newcastle Archives » Angelina Egerton

The show(s) must go on.

27 August 2013 1 Comment

I am writing this from my home for the week in Newcastle. This week I’m playing for the Newcastle Musical Theatre Company’s production of Sound of Music in Newcastle’s Theatre Royal. The first performance is tonight, which is very exciting! Here’s my harp in the pit:

I left my pillar cover on just to be on the safe side… the ceiling is really low! This is probably the easiest pit I’ve been in recently. This month I’ve also been playing with the National Festival Orchestra for the International Gilbert & Sullivan Festival in Buxton Opera House, which is beautiful:

The technical team in Buxton move harps all the time (or so they told me) and thought it best to lower my harp down into the pit from the stage. Oh my. It was crazy – but actually – if you have enough people helping it’s not too bad. Here’s my view from the pit once I was in:

I was there to play in Franz Lehar’s Merry Widow. What a fun operetta! It’s still going round in my head most of the time. The performances were separated by a day, and instead of being able to leave my harp in the pit I had to heave it out to go up to Scarborough to take part in a concert organised by the lovely Christine Cox, playing alongside Simon Lindley, Keith Swallow and Phillip McCann. It was lovely to do some solo performing:

After Buxton, Merry Widow was also performed in Harrogate’s Royal Hall – the pit was even more tricky than Buxton! The harp had to be lifted over a waist-level rail before being lowered into the pit – thankfully again I had loads of people helping me (by helping me I actually mean doing it all themselves while I try not to freak out too much). And I couldn’t even leave the harp there because in between performances I had to drive up to Newcastle for the first Sound of Music bandcall! Yes this week has been mental. I enjoy playing for shows so much though it’s worth all the driving, no question.

So here I am, in Newcastle for the week. I thought I was being sensible by buying lots of healthy food to cook for myself (I’m staying in university halls of residence) but I didn’t realise that the kitchen is devoid of any pans/pots/cutlery! I think some band members are donating stuff to me for the week, but tonight I’m afraid I’m having garlic bread and pizza, shove in the oven and eat. As simple as you can get!

So that pretty much brings us up to date. As ever, thanks for reading! Lots of exciting projects coming up in the near future! I can’t wait to tell you all about them.

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CLOUDS and beyond

9 August 2013 1 Comment

So I ended the previous post saying I was going to be driving up to Edinburgh after the final Les Mis show a week last Saturday. What I hadn’t bargained on was the weather. After glorious sunshine for what felt like ages, that Saturday afternoon the rain started. While packing for the CLOUDS tour I even wondered if I should bother packing jeans or just stick to summer dresses as I had been doing. So glad I packed jeans!

Elfair and I left Runcorn at around 11pm for Edinburgh. The rain was constant and very heavy – we arrived sometime around 5.30am. I have little memory of actually arriving, the concentration required for driving in the pouring rain had completely drained me. But we had a sleep in the following day to recharge our batteries. That evening we had a concert in Canongate Kirk in Edinburgh.

It was such a beautiful space, really blue! They keep the front pew roped off as that’s where the Queen sits when she visits (sadly she decided not to attend our concert). The following lunchtime we played in Edinburgh’s St. Giles Cathedral. We love playing here, there were so many tourists coming in and out all the time but lots of them sat down to listen to us (we also sold lots of CDs!)

After St. Giles it was time to drive down to Peebles in the Scottish Borders for an evening concert the following day at the Eastgate Theatre. It was here that we had the idea to start the concert in complete darkness. We go to the harps and start playing one by one, each holding a candle. Our first piece is entitled ‘Interstellar Cloud’ so the candles look like twinkling stars as we play. It’s also the bonus track on our new CD – WATER which can be purchased here http://www.cloudsandharps.bigcartel.com/product/water

Here we are at Eastgate:

We had lots of people commenting on our dresses, Rebecca (on the left in the photo) actually got these for us while working on the Queen Elizabeth cruiseship. Two are from Costa Rica, one is from Malaysia and the other is from Mexico! We loved how coordinated they are while still being individual.

After Peebles it was time to head down to Newcastle for a Wednesday evening concert in Trinity Church – another beautiful venue, followed by a Thursday lunchtime concert in Brunswick Church right in the city centre.

The rest of the day was spent driving down to Mynytho in North Wales. I adore this area and luckily the weather was fabulous when we were there – there was even chance to paddle in the sea in Abersoch!

We had an evening concert on Friday in Pwllheli (a concert that included lots of delicious cake in the interval!) followed by an afternoon concert on the Saturday in Llanbedrog at the Art Gallery. This was a really special concert as we played outside in their little amphitheatre! I’m sure you can imagine that the value of our harps means that conditions have to be perfect, but on that day we had the chance to play CLOUDS under the clouds!

On the Sunday we all went our separate ways, I headed back to Manchester, Esther set off for London, Elfair went to compete in the Eisteddfod and Rebecca went to support – Elfair actually won the Blue Riband so a huge well done to her for that! What a way to end the week.

So it’s been nearly a week since the tour ended and it’s back to reality – this is the first ‘free’ week I’ve had since I left Long Tall Sally. There’s still lots to keep me busy though! It’s amazing to not have to set an alarm for the morning, but it is rather alarming that my body wants to sleep until 11am some days! Need to get some sort of schedule going – maybe next week!

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CLOUDS, Les Mis and Summer

25 July 2013 3 Comments

Summer 2013 is turning out to be very busy indeed!

Last week was the first leg of the CLOUDS Harp Quartet tour. We did five concerts in and around Manchester and had a great time, rehearsals were at my flat, rather interesting fitting four pedal harps into an average-sized lounge:

The tour is to promote our new CD entitled WATER:

We are all so excited about this new piece. It’s written by Esther Swift – but I use the term loosely – nothing is physically written down. Esther composes the piece, then teaches it to us aurally and by demonstration. When we first started playing together about four years ago I’d never done anything like it, but now I love it. The music is so free because we aren’t bound by sheets of music, we have to communicate a lot during our performances and I think it makes us much tighter as a group.

*At this point I’d just like to say anyone wishing to purchase WATER can do so by clicking here http://www.cloudsandharps.bigcartel.com/product/water *

Also, here are the dates for our 2013 tour – catch us in Edinburgh, Peebles, Newcastle or North Wales:

On the first day of rehearsals with CLOUDS, my new lever harp arrived! I’ve hired one for the year, and it arrived like this:

It’s a Dusty Strings Ravenna 34 and so far I’m really happy with it – I even went busking earlier this week! I hadn’t really realised how heavy these things are, yes it’s easier than a pedal harp but too much walking around with this on my shoulder results in a lot of pain. Definitely an interesting experience though.

So this week I’m playing for Les Miserables over in Runcorn. Same company that I played for when they did Phantom of the Opera last year. It’s a group of 16-19 year olds and it’s in The Brindley in Runcorn. I do love playing for shows and I’m lucky enough to be doing three this Summer, this one is a bit different though because I’m playing from the guitar part. Shaun Chambers, the conductor, thought (quite rightly) that some of the melody parts would sound really good on the harp – however, it also means I have to play from guitar notation eek! It has been so good for me though, playing from chord symbols – a bit time consuming to mark up in terms of pedals but once you get used to it it’s nice having the flexibility to slightly change what you play each time. Usually playing harp for a show you can expect to be in five or six numbers. I’m playing ALL THE TIME – it’s great! Although it doesn’t leave enough time to eat my minstrels during the show. I made friends with the brass players during the interval last night over chocolates and warm lager. Classy.

The final show is this Saturday evening, after which I am driving straight up to Edinburgh to start the second part of the CLOUDS tour. Someone remind me how I ever managed to fit in a day job?!