Flutewise Academy at the Purcell School.

Flutewise Academy at the Purcell School.

This took place 10 -13 August 2010 and I think everyone involved really enjoyed themselves.

Over the years, every course I've done has had a problem or two. This one was not an exception. The first problem with this course was the low numbers of participants. I think this was mainly due to the present economic climate and maybe the date which seemed to clash with the holiday dates of lots of people who would have liked to have come. Then the next big problem was my arm (if you don't know, i broke it in Croatia). It really looked like I'd have to cancel the course, but then the wonderful Sandy Hay stepped in and I felt confident with him being there, plus Abbie, Gareth and Chris, all would be well. I should have learnt by now - Sandy arrived and within a few hours he was seriously ill with a tummy bug, poor him.

Sandy was due to do a flute choir rehearsal, but he couldn't. I couldn't. Everyone else was busy. So I handed the music to Martha and told her to get on with it. Martha was with us as a helper, she is just going into her third year at GSMD and she'd never conducted flute choir before. She was brilliant. You can see the results on the Videos section of the website - look under Threads - Videos - Little Red Monkey.

We had a workshop organised for that morning with John O'Neill (kindly supported by Schott). John divided the group into two and worked on jazz throughout the morning. Everyone really enjoyed it and learnt lots and lots.

In the afternoon we had another workshop,this time with Sally Adams, thanks to Faber Music. Sally was great fun and gave some very wise advice to everyone.

Rounders followed. That evening we had one of Abbie's famous quizzes. The winning team were awarded this huge trophy - it was as big as an ... egg cup - no, it wasn't that big! But everyone was really happy.

The next day came and we had more workshops. Anna Pope came and played a headjoint duet with Abbie and then talked lots about various flute playing things including posture. In the afternoon, Pasha came along to do some beatboxing. That was great fun. The video is well worth seeing - search Thread - Videos - Beatboxing is easy (you need to be logged into the website).

In the evening we had a lovely concert - again you can see some of it on our Videos section.

So the last day arrived. Gareth wrote a new flute choir piece for us, 'We All Love Flutewise' and we played this together with 'Little Red Monkey', 'Tango' and a Moyse Trio (Martha, Vicki and Kirstin with Chris on piano) for the parents before home time.

I was so happy that the course had happened and I'm extremely grateful to all the staff and helpers and Helen (Hannah's mum who covered one night and morning). I'm also really proud of all the flute players on the course. Well done everyone. Now please let me know all the bits I've missed out by leaving comments below.