April 20th - Day 2

At lunchtime I walked up eight large stone steps and into the entrance of St Martin-In-The-Fields, the large, bright church that has overseen Trafalgar Square and before then the King's Mews from the square's north-east corner for nearly three hundred years. I stopped in front of two closed doors, one of which had a sign on it saying "Concert in progress - no entry".

I stood in the porch area and marvelled at how clear the music coming from the main part of the church was - how it managed to fill up every inch of this small adjacent place despite being performed a hundred yards away in a different room and on the other side of two large wooden doors, probably made of something thick and sturdy like oak. Then I noticed, perched above me on either side, two audio speakers.

I was allowed in during a break between pieces of music and sat on a pew about half way up the nave, near the sides. The audience was at least a hundred strong. Many of them were quite elderly and some were tourists. We listened to flautist Eimear McGeown play a selection of reels on traditional Irish flute before she was joined by pianist Aleksander Szram to perform a lovely, drifty short piece of music called "Home from the Storm" by David Heath. It was written in 1984, but wasn't orchestrated for a cd recording until 2003. As I leant back in my pew, gazed at St Martin's fine ceiling and watched the music swirl sleepily above me, I realised that unexpectedly stumbling across wonderful music played by renowned musicians was something I'd like to do more often.

The concert finished. The musicians left the altar, momentarily disappeared behind a side door, reappeared for an encore of applause and disappeared once again into the vestry, or something similar, where they probably worried if they could have played that note a little bit better. Then the audience also left. Apart from one man who was asleep in the furthest corner of the furthest pew. He wore khaki shorts and his legs sported large scabs. I went back in five minutes later and he was still asleep. I wondered at what time they usually kicked him out.


eimearmcgeown.com


2011 update. This May Elmear has been invited by the Queen, I think to perform, to a reception at Buckingham Palace for Young People in the Performing Arts.

November 9th - Day 205

Spanish guitar by Dimitris Dekavallas at St Martin-In-The-Fields. Above, pre-recital and below, post-recital .

January 19th - Day 276

This guy woke up during the applause at the culmination of soprano Eleanor Briggs's recital in St Martin-in-the-Fields (accompanied by pianist Suzy Ruffles). Last year Eleanor sang in front of 10,000 people in Trafalgar Square as the winner of the inaugral Royal Opera House/BP Singing Competition. Today, the high pitch that she reached at the end of her last song, by Mozart, was wonderfully startling. It was probably that, in fact, that woke up the man.

More about Eleanor at eleanorbriggs.blogspot.com

Oh. I bought a theremin today. Arriving sometime next week. Yikes.

March 2nd - Day 318

Lunchtime recitals at nowhere new and only a couple of hours to play with, but a beautiful early spring day in London. I thought I'd just have a wander uptown. The train into Charing Cross station often stops on Hungerford Bridge and sits above the Thames awaiting a platform. The rail bridge now has footbridges running along both sides of it and from them one can often hear music drifting up to the stationary carriage. Today was not an exception and once the train had arrived at the station I doubled back and watched the guy below. He was playing Kid Creole and The Coconuts' "Stool Pigeon" when I reached him.

He looked kind of familiar. This is because, looking back at a previous photo, I'm pretty sure he's the same guy I came across on May 1st. Same instrument. Same place on the bridge. Same face. All fairly conclusive. See what you think...

I didn't properly twig until later on, but fortunately I'd decided to stop and listen to someone else.

This chap was setting up as I passed him on the way back to the north shore. He gave his guitar a few strums to check it was in tune and began. He sang too, but was very quiet and was somewhat drowned out by the saxophonist fifty yards further south. And by the trains. I like this photo, but like many on the blog wish I could make it larger, although if you click on it, it gets very big indeed. If you go really, really big you'll see that the man driving the speed boat about to go under the bridge is in fact Roger Moore and he's singing, "Da na-na-na-nah na na na, Da na-na-na-nah na na na. Dah-Nah!" It's amazing the little details one can miss if one doesn't look closely.

Ten minutes later, just because it was a sunny day, I stood in the front porch of St Martin-in-the-Fields with ten other people who'd missed the start of today's free lunchtime concert and listened to trumpeter James Woods-Davison performing Torelli's Sonata in D, G1. When the piece finished, the ten were allowed in for the remainder of the show and I went for a coffee and a salmon and egg sandwich.

I was looking at my diary on the way home and realised that, with the possible exception of Friday, fatherly duties mean I'm not able to see any evening music until Thursday week. Time to get creative.