Tuesday saw me playing at a reception at the Open University in Milton Keynes, where they were welcoming Lord David Puttnam as Chancellor.

Held in the new Computing Department building, this was my second visit this year as I also played there as part of a conference on computing and music back in the summer. I had a definite sense of déjà vu when I arrived as a large screen was playing a recording of my previous visit on a loop: Unusual, but also apt since my performance involved a variety of looped violin pieces! There were also some fascinating presentations about a variety of music and computer related research which is currently being carried out at the OU. If you’d like to discover more about music research at the OU then have a look at this page.

September and October this year seem to have gone by in a rapidly-moving blur, and suddenly here we are in November and I realise that I haven’t written a post for two months!

I have, as you may easily guess, been keeping busy: September saw me coaching on a strings and woodwind course with the excellent Colin Touchin, as well as giving a workshop at Haileybury College, where I worked with some of the students on playing electric violin, and also demonstrated the looping techniques which I use in my solo concerts. This was also the month that my son Chris started at Lincoln University, a rather major change for all of us! He has still found time to design the artwork for my new CD though…

The major event in October was an Ely Sinfonia concert in Ely Cathedral where I conducted, among other works, the Elgar Cello Concerto, played superbly by the renowned Raphael Wallfisch. This was the culmination of my first season as Artistic Director of Ely Sinfonia, and we managed to draw an audience of over 600 for what was an excellent concert.

I also gave a couple of solo recitals in October, including playing for the 2nd Norwich Festival of Live Looping, where I met up with the person who got me into looping in the first place, bass guitarist Steve Lawson. Also on the bill was the excellent Per Boysen, all the way from Sweden, and the Festival organiser, guitarist Andy Butler. At the end of the month I travelled to Glasgow for 4 days with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, playing the huge Messiaen masterpiece “Des Canyons Aux Etoiles”. For those who might be interested the concert we gave of this piece will be broadcast on Radio 3 on the evening of December 12th.

However my main efforts over the last two months have been towards the completion of my new CD “Ascension”. It’s now finally finished and is off to be pressed this week, for release by the end of the month. An ideal Christmas gift, if I say so myself!

This CD has evolved a lot from my original idea of a short CD single with about 15 minutes of music on it. It’s ending up coming in at 55 minutes and, in true Bingham style, has everything from Renaissance dance music on violins, recorders and percussion, to Led Zeppelin on multi-tracked violins! In between there’s some more Bartok Duos, and excellent Telemann Canonic Sonata, a wonderful choral piece by Pablo Casals, which I’ve arranged for strings, an arrangement of a Jeff Beck number with double bass and African drums, and, the title track, my own composition “Ascension”. There are 3 remaining tracks, all recorded live: A light-hearted, jazzy encore from a concert I gave with guitarist Jason Carter in Cambridge a few years ago, and, from the more recent past, two live sections from the very first completely improvised performance I’ve ever given! The details of this concert are in my blog post “Improvizone” and I decided that some of the music would work well as the first and last tracks on the CD….

“Ascension” can be pre-ordered from my shop now, and will be available from the beginning of December.

Friday saw me playing with the band No-Man in their first live gig for 15 years, and my first gig with a ‘rock’ band.

L to R: Mike Bearpark, Steven Wilson, Pete Morgan, Tim Bowness, Andy Booker, Steve Bingham, Stephen Bennett (photo: Lisa Smith)

Bush Hall, in West London, was full to capacity, plus recording engineer and film crew (the gig was being recorded for a live CD and DVD film).

(photo: Lisa Smith)

(photo: Chris Bingham)

The first song in the set was the haunting ‘Only Rain’, vocals and violin alone, and starting with a minute or so of solo violin live loops: 400 fans, some of whom had waited 15 years since they last heard the band live, eager to hear their heroes Tim Bowness and Steve Wilson perform - and the first thing they get is me! I have to admit to being a little nervous….

But all started well, and at the end of the evening I don’t think that any of the fans were disappointed:

A mixture of songs from old and new albums made for an interesting and varied set. I await the live CD and DVD with interest, but meanwhile we’re off to Europe on Tuesday for repeat performances in Holland and Germany. There are more photos from the London gig here.

Email news arrived yesterday of the release, by Bohemian Productions, in collaboration with Sony, of their Jeff Beck tribute CD - entitled ‘El Becko’ (was that a groan I heard?) - to which I contributed a cover of the song ‘Scatterbrain’. I hope to have some copies of the CD available on the shop soon, but the track will also appear on my ‘Ascension’ solo CD (when I get it finished!).

A word about Improvizone: This is a venture run by the excellent drummer Andy Booker, who I’ve been working with in the No-Man band. He invited me to play at one of the Improvizone gigs in north London a couple of weeks ago. These are basically concerts by a variety of improvising musicians in several different venues - the one I played was in a pub in Walthamstow, with a line up of violin, guitar, bass, drums and sound engineer. Os, who does fantastic live sound manipulation, also records the gigs live. Andy then puts edited highlights on to the Improvizone website. You can already listen to a couple of clips from the recent gig (plus 80 or so others from past events), with more excerpts to come. Do take a look at - and more particularly a listen to - the website: www.improvizone.com. Meanwhile here’s one of the clips:

This gig was a new experience for me: My first completely improvised concert! It’s hard to describe the feeling you get (particularly for a classically trained musician) when you allow yourself to block out everything except the music that is happening at that moment, with no written notes, or even the memory of written notes, to get between you and the collective creative process which is going on. It can be completely exhilarating.

So now I’ve got a new ‘blog’ site I feel I ought to do some posts!

I’ve been having a few days off prior to a busy couple of weeks of rehearsals and gigs with the band No-Man.

I had a good visit to the RSPB reserve at Titchwell, on the North Norfolk coast, where I managed to take a few nice photos of waders.

Yesterday I visited my local RSPB reserve, Lakenheath Fen. Having walked to the far end of the reserve I was rewarded with excellent views of two cranes, very rare in the UK: But, I hear you say, I saw five JCB’s only the other day! These were, however, the Common Crane (grus grus), which, until last year, had not bred in this area four about 400 years: They’re extremely rare in the UK, with only a handful of breeding records in recent times. They’re also magnificent birds, somewhat larger than the common Grey Heron. My rather distant photo doesn’t do them justice.

Their courtship dance, which I might have seen if I had been visiting the reserve in the spring, involves much jumping about and stretching of the neck: Hence, I assume, the term “craning one’s neck”…