…till the cows come home

before proceeding please listen:

I’ve been told that England seems to be mostly in eternal drizzle to the point I thought it true. This place I’ve known for less than a week now has welcomed me with a warmth all too familiar. Did I bring that warm weather with me? This question incessantly plays in my head, perhaps a delirium induced by several layers of clothing in weather nearing the twenties. But a few days passed and I looked at the clothes I had brought in worry. Could my plans of being the winter marshmallow wrapped in jumpers been only fantasy? In this somewhat balmy weather I make my way down the narrow roads, greeting the cattle, sheep, goats, horses, badgers and birds as I walk to The Flute Studio.  Trevor speaks about the world of flutes and the beauty of music. He places manuscript on our stands and ponders over his collection of hundreds of discs, selects one and it plays. Listening to Les barricades mystérieuses has become the bookends of days at the studio. Calling it a ritual wouldn’t be an understatement. In this landscape few planes fly overhead and cars drive past infrequently, perhaps the distant mooing, tractors and the flute playing of my housemate Lindsay are the sounds that I hear most. In the comfort of the studio and this little farm stead across from St James the Great, I pick up my flute and play.  

I’ve arrived in Elmsted “an area of outstanding natural beauty” in the Kent downs, this is where I will be residing for the next six months. Elmsted was given its name in the time of Saxon, Elm referring to its abundance of elm trees and Sted meaning place derived from the Saxon word ‘stede’. It is a place of beauty and history. I walk down roads sided by hedges, sometimes you can find wild berries. The Anglican Church across the road is dedicated to St James the Great and dates back to the 11th century. It is always open and seems like it will be a beautiful acoustic for practice and recording. There are headstones so old they have become sculpture at the mercy of the Elmsted elements of weathering. One can barely make out an a name nor epitaph.

Our days at the studio have begun with high expectations and great intensity. Technical exercises are propelled at us one after the other and are expected to be absorbed into memory and therefore become automatic. Trevor seems to encourage the cacophony of all of us searching around lost in a tempest of tonalities and deciphering patterns he demonstrates to us by ear. After all: “you wouldn’t be doing these exercises if you can do them perfectly.” A week at The Studio is made up of classes on Monday (Technique and Studies) and Thursdays (Repertoire and excerpts) and the rest of the time is spent in personal practice of a specific regimen and research projects on the history of the flute up to 1700.  Trevor also takes us shopping once a week, a day I like to call “Tesco Tuesdays” and little excursions to neighbouring towns, Wye, Ashford and London. So far, I’ve met some of the community who seem to welcome Trevor’s students with great excitement. Last Friday, we were invited to play a game called Whist, a classic English trick-taking card game popular in the 18th and 19th centuries.  We were taught how to play only days before by Paul and his son Robbie who are friends of Trevor. It was quite a remarkable experience as during a game of Whist there is such energy of concentration and barely any sound other than the tapping of cards and the occasional apology. We are also preparing to have masterclasses Rachel Brown, Michael Cox and Juliet Edwards, among others. This week, we will go to London to hear a masterclass with Emily Beynon, the principal flute of the Royal Concertgebouw. In December, we will be playing in two concerts in the local area which I am particularly excited for. Otherwise, our time here is spent inside the house at Elmsted Court practicing all day with walks around the neighbourhood to freshen the mind (I’ve even tried running again!).

So far the house is inhabited by Lindsay and myself. Lindsay is also a flutist/composer who also shares the ability to talk to for hours on end. She also happens to be allergic to soy which means I can no longer be lazy and buy those frozen vegan meals made with soy protein (this is probably for the best!). It’s an interesting dynamic to be living with another flute player. Prior to this course I often speculated about what it would be like. Would it be competitive? Beneficial? Or even a little overwhelming? It’s only been 2 weeks but I can say it is certainly beneficial and lots of fun. Often, we both will practice sight-reading duets and do technique together. It is a helpful exercise to do this as there is pressure to keep up with each other but also you have another person’s perspective rather solely personal practice analysis.

I’ve certainly been busy with adjusting myself to this new environment and regime practice regime so I apologise for the delayed post and not uploading my recital footage yet. I will endeavour to do this tonight and it will be up on my Youtube soon.

Finally, I wanted extend my heartfelt gratitude to those who donated to my Australian Cultural Fund page to support my ongoing project and production costs at the flute studio. Thank you my lovely friends, family and colleagues. To Carlin Hara-Crockford, Judy Brandl, Robert Lantos, Michael Hannan, Daniel Fawcett, Natalie Williams and the mysterious but generous ‘anonymous’. The fund is open for another four days and all donations over $2 are tax deductible! https://australianculturalfund.org.au/projects/the-flute-studio/

Before I sign off, a few more words. I am quite outspoken about how I feel about “dead white guy composers” and consciously make decisions to program wonderful music that written recently especially my those under-represented. I am not iconoclastic, and I must confess I used to come across as such in my first year at the Conservatorium. However, Contemporary music has always made more contextual sense to me, I think it’s because it’s the world I live in. I don’t live in a palace or go to Church, or get invited to the dinner parties dinner parties of the aristocracy, nor have I lived through any world wars. But it’s a world that many composers did live and work in. This course delves into a lot of repertoire I have never really gelled with. I do of course appreciate and love listening to diverse styles of music but really feel most comfortable in contemporary as most of you know. This course for me is about becoming more versatile and feeling comfortable across all expressions of the musical language. I want to be able to express more honestly how I feel towards something that may be distant from our present time but still translatable to now. It is possible, and I have seen it done, that we are able to communicate our current landscape where we face environmental, social and political crisis’ though music because sound, vibration is what makes up our world and is innately human.

Something old but beautiful that I was reminded of by Trevor:

For flute players and others who might be interested this is the list of repertoire and excerpts for the studio:

Repertoire
Debussy: Syrinx
Honegger: Danse de la Chèvre
Enesco: Cantabile e Presto
JS Bach: E minor Sonata BWV 1034
JS Bach: E major Sonata BWV 1035
Marais: La Follia d’Espagne. (Flute and piano arrangement in G minor)
Schubert: Introduction and Variations on “Trockne Blumen” D. 802
Mozart: Concerto in D major
Mozart: Andante in C
Telemann: Fantasies 2, 4 7, 10.
Dutilleux Sonatine
Berkeley: Sonatine
Widor: Suite
Telemann: Sonatas in F Minor
Telemann: Sonata in F Major
Messiaen. Le Merle Noir
CPE Bach: Solo in a minor
Roussel: Joueurs de Flûte
Doppler: Aris Valaques
Müthel: Sonata in D major

Excerpts
Bach: Aus Liebe: St Matthew Passion
Gluck: Dance of the Blessed Spirits from Orfeo
Mozart: Magic Flute
Beethoven: Leonore No 3
Rossini: William Tell Overture
Schubert: Symphony No 5 in Bb: 3 movts
Mendelssohn: Scherzo
Saint-Saëns: Carnival of the Animals: Voliere
Dvorak: Symphony No 8
Rimsky Korsakov: Capriccio Espagnol
Prokofiev: Classical Symphony
Ravel: Daphnis and Chloe
Prokofiev: Peter and the Wolf
Bach: Domine Deus from B minor Mass.
Brahms: 4th Symphony

If you hadn’t already established it, these are all dead white guys… but they have an  important place the flute repertory.