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 …
GOOD EVENING! And welcome to… THE GIG REVIEW! This is a brand new, freshly-baked feature in the Michael A. Grant Blogging Universe, in which I will be taking a wry look at the preceding month’s performances, sharing some of my sublime and ridiculous adventures, and – who knows? – maybe even learning some life lessons …
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 recently had the pleasure of collaborating with Cambridge-based composer Paul Wellings-Longmore, who despite not playing any musical instruments himself has written some thoroughly charming pieces for a variety of woodwind ensembles. He’s kindly allowed me to share the results of one of these projects, and so I’d like to present ‘Variations on a Theme’, …
I scream, you scream, everybody wants… TRAD. JAZZ! That’s the kind of awesome insight you can usually expect from my posts on The Jelly Roll Jazz Band’s Facebook page, however today I’m going to talk about a couple of different bands with whom I’ve been clarinetting recently. Let’s start with a gig I did back …
I don’t often post on here about The Jelly Roll Jazz Band, largely because I put things fairly regularly on the band’s Facebook page and YouTube channel so I somehow feel as though everyone already knows about it! Further thought, however, leads me to believe that this may not in fact be the case, and …
I’ve got to the point now where I’ve played in a fair few musicals, however one that’s doing the rounds at the moment but had eluded me until recently was ‘The Addams Family’. This all changed last month though, when I got the chance to play Reed 2 for the show and find out what …
Everybody knows that there’s no clarinet like a nice shiny, freshly-polished metal clarinet. And I’ll be getting plenty of use out of mine this summer with all the wonderful outdoor gigs I’ll be playing with The Jelly Roll Jazz Band. So I’ve been taking advantage of the cold winter months (when outdoor gigs are mercifully …
The other week I had a delightful time performing with pianist extraordinaire Jack Mitchell Smith for a wedding in Tabley House (near Knutsford). But if you don’t believe me, I HAVE EVIDENCE! Here are some videos taken from our performance on the day, as well as a couple of clips from our rehearsal: There’s …
The weather may be getting decidedly chilly – yes brrrrrrrr – but I’ve got the perfect thing here to make you feel all warm and glowing like some sort of lantern! It’s a newly-released track by the Mantra Blues Band called ‘Vem Comigo’ (which translates as ‘Come With Me’), and I was fortunate enough to …
