Tony Haynes on GU’s first gig of 2011, a great start to the touring year…
What a great way to start the touring year! A clear, crisp sunny winter’s day, little traffic to speak of on the M1 and M6, arrival in Lancaster half-an-hour ahead of schedule, a great welcome from the promoters and above all a wonderfully enthusiastic audience for the show. So spirits were high, everyone in the van delighted to be on the road again, even a little nostalgic, recalling some of the great touring experiences of the past – it seems inconceivable now to spend two weeks touring the Scottish highlands and islands with 18 musicians, as we did several times in the 1990s…
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Some photos from pre-show soundcheck!
In spite of very little rehearsal – or more probably because of it! – this performance of Bengal Tiger, Shanghai Dragon was one of the most spontaneous, lively and varied that we’ve done. It was also a pleasure to work with a terrific Chinese flute player Rui Jun Hu, standing in for our regular gu zheng player Zhu Meng Xiao. (Zhu will be back for Colchester and the Vortex in March, but at the Oxford Playhouse in April, I hope we’ll feature both her and Rui Jun together.)
Lucy, Balu, Yousuf and myself gave a short presentation before the show, talking about the music and the varied backgrounds of Grand Union musicians, and fielded some interesting questions from the audience. To my astonishment, one of the questioners turned out to be someone I knew many years ago when I was doing a post-graduate degree at Nottingham, Hermione Potts, who I remembered as a very accomplished clarinet player. After my year at the University, I had the luckiest break of my life – becoming Musical Director at the Playhouse – which taught me the basics of what I’ve done ever since, through writing music and songs for most of the shows. For performances – we played several shows at a time in repertoire, always with live music – I was able to call on some fine local musicians and students like Hermione.
The Grand Union Orchestra came a lot later, and has developed in a rather different direction, of course, but all this experience has come in handy from time to time on other projects – and none more than the current commission for the BBC Concert Orchestra! I managed to finish the orchestra music a few days after getting back from Lancaster, and delivered the scores to the BBC for printing and binding the parts. Now it’s a matter of rehearsing with the GU musicians and singers before both ensembles get together, but more of that next week…
Tony
