Feed The Birds Harp Cover // Mary Poppins

feed the birds harp cover
Mary Poppins

In a recent twitch stream, a viewer asked if I could play a harp cover of Feed The Birds from Mary Poppins. I have always loved the film, so I immediately downloaded the music and started to learn it.

I am so pleased with the result!

If you enjoy these harp covers of mine, do consider heading over to my YouTube channel and subscribing.

Feed The Birds and other classics…

The wonderful thing about playing songs like Feed The Birds is that everyone knows and loves this music. Last week I had the opportunity to go and play a concert at the home where my father now lives. He is suffering with Alzheimer’s and needs a lot of care these days.

I played a mixture of light classical music that people generally have heard before, things like Debussy’s Clair de Lune and Pachelbel’s Canon in D. There were also some harp covers of Disney songs (including Feed The Birds). I also played some other songs from shows such as Carousel, Cats, Les Miserables and Phantom of the Opera.

The very energetic piece Harpicide at Midnight by Pearl Chertok was the final piece in my programme. Even though it’s not well-known by non-harpists, everyone enjoys it because it is so jazzy. It really challenges people’s perception of what the harp is capable of.

I can’t believe it’s not Rutter…

In other recent events, I have played for two performances of John Rutter’s Requiem and have another performance lined up for this coming Saturday. It’s not often I’ll get a group of concerts like this, all with the same repertoire. Honestly though, I’m enjoying playing in front of a live audience again so much. The pandemic has taken so much from us, I have only performed a handful of times since March 2020, but hopefully the worst is behind us.

Announcement

I have been doing some work on my website recently, and I now have an online booking system for online harp lessons and online piano lessons.

You can now book in for a free 30-minute consultation if you are considering learning the harp or the piano. click here to find an available time to book in.

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Countdown to Christmas – 3 weeks to go

Well this feels retro, I’m writing this in the break between a rehearsal and an evening concert. I’m sitting in the cafe of Leeds College of Music, having rehearsed with the Wind Orchestra before their concert tonight. We are playing an arrangement of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (amongst other pieces that don’t require a harp). Here’s a photo of the pitched percussion section – harp, piano, celeste.

harpist in York
harp, piano, celeste

This weekend has been exceedingly busy, it began on Friday and finishes on Tuesday evening. Today (Monday 3rd) me and the harp are in Leeds, we were in Sheffield last Saturday and then there’s a CLOUDS meet-up tomorrow. Do you like how I’m including Monday and Tuesday in the weekend? Wednesday I will chill. All day. Burning the candle at both ends can only be sustained for so long.
Things actually calm down a bit from then on, which is unusual for December but not surprising as most of my teaching has now drawn to a close ready for the big move to York. Speaking of which, I’m still clinging on to the hope that we’ll be in our new house by Christmas, we just need to sign contracts and complete. Keep everything crossed. Our journey to a home of our own has been 18 months in the making and I cannot tell you how excited I am to get a bit more settled. Congleton is so lovely but the amount of driving Tim and I are both doing is crazy.
December is a great time to think about the year ahead and start planning and getting organised. What are your goals for 2019 – musical or otherwise? One of my goals will be to keep on schedule with my social media. That means weekly blog posts – pop your email in the box if you’d like to join my little crew (what shall we call ourselves?) and receive these posts into your inbox. It also means weekly videos on my YouTube channel, which you can subscribe to here.
The current plan with the videos is to alternate between a performance video and more of a vlog/life update video. I really enjoy making these and I hope you enjoy seeing a little snippet of what’s going on over here, any feedback is always appreciated.
In the meantime, from the new year I will be scouting out work over in Yorkshire so please do use my contact form to get in touch if you need a harpist in York for music lessons, or for background music for your wedding or social event. You can also email me – angelinawarburton@gmail.com.
As always, thanks so much for reading, here are my social media links if you want to follow me or say hi.
See you next week!
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Alderley Edge, Prestwich, and the 10k that didn’t happen.

I’m writing this week’s post in a Caffe Nero in Alderley Edge. I’m here to play with Alderley Edge Orchestra for a concert tonight, we are performing Holst’s The Planets and Elinor Nicholson and I are the harp section. 

We arrived early to get good parking spots (harp life), warmed up, and are now both catching up on some admin over cups of tea/coffee.

How’s everyone coping with the Beast from the East? Where I am in south Manchester it hasn’t been too bad, and I’m thrilled that I haven’t lost out on any work due to snow. It can be super frustrating when snow means cancelled gigs, which means no payment, not ideal.

The 10k race that I’ve been training for however, that has had to be cancelled. I can totally see why the organisers took the decision as lots of people were no doubt travelling from a good distance away. It’s a bit gutting to have trained in snow, wind, hail and freezing cold to end up not doing the race, but training is never wasted is it? I’m still fitter and stronger than before and that was the whole idea of competing. I’d decided to treat myself to some new gear after the race, so when I heard that it was cancelled I went ahead and ordered them anyway, maybe I’ll chat about them in the next post. Totally off-brand but exciting anyway…

On the house front, I do have exciting news, a house that we viewed back in January has finally accepted our offer! Hurray! The house is in Prestwich – north Manchester – and I’m keeping everything crossed that this time everything goes smoothly. This is the third house we’ve had an offer accepted on so hopefully it’ll be a case of third time lucky… I’m simply far too excited about actually having a music room/office, and I know Tim is looking forward to having his own gym in the garage.

Could this be the new music room??

I wasn’t expecting buying a house to take this long and we’ve certainly learned a lot along the way. But maybe, just maybe, we’ve finally found our home.

I think that’s all from me this week. Thanks for reading as ever, and if you’d like these posts to go straight to your inbox, just pop your email address in the box at the top of the page. I’d love to connect with you that way. These posts sometimes get sent out a day or two early to my email list – so if you fancy that then do sign up.

As always, you can follow me on Patreon, Instagram, Twitter & Facebook to keep up with harpy and other shenanigans.

Ax

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Harping, Running, Yoga.

I can’t believe another week has gone by. I spent a good few days relaxing and taking it easy on myself following the events of the week before, and my car also needed a bit more work doing to make sure it was 100% safe.

I had a gig on Valentine’s Day in a lovely little restaurant in Blackburn called Gioia Italiano:

It was so nicely decorated, and not too crowded either.

The following day I decided to record a video. I want to be uploading to YouTube more regularly than of late. I’m quite pleased with this effort because it’s the first time I’ve attempted more than one camera angle:

Please subscribe to my youtube channel if you haven’t already – I’m closing in on 100 subscribers, which is rather exciting.

Aside from music, I’ve been keeping up with my 10k running training. I can’t believe that this time in two weeks I’ll have done the race. Eeek! I can definitely feel my legs getting stronger and my endurance is getting better as well. I’m still probably the slowest runner you know but that really doesn’t matter that much to me. If anything, I’ve stopped exercising to try and look good, it’s more about my mental health now. Running and yoga offer me peace and quiet from my mind, which never seems to switch off. That voice in my head telling me I should be practising or working, that I should be further on in life than I am, that I’m failing, that I’m not earning enough, can’t get to me if all my attention is on keeping my body in motion out on a run, or keeping my body and breath calm and still in yoga.

I’m also trying to get into the habit of meditating daily – starting with just five minutes – so I’ll let you know how I get on with that.

Speaking of yoga, last Saturday was day six of the British Wheel of Yoga Foundation Course that I’m enrolled in. I’m absolutely loving it and seriously considering taking my studies further into Yoga Teacher Training at the end of the course. All I can say is ‘watch this space’!

Thanks as always for reading and supporting. I’ll leave my social media links here in case you want to see what I’m up to until the next post!

Bye for now,

Ax

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February on #YouTube

It’s been another month of regular YouTube uploads! Thank you to those of you who have subscribed to my channel. We are slowly growing and already I’ve had a surge in enquiries so that’s absolutely brilliant.

The first video to be uploaded onto my channel in February was a tutorial giving a basic overview of how to sit at the harp and how to actually play the harp:

Next up, Vlog #5:

This was a big week as it was the first week of being completely freelance after quitting my part-time ‘side-hustle’. So give it a watch and follow along for a week of musical adventures. This was the first time I’ve attempted a weekly vlog and I had no idea how long it would get! I had to cut out a lot of footage to keep it a reasonable length. Let me know what you think.

I’ve talked about this next video in a previous post but didn’t want to miss the opportunity to share it again – I made another CLOUDS video:

CLOUDS are going on tour in June and we are very excited to be bringing you a whole new programme of music (I’m sure some old favourites will be in there too). We’ve been busy rehearsing and learning all the new music that Esther has written ready for summer. Tour dates are up on our website so check those out.

Last but not least, I couldn’t let the month slide by without uploading a classic wedding favourite. Here is my performance of Handel’s Arrival of the Queen of Sheba. I get asked to play this very often, and it’s particularly fitting for the couple’s exit from their Wedding Ceremony:

I had the bright idea of recording these videos from memory. I know this piece so well and yet it still took ages to get a full take! I think it’s definitely worth the extra work to have memorised performances, but what do you guys think? Also, I’d like to say a big thank you to my housemate Chris for letting me use his fancy DSLR to record this last video. I love the quality but still need to learn how to use the camera properly (beyond just zooming in and pressing Record).

I’d like to say a big thank you to all of you for reading, watching, and just generally supporting me along the way. I know some of you have been reading this blog since it started back in 2012 – that’s five years folks! Your support is much appreciated. I adore having a writing outlet and getting the chance to share my musings with you.

Chat soon,

Ax

p.s. I’d also like to ask you for some feedback. If you received this post via email, did the links to the videos work ok? Did you just receive the one email? I’m transferring my email list to MailChimp so please bear with me while I sort any niggles out!

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