New Season launches, November 6th 2016
Exeter Phoenix

JUTP version of the Earworms' Jingle

Here is the performance of our Jingle by the JUTP Music Ensemble from the December 2014 concert:


JUTP at Exeter Library December 14th

Here are some photos from the concert by JUTP last week


Fiona McLean-Buechel (violinist and creative director of Joined Up Thinking Projects)


Mervyn Bedford the pirate santa!


A festive cello





Some of the performers




Some of the very youngest performers


Mervyn and partner dancing the can-can


A surprise visit from father Christmas!

Merry Christmas and Happy new year to you all - hope to see you in the new year.

The Return of Mervyn Bedford

Having missed out on the previous two events our December 14th concert will see the return of Mervyn Bedford as host.


Mervyn runs Musikgarten classes for children and has done since 1997 and is a regular visitor to Nursery and Primary schools as well as running children's birthday parties. He has been the main host for Earworms since the start and we are delighted that he will be hosting the concert by JUTP Music Ensembles at Exeter Library on December 14th.



Hope to see you all there.

Tickets are available from Exeter Northcott Box Office 01392 493493 or Exeter Visitor Information, Dix's Field, Exeter.

JUTP Music Ensembles December 14th

We are delighted to confirm that our next concert on 14th December will be given by musicians from JUTP Music. Please remember that this concert will take place in the Rougemont Room at Exeter Library.


JUTP Music is a unique youth group of string players that offers creative opportunities in musical performance and professional development. It was started in 2006 in Plymouth and since then 31 of their young musicians have gone on to read music and Arts related subjects at Conservatoire and University and many are professionally engaged in the Arts world as performers, sound engineers, teachers and music managers.


Through "Joined Up Thinking Projects", young music leaders from within South West Camerata are developing huge amounts of transferable life skills; mentoring, teaching, supporting, web design, stage management, sound engineering, creative lighting, arts management and performance development.


In 2011 JUTP Music attempted to achieve a Guinness World Record for the largest ever string orchestra, it was attended by 320 performers from across the south west with ages ranging from 4 to 78!



Read more about JUTP on their website or Facebook page.


Tickets are available from Exeter Northcott Box Office 01392 493493 or Exeter Visitor Information, Dix's Field, Exeter. The concert starts at 2:00pm and will run for 1 hour. 

Some pictures from the mini BSO concert




Here are some pictures from our last event that featured the excellent MiniBSO who performed a wide variety of spooky songs.


We were also joined by the author Ron Dawson


and Scary Bones


The Earworms' Jingle
 Ghostbusters 
 more Ghostbusters 
the Monster Mash   




Mini BSO jingle

Here is the performance of our Jingle by the Mini BSO from the October 2014 concert:


Scary Bones and the Mini BSO

As Hallowe’en approaches, the musicians of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra are gathering their garlic as they rehearse for their Mini BSO Earworms' Concert, Ghosts and Ghouls, at 3:00 pm at Exeter's Northcott Theatre on Sunday 26th October.


They promise a concert of musical mystery, magic and mayhem, replete with spooky sounds, ghostly goings on and ghoulish noises. Only a few days to go now and tickets are selling fast so if you want to be sure of a seat please book now! Tickets available from the Northcott Theatre or Exeter Visitor Information & Tickets.

Ron Dawson, the author of Scary Bones, will be attending the event and will have a stand in the foyer of the Northcott Theatre where you will be able to meet him and see some of his other books.



Ron Dawson author of Scary Bones

Author Ron Dawson with Scary Bones

Ron Dawson is the author of the Scary Bones series of books one of which (Scary Bones Meets the Wacky Witches of Wareham) will form part of the mini BSO concert on 26th October. 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Scary-Bones-Meets-Witches-Wareham/dp/095617325X/ref=asap_B003SPGIJ6_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1413491975&sr=1-2

This is the fourth in the Scary Bones the Skelton Adventure series. In this adventure, Scary Bones, the Red String and Sasha and Ben enter the magical world of Wareham's Wacky Witches and the Wicked Wizard of Corfe Castle. The children of Wareham have disappeared and the town is littered with sleepy cats and no-one knows why. Can Scary Bones rescue Sasha and Ben from the spell of two very strange and unusual lollipop ladies and defeat the Wicked Wizard of Corfe Castle?

After a nine year career in industry and commerce, Ron Dawson trained as a teacher in his late twenties. Following his teacher qualification, he gained the awards of Bachelor of Arts, Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy. He worked in education for over thirty years as a classroom teacher, a research and educational psychologist, county advisor and inspector and a University Principal Lecturer and Head of Department. He authored a considerable number of academic and research articles, reviews and books and had his own column in a national magazine. On his 'retirement', Ron turned to writing fiction for both children and adults, including the increasingly popular 'Scary Bones the Skeleton' adventure series. His first adult novel, 'The Last Viking', was optioned to made into a film within a year of its publication. Born in Birmingham, he now lives in Dorset.


The Mini BSO

Tickets are selling fast for our October concert featuring the mini BSO so if you want to be sure of a seat please book now! Tickets available from the Northcott Theatre or Exeter Visitor Information & Tickets


The Mini BSO is a quintet that includes all four families of musical instruments found in the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. In the last ten years the ensemble has encouraged, entertained and educated thousands of children of all ages.

The players who will be performing at the Earworms' Concert on 26th October are:

Jenni Curiel (violin)


Bob Walker (bassoon)


Kevin Morgan (trombone)


Rob Harris (horn) 


Alistair Marshallsay (percussion)


Learn more about the mini BSO from their website where you can also have a quick listen to them.

Don't forget that the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra are at the Great Hall, Exeter University on Thursday 9th October playing Mozart's Clarinet Concerto and Bruckner's 7th Symphony, more details here

Earworms Sunday 26th October 2014

 

Earworms 26th October 2014


For our next concert on Sunday 26th October we return to the Northcott Theatre but please note the start time of 3:00 pm
and not our usual 2:00 pm.


We are delighted to welcome the Mini BSO for this month's concert they will be presenting a concert of musical mystery, magic and mayhem to tie-in with the Extreme Imagination Festival.

 

 

Join us and experience spooky sounds, ghostly goings on and ghoulish noises. We also catch up with Scary Bones who meets the Wacky Witches of Wareham.

 

 


The Mini BSO is a quintet that includes all four families of musical instruments found in the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. In the last ten years the ensemble has encouraged, entertained and educated thousands of children of all ages.

 

 

Tickets are available now from the Northcott Box Office (booking fees apply) 
Keep up to date with the latest information by following us on Twitter
Look forward to seeing you all on
October 26th!

 

Photos from Earworms 21st September 2014 & a bit about the mini BSO

Here are some photos of our September concert last Sunday with Marilyn Tucker. This was our first event in Exeter Library and for this season we will be switching between two venues (Exeter Northcott and Exeter Library).








Our next concert is on Sunday 26th October at the Northcott and will feature the mini BSO a quintet that includes all four families of musical instruments found in the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. In the last ten years the ensemble has encouraged, entertained and educated thousands of children of all ages and we are really excited to have them perform for Earworms. Tickets are available now from the Northcott - we will have more news and details of their performance shortly.

Earworms logo embroidered on a t-shirt

We have been using the sewing machine in FabLab Devon at Exeter Library to embroider the Earworms' logo onto t-shirts - here is a picture of our first attempt!


Earworms returns this Sunday!

Earworms is back this Sunday (September 21st) at Exeter Library 2pm.
We have made a move to having three events at the library and three at Exeter Northcott for our 2014/15 season.  We are really looking forward to Earworms becoming a part of the wonderful new library building and all that it offers.

Tickets can be bought here   http://www.exeternorthcott.co.uk/earworms-at-the-library
or will be available on the door if there is still availability.  We will be picking up reserved tickets on Saturday evening, so no need to go to the Northcott to pick up tickets - you can also buy at Exeter Visitor Information Centre in Dix's Field Exeter (open 9 - 5 today and 9 - 4.30 tomorrow)

Read down for more information about Marilyn Tucker who is joining us on Sunday.
We hope to see some of our regular Earworms fans there and look forward to welcoming some new faces.

Earworms New Concert Season starts next week - at Exeter Library


We're absolutely delighted to be welcoming Marilyn Tucker of the fantastic team at Wren Music for our first Earworms at Exeter Library. If you've visited the library since its refurbishment you'll know that it's now THE place to be on a Sunday afternoon with a family in Exeter. Great coffee, too.

Marilyn is a wonderful singer and storyteller and co-founder of Wren Music. She is passionate about gathering songs and people together, cultivating the oral tradition of handing songs down the generations.

The concert will take place in the Rougemont Room (formerly the Music Room) upstairs at the library. You can book tickets here, by phoning 01392 493493, or at the Exeter Visitor Information Centre, Dix's Field, Exeter.

See you on Sunday 21st September, 2pm - all families with primary age children and their siblings welcome!

New dates for 2014/15

Earworms have been resting a little over the last few months, but we're now busy planning the dates for our next season.

We have three dates lined up at Exeter Northcott and three at the beautifully refurbished Exeter Library.
We're busy planning the performers, but we're already very excited to be welcoming the mini BSO to the Northcott on October 26th.

Dates for your diaries -
September 21st    Exeter Library 2pm
October 26th       Exeter Northcott 3pm - with Mini BSO (and a ghostly halloween themed programme)
December 14th    Exeter Library
January 11th       Exeter Northcott
March 15th         Exeter Northcott
May 10th            Exeter Library

Our new flyers are being printed this week so you should hopefully see this around Exeter in the next couple of weeks.
Keep checking back for more updates as we have them.

Earworms' new season

Apologies for blogging about our next season when we haven't even had time to upload the photos from last week's Earworms.  It's a been a busy week with scary concerts to practice for and our own Exeter Contemporary Sounds date at the Phoenix taking up much of our time and brain space (www.exetercontemporarysounds.blogspot.co.uk)

But - we do have news of new dates.  We're very excited to be staying at the Northcott for some more dates whilst also hopefully venturing into other new venues over the course of the next season.
We took quite leap into the unknown when we moved Earworms from the Phoenix to the Northcott Theatre in January but we've been delighted by their support and professionalism and also by the growing following.  Financially we took a huge risk, but by the skin of our teeth we've just about broken even - thanks in part to some generous sponsorship from Crosse & Crosse and JojoMamanBebe.

So we've decided to take another risk and plan some more dates.  We're moving away from monthly dates - the huge administration task is unsustainable at the current rate and we feel we need more time between events to plan and to publicise well.  So we'll be planning six dates between September 2014 and May 2015.

In order to guarantee that we can continue to offer the quality of performers and ensure we can cover the costs, we now need to work hard to attract some sponsorship.

We have a very short deadline of this Thursday (26th June) to get our copy in the Northcott's new brochure - if there are any companies out there who might like to sponsor the whole series and get their name in the Northcott Brochure as well as in all our publicity  - we'd be delighted to hear from you!  Get in touch and we can discuss what we can offer you.  Once the Northcott deadline has passed, and if we haven't secured a sponsor for the series as a whole, we'll be looking for individual sponsors for each event.  More on that next week........

Thank you so much for all  your support so far - we're really looking forward to building the Earworms' audience even more and we're beginning to plan some really great performances for the coming season.
Please pass the word around to any companies you think might be able to support us - there are some fabulous performers out there who we would love to invite, but we need to have the funds to be able to do this!

Earworms' Jingle by Solarference

Here is the performance of our Jingle by Solarference from our June 2014 concert:


Something old, something new

Hello Earworms

At 2pm on Sunday, Solarference will be live, on stage, at Exeter's Northcott Theatre with a concert specially prepared for Earworms family audiences. Solarference are making adventurous music that marries the newest technology with songs that are often centuries old, and it makes for a fascinating musical journey.

The centre of Solarference are the wonderful voices of Nick Janaway and Sarah Owen. Sarah is known to large numbers of singers of all ages across Devon and beyond through her work as a Community Musician with Wren Music.  Nick and Sarah sing traditional songs of England and Wales, often learned by oral tradition or from archival research.

The new bit is the rest of it. Solarference love to play with sound, and find sounds in the unlikeliest of things. You might expect them to turn up with stones, guitar, musical boxes and rolls of sticky tape. The sounds of these objects and instruments are played live, then fed through intricate computer code to weave textures, beats, echoes and harmonies together with the voices. This is really musical storytelling, with the songs and their stories at its heart.

For a taster of the Solarference creative process, have a look at this short video.

I must add that those of you who enjoyed Matthew Shepherd's musical saw playing with the Seat Of The Pants Orchestra back in October in the good old Voodoo Lounge might be lucky enough to hear it again on Sunday. If that doesn't tempt you, then I don't know what will...

...and, what better treat for Father's Day? We'll be there, with our dads. See you there!

Solarference

We've been enjoying having a little rest since our performance at Earworms in May.  Exeter Contemporary Sounds are now also busy preparing their next performance at Exeter Phoenix on July 6th - more details on our other blog - www.exetercontemporarysounds.blogspot.com

We have Solarference performing for us at Earworms on June 15th.  Here is a little more information about them.  Tickets are on sale through the Northcott box office - 01392 493493 or in person at Exeter visitor info and tickets in Dix's Field.

Solarference Nick Janaway and Sarah Owen perform with voices, laptops, instruments and sound objects.  Their work is rooted in a repertoire of English and Welsh traditional songs, set within atmospheric worlds of transformed sounds using their own self-designed performance software.
Every sonic detail of a Solarference performance is crafted and created live, as Nick and Sarah weave together layers of sound and song.  Improvising and responding together, Solarference’s music is born purely of the moment and place. Their performances are interactive and theatrical; fascinating live experiences.

Solarference have a track record of collaborating with other artists including animators, circus artists, dancers and theatre makers.  The duo have just completed a regional tour of their live soundtrack to the 1920 classic silent film ‘Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde’.

Winners of the 2012 Fatea Award for Innovation, Solarference have been described as “one of the most original acts playing English folk music” (fRoots magazine). Based
in the South West of England, their unique approach to fusing traditional folk music with live electronics has been gathering a growing critical acclaim and their first album, Lips of Clay, was released in late 2012.

Nick, based in Bristol, is a multi-instrumentalist and songwriter, as well as having an MSc in sound design.  Sarah is a versatile vocalist from East Devon with a background in sonic art and composition.  Solarference is the perfect forum for the two to bring together their love of the human voice and their fascination with live audio transformation.

“Crossing into new musical territory, Nick Janaway and Sarah Owen perform their live electronic folk music to captivated crowds … a fascinating show."
- Festivals for all

“Totally intoxicating. This project has reached a magical fruition. May mornings will
never feel quite the same again."
SpiralEarth

 “Simply Genius… the ghost of a voice singing down the ages..."
 fRoots
Magazine








Photos from Earworms - May

Last weekend's Earworms featured the team who created Earworms concerts - Exeter Contemporary Sounds.  The first time we have played ourselves, we really enjoyed ourselves.
The concert featured music by Steve Reich - Different Trains and  Simon Belshaw's Between the moon and the earth - both combining with some lovely film imagery.  We also involved the audience in performing one of Simon's Music Machines.
Julian Rippon joined us to sing 'Violin' and to make his debut on the typewriter!
R2D2 probably stole the show - we were upstaged by an inflatable robot!!

Here are some pictures from Exeter Contemporary Sounds' performance on 4th May.













R2D2 sings the Earworms' Jingle

Here is the performance of our Jingle as performed by R2D2 on our May the 4th 2014 concert:


Earworms today!

Good morning!

A lovely sunny May morning and we're looking forward to Exeter Contemporary Sounds' performance today.
There will be fantastic music by Steve Reich - Different Trains which we've added some fabulous film footage to.  Simon Belshaw's Between the moon and the earth has some truly beautiful images of the earth as seen from near the moon during the Apollo 8 mission.  There will also be music by Michael Nyman, Kraftwerk and Leroy Anderson.
We're also welcoming the wonderful Julian Rippon (Bass) who agreed to sing one little song for us and has since been roped into more and more silliness!  It's also a  bit of a star wars special to celebrate
'May the 4th'!

Tickets on the door.  All kicks off at 2pm at Exeter Northcott.
Many thanks to JoJoMamanBebe for sponsoring today's event.

Music Boxes, Music Machines and May the 4th

I've been working on a number of different things for the next Earworms' concert. My piece, Between the Moon and the Earth for string quartet, backing track and film was composed in 2002 and has had several performances since then so requires no work at this stage.

Exeter Contemporary Sounds are currently working on a programme of Machine Music which will be performed at the Exeter Phoenix in July and some pieces that we are going to play will be performed at the Northcott on May 4th.

We have arranged The Model by Kraftwerk for the quartet and Andrew has arranged a Bach Fugue. In our Machine Music programme there is a piece for music boxes and I have made a music box version of the Earworms' Jingle.

Here is a picture of the roll that goes through the music box:





and here is a video of it being played:





Another piece of mine that we (audience included) will be performing on May 4th is Music Machine 1. For this piece you need no musical ability nor an instrument (but having one or both does not exclude you). We will explain more on the day but if you can't wait have a read about it here. If you've got an instrument that you want to bring along please do, it can be a toy instrument, whistle in fact anything that can make a sound. Here are some of the instruments we'll be bringing:



Finally, have a listen to this



Do you know what it is and what it means? The first person to email us the correct answer wins an Earworms' t-shirt!

(clue: May the 4th)

Send Email
(earworms@live.com)

This concert is sponsored by JoJo Maman Bebe - thank you very much!



 Look forward to seeing you all at the Northcott

Simon