It seems an age ago that May gave way to June. There are months you have where you can only remember the vaguest of events, months that pass you by with no keepsake memory whatsoever. March is usually like this, although it wasn’t this year. Then there are months, like June has turned out to be, where you are not sure how so much has been crammed into such a short space of time.
So here’s how it worked out:
1st June: Concert in Thurso by Michael Collins and Michael McHale.
5th June: Got seriously sidetracked while practising pieces for the impending festival and started composing.
8th June: Completed composition
10th-14th June: Caithness Music Festival
17th June: Post Festival Concert
21st June: ABRSM exams
As well as all this, my 9:30-8:30 music teaching continued through the first and third week.
At this point, I have to reiterate how much I love my job. Working with budding musicians, some of whom have the musical ability to soar, should they choose to, is the most rewarding role I can imagine. It is true that, on the evening of the 10th June at 11:00pm, I was having to recite this mantra over and over again to try and make myself believe it after a 9:45 start in the morning, but it is all part and parcel of the job.
So June started off on a definite high note. A much respected Caithness musician and friend, Robert Fields, was having a world première of some of his compositions by premier musicians: Clarinettist Michael Collins and Pianist Michael McHale. Prior to the concert there were, of course, the comments made about whether the clarinettist would bear any resemblance to Liam Neeson (who in actual fact bore very little resemblance to the historical figure of Michael Collins who he was portraying), but I could not find any similarities!
© North Highland Connections
If I could relive that evening again, I most certainly would. I’ve not been privileged to have seen such brilliant performances as these for a very long time and it is a credit to North Highland Connections that they could bring such world class musicians to our little corner of the earth. My only regret was that I had not managed to persuade a few of my piano pupils to go and watch, I’m certain they would have gained a great deal by watching Michael McHale play. But it was a learning curve for me, too. I have never been a clarinet fan, but hearing Michael Collins play, it sounded like a completely different instrument. Not tempted to pick it up though! I can occasionally manage a tuneful squeak on a reed instrument but that is as far as my wind playing ability stretches. I’ll stick to the ‘cello, thank you very much!
I bought a CD of each artist, the true testimony of how highly I regarded them! And have listened repeatedly to The Irish Piano, and some of the tracks have even been promoted to our inspirational play list on Spotify, keeping me company while I write.
But despite the musical mastery of 1st June, the month had to roll on. I’m someone who is, once inspired, impossible to break from my idea. So when, whilst practising the piano accompaniment for one of my pupils, I got sidetracked by a six note melody I became like Alice following the White Rabbit down the rabbit hole and could not get to the manuscript paper fast enough! Three late nights and sneaky free minutes here and there and I’d finally produced a piece of music I was actually pleased with! This was a particularly big thing for me as I’ve never composed a piano piece, and the last song I wrote and was pleased with was while the year was still a single digit! I owed it entirely to the inspiring piano playing from the concert the week before; it was my thank you!
All things considered, the late nights were not so good in the build up to the festival, though! But my pupils achieved an impressive 14 firsts, and I was proud of every single one of them, not only the winners but all of those who plucked up the courage to perform in front of their audience. The next stop from here will be our October concert, raising money for the RNLI and giving all of my students the chance to perform to an audience once more. But the festival was gruelling at times and during the harp recital I was forced to prise my eyelids open to stay awake! Harps are great, but not at the end of a 12 hour day! The festival certainly taught me that the music community is a small world, however, when our adjudicator began telling the audience that he had been Michael McHale’s teacher - crazy small world story for the Caithness community!
I do keep thinking back to the children’s choir performing The Seven Little Kids and thinking about how healthy and safety would have had a field day with us: shutting kids in cardboard boxes, chasing each other around a stage… Still the children enjoyed doing it and they performed so well that they were asked back on the following Monday evening to perform three of their pieces again as well as one of them performing a solo. After the antics of the festival week - including one day where we had only 20 minutes to run home, eat dinner and then be back again - a part of me had hoped to have had a bit of time off before continuing with the hectic whirl of musical performance, but they once again did me proud and the feedback that I’ve received has all been completely to their favour.
I was a proud music teacher that week! I really do have the best job ever!
On the 21st, the height of summer, came exam day, with drama it has to be said! A car crash at the gateway to one of my pupils’ house was not a great start to her climb up the exam ladder. But despite that, I am sure I was more nervous than she was when I walked into the exam room. Quick calculation said it was 12 years since I last went into an ABRSM exam and I almost felt like it was me who was sitting the test.
Another cause for me to love my job and be full of pride in my pupils!
So on 22nd I had my first free Saturday since January and began looking forward to our holiday in Orkney. Its always great to head back to revisit those places that were second nature to me when I was a child, and to monitor, with varying degrees of approval, those changes that have occurred there. I'm sure that June will remain a music filled month until it gives way to July, and I’m equally certain that there will be no musicless days in July! But, despite being almost musicked out, I have no doubt it would be a dull day indeed to have no echoes of melodies, and not just from instruments. I love the tune of the gulls crying and the leaves on the trees brushing against each other in the summer wind; those remote whirs of lawnmowers that speak to me of sunny days in childhood; waves lapping or crashing and the contented sound of busy bees to-ing and fro-ing as they industriously gather their nectar.
So I’ll leave you with two quotes that make up my forum signature:
“Music is Forever” (Paul Simon)
And
“Music is well said to be the speech of angels” (Thomas Carlyle)
I think they sum up the role of music rather well. At least how I view it. There’s music everywhere, June has taught me to take time and appreciate it, I’d prompt you to do the same…
...Oh, and did I mention that I love my job?!
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