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The South West Flute Festival Experience 2009 By Rhiannon Fuller age 17 from St Margaret’s school, Exeter. On the 6th of June, a group of St Margaret’s’ best flautists, plus Mrs Lowles, travelled down to Cornwall for the Flute Cocktail Flute Festival. Despite nearly drowning in the rain on the way there, we made it to Launceston and were greeted by biscuits and tea. The day then began with a yoga workshop helping to improve our posture and breathing and also help with performance nerves; it was indeed very calming, so much so that I nearly fell asleep during the exercise that involved closing our eyes for five minutes. The next part of the day was the masterclasses, which I personally had been dreading. This involved forty minutes of playing a prepared piece and getting constructive criticism from Gareth Davies, the principle flautist of the London Symphony Orchestra – whilst every other flautist at the festival was watching. I wasn’t really sure what to expect before the masterclass so had been preparing myself for the worst (Miss Highton, my flute teacher, had warned me that “he might say ‘That was absolutely dreadful!’ but at least you’ll learn something”). In consequence, I began my masterclass looking like a scared sheep. I began my piece trying to make life as easy for myself as possible – when asked by Tim Carey, the accompanist how fast he should go, my answer was ‘as slowly as possible – and then when you get to the bit that says ‘pochetto più mosso’ (‘a little faster’), can you slow down?’ As it turned out Gareth was very friendly and one of the main faults he picked up on in my flute playing was indeed the fact that I looked terrified; once he had got me to stand up straight and think to myself ‘I am the best’ then, according to several people, my flute playing actually improved. At the end of my masterclass I was rather enjoying myself and was disappointed to have to let someone else have a turn. After another masterclass we enjoyed a rather sophisticated buffet lunch, before going to one more masterclass. We then had a couple of workshops in which Gareth taught us how to breathe out like a real man and how to breathe in through a toilet roll, vital skills for any flautist. During lunch time we happily browsed in the flute shop (Just Flutes) that was available, looking at the huge selection of music on offer, but mostly staring adoringly at and attempting to play the alto and bass flutes that were on show. We then played altogether as a flute choir, starting with Tambourin by Gossec, then playing Golliwog’s Cake Walk by Debussy. It was amazing to play in an ensemble with such high standard musicians and really gave us a feel for how flute playing at its best sounds. After the workshops we had some free time, but didn’t want to stop playing the flute, so we found a practice room and tried out some ensemble flute pieces, borrowing the piccolos and the bass and alto flutes to make a proper ensemble. We played a range of music, from jazz to classical, but I have to admit my favourite was the Teddy Bear’s Picnic. In the evening Gareth gave a concert which was also open to the general public, but was still a small concert so we felt very privileged. I think I can safely say it was the best live flute playing that I have ever heard. He played a variety of styles of music, which all sounded beautiful and sickeningly difficult to play, and also a couple of relatively simple Welsh folk tunes, which were amazing, because as he said ‘the difficult thing in music is actually to make the simple tunes sound beautiful’, which obviously he managed to. But the tune that really stuck in my head wasn’t actually played on the flute. It was a duet called ‘Wake Up’ with the unlikely combination of a piccolo and an alarm clock, and, I felt, just goes to show that music can be found all around us and not just on CD players or in concert halls. At the end of the day I was very disappointed to go home. My enthusiasm for flute-playing has grown so much that I have actually done my flute practice twice today! The techniques I learnt and the criticisms of my playing that I received were very useful, but the best thing was listening to world-class flute playing and being inspired.
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