work Archives » Angelina Egerton

Moving to York

23 October 2018 No Comments

It’s been a while since I’ve updated you here on the blog, and as you can see from the title of this post, I have some big news…

Tim and I have been house-hunting since we got engaged in May 2017. However, it was only recently that I started to feel the call to move closer to home. York will always be special to me, it’s where I grew up and went to school until the age of 16. The thought of moving back to York makes me so happy and excited for the future. Tim is going to move his busy Personal Training and Sports Massage business over to York too, so our home is going to be a hub of activity!

So, we started looking in York and found somewhere we like in the Foxwood area, made an offer and it was accepted – hurray! Our solicitors are currently crunching through all the searches and finer details but the crux of the matter is, hopefully we’ll be in our new home by Christmas. Everyone keep your fingers and toes crossed.

This means it’s time to put my Yorkshire feelers out. If you live in York and are interested in having harp lessons, piano lessons, or music theory lessons, please do get in touch. I plan to start teaching in York as soon as possible after the new year, and I would love to help you reach your musical goals.

In the meantime, I do offer lessons via skype, so if you live in York and want to start right away, maybe we can start online and then move to offline lessons when 2019 comes around.

I cannot tell you how much I’m looking forward to going back to my Yorkshire roots.

As always, here are the ways in which you can contact me should you so desire:

https://twitter.com/harpistangelina

https://www.facebook.com/angelinawarburtonharpist/

https://www.instagram.com/angelinawarburton/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQzzApriMcGEdE1ZxjkWMdg

I also have a Patreon page if you are interested in supporting me in that way:

https://www.patreon.com/harpistangelina

Thanks so much for reading, let’s chat soon,

A x

Career, Lifestyle, Music

Alderley Edge, Prestwich, and the 10k that didn’t happen.

5 March 2018 No Comments

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.

Career, Lifestyle, Music

Harping, Running, Yoga.

19 February 2018 2 Comments

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,

How to Practice: Schedule it in

10 November 2016 No Comments

If you’re anything like me, sometimes it’s hard to practice. Some days, the motivation just isn’t there, it just seems like too much. So we end up procrastinating and putting it off until eventually the day is over and it’s too late (who else does this?)

I think that the reason for this is the fact that practice – good quality practice – is mentally tiring. You’re always thinking, always trying to improve, actively looking for imperfections and then trying to iron them out. It’s not easy! It takes effort. That’s why I think it’s hard to get started sometimes.

So I’d like to use this post to make a list of things that seem to help me to practice (even when I don’t want to). If you have any of your own tips please leave them in the comments – let’s help each other with this.

Find what time works best for YOU

For me, it’s first thing in the morning, before I’ve had chance to get distracted by emails and other commitments. Straight after breakfast, sit down and play. I find that I focus much better in the morning and practice is much more productive (in fact, I’d go as far as saying it’s probably twice as effective as afternoon or evening practice).

I realise that with family and work commitments, morning practice isn’t always possible, but even if it’s a couple of days a week, morning practice could make a massive difference to your overall progress. Give it a try.

Set a weekly practice target

We all have busy, crazy days where practice just ain’t gonna happen. Let’s not beat ourselves up about it. Instead, set a weekly target of how much practice would be ideal and try and stick to it. Start small, how about four hours a week? If you get to the end of the week and find you want to do more, increase it. If you find your target was way too high and you’re feeling guilty for missing your target, relax a little and find an amount that works for you. If your practice is good quality, you may not need to do as much as you think.

Schedule your practice in for the week

So you’ve decided how much practice you need to do this week, now let’s schedule it in. Ahh I love a good schedule and I’ve written about this subject before. But trust me on this. Schedule your practice in and you remove the guilt of always feeling like you ‘should be practising’. Turn it into a commitment – you wouldn’t be late for a coffee date with your bestie or a flight to go somewhere exciting, so don’t be late for practice. Show up, get it done, and then reward yourself…

Reward yourself for staying on track

I’m still not very good at this, but there are lots of ways to reward yourself if you are really struggling to get your practice done. Obviously improving your playing is a reward in itself but thinking more short-term – when you hit your practice goal for the week reward yourself with a treat. Fancy hot chocolate with mashmallows and whipped cream? Watching your favourite tv show? Buying some new music? Having a super-long bath with fancy oils and a glass of bubbly? Whatever you fancy, if it’ll make you do your practice, it’ll be worth it.

Set specific targets for each session

Look at what’s coming up in your diary. Any gigs in the next six weeks should be your priority. If you’re just playing for a hobby, why not set yourself a deadline of when you want a piece to be ready for? Your next lesson is an excellent goal to work towards and gosh I miss that weekly lesson to kick my behind into gear and focus my mind on what I need to improve.

Have a goal for each hour of practice. Even if it’s just ‘I want to play the first line of my piece from memory’ or ‘I want to be able to play fluently at x speed with the metronome’ or ‘I want the left hand to be smooth in this section’, set a target so you’re not just playing a piece through and hoping it’ll get better. Focus on the bits you can’t yet play and practice them until you can’t get them wrong (practising until it’s correct is not enough – practice starts when it’s correct). Whatever you’re working on, see if you can play it ten times correctly before moving on – if you make a mistake on the ninth time, it’s back to the start for you (sorry).

So there we have just a few tips on how to improve your practice – if you have any thoughts or anything to add please do comment and let me know what you think. Or at least let me know that I’m not the only musician out there who sometimes doesn’t want to practice!

As ever, thanks very much for reading.

Career, Music

Orchestral Etiquette: how to get conductors to like you

23 June 2016 No Comments

You think being excellent at your instrument automatically makes you an asset to your orchestra?

Well… not necessarily.

I started playing with orchestras as a child, going away for week-long orchestral courses for IAPS and NSSO. These early experiences of playing in an orchestra are absolutely fantastic and get you into some great habits. As a young harpist, I was lucky to receive guidance from many amazing harpists – all of whom I still know and respect today (Honor, Gabriella, Eira, Rachel, Georgina and Anita to name just a few).

The following is a list of some of the things I’ve learned about playing in orchestras, if you are new to orchestral playing, following these tips will certainly help you make a good impression.

If some of these seem stupidly obvious, please forgive me, it’s my attempt at being thorough. Please know that this isn’t me being ‘holier than thou’ – believe me I’ve often fallen short of these standards. But I believe this is what we should all strive for.

Being on time is not good enough

First thing’s first. If a rehearsal starts at 10am, turning up at 10am means you are late and inconveniencing the conductor. I’d recommend if you have a large instrument (harp or percussion), aim to arrive AN HOUR before the starting time of the rehearsal. Everyone else, half an hour.

Hear me out here.

Arriving sufficiently early means you have time to find somewhere to park, unload, sort any potential disasters, find where you are going, settle in and tune before wind and brass start warming up, and maybe even grab a coffee too. By the time 10am rolls around, you’re relaxed, warmed up, caffeinated, and good to go. Plus, with traffic and the (very real) possibility of getting lost, we often arrive later than we expect – so this plan at least gives a good margin for error

No chatting, NO PHONES, no reading, unless the orchestra is rehearsing a movement you’re not in.

I get it, you’re not playing for a hundred bars and you need the gossip from last night. Maybe just send a quick text to see what’s going on.

No.

Conductors see everything and being on your phone in a rehearsal is unprofessional and rude. Just don’t do it. If you’re not playing for a whole movement that’s perhaps different but in general, keep in off, in your bag, away from you so there’s no temptation. Personally, during movements I’m not in a prefer a good book or a crossword/sudoku.

Whispering and chatting to your deskie while the conductor is talking is also a no-no, it’s obvious and distracting to others.

Tune quickly and quietly, when it’s your turn, and stop playing when you are in tune.

Oh, the joys of getting an orchestra in tune. Harpists, sit back and hope that you tuned to the same A that the oboist is now playing – personally I prefer 440 Hz but different orchestras might do things differently (441 or in some places even 442 *shudder*). Everyone else, tune when directed to do so, but please do it as quietly as you can (so as to be considerate to the players around you who are also tuning) and stop playing as soon as you are in tune – to make it easier for those still tuning.

Practise the music beforehand

I hope this one is obvious, particularly for harpists. If you can get your hands on the music in advance, do it! What helps me a lot is finding the score online (try imslp.org) and then listening to it on spotify. Notice any tricky or solo passages and work on those. Mark up your part as necessary. The better you know the music, the better prepared you are on the day. Preparation is key and no one wants to get caught out.

Be prepared

Have a specific bag that you bring with you to rehearsals, or keep these bits in your instrument case. A couple of 2B pencils (darker lead and easier to rub out), a wire stand in case there aren’t any at the venue, and a folding light just in case the light is poor for the concert.

Depending on your instrument of course you will need other bits and pieces, for me, I take my gig bag, the contents of which I list here.

Having these bits with you just puts your mind at ease that you won’t be caught out. It’s embarrassing to not have a pencil when you need to mark important instructions (cuts, repeats etc.)

Always, always, count.

So you’re not playing for a hundred bars, cry me a river and just make sure you count. All the time. SO many times I’ve been counting for what feels like hundreds of bars only for the conductor to stop just before I come in. Classic. But it’s still useful. You learn and can note down any important cues and get so much more of a feel for the music this way – and ultimately – that will add to your confidence when it comes to the performance. You’ll know exactly where to come in – and the conductor will love you.

Never rely on getting a cue from the conductor.

I say this with love, I really do. Conductors have so much to think about I don’t know how they do what they do. They won’t always be able to bring you in for your entry. This is why you need to count 100% of the time. Still WATCH the conductor at all times, but don’t be afraid to come in if they don’t give you a cue.

Harpists and other lone instruments: if you are not sure about your entry, come in anyway, if it’s wrong, it can be addressed, if it’s right, great work! Have the confidence to just come in, even if you’re not completely sure where you are. This comes with time and experience.

After a concert, sit when the leader sits, leave only when the leader leaves.

All this bowing, clapping, and standing after a concert has finished can seem silly, I mean, some of us actually have homes to go to, homes that are really far away. If in doubt, do what the leader does, when they sit, you sit, when they have left the stage, you can leave the stage.

Just don’t actually bow, you’ll feel ridiculous and you’ll be the only one. Smile at the audience and stand up straight, act like you are proud of what just happened.

Long Black is more professional that All Black.

Ladies, when it comes to concert clothes, let’s keep it decent. You don’t want the audience thinking you must be going clubbing right after the concert. This is less of an issue in winter, when church concerts make you want to put at least ten layers on as well as a hot water bottle and mittens.

But seriously, smart, professional, and long is best in my opinion. No miniskirts. ESPECIALLY if you straddle your instrument (I’m looking at you, cellists and harpists).

I used to love flouncing around in a black ball-gown at every orchestral gig I did. Nowadays I prefer smart black trousers, a black plain top and a black cardigan for smaller concerts and I keep the dresses for the bigger concerts halls and solo gigs.

So there you have it! Just a few tips to help make a good impression on your colleagues at orchestral gigs. Thanks for reading and I hope you find them useful.

Do you have any others that I’ve missed? Leave them in the comments below.

Career, Music

January 2016 Gigs

28 January 2016 No Comments

Only a couple of gigs to report on this month. Both background gigs. The first was at Bolton’s Museum and Art Gallery – a drinks reception for KBL Solicitors. It got a write up online that you can read here.

I have to say I was looked after so well in Bolton, I was given a plate of delicious canapés and everyone always made sure I had a soft drink of some sort. That makes such a difference. I often have to travel to somewhere totally unfamiliar, greet people I’ve never met or spoken to before so little things like food and somewhere to change my clothes really make a huge difference.

The next gig was down at Alton Towers Conference Centre. This was an unusual event. Firstly, I’ve never been to Alton Towers before. Yep. Never. I had no idea that it’s actually in the middle of nowhere! It was already dark when I arrived and I hadn’t seen another car for several miles (the same happened on the way home, quite spooky really). Oh, and the building seemed deserted when I arrived, walking down empty corridors in a strange building after driving down empty roads in the dark for ages is so weird!

Anyway, I did eventually find where the dinner was taking place and wow, it looked pretty cool:

The whole evening had an Enchanted Forest theme, and I wish I could have taken pictures of the guests – a lot of effort went into the costumes! Everyone was there, chimney-sweeps, Snow White, Aladdin, Captain Hook, it was crazy!

So that’s pretty much it when it comes to gigs this month. Luckily I had loads of work in December, and because of the way I now organise myself financially I’ve been able to keep paying myself each week as usual. Looking back on previous January blog posts, it’s interesting to see how things have levelled themselves out now. No panicking if a gig doesn’t pay for a while, not too much stress if there’s a quiet time with not many gigs, hey, they’re pouring in now! I guess that, after freelancing for over four years now, I’m learning that it’s all going to be ok. There is work out there. There are jobs out there. There are opportunities out there. And I intend to grasp all of the above with both hands.

Career, Music

Music Business Myths #1 ‘you only get one shot’

15 October 2015 No Comments

As a new experiment on this blog, I thought I’d share what I think are some misconceptions about the big bad music world and us mere humans trying to navigate our way around it.

The first one I’d like to address is the idea that, you get one chance to really make your career amazing. It could be a big concert, a presentation, some sort of performance or audition that you feel could be a huge break for you, and if you fail or do less than your best, that’s it – career ruined, minimum wage job for the rest of your life – no more chances.

This, in my opinion, is a mindset that is so unhelpful that we need to put it to bed right now.

Sure, some gigs might lead to more work, better work, with influential people – fantastic! – but if those seemingly ‘more important’ gigs don’t go well, you can recover, you can regroup, you can carry on and learn from failures instead of thinking of all the missed opportunities.

In fact, some of my ‘failures’ have actually taught me way more than the concerts that went well. As musicians, we dedicate our lives to learning, and this is true of freelancing as much as it is true for mastering your instrument.

Having an important string break just before a big concert? We learn to always have spares of everything. Just in case.

Late to an important gig? We learn to leave enough time, even when we think there won’t be traffic.

Solo performance could have been better? We learn to evaluate our performance, see where we went wrong, practice differently, and do better next time.

Instead of looking at all our failures, all the times we went wrong, all the times we didn’t fulfil our potential, let’s look at what went well, what we can change for the better, how we can improve.

A career like this is a journey for us. A huge learning curve. Nobody starts off knowing everything, we learn by experience. If something doesn’t go well, as Taylor would say shake it off and remember tomorrow is a new day. It’s a big world out there, don’t be afraid to jump in and move forward.

Uncategorized

Happy New Year 2015

8 January 2015 No Comments

So here we are, 2015, can you believe it?

This is the third Happy New Year post I’ve done – time flies – so I’ll try and make this one a little different (check out 2013 and 2014).

It’s natural at this time to assess the previous year and to look forward to what we want to achieve in the future. Last year I moved in with my boyfriend so that has been the biggest change. We are absolutely loving having our own space just to relax and spend time together. He probably does 90% of all the cooking, which leads to me eating far too much of his delicious food (carbonara is my favourite – I may steal the recipe for a future blog post, leave a comment below if you’d be interested in this).

Work-wise, things still seem to be ticking along nicely. I’m making enough to stay afloat, woohoo! I’ve started saving 20% of everything I earn, which comes in really handy at this time of year when my tax bill is due.

I haven’t been running quite so much as I used to and have joined a gym instead. I wanted to work more on strength but also I wanted the variety of being able to do things like Yoga, Body Pump and Spinning, then be able to swim and have a jacuzzi/sauna afterwards. I also like doing classes as once they are in your diary you treat them like appointments, so emails, phone calls etc. just have to wait until you get back. End of story. I can’t help it. I just love prioritising ‘me time’. Having already done two classes this week I can’t believe how much busier the gym is! So many people on their New Year’s Resolutions. I miss the old days before Christmas with Yoga classes of six and spinning classes of two!

So now for some resolutions, I don’t want to commit to too much and then fall off the wagon later, but here goes:

1. Dry January

No booze in January. I’m tweaking this ever so slightly and doing January 5th to February 5th to allow for a large family party last weekend. I’m doing it to stretch my self-control, and possibly save a bit of money. In addition to that, I’m trying to lose a bit of weight and I’m interested to see if quitting the drink for 31 days will help give me a headstart.

2. Have a ‘weekend’ during the week

Ok this is an odd one but bear with me, I nearly always have gigs at the weekends, so I’m trialling a system of making Tuesday and Wednesday my weekend – and treating Saturday and Sunday like normal working days. Normal working day means getting up at a reasonable time, and either practising, doing admin, going to gigs or something useful during the working day. Weekends mean sleep in, practise if I want to, go to the gym, go for walks, maybe cook a nice meal and generally potter about. I’ll be reporting back on this after a few weeks. Obviously it won’t be completely clear cut – I have pupils who can really only do Tuesday for example. But we’ll see how it goes. I may just end up binge-watching Sex and the City on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Let’s hope not.

I’m also aiming to publish a blog post once a week (on a Thursday, just in case you’re interested). So watch this space for more musings during 2015. It’s good to be back!

Career, Music

Autumn Term

11 September 2014 1 Comment

The summer is drawing to a close and there’s a definite sense of ‘back to work’ here in Manchester.

It’s been a very chilled break for me, I spent some time in the Netherlands, where I had a few cycling lessons, learnt a bit of Dutch, ate a lot of food and drank lots of coffee. I also went on a few National Trust adventures and had many, many dinner parties with friends.

I had a few gigs here and there, mainly providing background music for weddings and other social occasions. It was enough to get me through August (just) but things feel like they’re stepping up a gear now.

It’s September, the start of a new term, I’ve joined a gym (and have been going three times a week) – already I feel like I have way more energy. Gigs are starting to come in thick and fast so I’m spending more time practising. The choir that I sing with has started up again after an August break, and with that the weekly trips to the pub also restart. The new term has also started at Chetham’s, where I work one day a week, how is it that some schoolkids now were born in 2006?!

So the upshot of all this is, all of a sudden I’m ridiculously busy! I’m seeing this as a very good thing as it means I may have money soon yay! I also need to start getting up early again (boo!) but for this I have freshly ground coffee that starts making itself at 7am – I don’t have the mental clarity to grind beans at that time.

I intend to be posting more or less weekly from now on. Just to keep checking in and keep this blog up to date. I hope all of your summers were lovely and that the start of term isn’t too traumatic!

Career

Erm, where’s my time off?

10 January 2014 2 Comments

I hope everyone is settling in to the New Year nicely, who is keeping their resolutions?

So I just looked back to my ‘Week 2’ post of last year. It makes rather depressing reading. I was struggling financially and needed a part time job to tide me over. I felt out of control regarding my earnings and hated living month to month, not knowing if I’d be able to pay rent next month.

Well, a lot can change in a year.

I had so much work in November and December of 2013 it was absolutely fantastic, as well as a bit frantic. I admit I was looking forward to the quiet of January. I knew I’d made enough money to feed myself even if I got no work this month – which happily isn’t the case. I also feel a lot more in control of my finances since using the iPhone app ‘Back in Black’, which I talk about in the post Will We Always Feel Skint?

So rather than wallowing in the lack of work and freaking out about the future, I’m taking a different approach this year. I’m being generally a bit more on it, getting stuff done regarding admin, practice and other life-stuff that needs doing. I’m also using this time to take stock, to think about possible projects for the upcoming year and setting myself some targets. More info coming on those projects as and when… but I’m pretty excited already! So basically, when I thought January would be something of a holiday, I was wrong, it’s a holiday from three gigs a week but there’s still so much to do!

This last week I’ve been playing down in London, but annoyingly I’m not allowed to say what I was doing! This will definitely be the subject of a post around April time so keep your eyes peeled. This photo was shared on Facebook so I guess I’m allowed to share it here, check out the beautiful paper birds:

But that’s literally all I can say at this point, so watch this space!

In other news, my harp quartet have been brainstorming ideas for this year too. 2014 is going to be an exciting year. If you haven’t seen our website yet you can visit it here.

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