kingsbridge

Sterry Cartoons: Desperate Cats

The Cats Were Getting Desperate! - Cartoon by Sterry Cartoons
Aside | | Hannah Sterry

This is a sketch from a while ago, but I thought I’d release it to the wild, wild internet.

The Cats Were Getting Desperate! - Cartoon by Sterry Cartoons

Hope you like it!

Other News

Friday: Had a lovely evening playing blues (on flute) with Ben Carr at the Kings Arms Hotel. Really friendly atmosphere & buzzing with people!

Saturday: Day job in the morning, but spent another afternoon looking at some of Ben Carr’s cartoons and artwork. If all goes to plan, I’ll be collaborating on some new cartoons and animations with him soon! 😀

After leaving Ben’s, I had an hour to wait before the next bus so I popped over to The Harbour House to have a look at their Open Exhibition. The theme this time was “Blue” and it was brilliant to see so many pieces from local artists (including a few from one of my work colleagues, Ian)! I highly recommend a visit. Entry is free and the quality of work is amazing!

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.

Photoblog: Music Photography

Fading Notes II - Flute Keys Version
| Hannah Sterry

This week has been a wonderfully musical one. My to-do list has looked roughly like this:

  • URGENT: DRAW MORE CARTOONS!
  • Learn the flute part of Benjamin Godard’s “Suite De Trois Morceaux”.
  • Take some promotional photos for a friend’s band.
  • Teach myself clarinet and saxophone (ongoing).
  • Add a few more pieces to the harp repertoire.
  • Go over recordings and stop faffing about on the internet.
Obviously, I have spent some time faffing on the internet and the cartoons are still in sketch form, but I’m reasonably happy with some of the photographs I’ve taken this week and think I might start a big music photography project where I’ll try to photograph and review everyone I ever play music with under the tag #SouthHamsMusic. We’ll see how that goes!
Anyway, here are some of the music-related pictures that I’ve taken recently:

 Ben Carr & The Hot Rats at The Hideaway Speakeasy, Kingsbridge.

Ben Carr & The Hot Rats
Benny Guitar Carr & The Hot Rats: Aly Day, Joe Sterry and Tom Carr.

These were from The Hot Rats gig at Kingsbridge’s Hideaway Speakeasy on May the 4th. It was a fairly quiet evening in Kingsbridge, so The Hot Rats livened the place up with an energetic bluesy set and wild improvisations.

On Wednesday there was another blues night at The Royal Oak. The highlight for me was a completely unexpected cover of Gay Pirates by Rob and Laura Williams. It’s a great tune, written by Cosmo Jarvis, with a brilliant video (good enough to be tweeted to thousands of followers by Stephen Fry) and here it is:

After that short round of musical insanity, here are few pictures from my ongoing “Fading Notes” photography series:

Fading Notes II - Flute Keys Version

Hope to catch you at a gig in the South Hams at some point – I think I’m the only person around here who plays jazz flute!

Feel free to follow my twitter account and facebook page and I’ll try to keep you updated!

Hamer & Isaacs at The Millbrook Inn

| Hannah Sterry

Hamer & Isaacs played a really energetic set at the Millbrook Inn earlier on Sunday afternoon. They play gypsy jazz with a sound reminiscent of Django Reinhardt and Hot Club of France and were kind enough to let me stand in as guest flautist on one or two tunes! When I wasn’t playing I found the time to take a few photos and videos. Here’s how they turned out:

Hamer and Isaacs gypsy swing band at The Millbrook Inn, South Pool.

The gig was brilliant!

Everyone had a lot of fun and there was smiling…

Singing…

Hamer and Isaacs gypsy swing band at The Millbrook Inn, South Pool.

Laughter…

Hamer and Isaacs gypsy swing band at The Millbrook Inn, South Pool.

And even some dancing (I’m attempting to upload the video now, but Devonian internet is a little bit temperamental).

The whole afternoon was a lot of fun and the atmosphere was really relaxed and welcoming. I thoroughly enjoyed playing and listening to the music and hope I have plenty of chances to see the band again!

An Amazing Week

| Hannah Sterry

This is the best week I’ve had in such a long time! Mainly because lots of interesting things are happening:

Monday – Lovely walk around Mount Edgcumbe and Kingsand with great company (the image above was taken from the Amphitheatre woods at Mount Edgcumbe).

Tuesday – Meeting people, helping out and my first experience of attempting to play harmonium.

Wednesday (today) – Caught up with Laura and Charlotte from the The Carrivick Sisters (a brilliant folk/bluegrass duo), great flute lesson this afternoon (I have an exam next week!) and this evening I’ll be going to Ben Carr’s Blues Night at The Royal Oak in Malborough (I’ll be bringing my flute, but have no idea who I’ll be playing music with – it’s great fun)!

Thursday – Going to see Enter Shikari in Plymouth (and might see some other nice people along the way)!

Friday – Work and hopefully catching up with a wonderful friend!

Saturday – Going to see Hamer & Issacs gypsy swing band play at The Hermitage Inn in Kingsbridge with some lovely people!

Basically, it’s an amazing week (I’ll try to get some decent photos of all of these things)! If you’re free to come to the Royal Oak this evening, or The Hermitage on Saturday (or both), it’ll be great 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

Malborough Cycle Path

A morning view of the cycle track between Malborough and Salcombe in Devon.
| Hannah Sterry

Another of my photos has been published in the Kingsbridge and Salcombe Gazette. This week it was my shot of Malborough Cycle Path.

A morning view of the cycle track between Malborough and Salcombe in Devon.
The path provides a great car-free way to travel between Salcombe and Malborough and apparently there are plans for it to eventually reach Plymouth too [source], although I’m not convinced that’ll be happening for quite a while.