Be My Guest

A Day In The Life: Chris Gray

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An occasional series featuring guest posts and contributions. 

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This post comes from Music Scholar and first-year  Architecture student, Chris Gray. Chris plays tuba in the University Symphony Orchestra and Concert Band, and sings bass with the Chamber Choir and the Cecilian Choir.  Chris has previously been Principal Tuba with the Wessex Youth Orchestra for three years, and lives in Poole in Dorset.  He recently played in the University’s Colyer-Fergusson Concert in Canterbury Cathedral. 

Chris Gray
Top brass: Chris Gray.

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Bleurgh. 9am. Is all this really worth it? 

Saturday 13th March. Eliot College music store room. Day of the Cathedral Concert. 

I guess this was it, the start of a long day, culminating, hopefully, in a wondrous concert. That last sentence is tinged with doubt, not because I have no faith in my fellow musicians, but because on the day of a big concert like this, doubts do start creeping up into your mind about your own musical ability, and being a tuba player, you have good reason to!  Hitting the top A in the Strauss, playing the octave jumps in the Poulenc…. 

I started off the day doing what I am useful for, moving heavy percussion. We successfully threaded the timpani through a tightly-packed store room and through the bowels of Eliot College. I took great delight in marching with the bass drum, banging it loudly informing the residents of Eliot College of my impending heroics lifting timpani into the idling van outside…. more like trying to wake everyone up to let them share the beautiful crisp spring morning with me and the other musicians up at this torrid hour. 

A very nervous journey in the percussion van from campus to the Cathedral ensued with glances back at the precious cargo every time we heard a bang or crash. We arrived in the Cathedral Precincts and proceeded to unload the van, carrying the percussion down a small make-shift corridor, through the South door and into the Nave. 

The Cathedral was already a hive of activity with vergers, members of the chorus and various students and staff from the University milling around tending to their jobs. Once we had located and set up the timps, we started on the chairs for the orchestra under the expert guidance of Sophie and Dan Wheeler. I had heard that fitting the orchestra in between the towering columns of the Nave was a difficult job with no room for error. 

We started with the timpani, then the woodwind making sure that the principals of the woodwind section were directly in front of the podium….. one of Sophie’s pet hates. Then the brass in two rows so the lower brass could deafen the trumpets who in turn could inflict ear-splitting terror on the violas. The strings worked out nicely and with the podium for the conductor and soloists in the correct place, in accordance with Health & Safety providing a 1.4m gap around all obstacles, it was done. I stepped back…. plenty of room, don’t know what the fuss was about!! 

Then I saw where I would be sitting….. 

Words cannot describe the predicament I would be in. Stuck behind a pillar, wedged between a desk of the double basses and the timpani, I dreaded the moment when ‘the listener is catapulted headlong into a torrid allegro’…. (Sue’s programme notes). I thought I would never get the downbeat in the right place…. What if I came in a bar early….? 

Then the long and arduous process of seating the chorus took place. To liken it to a familiar occurrence would be like watching the start of the London Marathon, yet the athletes were tethered down and then when they did break free of their reigns, they would be running on treacle… 

Rehearsals started dead-on 11.15am…. yeah right, on days like this you can bet your house that they don’t, it’s something about a large group of chattering people in a confined space that seems to make you lose track of time. 

Rehearsals began with the Szymanowski, so time for coffee for the lower brass players or in my case a lovely white Malteser milkshake! One thing I noticed whilst watching the rehearsals, was the length of acoustic in the cathedral. 3 seconds! How we would pull of the Strauss or the delicacy of the Poulenc was beyond me, but somehow in this setting, the pieces seemed to fit and gel with the architecture of the building. Good choice of programme, I’d say! 

Then came my moment of glory, my incredibly important part in the Poulenc, all 33 bars of it! I do like the piece, I just find it hard to look past the part I’m playing and listen to the overall work, listening to it, here, now, in the comfort of my own room you can appreciate the ‘juxtaposing of thematic cells’… (Sue’s programme notes again). 

Poulenc done. 15 minutes for lunch…. yes I know, that is how committed we musicians are! 

Onto the Strauss which does have a very nice tuba part. I enjoyed playing this, although the droves of Cathedral visitors milling around during rehearsal not only annoyed Sue but most of the orchestra as well. Nothing like the musical setting of the transfiguration of a dying artist to the backdrop of chattering schoolchildren. Strauss almost done, but no, we need to rehearse the last 6 bars over and over to try and kill the brass… Then onto the Ravel (sorry not much to say about this, I went outside). 

2.15 came, relaxed for the rest of the day. DJ – check. Time to go!!! 

7.30 concert time. Well not for me, I watched from the sideline as Ravel and Szymanowski didn’t want me in their music. It was interesting to watch people prepare for the concert the inexperienced paced… the experienced laughed and joked about the inexperienced. First half finished after amazing performances from orchestra, choir and soloists. 

Then came the second half and it was time to play some Strauss. I kept fiddling with my bowtie, asking people if it looked right or not, but in the end it didn’t matter because I was sat behind a pillar! The Strauss went well, and it was amazing to be part of such a large orchestra, now, after weeks of rehearsals, playing as such a coherent group of musicians as one huge music making machine churning out bar after bar of absolute perfection. Sorry, got carried away in the music there… it happens. Then the Poulenc, the wonderful individuality of this underrated French composer coupled with the skills of Sue bringing chorus, orchestra and soloist into a blazing finale. Blazing finale meaning fading away into nothing! 

The audience loved it, the Cathedral had been filled with vocalists and instrumentalists alike, and we did ourselves proud. On the drive back to campus from the Cathedral, I asked myself the same question that I asked myself that morning, some 13.5 hours ago… 

Was it worth it? 

Oh yes.. most definitely.

Was It Good For You ?

Was It Good For You: Gerard Collett

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Gerard Collett
Hitting the right notes: Gerard Collett. Photo: Aubrey Kurlansky.

Beginning a new series profiling musical alumni of the University of Kent. This week, we feature Gerard Collett, who recently returned as a soloist in the annual Colyer-Fergusson Cathedral Concert earlier this month. 

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When were you at Kent ? 

I studied at Kent from 2001 to 2004.   

What subject did you study ? 

I took a combined degree in Philosophy and History and Theory of Art.   

What occupation are you now engaged in ? 

I am an opera singer.   

How were you involved in music whilst at Kent ?  

I conducted the University Chamber Choir, and sang in the University Chorus, and also sang in the Summer Opera Projects.   

What did you gain from your University music experience, and has this helped you in any way since leaving Kent ?  

The value of working as part of a company, whether it was the Chamber Choir or Chorus, or as part of the Music Society in general, and the shared sense of satisfaction of a job well done are lessons I gained from my time at the university.  There is no better or more beneficial contrast for a student who must sit in front of a computer or in the library writing essays, than to make music with other students and lecturers, usually from different disciplines.  Music is a great leveller – we are all created equally, and so can be equally creative.  I strongly believe that.  It can also be great fun!   

What was your most memorable musical experience at Kent ? 

 I couldn’t pick one, but my most memorable and happy musical experiences were rehearsing for the opera productions.  I think there is something special about the Kentish Summer, there was a real end-of-year-joy in our summer productions.  A close second would be a well deserved beer in Simple Simons’ – (now ‘The Parrot’)… which is a musical experience of sorts…   

What would you say to current musical students at the University? 

 To current musical students I would definitely say, 

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If you’re an alumni and would like to be featured, get in touch via the Music Department website: we’d love to hear from you!

Notes on Music

Announcing the new Friday Feature

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This Friday sees ‘Music Matters’ launch its new series profiling musical alumni from the University of Kent.

Musical students
Making music.

Each week will feature an interview with former students who were involved in music-making at the University, from soloists to orchestral-players, Chamber Choir members and conductors, and Music Society committee members.

It promises to be an exciting odyssey, and a chance to visit some old friends.

Make sure your RSS feeders are primed to deliver them direct to your desktop by clicking on the blue feed-link at the top of your screen!

Jazz Booth

The Slippery Eel: Jazz and the hunger for re-invention.

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What is it about jazz that attracts listeners so much ? What is the eternal appeal of jazz music ? Is it it the subversiveness, the way jazz undermines so-called ‘rules’ of classical music of related keys, permitted harmonies, ‘blue’ notes;’ its creativity, its reliance on spontaneous composition at the moment of improvisation; its rhythmic drive ? Or something of all of these ?

For me, the great allure of jazz is its constant hunger for new things: like a fire, jazz is forever consuming other forms in its path in its endless quest to re-invent itself. 

As jazz moved out of the Swing era into Bebop, it began to develop more advanced melodic, harmonic and rhythmic principles. An apocryphal legend has it that jazz musicians deliberately created more rhythmically and melodically complicated pieces to stop random amateurs being able to sit in on their sets and churn out the same old array of standards and popular tunes that were becoming dull.  Out came the effortless lyrical invention of Charlie Parker, the fierce muted trumpet tones of Dizzy Gillespie, both of them working through the rapid chord changes in each bar with supreme skill.

Never content to sit and contemplate its own achievements, jazz promptly reacted against its own complexity in Bebop and stepped back to Cool, a return to modality and simplicity in both melody and harmony. Kind of Blue stands as a laid-back testimony to the new austerity in jazz; So What features very few chords, a skeletal introduction from Bill Evans on the piano; jazz cocks its hat over its eyes and sits back with a cigarette dangling from its lips.

Jazz has always been open to embracing new technologies; think of the electric keyboards in the 1960’s with Herbie Hancock (who first played electric keyboard on the Davis album Filles de Kilimanjaro), or the wah-wah pedals and amplification effects in the 1970’s with British trumpeter Ian Carr’s ‘Nucleus,’ or the sampling keyboards in the 1980’s with Hancock and Joe Zawinul. Jazz looked at the lifestyle of rock music in the 60’s and decided it wanted some of the action that was being handed out to Sly and the Family Stone and Jimi Hendrix; jazz’s infatuation with the glamour and popularity of rock musicians (not to mention the large fees rock musicians could command) led eventually to the cultural epiphany in the famous Isle of Wight festival, where both Hendrix and Davis played (though alas not together), immortalised in Murray Lerner’s film ‘Miles Electric: A Different Kind of Blue.’

Jazz has also been willing to embracing new musical cultures: Indian music in the 70’s with the dizzying technical displays of John Mclaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra or the more thoughtful Indo-Jazz fusion of Joe Meyer and John Harriott; or African harmonies and rhythms in Coltrane’s solo career; Brazilian and Spanish influences in the music of Chick Corea’s fusion band Return to Forever.

Then there’s the hard-nosed funk-rock and jungle-infused music of one-time Miles Davis guitarist, John Scofield, or the experiments with hip-hop beats and DJ’s on decks in the music of Courtney Pine or (more latterly) Norwegian trumpeter Nils Petter Molvaer. Reactionaries like Wynton Marsalis may preach the supremacy of swing – and swing in a variety of time-signatures, sure, but it’s still swing – but jazz will always hunger for new elements, for the cyclical rhythms of Indian ragas or the polyrhythms of African drumming. (In Marsalis’ defence, though, he’s technically untouchable  and swings like a demon.)

Like a slippery eel, just when you think you’ve grasped jazz, it scoots away from you and goes somewhere you hadn’t expected. Pronounced dead or locked in a dead-end by an endless succession of worthy critics for many years, jazz will still always forge a new dynamic, a different and exciting path.

Come to the next Jazz @ 5 in the Gulbenkian Foyer on Wednesday March 25th and hear some of these elements for yourself.

So What is there, if anything, that appeals to you about jazz ?

Notes on Music

Exposition…

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As this blog gets underway, it seems useful to begin by reflecting on what it is about collective music-making that is so crucial both to members of the University community, as well as to the human experience in general.

The larger musical activities that occur on campus here – Chorus, Orchestra, Concert Band and Big Band – are events at which people from different aspects of the university’s community can participate on an equal footing: an English professor sits next to a first-year undergraduate reading Maths; a member of the IT department rehearses with a final-year Drama student; or a departmental administrator sings alongside a postgraduate student reading Law. The opportunity to rub shoulders with, and participate alongside, others from the same community is a great leveller, and also widens one’s social circle. The sense of a collective discipline – attending regularly, rehearsing, performing – shared by so many, whatever their occupation or background, and often one that is outside of one’s profession, gives communal music-making its great appeal.

The University Concert Band, conducted by Ian Swatman

For a short time, whether in rehearsals at the end of the day, or during a performance in Canterbury Cathedral, everyone achieves the same goal as a result of sharing the same rehearsal and performance experience that led up to it. What you do during the day makes no difference: you are in the same boat as all the other performers around you, striving to create a musical event  that will move both yourselves and the audience, working as part of a larger team. For those working in an office or at a quiet table in the library the rest of the day, these moments offer a chance to get away from the solitary and join in with a communal activity – often creating a lot of noise!

University Chorus and Orchestra
University Chorus and Orchestra in Canterbury Cathedral: Photo: Robert Berry

Apart from solo practice and recitals, music is inherently a social activity: it demands that people work together, share the same experience, support one another: perhaps most importantly, that they make mistakes together in an environment where mistakes are expected and assistance is offered in rectifying them (at least, in early rehearsals!). Few other undertakings offer so supportive an environment in which to work. And events such as WorldFest are a celebration of this, of the collective community coming together to celebrate its unity in working and performing.

I sat in the midst of the Chorus on Sunday’s rehearsal, bolstering the tenors (who this term really don’t need any support – how often can one say that about a tenor section ?!) – and was immersed in the sound-world of Poulenc’s Gloria and Szymanowski’s Stabat Mater; along with everyone else: counting bars’ rests like mad, frantically pitching the note for the next tenor entry from a fleeting clarinet solo or cello line, not being able to see the conductor, singing the wrong text: it was hard work, and terrific fun. I can say that now after a period of twelve or so hours from the tranquillity of the office: it didn’t feel quite like that at the time!

So, take a moment reflect on your own ensemble music-making experiences: what does making music mean to you ?