Tuesday 20 May
I am always looking at helping people to have new experiences and this wine tasting was meant to be just such a thing. It was scheduled to be on the following Monday, a bank holiday, which would have brought more people in, but as it turned out, the company that does the tasting was in Shetland the week before. It was a small, select gathering, but the wine was very good and it was relaxing to not have to organise anything aside from glasses!
|
Thursday 22 May
A local pianist and accompanist, Alice Mullay, and I are having a recital on the 30th May of British Songs including works by Britten and Vaughan-Williams. John Laughland, a composer from Unst, the next island north, has also written three pieces for us. We are performing in the Town Hall, Lerwick. This is the first recital of its kind in Shetland for a very long time, perhaps one hundred years, and we are very much looking forward to it. Our rehearsal was a complete run-through of the ‘Songs of Travel’ by Vaughan-Williams, and some Britten folksongs. Folk stayed in the cafe to listen and we had good comments back from them, so hopefully it will be a full house on the night.
|
Friday 23 and Saturday 24 May
The Lerwick Choral and Lerwick Orchestra were here for the dress rehearsal and performance of the traditional May concert for the choral, which I conducted. The evening was excellent; well attended and very good singing from the choir. Songs from Shetland, sea shanties and local pieces were all performed, while the orchestra played two pieces, Pergolesi and Handel. It was my last conducting of the choir as I have too many other commitments in the cafe to be away from it for any length of time, and I have enjoyed the chance to learn a new discipline. The experience has also taught me to sight-read multiple lines of music and to work with groups of people to rehearse and perform a concert.
|
Tuesday 27 May
A meeting of the focus group on branding Shetland. The cafe was closed for the afternoon to enable this meeting to convene. I was part of the focus group looking at making Shetland into a marketable commodity in terms of exports and tourism. It was an intelligent and informative discussion with contributions from salmon farmers, artists, craftspeople, local community workers, tourist providers and the like.
|
Saturday 31 May
The eclipse. This week saw the biggest number of people through the cafe that I have ever seen. There is an eclipse of the sun in the early hours of today, so I am dashing back from my recital in Lerwick, catching a few hours nap, then watching the spectacle from the hill behind the cafe before opening up the venue for cooked breakfasts. As the sun will be eclipsed for an hour from about four o’clock until just after five, I expect ravenous spectators and lots of coffee to be drunk! Which is just how it turned out. We were lucky enough to see the beginning of it, as about one third of the sun disappeared, but then went behind clouds. It was lovely to see the event though, and I returned to 21 hungry people wanting breakfasts, so was busy from six until nine o'clock!
|
Andy Ross is a baritone who moved to Shetland in 2002, where he now runs the Wind Dog Café on Yell, an arts venue and cafe.
|
Next Page | Previous Page Page 1 | 2
|
© Andy Ross, 2003
|
Related Links
|
|
