Website :O

Hey guys,
Just a quick one today. I've just put my shiny new website online (I know, exciting right?) and was hoping you could maybe have a look and give me some feedback,
Love to you all in advance for being awesome xx
www.deannagreenwood.wix.com/deannabassoon

LPO stalking - Poulenc, Prokofiev and Shostakovich

Well hi there. So, over the past few weeks I’ve been to see a number of concerts by the London Philharmonic Orchestra. They have an amazing student deal on certain concerts that means you can get the best available seat for only £4. If you’re a student and haven’t signed up for the mailing list you should really check it out totally worth your time. The LPO aren’t the only orchestra that do student offer as well so you should have a nosey and see what discounts you can find.

Anyway, tangent over, one of the concerts I went to see was of the Poulenc Piano concerto, Prokofiev Symphony 7 and Poulenc Stabat Matar. Now, I’ve played Prokofiev 7 but the two Poulenc pieces were completely new to me. I adored the piano concerto, the soloist was spectacular and the orchestra were really on the ball. Excellent playing of what is really a beautiful piece. Prokofiev 7 is one of my favourite bassoon parts to play because it’s just so ridiculous at times. Have a listen if you haven’t heard it, it’s a good piece and really enjoyable to listen to. The Stabat Matar was not my favourite but was still quite a good piece.

The other concert was Shostakovich 13 (Babi Yar). This piece is not really performed regularly but was an amazing experience. The combination of male voice choir, bass soloist and orchestra was hair raisingly beautiful. Sadly I need to go to bed so I can’t give you a full review but you should have a listen. I went to broaden my horizons and thoroughly enjoyed it :)

Sorry this a bit dull but hey, I'm funny 99% of the time, this was just the unfortunate 1%, see you next time

So, I accidentally got on a plane to Germany...

Hello world, so, I'm currently in Germany visiting Sez, my bestest friend in the whole world, for her 21st birthday. And this means I managed to get to Mannheim, Germany, just. Now, I don't know how many of you have used London public transport but generally it's very good. On Thursday it totally wasn't. Thanks to a number of delays, trains that decided they weren't actually going to go to terminal 5 even though they said they were and the sheer number of people trying to get to the airport it took me over 2 hours to get there. OVER 2 HOURS! Was a little bit stressed and nearly missed my flight but thankfully managed to escape the motherland to pastures new.
This is where my tale of stress turns into tales of joy. Sez met me at the airport and after a coffee, a train journey and a trip to the local shop we settled into her lovely flat for the night for a catch up and some sleep. Waking up alone on Friday, the poor girl had a three hour lecture on her birthday, at 8:30, owch, I got up and ready to explore. We visited Universitaet Mannheim, where she's studying for the year, which is a castle, jealous much?

We also had an explore of a couple of other places but the main event of yesterday was the Adler Mannheim ice-hockey match which was INSANE! Now, I've never been into ice-hockey, it's not really a thing in England but really, after watching last night, I have no idea why. The game is fascinating, fast paced and has a nice edge of physical contact which keeps it super exciting. The atmosphere throughout the entire match was electric and I can safely say I'm now a Adler Mannheim fan, and we totally smashed Munich. The end score was Munich 0 - Adler Mannheim 9. GO ADLER MANNHEIM! Here's a couple of snaps of the pre-game display and the pitch.

After we arrived

 Pre-game warm up

More warm-up

And we're off!!!

So, the lesson here boys and girls is that I'm now an ice-hockey fan (I know some of the chants and everything, even though they're in German). And that Sez had an amazing 21st birthday. That's all for now, I'll finish my tale, including today's events and extra details, when I get back to the UK but for now, tatty bye :)

If you want to here Sez's opinion on events check her out at http://studiesintheschloss.blogspot.de/ it's also an interesting account on Erasmus for those considering doing a year abroad.

All comments/questions/requests welcome :) xx

First real post - LPO concert and recording shenanigans

Hello world! So, I've finally decided to use my blog as a blog is supposed to be used rather than doing an assessment on it and then hiding it away in the tab fest that is my internet browser (yes I'm one of those people, yes I do judge myself, no I will not change). So, I know how you all want to hear about my life so without further ado, here we go.
So, a quick run down of interesting things that have happened to me recently. I went to watch the London Philharmonic Orchestra concert last Wednesday. It. Was. Awesome! The concert was in their home venue of Royal Festival Hall, a brilliant venue which is a real pleasure to play in, and it was magnificent. I went to the concert not knowing any of the music, I've decided I need to broaden my horizons. The programme was entirely Britten, which is not someone I usually go for, but it was really enjoyable. If any of you get chance to go watch the LPO then go, totally worth it. Also, student tickets are really cheap, especially for the £4 noise concerts. £4 for the best seat available, crazy! But anyway, much fun was had.
Also exciting, today in bassoon class we were working in the recording studio. Bassoonist Alice Lee, who freelances in orchestras and the west end, came in to help us learn about working in a recording environment and to let us know what was expected and so on. It was a realllllllllly fun session. We had a go at recording using click tracks, which is a lot trickier than it sounds, especially when you're sight-reading. Trying to play with headphones on is disorienting, and hearing yourself through them as well as hearing yourself live is bizarre. We also had a go at recording ensemble pieces without a click track but using drop ins to cover any mistakes. A drop in is where you record a small section and replace the original bit with it. All in all a fun and really useful experience .
Well, I think that's enough for now but if you have any feedback/questions leave me a comment (comments are love) and I'll see you all soon :) xx

Check out the LPO at http://www.lpo.org.uk/

CoLab - It's A Kind Of Magic - Show Time

So, wow, just done the magic show. It. Was. AWESOME! Butlers bar has never had such a buzzing atmosphere, like, ever. The show went amazingly well and everyone was really impressed with it. The most terrifying thing about it was that we opened the show.

We opened with Quiajing pouring a glass of wine into a newspaper and the wine magically disappearing and the reappearing at the end, after the newspaper had been opened over a poor unsuspecting member of audience who just came out to enjoy the show, poor girl. While this was happening I was accompanying with a cheerful, jazzy tune on bassoon and Quiajing played on the humorous aspect of the music to create a brilliant performance without saying a word. It was brilliantly done. I then put down the bassoon and took to the stage with accompaniment of dramatic piano. My trick involved filing a glass full of water, placing a piece of paper over it and then turning it upside down over the poor audience members head (I do feel a bit bad about that). The water stays in and then I rip the paper off before letting the water fall out into a bowl. The crowd loved it and we pulled it off spectacularly, in my opinion. The whole project has been brilliant fun and working with the group has been brilliant. A big shout out to Max for organising it and, until next year, farewell :)

CoLab - It's A Kind Of Magic - Wednesday, Thursday and Friday

Hey there friends, examiner and any other person who is reading this cos they've got nothing better to do. So, just finished the magical ( I am so funny) week of Colab rehearsals. It's been a blast and working with the other members of the project has been such good fun, we are all really looking forward to performing on Monday and are really hoping for a good audience.
The last few days have been spent preparing for the show. The first two days were more about the actual technical aspect of magic but we have now started collaborating with the musical elements. We have all been working in pairs and trying to work music in with whichever trick we are performing.
I have been working with Quiajing and we are tackling the water based tricks. It's been interesting trying to add a musical element and designing the performance around the music and vice versa. We have a nice juxtaposition of a light hearted trick with a couple of shock moments and an extremely tense second trick which immediately follows. I'd love to go into details but I don't want to spoil it for anyone who is coming to watch on Monday.
We've also all been watching the other groups learn their tricks and been assisting as test subjects and helping with planning. The entire group have been really fun to work with and all the tricks are going to be amazing on Monday. It's been quite interesting how the increased confidence has translated back to instruments as I know I definitely have been playing with a lot more self belief even when it has been going wrong. Sorry about the shortness of this post but hey, don't want to spoil anything so here's a picture of Ben being taught his trick as well as a copy of the plan of action for Monday, Deanna out.

CoLab - It's A Kind Of Magic - Monday and Tuesday

So, it's that time of the year, CoLab is back and this year I've been assigned to the magic music-hall project. I was originally a tad dubious about this but I have never been happier to not get my original choice. The project is being led by magician Max Somerset, who is phenomenal btw, and has so far been amazing fun.

Monday started with Max wowing us all with a mini show that had us all amazed and raring to learn more. The focus for the day was 'creating realities'. In magic, it is sometimes essential to make the audience believe something that is not exactly true and we worked at mastering a few tricks that rely on the concept and discussed how that applies to music. The point of the project is to look at performance skills through a medium other than music so we looked at how having complete outward confidence can mislead the audience into believing you played something correctly when it was actually less than perfect.
This morning began with an interesting occurrence.  4 people singing swing low sweet chariot while their chairs were removed. The rest of us thought it was hilarious, those involved were not so amused, not sure why...

We followed this up by learning a trick involving cutting and putting together a piece of rope which I imagine people will not be able to stop practicing, it's weirdly addictive. The tricks this afternoon were more focused on 'mind reading' and presenting it in such a way that it's believable. We worked in pairs and spent the afternoon perfecting and demonstrating to the rest of the group. Myself and Kathy were working on a trick where I had to choose a random name from a list and somehow, using the help of said person, telepathically send the name to Kathy who was waiting outside and unable to see or hear what was going on. It was really interesting devising a system to do this and we worked well together. It was good fun and the improvement in certain members of the group is amazing, they are a lot more confident. I also feel a lot more confident in the purely performance aspect of the tricks and I am looking forward to translating this into a musical situation.

P.S Here's a link to my youtube video about today