Will Hay

Category: Reviews

  • Streetpianos – A municipal piano for your neighbourhood

    Play me, I'm yours

    What a wonderful idea. Birmingham, Sao Paulo, Sydney and now Bury St. Edmunds have all been the lucky recipients of a number of pianos installed in various public places to encourage artistic expression and communication. I am sure they must have encouraged many reticent pianists to come out of the woodwork.

    Following a recent visit to the streetpianos of Bury St. Edmunds I have uploaded photos and videos of them below. I was quite suprised how well some of the instruments had stood up to the elements and exposure to the public.

    [slideshow id=3]

    Comments encouraged …

  • The Ashgrove (SATB, piano accompaniment)

    Originally arranged for the Waverton Singers’ April concert in 2006, I have just produced an mp3 of this popular welsh folksong to accompany the score on Choralwiki., which is also available for free on Sibelius Music and on my Noteflight Classroom

    The Ash Grove

    [powerpress]

  • The lonely little piano

    The Lonely Little Piano 2nd Edition Front Cover

    One of my first posts on the blog last year, reviewed a story book for piano lovers by Tom Allan, published by Penketh Publications. The book is now in second edition and has an appealing new cover design worthy of mention. 

    “… The latest book from Penketh Publications written by Tom Allan is destined to delight piano lovers aged from 8 to 80.

    “A little blue-and-gold piano was just what Jessica and Jack had always wanted. But as the children grew older they played it less and less. The little piano was lonely – until he was joined by a strange new companion!”

    Available only direct from the publisher, priced £4.99 …”

  • African Elephant Composition by Oliver, age 8

    Oliver

    Oliver showed me his composition today, which I think was pretty good for an 8 year old. This is the first time I have used Noteflight which is a bit like google docs for musical scores; making the score viewable, searchable and printable on the noteflight site and producing an embeddable, printable flash score for websites and blogs.

    It is able to import music xml from other score editors but currently doesn’t support midi input for editing or allow the export of scores once produced.

  • Concert by Candlelight – Chester Cathedral Nave Choir 16/11/08

    On a cold winter’s night that was so deep, over a hundred people gathered in the darkness of Chester Cathedral to be transported through four hundred years of music in reverence to the Virgin Mary. Whilst the time span was condensed for the duration of the concert which did not quite last four hundred years; the audience was treated to an hour and a half of music which was timeless.

    The concert began in semi-darkness, permeated only by the glow of sixty six flickering candles and the plaintive sound of Jean Allain’s setting of Ave Maria sung by Becky Hay. A sequence of delightfully rhapsodic organ episodes followed, interspersed with plainsong floating ethereally from somewhere in the quire…

    The Nave Choir will next be performing in concert on Saturday 14thMarch 2009 though this Christmas you can worship with them at the Nave Choir Carol Service on Sunday 21st December at 2pm.