SO BUSY!

You'd think a percussionist would have a finger on the pulse and know exactly how time flies, wouldn't you! GRIN.  I can't believe so much has happened since my last post ... to be fair, quite a lot of it's been organising and rehearsing for upcoming gigs - and Dream will be recording the rest of our album in March, so there's a lot of hard work going on here behind the scenes!

DATES FOR YOUR DIARIES!* please contact me if you need any further information about any of these gigs, I know I haven't given much detail, but time's running out again!

DREAM - please check www.myspace.com/dreamsounds for full details
Thursday 22 March                Olive's Bar, Leicester
Sunday 6 May                          Joule's Yard, Market Harborough
Wednesday 23 May                  Brixworth, Northants
Sunday 24 June                        The Musician, Leicester
Saturday 30 June                      The Green Place, Sileby
Monday 2 July                          Monty's Acoustic Club, East Goscote
Tuesday 4 September              Acoustic Knights, Sutton Cheney

BACKWATER
Saturday 10 March                   The Old Crown Inn, Fleckney
Saturday 7 April                        (oooh, i don't know where!)
Monday 7 May                           Castle Donington 
 
THE SILEBY SLAPPERS
Saturday 3 March                     Sage Cross Church, Melton Mowbray
Saturday 7 July                          Hosenbury Festival, Hose

JUJUMAA
An exciting new project with Jude Winwood ... kora piano balafon percussion ...
Monday 5 March                      Monty's Acoustic Club, East Goscote
Saturday 7 July                         Hosenbury Festival, Hose

To be fair, I have also been teaching djembe students in local primary schools, and running the odd full day workshop here and there across the region, as well as meetings with longstanding clients and some new ones, but I guess the most unusual job has been with the puppeteers!

THE LONDON SCHOOL OF PUPPETRY
A long drive up to Caroline Astell Burt's Yorkshire base, Grassington, for another project with her fantastically creative puppetry students.  Every percussion instrument in my vast collection was available for use in "The Marionettes Ball!"  An improvised performance, operators were either on stage with their marionettes, or at the percussion station, improvising a sound score for the action on stage.  Wendy Cook had already given the students an insight into improvised performance (in the style of Merce Cunningham, one of my choreographic idols), and it was a chance to play with music, movement and puppets in a beautiful part of the country.  I look forward to more projects later this year, so much creativity and craftmanship in one place ...