Cubelog

. . . also tomorrow night - starting 6.45 - is initmate~INTIMATE

Maybe go to this before going to Vladmaster . . ?

Info here

Vladmaster tomorrow night, I hope you can make it…
It’s gonna be fun.

Everybody in the audience gets a Viewmaster camera…

No, Not the Gypsy Kings, but The Orchestra with a vengence. As you have no doubt already read and seen, The Maestro Peter Swaffer Reynolds was back. With him, his own special brand of musical madness stroke Art, odd time signatures (anyone for 13/4?), a new Violinist (Simone) And the return of Mr Hopkinson .

Mr Hopkinson’s said quite a bit about this so i’ll be brief. A good turn out

A youthful looking Mark, Adam ‘The Wolfman‘, Leo, Bel, Hugh, Marcus, Mr Hopkinson, Chris, David, Simone, Peter, and yours truely. Some great material born from Peter’s ideas and that 13/4 turned into a smoking little tune with lots of drive and passion (we’re very passionate people us Orchestra types let me tell yew), reminded me of Chris Bowden’s big band stuff.
And despite Peter’s flattery of me, it took me ages to get something to work for it.

Peter unleashed the Accordian and We ended with me playing 4/4 and 5/4 whilst everybody else played 7/8 and 5/4, crazy yes but it somehow worked.

Ch, Cha Ciao for now, Richie Paradise

here i am in san jose which, according to the song, is difficult to find and the weather is just lovely. the sun has been out all day and it is really quite hot.

…heading back tomorrow and looking forward to being back in the uk and heading down to the cube for some live music and catching up with friends.

as you can see i’m getting along well in the land of CA as really can think of very little to say at this point.

SO SEE SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON.

My first Orchestra Cube practice in a few weeks, and Peter’s first in a few months . . . the maestro returned to conduct us with his trademark charismatic conviction. It almost felt like he’d never left except we were in the circle formation that developed in his absence . . .

. . . it’s much more fun in my eyes and ears than trying to conduct yourself ( which I’ve never been able to do properly ) , even though I was often challenged, or should that be baffled (?), by the strange time signature combinations and circular motif suggestions. Meanwhile the “brilliant” Richie Paradise ( (c) Peter Swaffer-Reynolds ) did a great job with the various difficult rhythms.

The main theme seemed to be instilling a sense of structure to allow improvisation to occur within, with a nod to it being palatable, or even seductive, to the potential audience.

There were lots of new faces, to me anyway, and I was sort of sad to have missed the previous practice which was apparently the antithesis of this week’s control with way too many people, not enough amplification and almost no coherent sense of direction - sounds like another kind of, but still, fun to me!