Greetings from a hot and humid Taiwan. I'm here with the wind quintet Quintessence. Tonight they start their sixteen date tour of this island with a British Council reception followed by a concert in a converted wine cellar.....brilliant programming by all concerned! I will post reports as we go so watch out!

Backtracking 6 thousand miles or 48 hours, the Steve Martland Band's performance at Turner Sims went with a bang. The audiences response was brilliant (25 cd's sold) with others wanting more. A managerial mistake as I only took one box, my excuse was that I also played taxi for our Marimba dep. Sam Walton (who was a star performer on the night.) My cars a VW polo.... The local reviewer wasn't so impressed, it seems he couldn't disconnect his pen from expecting an evening of Brahms romantic melodies... who cares, the proof of the pudding was left to the audience, a shame the reviewer had already beat a hasty retreat.

A belated happy birthday to Steve Martland (October 10th) my excuse to say it's my birthday today, which will be spent relaxing to Quintessences renditions of Joe Duddell's endgame and more fittingly, Steve Martland's arrangement of, 'As Time Goes By'.

Best wishes
Chris
posted by Chris at 8:09 AM

What a frantic/brilliant week. The Steve Martland Band plus extras (including the Delta Sax Qt.) started off the Andriessen Festival on the London's southbank last Friday. What a response! The guardian reviewer Andrew Clements seemed to have his own axe to grind alas, fuming that the concert should have been 'all Andriessen's music'. How typical and shallow minded, if he'd have attended the film prior to the concert he'd have had an excellent insight to what Andriessen is about..... challenges, supporting others , going against the steriotypes. Andriessen's humble nature and support was thus re- Friday. I'll open a Festival about my music with the music of one of my 'inspired' pupils, Steve Martland. Unselfish and groundbreaking. Mr Clement's missed the point, but that's to be expected in the political British music world. Today's review of the London Sinfonietta's Sunday evening concert even had the cheek to say that this was the real start (don't we all love the Sinfonietta!?). I look forward to seeing a Festival directed by the broad minded Clements! Would he dare? PS, I also learnt that Mr Clements doesn't like Graham Fitkin's music either..... sorry Graham, you can't please everyone.

The other pupbic responses have been amazing, I'll post some of these up later this week.

Today the SMB are Southampton bound, reports to follow.

Quintessence starts their Taiwan tour on October 12th. I'll be posting a running report as we go, so keep watching this space.

Thanks for reading. Best wishes, Chris Caldwell

posted by Chris at 10:54 AM