It has been constantly one thing after another since my last post. There has been knitting interspersed but not an awful lot, unfortunately. So shortly after my last post, I got to play for National Music Day. Directly after that, the violin duo I played in won the Elsner cup for Duo playing at Dublin Feis. Between that and Easter, I spent trying to recover a concert I had spent the last six months organising in Viarmes, France. My violinist decided to… not do the concert… with less than two weeks’ notice. I have a flautist friend who wanted to go instead, so all was not lost, apart from my Easter holidays which I spent learning an entirely new programme!

We travelled to France over the May bank holiday weekend. My point of contact was the lady who heads up the town twinning committee for Viarmes with Tubbercurry (which is where I’m from). She was nothing less than utterly amazing in her organisation so I knit her this shawl in the delicious Blue Sky Alpaca Alpaca Silk.

It was a much easier knit than I expected it to be. I used three skeins of the Alpaca Silk and although it was already far too warm there for her to wear it, she loved it.

When I got back from France, I was busy playing for my students’ practicals in the IT, in NUIM, for end-of-term concerts for DIT Chamber Choir and of course, my own Masters recital! Through all of this mayhem, I was receiving my monthly installments from the Hedgehog Fibres fibre club. One package was this…

…and another was this, with its own matching draw-string bag…

I’m saving them all for the Tour de Fleece!

Like I said, there has been sporadic knitting. Although I am finished with college, I still have more exams to play for in NUIM and to compound my stress levels, I agreed to be rehearsal pianist for La Traviata for the next two weeks. I just wanted to start things that I knew I liked. Like another Heather Hoodie.

And another Audrey in Unst.

I can tell you now that there won’t be much time for knitting over the next two weeks but I’m going to post photos from the rehearsals to keep you guys up to date

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I get asked this a lot. I try and keep to the point of knitting when I post here but I think it would be good to fill you guys in on what goes on around here. It will hopefully also explain why sometimes there is a lot of knitting and others, not so much.

1. What exactly do I do? I am a pianist. I did a BA in piano (yes! you can do that! academic modules in harmony, composition, history, conducting; exams that made up 75% or more of my overall mark were solo recital, concerto, technical and chamber music exams). Then I did an MMus in solo piano (solo recital, concerto, chamber only). Then I did a fellowship diploma – the performance equivalent of a masters – in piano accompaniment. I graduate from MMus in piano accompaniment this year.

2. How do I make money? This is a very good question. My main sources of income have been teaching piano one-to-one, playing for singing lessons and playing for students’ competitions, auditions and exams. More recently I’ve been getting an increasing amount of accompaniment work and have stopped teaching piano for the time being. This sort of work includes working as a set accompanist for a feis or music festival – typically one or two days together.

I also work as an accompanist in a university where I play for a performance class. There I am assigned a number of end-of-degree/masters students, usually six, to prepare their recitals in June, and I play for undergrad performance module exams, too. I do pretty much the same thing in the IT where I got the job a few weeks ago. I used to work as an examiner for the RIAM. I also work a lot of random jobs like filling in for rehearsals, exam resits where the original accompanist isn’t available, that kind of thing. I’ve actively worked in the city for over five years now and I can get phone calls for all sorts of random things. A lot the time it’s either someone I played with before looking to work on a new project or it’s a recommendation from someone I played for.

3. That sounds really hectic, right? Yes and no. From February to June is the busiest period for me. There are exams – from grade exams to the ones I’m assigned like in the university and IT, auditions for the main music institutions, competitions and festivals. It’s also a busy concert period and the best time of the year to get an audience. I have a recital today and one next week, one in March and three in April. Some of these are my own projects, some are projects where I am hired by whoever got the gig initially.

In the summer, it is very difficult to get decent audience numbers and most musicians travel to music festivals abroad to take masterclasses and meet new people. A masterclass is a lesson with a teacher you don’t normally go to. They’re usually open to the public so it’s more like a recital with discussion afterwards than an actual lesson. This costs money to do so most people apply for funding for a little help. It’s good to try and tie in masterclasses with a concert because then the concert can pay for getting to the masterclass.

September is the worst time of the year. You’re broke and teaching has only just started again. Even worse if you’re in a third level institution like me – they don’t start back until the end of September. Up to December is usually a quiet period, bar a flurry of Christmas concerts which are usually last minute. This is where you really need a steady teaching job to get through. On the upside, it leaves a lot of free time to enjoy the autumn and to get stuck into learning new repertoire for the coming year.

4. Sometimes it is very hard. Sometimes the music is hard, I have to learn a lot of music I have never heard before, I am under time pressure, I have to sight read, the person I am playing for is an idiot/maniac/arrogant/mean, I work long 12 hours days, there is a lot of travelling involved but I still have to turn up and play like I just had a long snooze and a smooth cup of coffee, I get abuse from who I’m playing for (usually singer/conductor), the person I’m playing for blames all their mistakes and bad judgements on me.

5. Mostly, though, it is really cool. Sure, at times I have an overwhelming amount of work to do, to try and juggle my course work with what I need to do to be prepared for actual work. But at the end of the day, I get to play really great music all over the place. I get to meet and play for all sorts of people. Sometimes it’s kind of hairy but mostly it is lots of fun.

6. If you have so much work to do, how come you’re drinking tea and writing this at 4pm? I don’t have office hours. Sometimes if I have a rehearsal or lesson later in the day, I sleep in and work through the afternoon. The days I work in the IT, I go there first thing and then practice in the evening. I have to try and fit in the practice I need to do with outside commitments that earn money. Typically I end up working through the weekend and taking a few halfdays as I need them.

7. An average day’s work for me is 4-5 hours of practice, not including breaks.

8. I still have piano lessons and intend to keep having them for another few years.

9. I think what I like most about being a pianist is that, as a person, you have to constantly refresh and renew your approach. You have to be receptive and open to learn and change. You have to be strong and stand up for what you believe to be musically right, but diplomatic and compromising to find something that works for that moment without having a massive row.

10. Overall, though, the best thing is that, in my office, you can knit any time you want!

Playing piano duets at Mary Immaculate college, Limerick, today (15th) at 1pm – come one, come all!

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This time I’m involved in the music for a one man play called Tom Loves a Lord. We played Friday night in the Town Hall Theatre, Galway. (The theatre gives a good synopsis of the play). I wanted to post about it before the night but we were so involved in rehearsals and set up on Thursday and Friday that I simply did not have one spare moment.

Here we are about fifteen minutes before starting.

Martin Dyar, the ‘one man’ part of ‘one man play’, also wrote it. I must say, it is interesting, easy to follow and most of all, funny. His conception comes across so clearly. The structure is simple but the language is so full of nuance that each character is convincing with their own quirks and contradictions.

We help to punctuate the rhythm of the play with songs from Moore’s Melodies. Luckily, the songs Martin chose are some of my favourites: The Last Rose of Summer, Silent O Moyle and the beautiful Lambert arrangement of She is Far From the Land.

The most important bit!

Anna Louise I know from secondary school. We were reacquainted through competitions that I was the set accompanist for and so, here we are! It’s a small world.

Last night, my violinist Elina and I played for a town twinning concert in Tubbercurry, Co. Sligo, where I am from. I must confess to being very tired after the rehearsals and performance on Friday night but it came off fine. We were warmly received and it was so nice to meet many people that I hadn’t seen in over a year. It was what Elina calls a ‘karma gig’, because we didn’t get paid for it, but we were invited to their town in France to give a recital in our own right. That, to us, is payment enough!

Tom Loves a Lord runs Wednesday, November 3rd in Charlestown Arts Centre, Co. Mayo at 8pm as part of the John Healy weekend, and again Saturday, November 6th in Anaverna House, Ravensdale, Dundalk at 8pm. Don’t miss it!

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Summer is floating along. Elina and I played at the Boyle Arts Festival last week. As you can see, we are starting to keep good company!

Next week, we’ll be in Finland (where Elina is from) for some concerts and then masterclasses at the Turku Festival. Founded in 1960, this is a renowned chamber music festival and I am very excited to be going. Also, it is not often you get to be shown around Finland by a Finn. You can expect to hear more about our adventures in the coming year! After a few months of playing together, it became very clear that this is a good partnership and, surprisingly, exactly what we both wanted. Most pianists and violinists are interested in just solo playing or, for the violinist anyway, orchestral playing. Most dip into chamber music now and then but rarely pursue it singularly – in Ireland, anyway. For us, we came to the conclusion that we are both good but far, far better together. Together, we will probably achieve much more than would be possible alone (and have a lot more fun doing it). So to Finland we go!

I have a lot of knitting to show you but I am going to try and spread it out because I don’t expect to have a lot of computer time for the rest of the month. Happy knitting, everyone! (Did you see the Autumn issue of Twist is out already? I love this time of year!)

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My father gave me this great learn-Italian set of CDs and a book from the BBC a while ago. Before I came out, I covered the first section easily enough. I had hoped to do more but was so busy working and trying to squeeze in extra preparation that it ended up taking a back seat. On the plane over I realised that the extent of my Italian was how to ask for five different types of coffee, ask where the toilet is (but alas not understand the answer!) and count up to ten. My hosts’ English is limited but when they speak clearly in Italian, I understand them quite easily. I think this is because the root of many words is similar to that in French, which I know well. Now we converse in a funny sort of Italiano-inglese. By the time I went to the market on Saturday, I felt confident enough in my phony French-with-Italian accent to buy wool. In fact, when I do this generally, I fare better. If I ask if they speak English, often people get flustered and then defensive. Easier if I’m the one who speaks poor Italian rather than the reverse, if you get me!

Anyway, this is what I came away from the market with. Cotton and linen are the most popular fibres here for obvious reasons but the guy was also selling ‘winter wool’ because the weather has been so poor here (They consider 18C and cloudy to be poor for this time of year. Yeah. My sympathy doesn’t go that far either.) I have been going through a real phase of fascination with Zakka and all things for the house. I have a nice book called Lacy Crochet which calls for fine cotton for a lot of the projects. I got these three.

100% cotton, 340m per 50g, a staggering €1.60 a ball. Of course I had to try it out straight away so I whipped up this wee doily from the book. Apologies for its crinkliness, it really needs a good blocking and perhaps some starch.

He also had heavier weight cottons but those I can get fairly easily at home so I went for some linen instead. This I bought specifically with tea-towels or a mat in mind.

I bought two of each colour. 100% linen, 105m per 50g, €3 a ball. I know the temptation is to buy a ton but this stuff is going to be pretty rugh to work with. I imagine by the time I get through 420m of it, I’ll have had enough for the time being.

The market was very interesting. It’s not a good market by my family’s estimation but really, it had everything you could think of. I enjoyed looking at the cheesemongers’ stalls and also at the vegetables. Every vegetable stall sold huge nets of… snails. Initially I thought they were oysters because they were wet and drippy. But then I thought that they couldn’t be since we’re so far inland. That’s when I noticed the many, many antennae straining and wiggling. Whose fantastic job was it to bag up all those guys? I also wonder how long they last for. You’d probably need to cook them all together. But from prior experience, you can only eat so many snails in one sitting.

Anyway, there was also a guy selling pet birds and different types of eggs. Hen eggs, fine. Tiny little white eggs I found out later that are quail eggs…. and absolutely gigantic, creamy, dimpled eggs that looked like dinosaur eggs. ‘Uovo di Struzzo’. I looked it up when I got home: ostrich eggs. I’m not kidding, they were about 20-30cm long and 15-20cm wide. Apparently you make big omelettes from them. No duck eggs, curiously enough.

I also finished up a square doily I started a few days before I came over. It’s quite large so here’s just a corner to give you an idea.

Tivoli Cruise cotton, 4ply, and the pattern is from the Lacy Crochet book I mentioned above. I used a 2mm hook. It’s to protect one side of the desk of my piano (the desk is the music stand on a grand piano, it has a shelf on either side of the stand and the whole thing can slide in or out). II’m going to make a matching one in blue for the other side.

I played this morning so now I am taking it easy. I find out tomorrow evening if I pass into the next round. I don’t expect to – I’m not being pessimistic, rather, realistic. I was happy enough with how I played, considering the overall situation. It takes courage! Especially if you follow a German lass who quite literally slashed her way through a Beethoven concerto with a sledgehammer. Oh Madonna… I did the best I could do for now. It could have been better, but also much worse. The next one I do will be better because I’ll have done this; and the one after, a bit better again. For now, espresso and a doily await!

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