleton was extremely cheap (it still is very cheap but not quite as cheap!). This was achieved by reusing as much as possible (to an unbelievable extent), and paying the coaches very badly! The coaches were frequently retired and some were very old and frankly past it. This last aspect has changed in the years under the current management, and now the coaching has become very much better.

This year I will be playing first viola in the Frank Bridge sextet for string (2 violins, 2 violas & 2 cellos) in my first group, and a quartet by Stanford in the second. The Stanford work is completely unknown to me, but I've played the second cello part (on double bass) of the Frank Bridge at a Mazer evening.

I expect that I'll take a few pictures, and will probably put some of them on the net somewhere. http://frank.mcnamara.se/Grit-2009/ has a few from last year.

The hardest part of going to Grittleton is getting there! I have to fly, which I don't like. The other difficult part is going back to normal life afterwards! That's very hard, so please bare with me if I'm even more grumpy that usual for a while when I get back.