Antonio Forcione (acoustic)

Bach For Breakfast (featuring Sean Shibe on classical guitar)

Bert Jansch (acoustic)

Bon Iver (acoustic)

Camera Ritmata (featuring Simon Thacker on classical guitar)

Classical & World Guitar (featuring Neil Wilson on classical guitar)

Classical Guitar Recital (featuring Spyros Dendrinos)

Classical Guitars & St. Cecilia’s (featuring Luca Villani)

Claude Bourbon (acoustic)

Darren Dutson-Bromley (jazz)

Electric Avenue Band (world/rock)

Flamenco Jazz Late Night (featuring Ricardo Garcia)

Guitar Fiesta (featuring Luca Villani)

Guitar Music – Transatlantic (featuring Stefan Grasse)

Guitars at St. Cecilia’s (featuring Gordon Ferries - baroque)

Jonathan Prag (classical)

Lotte’s Gift (featuring Karin Schaupp – classical)

Mayhew: Live – Free (featuring classical/folk guitar and more)

Preston Reed (acoustic – unusual technique!)

Spanish Spectacular (featuring Sorros Duo – Phillip Thorne & Selina Madley - classical)

Tony Cox – Guitar, me and South Africa

Two-five-one (featuring Duncan Findlay & Adam Bulley – jazz)

Wingin It (acoustic/traditional)

It’s interesting to see the term “social networks” appear in the same sentence as “Upper Palaeolithic music.” Plus ça change….

On Monday, P5 – P7 pupils from Campie PS played a short concert for the current P4s. The repertoire was a mix of group items and solos, the latter of which would give them some idea of what they might be doing next year. The atmosphere was great and there were some very interesting questions for the pupils from the audience. Recordings from this event can be found on the Campie PS page.

In a similar vein, Tuesday saw a visit of NBHS guitarists to Law PS and Wednesday, a visit of Knox guitarists to King’s Meadow PS. Technical glitches e.g. batteries running out during performances, resulted in their being fewer recordings than I’d hoped, but there are enough to give some idea of the day. The explosive applause of P7 pupils should also convey how much the pupils enjoyed the visit. (NBHS page; Knox page).

Thursday evening was the Musselburgh Grammar School Summer Concert in which the school’s Guitar Group played two items – a Scottish Medley and a Brazilian Choro. You can hear these items on the MGS page.

Many thanks to all the pupils concerned for the hard work, joie de vivre and savoir faire.

You can hear more on YouTube.

Impromptu MC, I was keen to highlight the relevance of the way in which much of the music had been put together to the themes of the day. Many of the pupils had been on exam leave for several weeks and, nevertheless, were game to take on new material for public performance at very short notice. One example of positive attitude was to be seen in two pupils who agreed to join in the accompaniment of two songs only yesterday. Another was in the willingness of the whole group to perform a blues put together in a few minutes with neither notes nor overall plan written out. Four individuals volunteered improvised solos in this blues, and I was keen that the audience enjoy the quality of living in the moment, which always adds an immediacy to performance. I decided to dedicate this blues to Carol Craig of the Centre for Confidence and Well-being who was seated quite near the group. Her talk on well-being at the 2007 Scottish Learning Festival was one of those rare events where someone appears to be articulating inchoate thoughts you’ve had for years.

Our final item, an arrangement of The Average White Band’s Pick Up The Pieces, seemed apposite. The young people playing have most of their lives before them. Things are bound to go wrong in the remaining decades but the thing is to pick up the pieces and keep on keeping on.

Thanks to everybody involved* for representing East Lothian in general, and these two schools in particular. The audience seemed both engaged and moved and the organisers were very grateful to the pupils for providing exactly the positive effects they had envisioned.

* the day had kicked off with a performance by some hip-hop dancers from Dunbar Grammar School – unfortunately this was long before we arrived for our lunchtime slot.

“The definition of a lecture has become the process in which the notes of the teacher go to the notes of the student without going through the brains of either.”

More here.

To experiment with cross-fading, I’ve cut down my original Desert Island Disc extracts to a few seconds. This is the sort of mashup one could use to give an overall flavour of, say, a school concert. While I think you’ll agree that this selection desert-island-discs-mashup doesn’t represent the ideal dinner party mix, it probably doesn’t matter as, on a desert island, one tends to dine alone. “Just as well,” some of you may say upon hearing these extracts.