GOOD EVENING! And welcome to… THE GIG REVIEW! “Well, it’s a marvelous night for a moondance, With the stars up above in your eyes, A fantabulous night to make romance, ‘Neath the cover of October skies.” – quoth Van Morrison, ‘Moondance’ As the days continue to shorten and the nights to lengthen, we yet …
GOOD EVENING! And welcome to… THE GIG REVIEW! “Augustus Gloop! Augustus Gloop! The great, big, greedy nincompoop!” – quoth The Oompa Loompas, ‘Augustus Gloop’ Sure as eggs is eggs, August follows July, and thus it was no surprise for me to awake on the day after 31st July to find that I was yet …
GOOD EVENING! And welcome to… THE GIG REVIEW! “True love blooms for the world to see, Blooms high upon the July tree.” – quoth Nina Simone, ‘July Tree’ With the summer months now well and truly upon us and the academic year drawing to an end, July represents for many a period of winding …
It is with unbridled delight that I share with you today a brand new recording from the songwriting powerhouse commonly known as Ellie Bleach! The piece is called ‘That’ll Show ‘Em’, and will be the penultimate track on her upcoming EP ‘Now Leaving West Feldwood’. I had the pleasure of recording some clarionet and some …
One of the reasons I play so many different instruments is that I really enjoy performing in pit orchestras for musical theatre productions. In these ensembles, each individual woodwind musician is frequently called upon to swap between 3 or 4 instruments, and this practice of ‘doubling’ allows orchestrators to maximise the palette of sounds available …
I was saddened and surprised recently to hear of the death of the legendary songwriter Burt Bacharach, at the age of 94. To be completely honest the main surprise wasn’t so much that he had died, but rather that he had still been alive so recently – but that’s beside the point! At any rate, …
Ladies and gentlemen, it is with great pleasure that I announce the premiere performance of the U.K.’s newest and quite possibly greatest ever musical ensemble: The Dunleavy & Dimplesauce Showtime Orchestra! Yayyyyyyyyy! The orchestra was formed in mid-2020 by the legendary (and also mythical) characters of Beatrice Dunleavy and Ericona Dimplesauce. Their mission was a …
So here’s something I’ve been meaning to get around to for 3 years! Shortly after purchasing my baritone saxomophone at the start of 2017, I thought it would be fun to pick a woodwind-heavy piece of Broadway music and do a one-man reed section video. I imagined it would be particularly interesting for people to …
You may not have realised it yet, but today is a very special day and this is a very special blog post! For this is the 100th post I have written since starting this venture way back in 2017. To celebrate, I’ve been looking back into the mists of time and working hard to put …
I suppose one of the flaws with this sort of blog is that the more I have to write about, the less time there is to do it in. So when I’m running about all over the place doing gigs every few days, I have little opportunity (let alone enthusiasm) to sit down and write …
