flute

THIS WEEK: Upcoming Gigs & Fluid Pianos

Fading Notes II - Flute Keys Version
| Hannah Sterry

Here’s what’s happening this week:

Tuesday Night is Music Night at the Cottage Hotel. I’ll be playing flute as part of The Sterrys and watching the sun setting over the water at Hope Cove. Feel free to relax with a cocktail and enjoy the music! Starts at 6:45pm.

Wednesday… brings the second of Ben Carr’s Music Sessions at The Hideaway. Anyone can come along, bring an instrument and join in (I’ll be there with my flute). The whole evening’s great fun and you’ll meet some really nice people. Starts at 8pm.

Thursday… features An audience with Auntie Pus at B-Bar, Plymouth. I’m really hoping to go to this, but haven’t quite worked out the logistics yet. Either way, I’m sure it’ll be a brilliant evening. Starts at 8:30pm.

Sunday… Gallows Ghost play The Hideaway and have asked me if I’d like to stand in for a few tunes as a guest musician. They’re lovely people and their music is great fun to play, so the answer is always yes!

Today’s discovery is… a new instrument called The Fluid Piano. The strings all have sliders that enable each note to be changed in pitch (by up to a whole tone) as the piano is being played. This also means that the piano can be tuned to the true harmonic series, making it much more compatible with traditional indian  music, which doesn’t use the standard western tuning (twelve note equal temperament) and can often involve fluctuations in pitch.

Anyway, I hope you’re all having a good week and if you happen to be at any of these gigs, feel free to say hi (I’ll be the one with the flute and the long brown hair)!

Jazz Greenhill drew me! She’s a genius armed with pencils.

This Week’s Music Highlights

Ben Carr's First Music Hall & Blues Night at The Hideaway Speakeasy
| Hannah Sterry

It’s been a thoroughly enjoyable, musical week with lots of things happening, but here are the highlights:

Tuesday: John Sterry (pianist for The Sterrys) entertained guests and visitors to The Cottage Hotel with a relaxed evening of jazz piano.

John Sterry (from The Sterrys) playing piano / keyboard at The Cottage Hotel.

Wednesday: Ben Carr hosted his first Blues Session in The Hideaway Speakeasy, which turned out to be an amazing success! The atmosphere was wonderful and it was good to see musicians who’d never met just getting up and joining in (at one point Ian Feetenby jumped in and provided us with some brilliantly spontaneous percussion on acoustic guitar). The next session is on Wednesday 8th August – Feel free to come along and enjoy the music or, better still, bring an instrument and join in! We’re all friendly, I promise!

Ben Carr's First Music Hall & Blues Night at The Hideaway Speakeasy

Friday: Hamer & Isaacs played The B-Bar in Plymouth and were kind enough to ask me to step in as a guest musician on their second set. What followed was a foot-tapping extravaganza of swinging gypsy jazz with one of the liveliest audiences I’ve ever played to! I think everyone left that gig with a huge smile.

Musical Updates

| Hannah Sterry

This is what my diary has looked like for the past few weeks:

7th May – Recorded some improvisations with Stephen Abrehart, just to see how the harp and baritone guitar worked together. The sounds mixed brilliantly and I hope we’ll be able to record a few more things together in the future.

10th May – Saw Ben Carr play at The Refectory Bar, sampled some delicious cocktails (the Apple Crumble cocktail was really good) and joined in with some jazz flute for the last few songs.

16th May – Jam night at the Royal Oak. This night featured Tez Locke, Phil Kennerel, Rob Wheeler, Joe Sterry (and me), Tom Carr and was hosted by Ben Carr. Past guests have included: Rob and Laura Williams, Gallows Ghost, Blue Orchid and Hamer & Isaacs Gypsy Swing Band.

19th May – The Sterrys (John, Joe and I) played music for a surprise birthday party in Malborough Baptist Church.

That afternoon we also went to the Cottage Hotel to discuss their plans for music throughout the summer, which led to this:

I am delighted to say that from June 5th, The Sterrys will be playing at The Cottage Hotel every Tuesday throughout the summer. The line up will change week-to-week; one week might be solo piano, the next a jazz trio with flute and harp the week after that…

Anyway, we expect it’ll be a lot of fun and hope to see you there!

The Sterrys have a new website!

| Hannah Sterry

The Sterrys have a new website!

http://sterrys.com/

At the moment it’s just bare bones, but I’m really glad we’ve finally got something up! I’m hoping to get some good images from a photoshoot on Thursday, so it should be updated fairly soon.

I should probably mention that John (in the middle in the picture above) isn’t really that short, he’s just sat down at the piano. We really need some better pictures!

Anyway, here are a few of the tracks from the site:

Hope you like them and feel free to let us know what you think!

H xxx

The Royal Oak Blues Night

Blues/Jazz trio with Saxophone, Double Bass and Slide Guitar/Vocals at the Royal Oak Pub.
| Hannah Sterry

On Wednesday 25th Jan, there was a brilliant session at the Royal Oak.

About a week before, my dad (Joe) and I had been asked we’d like to come and join in with some blues with Ben Carr and a few guest musicians. Neither of us knew exactly how it would work and we’d had no idea what we were going to play – just that it started at 8pm and that it’d probably be a lot of fun.

Ben Carr played his blues set first, with brother Tom Carr on double bass. Ben is an excellent guitarist and manages to organise things like this so quickly – I’m not sure that anyone else would be able to do it!

Next, Tez Locke played a set of completely original works and Ben asked if  Doug “Big Toe” Smith and I would join in . Tez was the only one who’d played the songs before, but I joined in with improvised flute fills and harmonies and generally had a good time. People seemed to think we’d been playing together for ages, so it must have sounded fairly good, and we all really enjoyed it.

The last set was made up of three the musicians from Hamer and Isaacs gypsy swing band (Howard, Julian and Rosie) and my dad (Joe) joined them on saxophone with fills, harmonies and improvisations. They were amazing – Rosie has a stunning voice which suited the blues/swing style perfectly and meshed really well with the guitar and bass.

The evening ended with everyone joining in for the last blues and lots of chatting! The atmosphere was just so relaxed and appreciative that I don’t think there’s anyone who wouldn’t want to play there again.

I’ll let you know when there’s another one!

H xxx

Free Classical Sheet Music from the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)

| Hannah Sterry

I’ve just found out about the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP). They provide a brilliant website for finding free classical music scores and seem to just generally have a really good collaborative/community attitude. Here’s what they have to say on their website:

“We at the IMSLP believe that music should be something that is easily accessible for everyone. For this purpose we have created a music library to provide music scores free of charge to anyone with internet access, with several other projects in planning. IMSLP is also entirely collaborative, and all contributions are greatly welcome.”
 
I just thought it was a great project that you might like to know about. If you’re really keen you can even follow them on twitter (@imslp). Hope you find it helpful!
 
Featured image by Horia Varlan (CC BY 2.0)

Live Music at The Cottage Hotel

| Hannah Sterry

On the 1st January I’ll be in Hope Cove at The Cottage Hotel playing jazz flute with John (keyboard) and Joe (sax) as part of “The Sterry Family”.

If you’ve not been to The Cottage before, it’s a hotel with a stunning sea view, really good food and the people running it are lovely (they’re even nice to musicians!!!). I chose to go there for my birthday meal because the atmosphere and food is so good (the puddings are delicious too).

Picture from http://www.hopecove.com

Another day, another instrument…

Yesterday I played harp at The Cottage and it went down really well! I got to speak to some wonderful people afterwards about  and brought my dad and sister along to listen.

People tend to ask quite a few questions about the harp, because it’s a fairly modern design. This particular model is a Smartwood Harp and is much lighter than some of the more traditional designs, which makes it much more convenient for travelling with. Most importantly, I enjoy playing it and it sounds good (the low notes in particular have a wonderful warm rich sound). I’m tempted to add levers soon, as I am finding the standard modes a bit restrictive, but overall I’m very happy with it.

Dusk: New tune uploaded on bandcamp!

| Hannah Sterry

I’ve had this tune sitting on my hard drive for a while now, but haven’t known what to do with it, so I thought I might as well post it and then anyone can have a listen if they feel like it.

I’m a bit of a cynical flautist, so I really really enjoyed improvising on this big dark tune. All of it is my work, it’s just that the flute part was the most fun to play. The photo above is mine too and is called “Hope at Sunset”.

Tips for Learning an Instrument

| Hannah Sterry
Whenever music comes up in conversation, there seems to be an instant divide between people who do and don’t class themselves as musicians. Most of the time the people who don’t class themselves as musicians mumble something along the lines of “I wish I could play an instrument”.
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