Ghost Variations is out!

The e-book of Ghost Variations has been published.

It's a very weird feeling, since the book has been part of my life for some five years and has seen me through many not-so-liquorice all-sorts of life. If it is about Jelly d'Arányi saving a concerto (sort of), and it saving her (almost), they've also saved my sanity on several occasions. This week may be the start of the book's life as an actual book, but it's also, in some ways, the end of an era.

The crowd-funding was enormous fun - and several subscribers have already told me that they feel part of the process as a result, which is heartening. Unbound have been simply wonderful to work with: the editing excellent, the cover design the best I've ever had and the sense of support and good sense unfailing. My heartfelt thanks to the whole team - and to everyone who signed up to contribute with such enthusiasm. And, of course, to the many individuals who have helped, advised, pointed, talked, been interviewed, read, emailed and corrected my Hungarian along the way.

If you subscribed to it, you should have received an email with the links to your download. Other would-be readers can buy the e-book from Unbound now for £5, or hang on for the paperback which will soon be available for pre-ordering from Amazon (as will the ebook) for general release on 20 Sept.

Meanwhile, do come and celebrate with me, David Le Page and Viv McLean at St Mary's Perivale tonight - no books on sale yet, but a real jamboree of a violin&piano words&music concert. The next ones are on 4 Oct at 22 Mansfield Street, 18 Oct at Leighton House, and 3 November at the Old Sorting Office, Barnes.

Chineke! Riding high at the RFH

Sheku Kanneh-Mason (cello), Kevin John Edusei (conductor) and the Chineke! Orchestra.
Photo: Belinda Lawley/Southbank Centre

It's hard enough to put an ordinary orchestra together... so just imagine the effort involved in assembling the magnificent crew that took the stage at the Royal Festival Hall last night for the climax of the Southbank's Africa Utopia festival. Chineke! - the brainchild of double-bass suprema Chi-chi Nwanoku - is Europe's first all-BME symphony orchestra and is designed a) to celebrate the talent of its members and b) to show the rest of us that not all faces on the concert platform need to be white or Far Eastern. The atmosphere of the RFH's foyers, too, was transformed; warm, relaxed, smiley people of every shape, size and colour were there, enjoying the festive programming, foyer events and the food market outside, and the hall itself was packed.

The Chineke! players come from all over the world. They range from young students of the Purcell School and Birmingham Conservatoire to such luminaries as leader Ann-Estelle Médouze, concertmaster of the Orchestre Nationale de l'Ile de France, the lead trumpet of the Met in New York, the violist of the Fine Arts Quartet, the stupendous flautist Eric Lamb, British cellist and educator Desmond Neysmith, principal second violin Samson Diamond who started with Buskaid in Soweto, and of course Chi-chi herself. Charlotte Barbour-Condini, a BBC Young Musician finalist as a recorder player, is here playing the violin.

Sheku Kanneh-Mason.
Photo: Belinda Lawley/Southbank Centre

Several members of the multitalented Kanneh-Mason family are aboard too, including the current Young Musician of the Year, Sheku the cellist; when he wasn't out front, making his RFH debut in the Haydn Cello Concerto, he was back in the middle of the cello section, giving his all.

Despite this disparate nature, even if the ensemble can't always be perfect, there were moments of absolute magic where a section began to play virtually as one instrument, notably the first violins. The conductor, Kevin John Edusei, a young competition winner and now chief conductor of the Münchner Symphoniker, offered clarity, swing and masses of positive and unifying energy.

The evening got off to a flying start with Sibelius's Finlandia. Odd choice? Not so: along came the chorus of Cape Town Opera, which has been performing its Mandela Trilogy in the festival and, ranked up the aisles, they transformed the big tune into a stirring anthem with nice, up-to-the-minute, inclusive words. It would be easy to pick holes in that idea (the cited flora sounded a tad Alpine) - but my goodness, I was right in among them in an aisle seat, and my own background is South African; my late parents left in the '50s and my father refused to go back until Apartheid was brought down, and I thought of how much this evening would have meant to them, and I cried.

Next, a transformation to the 18th century: the three-part Overture to L'amant anonyme by Joseph Boulogne, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges: expert violinist, fencer and favourite of Marie-Antoinette. It's a piece of much charm and the Chineke strings, with Isata Kanneh-Mason at the harpsichord, brought it lilt, warmth and bounce.

Sheku was centre stage for the Haydn concerto and again one had the sense of history in the making. With virtuoso aplomb as cool as the proverbial cucumber punch, a splendid, pure and focused sound and a genuine, smiling stage presence, the 17-year-old cellist is going places, musically mature beyond his years - his encore, Bloch's Abodah in Sheku's own arrangement, was deeply reflective and moving. He had a hero's welcome, and deservedly so.

And to close, the Dvorák "New World" Symphony - a piece I realise one doesn't hear often enough because it, like so many other outright masterpieces (Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet, Mozart's Piano Concerto No.21, Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No.2, etc), has been siphoned off into "popular classics" evenings and therefore often shunned by the bigwigs. But these pieces are popular because they are fabulous works, and I have a special soft spot for Dvorák 9 because it was the first symphony I ever heard live, at the good old RFH when I was 7 years old. So it's always a treat. The drive, passion and blazing beauty of sound that Chineke and Edusei brought it warmed us from head to foot and even if I sometimes missed perhaps an earthier, wilder, more mystical-magical quality in it, each bar nevertheless had its thrills. The audience clapped between movements, a few people went out or came in, and you know something? It was fine.

It does seem extraordinary, of course, that in proud multi-cultural London, in the 21st century, it still has to be proved that a BME orchestra can a) exist and b) play every bit as well as anyone else. But if that is what it takes to wake people up, make them see, think and respond, then that's what it takes. We have to do what it takes. And it's fabulous, and it's working.

Above all, this concert showed us all what absolute rubbish it is to think that music could be anything but for everybody. All these divisions - race, colour, creed, nationality, "relevance" - are imposed by us, not by the music, and do nothing but limit people. Music transcends the lot.

Bravi, Chineke! Brava, Chi-chi! And bravo, Sheku - we will be seeing much, much more of you.

When thinking tanks

A recent Twitter exchange about the number of music blogs that have thrown in the towel got me thinking about why. I know I'm not posting at quite the rate I was in e.g. 07-08. But things change: in the world, in the virtual world and in yourself. In 2004, when I launched JDCMB on a whim, many other blogs were starting up. We were full of optimism: the Internet was a brave new world and we were excited about trying to make something wonderful out of it.

Unfortunately we reckoned without the pernicious effects of two vital points: 1. Anonymity, 2. Giving Things Away For Free. Twelve years on, the first can make people's lives a misery. It has contributed to the extreme polarising and poisoning of public debate, all the way from the comments "below the line" to presidential elections. The second is threatening our ability to make a living. And we have to face up to the fact that we've contributed to this ourselves, simply because it is so thrilling to be able to reach the reader right away, at the touch of one button. That hurts.

So what is stopping us blogging?
1. Trolls. I switched off the comments boxes a long time ago. Luckily we can have good discussions on Facebook, where people have to say who they really are.
2. Disillusion. Big one, as you'll see above.
3. Priorities. Big one too. I'm 12 years older than I was and, to coin a phrase, I'm looking at work-life balance.
4. Time. There's ever less of it.
5. Making a living. Necessary. I rather envy those older writers who have the luxuries of time and, I hope, a pension.
6. Anxiety, stress and what's now sometimes termed "overwhelm". Modern ailments, but real.
7. Watching your profession, which was thriving and perfectly viable when you went into it 25-30 years ago, shrinking around us year by year. (See 6.)
8. Brexit. WT actual F? (See 6.)
9. Rise of fascistic leanings in countries far and near. (See 6.)
10. Wanting to do something that lasts, in an ephemeral world. Blogging is very ephemeral. (It's also addictive, so probably won't go away entirely.)

If the blogosphere were a street of cafes, I guess mine would be the one that's been around for longer than some others, but maybe hasn't been painted for a few years. There's a fence outside and signs saying Beware of the Cats. There's a bookshop, magazines to leaf through, and a noticeboard about our concerts. I'm not open all hours; just a few days a week. But core customers come back because they like the ambience and the food. If I'm cooking, I try to create nourishing, organic fare. The cafe hasn't been forced out by the big chains, the high-sugar model, or the IEDs occasionally left under the windows, because it and its customers are cool about keeping on doing their own thing and not sweating the small stuff too often. Beyond the fence, as some neighbours close down, others move in with new recipes and interesting, fresh flavours.

In the musical blogosphere, matters have evolved. Our expectations perhaps need reassessing, since the discourse tends to go round and round in circles. For example, we know that classical music is not by nature "elitist" - after all, that word was scarcely used in musical contexts before the late 20th century - but everyone has a different explanation for problems arising in this sphere and many have agendas of their own to explore. No one area has a monopoly on needing to be "fixed"; everything is related; there aren't any simple solutions. Classracegendereconomicstalentslogpushyparentseducationschoolscashgovernmentamateursculturedifferencesplaygroundbulliesclothingclappingmobilephonestvcrispsdrinkssnobberyinvertedsnobberyhallscarparkspromsstreaming, and much more, all exist at once. What's really needed - to explore the whole lot together in real depth, in the context of the big, exciting, messy collisions of contemporary society - requires not so much a blog as a book around the length of the Chilcot Report.

Sometimes the discourse does make an effect. Today The Observer declared that there are plenty of women conductors around and that to suggest otherwise is an outdated view. (I'm not entirely convinced the problem is definitely fixed now, forever, and forever more, but we've certainly gone a good way.) It's a fine example of a case in which yelling loudly has helped to do some good: waking people up, making them think, see, then do something.

But meanwhile, certain other powerful ideals - music for peace, music for social change - haven't worked quite so well. Music is great, but it demonstrably does not bring actual peace. Music can keep kids off the streets in challenging places; so can sport and good schooling. Music can do wonderful things for young people's development, powers of concentration and school results; yet governments still don't want to give it adequate support and encouragement, despite all its benefits. From the other side, the behaviour of certain members of the profession can occasionally leave you wondering whether the benefits of musical study really are all that substantial. Some musicians I know are among the most excellent human beings in the world. Others aren't. That's true of many other professions as well.

Yet while we argue, the one thing that doesn't need to be fixed is the music itself; it just goes on being wonderful, and more and more fabulous musicians keep emerging into the light. Perhaps we just need to shut up and listen to some.

A novel approach...

Very grateful to the excellent Andrew Morris at The Devil's Trill blog for doing this e-interview with me about the umms and ahhs of turning history into fiction. It was interesting to try and articulate my thoughts on the process, as I hadn't particularly tried before. The questions we explored include: where do you start? And where do you stop? What's comfortable and what isn't? And how did a Swedish-French supermodel prove that it was time to stop the research?

http://devilstrillblog.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/the-novel-approach-to-history-ghost.html

If you're a subscriber waiting for your copy of Ghost Variations, we're nearly there. Just a teensy bit of last-minute snagging today. It will be with you soon! Everyone else will be able to pre-order the paperback or e-book from online bookstores sometime next week and general release is slated for 20 September.

Please come to St Mary's Perivale on 7 September!

Ghost Variations is nearly here. Just three more days, I believe....and next week my performance partners David Le Page and Viv McLean - an absolute knockout of a violin and piano duo - join me for the first of four concerts we are giving through the autumn based upon 'Ghost Variations'. I narrate, they play the appropriate music and thus we tell the story together. 

The first concert is on Wednesday 7 September at the exquisite 12th-century church of St Mary's, Perivale, tucked away behind the A40. It's an intimate venue with a magical atmosphere and a marvellous concert series. Admission is free and seats unreserved (though you may make a donation at the end). 

The "pilot" for the project took place, to a very warm reception, at the Hungarian Cultural Centre back in March and  we have now extended it a little and added an interval, creating a full-evening recital. Incidentally, there will also be a shorter version, available for coffee concerts in the new year. Every piece has been chosen with forensic care to match the story, its protagonists and the necessary atmosphere.

(Above, Dave plays at the premiere...)

You'll have the chance to hear music written for Jelly d'Arányi - Ravel's Tzigane; Brahms Hungarian Dances arranged by her great-uncle, Joseph Joachim; music she played a great deal, such as the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto; a piece by Frederick Septimus Kelly, whom she had hoped to marry before he was killed at the Somme; 'Hejre Kati' arranged by her teacher, Jeno Hubay; and, of course, plenty of Schumann, including a juxtaposition that makes clear how close the slow movement of the Violin Concerto is to the theme of the Geistervariationen. Songs from the Thirties will welcome the assembling audience, creating the ambience in which the story unfolded (and I'm on the lookout for some vintage clothing...).

More details of the concert and how to get to St Mary's are available at the website: http://www.st-marys-perivale.org.uk/events-2016-09-07.shtml

PLEASE COME ALONG AND JOIN US!

Further performances very soon...watch this space...