Anne Gregson

This Summer Fiery Dragon Company were very pleased to gain two new members, violinist Kerstin Petersson and flautist Noeline Beesley.

I played my music with Fiery Dragon Company at Party in the City in Bath in May.  Then in August we played in the orangery in the beautiful gardens at Iford Manor. The video below was taken at that concert, with Noeline on flute. Kerstin was in Sweden that day so David Moss of LightGarden gallantly stepped into the breach.

It’s been a little while since I posted some news so I’ve got a decent chunk for you now.

Fiery Dragon Company will be performing my music at Bath’s Party in the City on the evening of  May 17th. The venue is Christ Church in Julian Road, Bath. We’ve had other performances as well that I forgot to mention here at Bath Folk Festival, Bradford on Avon Christmas Tree Festival and places like that.

Recorder player Kathryn Bennetts played my piece ‘Music Through an Open Window’ on 8 March in a concert she gave for International Women’s Day at St Peter and St Paul Tonbridge.

I recently joined the Olyver New Music Collective which is a new music ensemble, concert series ​and contemporary music news outlet and consists of composers, performers and sound engineers from all around the world. I was selected as a featured composer in their online magazine in March 2019.

Earlier this year (2018) I brought together some very fine musicians I had met to play some of my music. They were so enthusiastic that it was natural to propose forming a group to perform in public. The opera Make Room For Mummers had been performed on all three occasions by an ad hoc group of singers and musicians under the name The Fiery Dragon Folk Opera Company and it seemed entirely appropriate to re-use the name for this new venture. And so the Fiery Dragon Company was born (or, perhaps, reborn).

On the 18th May we had our first gig at St John the Evangelist Church in Bath. Of course given my track record with bells you won’t be surprised to hear the concert involved Ellacombe chimes. In the earlier concert (as you can hear in the post dated 26/9/16) the musicians played outside in the church yard. This was not really possible at St John’s, which is a city centre pub with rain forecast (though in the event it was a beautiful evening) so we needed to move the Fiery Dragon Company indoors. But another problem then arises which is that church bells are pretty quiet inside the church itself.

My husband Chris came up with the idea of placing a radio mic in the belfry which relayed the sound of the bells down to a speaker in the main body of the church. The group then formed up round the speaker and performed as an ensemble including the bells as another instrument in fulfilment of my long ambition to do this. Chris recorded the concert and you can hear some of the music played on the Listen tab as well as the Fiery Dragon Company‘s own website.

Yesterday was my graduation ceremony for my Masters in composition – I got a Masters with merit, I’m pleased to say. The University have chosen Jeremy Irons as their new Chancellor and so I got to shake his hand and exchange a few words. It was, as it happened, his very first graduation ceremony for Bath Spa University and he spent a while talking to every student as we came past. In consequence the ceremony rather overran. A nice man and a memorable ceremony.

Tonight is the first Apple Wassail in the Bradford on Avon Community Orchard and I’ve been commissioned to write a new wassail song for it. Even better the group I sing with, Eagle Alley, are to sing it at the wassail. It’s called the Hens’ Orchard Wassail We’ve been practising hard for it and I’m very pleased with it.

Well it’s a bit hectic right now because I’m approaching the end of my Masters course and there is a requirement that everything I have composed for the course must be performed – an excellent requirement, in my opinion, but hard work!

My investigations into Ellacombe Chimes paid off and yesterday there was a performance of several of my works at St Mary’s Church, Bitton, near Bath. What all these works had in common was the use of church bells played using the Ellacombe Chimes, with accompaniments from a group of singers and musicians playing in the open air by the church. The weather was good and there was a good sized audience and the music was lovely. Here is one of the pieces played, named Minimal Chimes:-

You can hear contributions to the music made by passing birds and an airliner. It all helped to enrich the sound, in my opinion.

This is a new song cycle I’ve written for soprano, tenor and string quartet, setting words written by Keri Hendy, the current Bard of Bath and tonight it receives its first performance as part of a concert in this year’s Bath Fringe Festival. Exciting, I have to say, but also scary since the soprano singer has completely lost her voice and I think I shall have to sing in her place! Still, we have a good conductor in the shape of Jeff Boehm from Bath Spa University who will pull us through, I’m sure.

UPDATE: we had a very good audience and a great welcome for the piece. Very gratifying.

Tonight the White Doves Peace Choir of Trowbridge sing one of my songs called All In Harmony. Looking forward to hearing them sing it. One of my most treasured possessions is a letter from Pete Seeger saying how much he liked this song.

Well we didn’t have a procession with bellringing in the end because bellringers prefer not to play much out of their comfort zone – understandable when you consider they’re trying to control many hundredweights of metal safely. However my investigations into the world of church bells is leading me towards something called Ellacombe Chimes, a way of playing church bells melodically. This could prove very interesting. More anon.

It’s that time of the year when we gird up our loins for Christmas carols. Mind you, we’re not talking about the carols you sing in churches nowadays but the old  carols, the gallery carols that were sung in the 18th and early 19th centuries and still survive in places like the pubs around Sheffield. We sing them in pubs around Bradford on Avon and it’s my job to organise and lead the band that plays for the carols. More about what we do here.