Gigs in Yorkshire

I'm off to Yorkshire. First I have a gig to do on the South coast tomorrow and then I aim to drive part of the way to Otley and stop over somewhere halfway up, Northampton-ish let's say, have a good sleep and a nice big breakfast on Friday morning

The guitar is ready

and finish the drive on Friday so I can arrive in good condition. The guitar is all ready - I put new strings on a few days ago and they are well played in now.
Otley looks like a beautiful town and Otley Courthouse theatre, where I'll be performing, looks awesome. We're lucky to have friends in the area so will be driving to their house after the gig - after the highly necessary curry that is. I don't think I can drive all the way to Otley, perform a concert and then not go out and have a curry.  I've been investigating local breweries in that area too...  there is the vital question of which local brews to sample.

Sampling the local brews is pretty much an obligation I think

I've got Saturday off - during which I will get the chance to see my friends and maybe do a bit of ale sampling and as it's the Holmefirth  festival of Folk I'll be visiting that. I'll definitely be going to hear Michael J Tinker playing at 4.30 pm - I am just assuming I'll be able to find him -  I'm not sure where it is but he's on at The Red Deer. The Gerry McNeice Band is on as well - And on Sunday I'll still be there and if you're in the area come and listen to Sarah Horn and James Cudworth - great musicians -  performing outside Hervey's, from around 2pm. I've just got time to sample some ale (modest pre-gig amount) and hear some music before it's off to my own gig - to play some Bartok and Bach and flamenco and Villa Lobos and all the rest of my programme in Halifax.
I'm performing there at Square Chapel Arts Centre and I notice that just above me in the what's on list is what looks like a very nice beer festival which I will have missed. Ah well - I'm sure I shall have had some very good local brews by then.

Back to King's Lynn and the 2013 Festival Fringe



Brilliant statue not far from my venue in King's Lynn

The King's Lynn Festival brochure is out now and the online version has gone live also. I’m listed in  ‘events, walks and tours’ and am honoured to share the list with some delightful things e.g. the poetically named walk: Algarkirk to Whaplode by way of Bicker & Pinchbeck. There are some lovely things on: - As You Like It in the courtyard at Holkham Hall, for example and tea dances and musical coffee mornings. Scroll down the list and you will find me between the Boughton Jazz Picnic and the West End Wendies! See picture below of me playing last year in this gorgeous church.
Tickets for this year are already selling well I’m delighted to hear. The Box office number is 02380 560945 if you want to book your tickets in advance or you can just turn up and get your ticket on the door. Do visit the Festival website to browse, but in case you didn't have time my programme entry says:

Jonathan Prag Classical Guitar, All Saints Church, King’s Lynn

 21 July 3pm £7 (£5.00 concessions)

Back following 2012’s Festival success in King’s Lynn. Superb playing includes Lauro, Barrios, Satie. ‘…gripping performance...held the entire audience’s rapt attention.’ (Lothian Life)

Organised by All Saints Church.

All Saints Church King's Lynn

A gig at St Mary's Stadium

I played at St Mary's Stadium last night - the first time I've ever been to it. I was playing the guitar I hasten to add and this was a grand function and nothing to do with football. Barry Cryer was there. He came up to me at the end and said how much he had enjoyed listening to me play. In today's  Guardian Simon Hoggart, reporting on the annual Oldie of the Year lunch in his Simon Hoggart's Week column says the same thing - 'Barry Cryer was there...' and then goes on to say that Barry is hard of hearing. Hmm. On balance I am still pleased.

This is the Ted Bates statue outside.

Happy New Year!

The evil lemon of doom

I hope 2013 will be a contented and productive year for you all. I would like the same for myself but there is a delay - partly self inflicted. Foolishly I chose to slice a lemon by resting it on the edge of the sink (I know... I know...) and I sliced my finger right where the pressure goes whenever I have to hold down many many chords. And then, after actually commenting to someone on how pleased I was with the current condition of my right thumb nail I caught it in the badminton net (guitarists have to play raquet sports as everyone knows) and two thirds of it snapped off. But never mind. I am sure that once I have got clear of January and it's physical inconveniences I shall be fine.
Exciting things are coming up - it's my concert at South Hill Park Arts Centre on February 8th and meanwhile I am busy putting together the programme for this year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe which, if all goes to plan, will get its preview at the King's Lynn Festival in July. I had a very successful concert there last year and am looking forward to returning to play again. It was a most rewarding experience and of course it is a lovely area to visit in any case.
Also - astonishingly - I am currently at number 1 in the local Reverbnation classical charts. Thank you to all the people who have liked /fanned/visited my pages or commented.

The Ruskin Ensemble

a younger incarnation - I still have that guitar though

I was reminded of all the tours we used to do when a fellow member of The Ruskin Ensemble, its leader, in fact, the violinist Jane Gomm, came to my concert at the Chequer Mead Theatre in East Grinstead last night.
For a  few years we went up and down the UK and did two or three tours in Scotland as well. I have a sudden nostalgia for the fun of performing those pieces!...
It was a time of collaboration, rehearsal, fitting cellos into small cars and playing composers I can't play as a soloist like Guastavino (I miss him), Vivaldi and Paganini. It was a time when I had only just begun going to the Edinburgh Fringe to perform, when I worried more about where I was in the Hampshire squash league than where my next gig was coming from and when I had more hair.
In April The Ruskin Ensemble is planning a concert in Kent - I will post more details when the arrangements have firmed up - and I am really looking forward to it.

Lothian Life Review for Classical Guitar - Jonathan Prag

I'm delighted to have got another really nice review for my show - this time from Lothian Life
http://www.lothianlife.co.uk/2012/08/classical-guitar-jonathan-prag/#more-11990

Jonathan Prag has been a regular at the Festival Fringe since 1992. After twenty years, the quality of his performances mark him out as one the Fringe’s finest musicians.
Classical Guitar – Jonathan Prag (1.30 pm, until 27 August, at C too, St Columba’s by the Castle, Johnstone Terrace) is a reminder, if we need it, of the emotional power of the solo guitar. It is also performed in a wonderful setting. St Columba’s is a small Victorian architectural gem, with a plain, lightsome interior, a totally fitting venue (marginally spoiled by the modernist mural behind the altar) for this scale of musical event.
Prag started with Villa Lobos, “the single most significant creative figure in 20th-century Brazilian art music,” whose two great influences were Brazilian folk music and JS Bach. Neatly and aptly, his next piece was the First Suite for Solo Lute by JS Bach.
Prag continued to exemplify the guitar’s versatility and its capacity to move and challenge the listener. He ranged expertly through Irish traditional folk tunes, a wonderful version of Cole Porter’s ‘Begin the Beguine’ and work by Flamenco master Paco Peña. A reverberating Tango by Ástor Piazolla was accompanied by Prag’s explanation of the dangers of musical innovation: Piazolla was reviled, threatened and spat upon by many Tango traditionalists in Argentina prior to his genius becoming more commonly accepted.
This was a gripping performance from which it was hard to select high-spots because of the quality of the concert as a whole. Certainly his rendition of the Staten Island Hornpipe had toes tapping throughout the hall and his version of Bela Bartok’s Rumanian Folk Dances held the rapt attention of the entire audience.
This was technical excellence and quiet restraint brought to bear on a programme with wide appeal. No other instrument quite achieves the same impact as the solo guitar, that sense for the listener of being entirely alone as the music strips away every inessential emotion. It was therefore entirely fitting that Prag’s well-deserved encore was a moving version of Mal Waldron’s song for Billie Holiday, ‘I’m Left Alone’.
We can only trust that after these first twenty years, the appearances at the Fringe will remain high on Jonathan Prag’s priority list

Great Review from Three Weeks

I'm very pleased to get this on Day 8 of the Edinburgh Fringe (I hope my pupils will agree that I actually AM an affable music teacher...)

"Not everyone would think to pair Bach and Bartok, Cole Porter and Celtic Hornpipe, least of all in a solo performance for acoustic guitar. When it comes to music, though, Prag is an unapologetic anthropologist, taking in a bewildering medley of cultures and influences. Deftly handling the complex arrangements, he renders Irish folk songs richly emotional, explores crisp classical movements and closes this intimate set with a fiery and frankly brilliant flamenco. If at times he comes across as an affable music teacher, he nevertheless plays with passionate precision, intensely expressive even during the most effusive flurries of notes. Like the composers he admires, Prag draws on deep traditions and diverse styles to make exquisite, intricate music."
- Dave Fargnoli, Three Weeks (Aug 07, 2012)