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Solstice Shorts: Longest Night, the Midwinter Wife
The Midwinter Wife got another outing at Longest Night. Here is the peerless Annalie Wilson reading the shorter performance version You can buy the full length print version in Latchkey Tales Clockwise – Midnight Blues
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World Premier… my very first tune

Organising Longest Night kept me away from my own blog for a while, but it was completely worth it, not least because it gave me an opportunity to share my first ever musical composition with musicians who would do it justice. Here are Ian Kennedy and Sarah Lloyd singing The Cold Time. This is a…
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Join In: Folk Song Workshop for Winter
LESTER SIMPSON FOLK SONG WORKSHOP SECULAR WINTER SONGS LEARN AROUND 5 SONGS SATURDAY 28TH NOVEMBER 2015 12:45- 17:15 ST HILDA’S CHURCH HALL COURTRAI ROAD SE23 1NL bus routes 122, P4, 171, 172 stop on the corner. train to Crofton Park or Honor Oak Park 10 minute walk. advanced booking required Book Here £25 INCLUDES REFRESHMENTS all…
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Callout for pre publication reviewers
So, experimenting with new stuff, my forthcoming book, The Dowry Blade (February 2016) is on NetGalley, a review site for librarians, bookshop owners, book bloggers and professional reviewers. If that is YOU, you can download a review PDF here. It is UNPROOFED, ok, so no comments about typos!
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Once more into print… Clockwise
Now, anyone who had anything to do with Solstice Shorts last year will know how much I like a good time theme. So I was delighted to find SolarWyrm‘s Latchkey Tales and their current project, Clockwise, a series of journals focussed around different times of day: this time Midnight Blues. So I sent them a…
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How Idomeneo looks from here

The audience are never going to experience an opera the way the chorus does. Even though performance in the round gives them some idea, as they peer through the crowds to catch a glimpse of th action, but actually, the action is what they are peering round. Our chorus experience is sweaty, loud and partial…
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Orchestral Manoeuvres
One of the delights of being involved in the community opera at Blackheath Halls is working with the Blackheath Halls Community Orchestra. We don’t get to hear what they are up to until the sitz probe, when we run through the entire opera and work out the corners. This is one of my favourite sessions,…
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Who are all these people?

We are a reading household (there’s a surprise) and an oft-quoted exclamation, when one of us, uninvited, reads an extract from the current book to the other is ‘Who are all these people?’ I think it’s from a Peter Nichols play but I could be wrong – we are also very poor on attribution. So…


