Music For Alice

We have just heard that Music for Alice have awarded us a generous grant for some specific instruments.
Music for Alice funds groups and organisations to purchase musical instruments and equipment so they can improve lives through music.

Music for Alice was established to celebrate the life of Alice Macgill, a talented musician who died in the Indian Ocean tsunami together with her mother, while on holiday in Thailand in 2004. She was 23 years old.
Alice began her musical life at an early age and played cello, violin, oboe, saxophone, bass guitar and percussion. She excelled at cello and played with many orchestras including City of Leeds Youth Orchestra, Dales Chamber Orchestra and Kensington Symphony Orchestra. Alice was principle cello in the Goldsmiths College Sinfonia and Chamber Orchestra.
At the time of her death Alice was training to be a Music teacher.
Music for Alice was founded to create a lasting legacy to Alice and to improve lives through music now that Alice no longer can.

Alice's sister Edie said 'We were incredibly impressed by your application and the work that you do.' How lovely is that!

You can see more about their great  work on their website www.musicforalice.org.uk
We get a special mention on the news page .... http://www.musicforalice.org.uk/winners-revealed/

We have also heard that a private donor is gifting a cello to the project. This is exciting and heartwarming : it's amazing and humbling how people are motivated by hearing about the AllStars project.

We had been thinking about getting a cello for a while : big, warm, tactile, something to get to grips with. A while back, Declan, who was the Heart Beats young musician in residence at the time, brought his cello in to a session. Mark loved playing it and it had a real presence in the circle. So we're delighted by all the news today.

Heart Beats improvisation, February 2012

Alex recorded some of our session last week. You can listen to some of music by clicking on this link:

https://soundcloud.com/heart-beats-5/heart-beats-long-improvisation

Everyone is playing along on different instruments. Geoff is playing the didgeridoo - it sounds like a whale! We know Mark can make really good whale noises too, but he is playing the dun dun, the foundation drum.
The lovely sound at the start is Martyn on the 'boom tubes' - a home made instrument.
Emma is playing the steel pan which sounds really bright.
Daryl is playing chime bars.
David and Andrew are playing percussion. Daniel is on guitar.

We called this piece of music 'spring is coming'.

Another guitar

And here's the Gretsch! This one's cherry red and sparkles.
Thanks again, Ellie.

lovely new guitar

Here's Russ trying out our new DanElectro guitar - thanks to Ellie for donating this to our project.
Is it lime green? beige? lemon yellow? whatever, it's got style, and sounds good too.