Thursday 19 January 2012

Musicians, venues, the long hard weekend ahead

Well, first things first. Some of the venues are booked. It was always going to be the case and unfortunately it is my own fault for misunderstanding and thinking I had assistance with booking for these. But alas, as with the rest of the challenge, it's a one man show. So I'm scrabbling around trying to find a venue before it's too late. Imagine! I get an orchestra together, suffer the ups and downs and the months and month of finding all these strangers to bring them together....in the cold with no venue!!

So, bad news first. The following venues appear to be already booked:

The Royal Albert Hall (Christmas season, innit)
Hammersmith Apollo (99% certain to go)
The Barbican (London Symphony Orchestra & Valery Gerviev performing here - http://www.barbican.org.uk/music/event-detail.asp?ID=13129)

So, that's 1/4 of the venues gone. 75% left. I guess my focus has to change and instead of focusing on finding musicians I'm going to have to go into admin mode for the next few weeks. I also have a lot of legal gumph that's been left for me to sort out (I really am on my own with all this!!) so sadly, musician hunting takes a backseat.

So....Good news now! What this challenge does more than any other, is give me the ability to work at any point in time. Being a Londoner, I travel on the tube at all hours. And often, when I'm going from one place to another, I bump into a musician. So I'm actually working 24/7. It's quite a nice feeling to always have something to look for. Like a Panini football sticker collection, finding the needs, the really really needs and the gots (maybe a reference that young English boys will get, I don't know).

Example of this - I was on the way to the cinema yesterday, and low and behold I saw a large bulky case on the floor of the tube. Upon closer inspection it was a double bass case. I approached the guy (very friendly man called Dave) who expressed interest, gave me his number and asked a lot about the challenge. I was so engrossed in conversation I nearly missed my stop. Running off, I realised that some people around us had taken interest in this story. And it starts to enforce that this really is a challenge that can bring people together.

I will find a way in the future of getting more people involved, not just musicians. We're all a lot closer than we realise. It would be nice to be able to show this however possible.

No comments:

Post a Comment