A taster of The Tethered Fairy Ring LIVE in France

So excited to share with you this little fairy taster of  my composition 'The Tethered Fairy Ring: A Symphonic Poem for Ukulele' being performed here by myself and Susan Berry in a beautiful old church in the centre of

 St. Quentin les Chardonnets

Lower Normandy, France.

An authentic unedited film of the full 20 minute performance is now available:

Kindly email me at: cherylbeermusic@gmail.com
for details of cost & postage.

Many thanks  and much love to you in advance
for supporting our work.

Ukulele Heaven

 

Just had to show you these lovely photo's from Bigyn Primary School.

 

 

My day at the school was kindly funded by

Y Ffwrnes Theatre as part of

Ffocus Ffwrnes Family Fun Days

 

 

A whole team of us will be facilitating workshops at the Y Ffwrnes on

August 16th 17th & 18th

So why not come along ...

 

 

Many thanks to Rachel Murphy and Arts Care Gofal Celf for organising the workshops and including me in the line up. Great fun!

 

 

 

Hafal Open Day

Foto by John Gilheaney

 

I've had an absolutely fabulous time at Hafal Open Day in Llanhilleth. How blessed am I in my work to have such fun doing it! Well done everyone for a great Day!

 

Earlier on this year I worked for 6 weeks with quite a large group of people who started attending Ukulele and Song writing with me funded by Head for Arts via Menu for Life and organised by the centre manager, Malcom, who is such a lovely chap.

 

I think is probably one of the resaons why Hafal feels like a great place to be. Like today, at the Open Day, there were all sorts of Hafal staff there from Regional Managers to smiley chaps in Bermuda shorts 'from Head Office' but no one walked around wearing their job title! Everyone mucked in, smiled and quite honestly, you wouldn't have known who was staff and who wasn't. This opens up a warm welcoming place for people to be, a place where the space is owned by the people who use the space, not the people who manage it, which is just the way I think it should be! In fact, I want to work with Hafal!

 

Anyways, we wrote 2 FAB songs this morning which we then performed when the Mayor and Councillors turned up ... the Mayor actually joined in, having been in a skiffle band himself in the 50's.

 

I LOVE skiffle having toured for some time with Lonnie Donegan, the King of Skiffle himself, not long before he passed away, bless him.

 

Anyways, the Mayor offered to show us how to play a plastic ashtray, which sadly we didn't have on us, but he will come back and teach everyone how to play it with a two pence piece!

 

So, thanks Hafal for providing such a wonderful service for people who find that they need extra help with their mental health. Thanks everyone for wanting me back so bad for the Open Day that you managed to get the funding! Thanks to my old friends and colleagues at Head For Arts for funding today via Menu for Life, thanks everyone for coming ...

 

www.hafal.org

 

www.head4arts.org.uk

 

Studio Daze!

Wonderful day in the studio, just taking a wee break now, for grub!

First off we mixed the piano onto the tracks that Mandy Painting came over to record last week. Her piano playing really is breath taking! Sounds beautiful! Thanks Mandy.

Then focussed on mixing in some birdsong which I recorded on the coastal path at 6am. This is an echo of Dylan's 'Quite early one morning' written in New Quay and I wanted to record what 'quite early' sounds like to incorporate into my work.

The lyric in 600 Castles 'Hear the birds singing your name' is now accompanied by the birds singing their little hearts out first thing: Dawn chorus!

It then blends into what for me is the possibly the most exciting piece of my journey; the dolphin voices.

Once the birds and the dolphins were down, I then recorded a piece of music that the dolphins inspired me to write on Uke whilst in my secret writing shack last week.

And that's where we've taken a break to grab a quick slice of toast and a cuppa before we pass out!

 

 

I am quite honestly moved almost to tears to hear what has been in my head falling out into the studio and being recorded. To hear the inside of your head coming back at you is truthfully a feeling that no words can touch.

Practical aside! Developed a ground hum on my electro-acoustic uke from the transducer!

 Nightmare!

 

But we got round it by connecting a ground wire from the output jack to my little finger whilst playing! Top techno tip for you there folks!