The Start of a Moment

It’s Easter Sunday, and it’s the end of our first holiday week, a well-earned rest after rehearsing & opening the Come From Away tour in Leicester, before a two-week run in Liverpool.

Our next leg of the tour is six weeks long, taking in the cities of Cardiff, Plymouth, Southampton, Oxford, and a fortnight in Leeds, and these few days will allow us to hit the ground running at the Wales Millennium Centre.

The tour had a wonderful press night, with writers Irene Sankoff & David Hein in attendance at Leicester Curve. Footage of our band playout from the night, plus press photos and other marketing, has meant my accordion playing has been seen (and heard) much farther and wider than I expected! Thankfully I can just about get around the melodies from the show, whilst politely declining any invitations to bring the accordion to folk gigs.

The Come From Away band (aka The Legion) L-R Derrick Taylor (bass), Phillipe Barnes (whistles), Jack Pennifold (mandolin), Ruth Elder (Fiddle), Andrew Corcoran (accordion), Rory Clarke (drums), Yue Miyagi (guitar) & Beth Higham-Edwards (bodhrán).

The band I get to play with are truly wonderful. We have such a great time each night, and the show’s dedicated band playout has the audiences dancing in the aisles - so much fun! We’re guaranteed a whale of a time this year. A particular shout out to Phil Cornwell, the Associate MD, who maintains the standard for me whenever I pop out to watch, and to Mike Steel, a friend and former colleague, who also steps in to play the show on occasion and absolutely smashes it.

The Come From Away cast (photo credit: Craig Sugden)

The cast are equally a dream. Cast to perfection, not only do they sound beautiful and tell the story wonderfully, they are all well-prepared for the rigours of touring that await them. They’re as empathetic as they are talented, and make me look forward to coming to work every day. An extra-special shout-out to the incredible troupe of standbys who are ready to (or have already) step(ped) in to cover any of the twelves roles.

Finally recognition to Kirsty Malpass, our Associate Director who continues to step above and beyond her duties, and to Sophie Macfadyen (Deputy Stage Manager) & Harry Regan (Sound No 1) who perform some of the toughest roles when running the show whilst also being blooming lovely to work with.

So after a week away from the tour catching up with London friends, a fair amount of life admin and chilling with the folks in Cheshire for Easter, I am very much looking forward to our next leg of this fabulous show. If you haven’t already, I really hope you come and see us in action at some point!

Welcome to the Rock

Come From Away finally returns to the UK! Judging by the audiences in Leicester for the previews, this is very welcome news.

This has been the most lovely rehearsal process. The show is a hugely intense piece to learn across many departments, whether you’re a musician, performer, sound operator or deputy stage manager. You need to know your stuff, otherwise the show is left very exposed. Fortunately, we have some of the best people in the world working on this tour.

We rehearsed the show fully chronologically, which sounds obvious but actually this is the only time I have done this on a show. Usually you would tackle the trickiest bits first to get a head-start, but the trickiest element of Come From Away is maintaining its flow, and staying chronological helps with that. We completed that process in two weeks, and then it was about running and cleaning, as well as band calls.

This past week has been tech week and previews. I have never known a more stress-free tech. Yes, we all needed to be on our full A-game, but a mixture of a cast who had been drilled to place each chair in the correct position, lighting & stage management teams from the Gods and a sound department you could only dream of ensured us of the smoothest of technical rehearsals.

And now we’re underway with previews, with full standing ovations at every performance. I still can’t believe how lucky I am to be involved with this show, playing with the most amazing musicians & cast, supported by a top technical team and basically getting to do what I love for 100 minutes every night. Please do come and visit us on our tour - you’re really going to want to see this show!

Leicester is such a vibrant city. Curve have been the most welcoming hosts, and we have discovered some fantastic cafes and restaurants during our stay here. And the locals are so bloomin’ friendly! I very much look forward to coming back one day.

Our tour continues on to Liverpool this month, which means I can see a little more of my parents (perfect timing for Mother’s Day!), and looking forward to friends in the North West coming to visit us at the Empire!

CFY 🛫 CFA

I have finally touched down in Leicester to start rehearsals for CFA (Come From Away), a tour which runs from March until January next year. Our first ‘official’ day of rehearsal is tomorrow, with the traditional Meet & Greet giving way to working on the show ‘from the top’, but in reality we have actually already spent a few days in our rehearsal studio at Curve Theatre. Pre-rehearsals have included a movement session, dialect coaching, music learning (yep, the entire score taught) and table read-throughs, plus much chat about the show’s context. Not wanting to give away too much yet, but yeah you’ll want to come and see this lot in action!

January was a good chance to rest after a fabulous end to the run of CFY (Crazy For You). With all that packed away, I had the chance to chill out at my parents in the New Year before seeing my sister (and her own show) in Hamburg, and the much-anticipated trip to Prague & Rome with my parents to celebrate their 70th birthdays. This was truly a trip to remember, with stunning architecture and history around every corner, a lovely vibe (although quite different in each city!) and wonderful cuisines to try. The five-course Czech tasting menu in Prague was a particular highlight! I won’t bore you with holiday snaps here, but I’ve popped some of them up on Instagram & Facebook.

So February is devoted (as ever) to full-time rehearsals for this next show. We have two weeks in the rehearsal room before we add the full band in the third week, then we tech and open ready for our first preview on 1st March. There’s a great deal to squeeze into those few weeks, but rehearsing in Leicester - and subsequently being put up nearby - is creating a proper boot camp feel that certainly helps to focus on the matter in hand. I’ll report back on that experience fully in next month’s update!

Who Could Ask For Anything More?

Yesterday, New Year’s Eve 2023, saw the final performance of Crazy For You after 218 performances. I had the pleasure of conducting 117 of those shows and we were sent off beaming with incredible audiences in our final days. This company (pictured above, including cast and crew) were a shining example of the calibre expected in London’s West End at the moment, and I can’t wait to work with them again on future endeavours. A special mention to my fellow musicians in the orchestra, with whom it was almost illegally too much fun to work with. A massive thank you to Alan Williams & Andy Barnwell for getting me on board with this production in the first place!

I have enjoyed being back in London with a show, especially in the run-up to Christmas. Yes, it gets busy with tourists and festive drinkers, but the West End is decorated beautifully and there’s always a great buzz each evening. I also managed to complete my walk of London around the 150 mile Loop, ending rather unflatteringly at Purfleet’s train station on the northern banks of the Thames estuary. Walking in December proved tricky at times, with mud seeping through my boots and under my toenails at times, but so happy to have completed it.

The beauty of finishing a contract on the 31st of December is the clean break it gives you going into the New Year. Following the final performance, I packed my things and headed straight back to my parents in Cheshire, where I spent Christmas Day, to carry on the festivities into 2024. Attention very much turns to my next show, Come From Away, and the change to being back on the road. Time to get some digs booked! Before that, I have much of January off. While I’ll do some prep for the show (including more time with Erica, the accordion), this is also a chance to chill out in Cheshire, visit my sister in Hamburg, catch some other shows in London and, later in the month, take my parents on the 70th birthday treat to Prague & Rome. This certainly feels like well-earned R&R!

Happy New Year!

Advent-urous

Every day it feels like I’ve given myself something to do, whether it is one of 8 performances of Crazy For You that week, another walk along the London Loop, some washing & tidying in the flat, learning more accordion or other elements of my next show Come From Away, exercise, shopping, cooking, or even - god forbid - some actual social interaction for once! Thankfully it isn’t too overwhelming, and it’s nice to plan out each day accordingly.

As I write this, the cast of Crazy For You are tapping away on the Royal Albert Hall thrust stage at the Royal Variety Performance, which will be shown later in December on TV. It’s going to be a fabulous performance and such a lovely way to honour this great run and company. We only have a month left of the show at the Gillian Lynne Theatre, ending rather aptly on New Year’s Eve to really draw a line under 2023.

I will try to finish the London Loop before the end of the run, although no promises! I only have five stages left, so it’s doable, but I have January as a backup before I head off on tour. I only like going out if it’s not going to rain or be too windy, and obviously depends on work commitments etc. We have a few nights of social fun ahead at Crazy For You, including a bowling night, dinner and a live music Hootenanny, which all should be great fun in the lead-up to Christmas! And then the day proper, where I get to head back to my parents in Cheshire (having missed it last year as I was away in Tokyo) for a proper family catch-up and some great food.

Meeting Erica

My walk of outer London continues, and I have now ticked off Uxbridge to Barnet through the course of October, which has brought me to the closest point of the walk to where I currently live. It’s rather nice not to have to spend 1-2 hours getting to the start of each walk via public transport for the time being, although always lovely to explore these far reaches of London! I especially enjoyed the view from Weald Wood across Harrow and the rest of west London, watching the planes landing at Heathrow.

There was a lovely reunion centred around Jenny Cooke, who turned 70 this year, of people from MT4Uth. This was a youth theatre company based in Belfast that I worked with for some years either side of 2010. A fair number of the alumni have gone on to do very successful things, so it was great to toast them all with a Sunday lunch and have a good old catch up with fellow creatives.

Talking of 70, my parents made another pilgrimage to London to see me conduct Crazy For You. It’s the first time I had seen my mum since she herself had turned 70, and with my dad hitting this milestone himself in a few weeks, we also used the time to plan a holiday that my sister and I are treating them to. Even better, I’ll be able to join them on the trip as we’re all going the week after my show finishes!

I only really have a week in hand to enjoy this trip with them, as I am then straight into rehearsals for Come From Away, my next major project as Musical Director. The show is on tour throughout next year and, following a meeting with Alan Berry (Musical Supervisor) this week, I am now in possession of Erica, the name given to the accordion that the MD also plays in the show! Consisting of diatonically laid out buttons (no piano-like keys), the hard work begins to start learning how to play her.

We are ramping up rehearsals somewhat back at the Gillian Lynne Theatre as we prepare for an exciting appearance at this year’s Royal Variety Performance. Look out for it on ITV in December! It should be fab.

Routine

I took advantage of the (mostly) sunny and warm September to walk from Banstead (near Epsom/Sutton), crossing the Thames at Kingston, up past the East of Heathrow Airport and as far as Uxbridge on the London Loop. Not all in one go, mind, but about 3 hours per day before an evening performance. The big advantage of ‘sitting down’ with a show in the West End is being able to get some routines going, and I am definitely being more active and eating a bit better. I get out for a walk/run/swim once a week each if possible, plus some Apple Watch Fitness+ exercises indoors if the weather has turned, and then cook at home before heading in for the show.

I certainly want to be feeling as good as possible at the moment as my long stint conducting Crazy For You continues. This week I am down to conduct all eight performances, and it’s lovely to get into a routine with the show. I also have friends & family popping in to watch, which breaks up the days nicely.

My mum turned 70 yesterday (1st October). She’s on holiday in Corsica with dad, so a virtual call had to do, but it was nice to spoil her with a special lunch (my sister called ahead to the restaurant) and begin arrangements for a joint-70th treat for both of them early next year. Happy Birthday, Mum! Love you loads.

October, it won’t surprise you, looks to be much of the same: full-time at the show, conducting regularly, with some jaunts out in to the fresh air of Greater London when time allows. May the routine continue!

Looping

When I moved to my new place near Barnet in April, I spotted signs for the London Loop, which turns out to be a 150-mile walk around the edge of London, largely where suburbia meets green belt. A friend of mine had already started it, so I thought I would use my free time while working in Central London to try and complete it myself. Using my Sundays off to start with, before moving to daytimes when I had one-show days once rehearsals had calmed down, I am already 6 (out of 24) stages in, having covered an area from Erith, on the south bank of the Thames Estuary near Dartford, round to Banstead near Sutton. I have even bumped into two other people doing the walk, and had a lovely stroll getting to know them both! It’s just great to get out in fresh air, move my legs, and see parts of Greater London I wouldn’t otherwise get to see. Who knows, maybe I’ll move to one of these area one day…?

Crazy For You is nicely settled now, with busy shows each and every day. I had the wonderful pleasure of my 4-year-old niece watching me conduct a performance in August, and she was very well behaved and laughed a lot at the physical comedy! She also loved the dancing and recognised some of the songs as her mum often sings Gershwin as lullabies. We have completed understudy rehearsals, timed well with our first understudies going on for their roles and doing excellent jobs. We’re still busy, though, as we worked towards a very special appearance on This Morning (in the original Studio 1 at Television Centre).

I have been present at every performance so far, either playing keyboard, conducting, or watching performances. Tomorrow, though, I have my first long weekend away - a chance to visit family in North West England, have a bit of a sort-out and generally have some R&R. When I return, I start a six-week stint conducting most performances, as the MD Alan Williams heads off to set up our neighbouring show, Sunset Boulevard. I will, of course, be punctuating that time in the theatre with more stages of the fabulous London Loop!

Full Time

A big show like Crazy For You needs plenty of TLC, and although we are now very much settled into the run, I am still at the theatre for 10 or so hours a day. First up, post press night, was the small task of my first conducted performance, which was a lot of fun and passed without a hitch. Then we filmed our EPK which has now been turned into various trailers that you can find across social media and the official website. And now we are deep into understudy rehearsals, having completed work with the first cover cast and are now readying the second cover cast to do an understudy run in early August.

At least we haven’t been missing out on the sunny weather, as July ended out relatively cool and cloudy in London, but hopefully as rehearsals calm down into August the temperatures will finally recover! Although I don’t have a great amount of free time from the show at present, I am looking forward to getting out and about around the capital once again.

Press Night

Seven weeks have slipped by since we began rehearsals for Crazy For You. It was a first day of introductions, a peak at the set & costume designs and a chance for everyone to learn a dance number together. We moved into the Gillian Lynne Theatre on 12th June to slowly tech through the show, adding lights, sound, costume, crew & orchestra, and the first preview was rapturously received by a full house on the 24th.

After some small tweaks to the show during the preview period, we have reached press night, when we officially “freeze” the show and the main creatives depart for their homes back in the US. Our work on the show outside of performances doesn’t stop; we continue with understudy rehearsals for the next few weeks, and I have the small matter of conducting the show to learn/get right this week!

It’s my first time working at the Gillian Lynne Theatre - a slightly strange design as the stage is actually three or four floors up, with the band platform two floors higher than that still! The orchestra are also ‘technically’ front of house, which has the advantage of being able to see friends and family in the foyer before the show and at the interval. We then disappear into our specially-built room for the show proper - a platform suspended above one of the wings, thankfully with its own supply of air conditioning!

It is also great to be back in this part of the West End. Taking a right out of stage door, the streets become very familiar after my months and years working at the Cambridge Theatre just down the road. It’s great to see that some of my favourite cafes and restaurants from those times are still going strong, whilst also getting to try out loads of new places. And as a way of helping the local economy, loads of establishments are offering us discounts and special memberships - a great way to feel welcome as a worker in the West End once again!

K-ra-zy

Gershwin’s music has taken over my days practically non-stop since I last updated my website. At first it was my own practice, putting the finishing touches to playing the behemoth of a vocal score that Crazy For You has, before heading to the rehearsal room and meeting the rest of the company. It was a very good thing that I prepped as much as I did, as on Day 3 of rehearsals I was called upon to play the entire score cover to cover for a read-through in front of the entire cast and creative teams!

We are now into Week Four in the rehearsal room, with show preparations now a closely-guarded secret until we unleash this company into the public eye, aside from the odd rehearsal photo on social media channels. One thing to say, though, is that it is possible one of the most well-run rehearsal rooms I have been in, with not a single weak link among the cast, crew and creatives who are on hand. This is allowing the piece to come together beautifully, and allowing the formidable cast to really hone the production into a glorious piece of artistry. And I almost have the score finally under the fingers!

June sees us move in to the theatre for technical rehearsals and previews, with press night coming up early next month. Book tickets here if you are yet to do so! I will be up conducting fairly early on and with good regularity, so just drop me a message if you would like a tip-off of any of my dates.

I gave myself a small break from Gershwin early on in May with a final trip up to Cheshire to collect items for my new flat, as well as one final visit to the parents, timed expertly well with the Liverpudlian festivities that encircled Eurovision. It made for a fine distraction before the hard work began! We even attempted a “Eurovision Buffet” with different food and drink for every country participating in the final. I’m not sure it was the best idea in the end, though, with a lot of food left over and a certain amount of indigestion to deal with the following day! But it was great to see such a wonderful festival of Europe come to the North West, and the images of Liverpool in the sunshine, with crowds bedecked in blue and yellow (as well as all sorts of colours of the rainbow) will live long in the memory.

Bidin' My Time

My move back to London is complete! I am now a resident of N20, some eight miles north of the West End and almost ready to return to Theatreland. In two weeks’ time, rehearsals begin for Crazy For You, with opens at the Gillian Lynne Theatre this summer, and should keep me nice and busy through until early next year.

The music of George Gershwin was sumptuously arranged 30 years ago into this monster of a show, and contains my favourite dance break of all time in the end-of-Act-One I Got Rhythm number, which skips through a myriad of Gershwin quotes on its way to a sure-fire ovation. The full musical contains many, many more dance arrangements and songs, and April has seen me effectively chained to my piano as I steadily get all 258 pages of the piano/vocal score under my fingers.

I studied Gershwin at university as part of my practical performance, emerging from Huddersfield with a first-class degree having performed Rhapsody in Blue with the in-house symphony orchestra. My prep for this show has really evoked those wonderful years studying music, getting back into the mindsets both of how I approach piano practice and that of the composer/pianist Gershwin himself. This production of Crazy For You has already completed a run at Chichester’s Festival Theatre, so for this transfer I am making sure I can hit the ground running on that first day of rehearsals!

Away from that, April was a mixture of spending time with my folks in Cheshire between trips down to London with the car full of boxes & clothes, and a brief but hugely welcome return to Edge Hill University to accompany the final-year Musical Theatre students at their Showcase. This is the cohort who started at the same time I did, when I was first an Associate Tutor there back in October 2020, so it has been wonderfully cathartic to see them through to this moment, and I wish them all every success in their degrees and careers beyond.

So the first part of May will of course involve more show prep, but I am looking forward to settling into my new flat, catching a handful of shows and enjoying Eurovision from Liverpool, before rehearsals take up pretty much all of my time!

Pressing On

Another show done. Girl From The North Country was quite an experience - quite different to any other production I have worked on, being largely a play with a handful of songs. I was fascinated by it on various fronts: watching the acting process up close through rehearsals and from my vantage point on-stage in performance; playing acoustically with fellow musicians rather than using click tracks or headphones; touring with a show during the tail-end of a pandemic, and balancing the role of Musical Director and the welfare of my colleagues on a fairly long run on the road with my own welfare. I always say I like to learn something from every contract that I do that I can take with me onto future productions, and this show certainly allowed that!

We finished the tour by playing Leicester’s amazing Curve theatre, where the show sounded and looked utterly gorgeous, with an equally lovely week in Wimbledon. Being close to London, the vibe understandably changed as much of the company commuted, many friends and industry people came to watch, and the producers gave us a gala night send-off with a post-show party. The final day, inevitably, came and went rather quickly, but with two fine performances to round off the run.

I actually booked proper digs for Wimbledon - a one-bed place in nearby Mitcham - as I still don’t have a place of my own to commute from, but I extended the booking for a few nights after the tour so that I could do some proper flat viewings in anticipation of a move back to London over the next few weeks. The search looks to have paid off, as I managed to view 8 properties in person over the course of a few days before heading back to Cheshire. I got great vibes from one place in North London, so my offer is in for that place and all being well I will be able to start moving stuff in later this month!

April, otherwise, is very much dependent on how the move to London goes. I have a little bit of work back at Edge Hill University, as I accompany the final year Musical Theatre students at their showcase at the Everyman Theatre, Liverpool, otherwise much of my work is score-learning for my next show (still to be announced). I have plans to slot in a long-overdue spa break with my mum (my birthday present to her from over a year ago!) and enjoy the Easter break properly, but will largely just be seeing how April pans out! I hope you all have a lovely Easter, wherever you’re spending it.

Home Straight

February was all about the touring life! Girl From The North Country moved across the Irish Sea to play the beautiful Grand Opera House in Belfast to packed audiences throughout the week, before being ferried back across to Scotland for its final visit to the country, playing Aberdeen. Most of us flew to these destinations, admittedly, although I was taken a rather scenic route at one point, flying from Belfast to Inverness before being taken in a taxi (all paid for by the airline) the 2.5 hour drive to Aberdeen!

We are now in Norwich, and the tour very much feels on the home straight now. Excitement and trepidation as to what comes next for our company members is a hot topic of conversation in the backstage corridors. I have managed to line up my next contract - news to come soon - so I am busy preparing for that whenever I have a spare afternoon.

Otherwise, it’s basically planning for life post-tour, which for me involves finding a place back within spitting distance of London (I am still officially based with family in Cheshire while I have been out on the road). I am looking forward to a small taste of that when we play Wimbledon later this month, but the planning for my own London home now starts in earnest!

Adapting

Our tour of Girl From The North Country rattles along, with performances in Bristol from tomorrow. We also squeeze in visits to Birmingham, Belfast, Aberdeen and Norwich into the shortest month of the year. We’re not hanging about, that’s for sure!

The show has just had a rather intriguing visit to Chichester. The design of its Festival Theatre does not include a fly tower or a proscenium arch, meaning that fundamental parts of our show’s design had to be adapted especially for the venue. A lot of hard work at the beginning of the week to implement changes really paid off, as we presented a “thrust stage” version of the piece, with audience on three sides. The show worked brilliantly in this setting, with every performance (almost at capacity every single night) receiving standing ovations. We left Chichester a very happy company!

We also played Liverpool and Sheffield during January. Audiences in the north have been equally positive, with an added bonus that colleagues and students from my previous place of work - Edge Hill University - were able to pop along to watch. I was also able to visit them one afternoon while in Liverpool to see how the third year students (who I have followed right through from their first year) were getting on with rehearsals for their big production, the world premiere of a new musical Pop Art.

But before all of this restarted, and after my visit to Tokyo, I was able to squash in a weekend visit to Stuttgart, Germany, where my sister is currently performing in Palazzo. Her daughter and husband are with her as well, and I was able to time my visit at the same time as my parents were visiting, allowing our whole immediate family to be together having missed the opportunity over Christmas.

There are only seven venues left to visit on this tour. None of us are really ready to say goodbye to this show yet, which may well be a blessing in disguise, but there is a real family feel on this show. I feel very lucky to still be having such an amazing time on this production. I am however starting to plan how the rest of 2023 pans out… watch this space!

シカゴ-東京

Today, New Year’s Eve, we completed our 24-performance run of Chicago The Musical in Tokyo. I feel very fortunate that this short run fitted well into a break in the tour of Girl From The North Country, allowing me to revisit a show (and piano chair) that I adore so much ten years after my last contract, with the added bonus of travelling to Japan, a country I have never visited before.

The company was entirely made up of people who had done the show before, some in the past few months, some <inaudible> years ago! While it would have been easy to treat this as a bit of a holiday, the passion for this show was very much on show across every single performer, with everyone making sure to pack their A-game for the long haul flight. There was a fair handful of familiar faces amongst the company, so these past few weeks have been great to catch up with old friends and colleagues, make new friends, and explore Tokyo with them all.

I also had the pleasure of working again with musical director Adrian Kirk, who I worked with way back in 2008-2009. We were able to pick up where we left off and have had an absolutely blast together once again. Our band were all from Japan, and we had translators on hand as our Japanese wasn’t that great…! They were the best of the best, and the show had that same flair that I remember all those years ago playing with the West End musicians. I’m just glad that the muscle memory in my fingers was still there after all this time, so I could keep up with them!

I never left Tokyo throughout the entire run. There was simply too much to explore, and only a small number of days/evenings off. I loved my visits to both Tokyo Tower and Skytree, where I was able to witness sunset and the glinting of the city lights as night set in. I was told to visit Golden Gai and was not disappointed, with its incredible array of tiny bars and eateries. Disney Sea theme park is as good as people say, and my one-on-one tour guide around the temples and shrines of one suburban district (a brilliant Christmas present from my sister & brother-in-law) was a true eye-opener. We have one more night left, and I plan to see New Year in at one of the temples as the bells are rung for 2023.

So it’s back to the UK at the start of January, and back to my ‘day job’. We finished our 2022 run of Girl From The North Country with a really lovely week at the Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff. The rest of the cast are, I’m sure, enjoying a well-earned break and ready for one final long push through various cities, starting strongly with a visit to Liverpool. Before that, I’m looking forward to some overdue family time, having completely missed Christmas! But this month’s adventures will live long in my memory.

Zojoji Temple & Tokyo Tower, December 2022

Sunset over Mt Fuji, as seen from Tokyo Tower, December 2022.

Side Projects

It’s often great (and rather healthy) to have little side projects to work on whilst on the road with a show, whether it be a hobby, a new skill, or in my particular case, a concert of musical theatre repertoire back at the University of Huddersfield. When I graduated in 2004, musical theatre was only really performed in an extra-curricular way, such as when I cobbled together a 60-piece orchestra and 40-strong choir (twice) to play bits of shows that I liked. This time round had a similar feel, although with just me on piano and a quartet of incredible singers from Girl From The North Country.

While there was a great sense of achievement when it came to nailing songs from the likes of Jason Robert Brown, Stephen Sondheim and Marvin Hamlisch, the main reason to make the trip was to work with some students afterwards on a vocal masterclass and be able to answer their questions about the industry. My time as a tutor at Edge Hill University had already shown me the benefits this can have, and I was delighted by how successful our afternoon at Huddersfield was. Here’s hoping I can take performers there again in the future!

The only small issue with really wanting to do justice to the concert with a raft of new material was fitting in rehearsal time around the ‘day job’, which this month included work on our tour EPK (Electronic Press Kit), filming parts of the show to help promote the tour into 2023. We just about managed to juggle everything, although it did get a little tiring at times!

I have also been working on the physical scores as we ready Girl From The North Country for future licensing, making sure everything is legible and consistent across band parts, vocal scores and full scores. Having done this years ago with Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, I will be intrigued to see what future productions of this show look and sound like.

We have now ticked Plymouth, Milton Keynes, Woking & Bradford off the tour list, with just one more venue this year: Cardiff. The show then powers down for a winter break, returning in January, with most of the company readying themselves to spend Christmas with friends & family, or heading off on a winter holiday. I am, however, heading straight into another show! Chicago The Musical is playing for three weeks in Tokyo over Christmas, and they needed a pianist. Having never been to Japan, the opportunity was hard to resist. It does mean having to drive straight from Cardiff to Heathrow Airport, but can’t wait to get started!

The Tour Continues

A small update this month as the tour of Girl From The North Country continues to roll around the UK. We are very lucky to have been able to visit the likes of Bath, Edinburgh and Cheltenham in the past month, with more lovely cities still awaiting us later in the tour. In some ways it’s a shame to only be in each venue for a few days, but there’s always a different feel to a weekly tour, as you daren’t fully unpack your suitcase ready for the next dash across the country!

We have had sporadic rehearsals as we continue to keep our understudies at the top of their game, as well as recently welcoming a new company member. A few of us are also prepping a concert, to be performed for students at the University of Huddersfield as part of a series of masterclass recitals, which we are delighted to be a part of.

This month we visit some old reliable venues - the likes of Plymouth, Milton Keynes, Woking and Bradford, with plans surely to enjoy a curry or two at that last one! Hope to see some of you as we continue our romp across Britain.

"Not What I Was Expecting"

The tour is up and running in earnest, now. We have sped through York, Glasgow & Salford, and complete our run in Newcastle this weekend. Four beautiful venues ticked off, with many more thankfully still to come! Audience buzz has been fascinating to hear, whether it be in the auditorium when watching (now that I have the fabulous Alan Berry & Luke Holman both up and running as cover conductors), outside the theatre after a performance, or on social media. I have overheard the phrase “not what I was expecting” more often than not, thankfully in a positive tone!

It was a somewhat strange month, though, with the death of Queen Elizabeth II dominating the airwaves. The funeral didn’t have a huge effect on the run of Girl From The North Country as we weren’t scheduled to perform that day anyway, and audiences seemed to appreciate the escapism that the show offers. It has been lovely to see familiar faces coming to watch, with one or two even booking again immediately after watching, planning to bring more people to see the show! I’m so glad that it resonates with my friends and family in the same way it has with me.

October is more of the same, as we travel to Bath, Nottingham, Edinburgh and Cheltenham all within the space of this month. The challenge at the moment is squeezing the show into smaller houses like Bath and Cheltenham, whilst also expanding it for the likes of Salford and Edinburgh. Our tech teams continue to work their magic in this regard, with the show looking and sounding fabulous every time.

Finally I’m delighted to be once again taking part in the MD Mentorship Scheme in its second year, with plans already to meet my current mentee, Rob, in person this month so that we can get cracking on various projects.

Back on the Road

After the full-on fun that was Girl From The North Country in Dublin, August was a far more sedate affair with just one week of performances in Canterbury. The Marlowe has had a near-100% redesign since I last played there way back in 2005, so I had to explore the venue (and most of the city) as though it was my first time once again! The theatre and surrounding area are stunning, made all the better by fine weather. The show adapted well after its first move, with a built-in rake now on tour with us, and a rather clever fully-working ‘prop’ piano that replaces the real one that we hired when over in Dublin.

Before and after the week of performances, there was a chance to rest and recoup at home in Cheshire (while it was boiling hot yet again), catch up with plenty of London folk, see a couple of shows (Moulin Rouge and Beauty & The Beast, if you must know) and generally get sorted ready for life on the road proper.

A few months back, knowing we had a designated ‘holiday’ week in place, I booked a 10-years-later trip to New York City, having first visited when I had just turned 30. This was a chance to revisit landmarks, explore new parts of the metropolis and, of course, catch a Broadway Show or four (A Strange Loop, Beetlejuice, Hadestown and Into The Woods, since you asked). Again it was boiling hot out there and I even made myself sit in the sun watching US Open Tennis at Flushing Meadows for a full day - and I bloomin’ loved it!

It feels like we finally start the tour proper in a few days - crazy when you think that we started rehearsals for this show in mid-May - as we begin our first of nine venues in a row over the next nine weeks, starting with York’s Theatre Royal. I suppose I should get back to unpacking from New York and repacking for ‘Old’ York!