Saturday, May 2, 2009

Sunderland ON Workshop

Sunderland is a small, very charming Ontario town located approximately 100 km northeast of Toronto. We were pleased to have both the use of the Sunderland Town Hall and the enthusiastic support of the local community. This day-long event was organised by Kim Schneider (http://www.myc.com/teacher/KSchneider) ably supported by her husband and children.

Photo 1: Kim Schneider and family (with me)

As in Kingston, there were master classes throughout the day – at 9 am, 10 am, 11 am, 2 pm, 3 pm and 4 pm. With quite large class sizes, I had to keep the pace up!

The day started with a string group with piano playing a movement from my Quintet, then some pieces for violin and piano from the Microjazz series. I thought this was a very nice gesture from the local players – starting with a mini-concert of my string music!

I was pleased to see how many teenagers played in the master classes, particularly teenage boys. The fact that students had chosen the pieces themselves meant that there was a good level of understanding of the music from the outset and there were some very good performances indeed, including pieces for piano 6 hands (Microjazz trios) and for violin and piano (Concert Collection for flute, very effectively played on violin) A very good local singer/songwriter, Lauren Maylon (http://www.myspace.com/laurenmalyon) played a great set at the beginning of the Gala. The day proved to be a rich mix stylistically and the capacity audience at the Gala was very enthusiastic.

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