Croatia 2008

I expect you'll be pleased to know I'm feeling better. I finished my mega dose of antibiotics today and that's made me feel much happier. My bites still don't look very nice though.

The bites were a small price to pay for the wonderful time we had in Croatia again. Imagine, Flutewise in it's own castle! It's true - Kastel Viturri is where we have the course and it is really beautiful.

Abbie Burrows and Gareth McLearnon came with me this year, which was really lovely. We had 24 young people aged from 7 to 17 (a typical Flutewise course). 9 of the children were absolute beginners and started on fife. Some of the others I started on fife last year or the year before that or the ..... and now they are all on flute and they are doing really well. We had Gaby, who is 17 and a really good player. Gareth gave her a copy of Zoom Tube by Ian Clarke and a lesson on it. Carina was there on holiday with her family and enjoyed meeting everyone playing duets with Gaby.

We have a flute class every morning for 3 hours. It is a real challenge with the wide age and skill range to have everyone together - and added to that is the language barrier. I've always made a big effort not to learn too much Croatian because the children need to learn English much more than I need to learn their language. My favourite word in Croatian is 'dobra' which has many meanings - like ok, good, whatever, etc.

This year for our course I took the theme 'The Pied Piper'. It needs a theme as we have a big concert on the last day. But our Pied Piper tale had a twist to it. He got rid of the rats and then there was a big party and the Pied Piper got drunk and took away the adults instead of the children. The main reason for that was so I could make the music we were doing fit in with the story - to help develop language we always sing songs - one of the songs was "What Shall we do with the Drunken Sailor" - changed to "What Shall we do with the Drunken Piper"!

This was our final programme:
Fanfare - played by Duje on trumpet (I know it was a flute course, but so what!)
Summer is a coming in - everyone
Song - There's a Rat on My Leg
Rat Chant (improvised piece) - everyone
Canon of Peace - everyone
Music Box - beginner flutes
Fairground Frolics, James Penny - advanced flutes
Song - What Shall We Do with the Drunken Piper
Musical Joke - Mozart - flute trio
Quartet in F minor - Mozart - advanced flutes
We Want Our Parents Back - improvisation - everyone
In the Hall of the Mountain King - Grieg arr. Randalls - all flutes
Song - They'll be Coming Round the Mountain (can you spot the connection?)
Walk Like This - Ian Clarke - - everyone (the fife players were the choir and did a grand job with all the words.)

It was a magic concert, with a few magic tricks thrown in between pieces because some children do a physics course and others do an art course.

Why don't you join us next year?