Left, right, forward, MARCH! In keeping with this terribly wordplay, March has felt like quite a lot! I’ve been so horrendously busy, even in my downtime I’ve been working or worrying about working, and I think April and May will be much the same. It might ease up a bit in the summer, but these last few months doing this masters at RNCM are going to be quite brutal. Still, I’ll miss it when I have to return to being a regular person and not an insufferable art school wanker. So here is what Old Will has been up to over March…
The main thing I have been busy with this month has been my musical, where a lot has gone on. I had the second workshop for my musical at the start of March which went extremely well. Off the back of that I met with the composer Alexis Ffrench to discuss this project and got some great advice from him. I also created an Instagram account for the show as well as a page for it on my website which makes the whole thing feel that much more real. I have also started looking into applying for the Creative Innovators Award to get some funding for a future performance which feels more in sight than ever before. The main thing relating to this musical has been that I applied for Lab Week at the RNCM, and though it took me a while to hear back about the results I got exactly what I asked for and more, which is to have the Opera Theatre Stage at RNCM for a full week. I could not believe it, it is the best thing that has happened to this project so far. What they have given me is literally worth thousands of pounds so this is a major deal! I am terrified, but also so excited about this opportunity. I have spent much of this month preparing for Lab Week since finding out I got it, April will be a massive month.
Outside of the musical, I was also busy with other music related work such as finishing my orchestral piece which was incredibly tough to do. Overall I was happy with what I had done, but as always I felt I could have done with a bit more time working on it. In any case, it will be being practiced in April and then performed at the start of May which is incredible. Along with this, I have also been busy with some other compositions as well as other RNCM work, most of it has now admittedly taken a bit of a back seat until I get passed Lab Week. This is seen most heavily in the free piano lessons that I have been having, for I hardly have any time to practice which makes me feel bad when I turn up to my lessons as shit as I was the last week. My piano tutor is lovely and I hate disappointing her, but I think I will have to stop these lessons due to my hectic schedule. There have been some great moments at RNCM this month though, I got to meet the composer Oliver Coates who I had seen supporting Radiohead back in 2017. I told him this, and I sent him a video that I took of him playing at this concert because he had no footage or evidence that he had played at this gig which was funny.
Beyond RNCM, I have been with many other things as well. Notably I got rejected for the gambling sound designer job that I had applied for. I was a little on the fence of whether I really wanted to work for a gambling company, but it would have been paid stable work in a field I would have liked to have improved in (sound design not gambling) so I probably would have done it. In any case, the universe settled this ethical quandary for me by giving the job to someone with twenty years experience. I have also been busy with my much more ethical job which has been tutoring English to disadvantaged kids. This has been really good though it is unlikely that I will see the kids I am currently tutoring again after this holiday break as the funding looks like it has run out which is a shame.
Outside of music and work, I have also managed to do some other fun things too. I saw the musical Pretty Woman with my mum in Manchester for her birthday which was actually pretty good though the crowd for some reason were abhorrent. I also saw the band Enslaved for my friend’s birthday which was fun, and the crowd were a lot nicer there. I don’t think black metal has still really won my heart, but I enjoyed the experience nonetheless. Maybe the most interesting thing I saw all month though was a car crash which happened just outside my flat. A few lads who were high on nos crashed their car into some parked cars just outside. The whole community came out to watch the fireman tear apart the cars which made me feel like an excitable seven year old boy. It did not look like anyone was hurt, so I did not feel bad standing there with my flatmate and eyeballing the scene. I also did another podcast with my flatmate around St Patrick’s Day which was fun. We have been doing them once a month which is much better we both find than doing them weekly. Probably the highlight of the month however was going to the Lake District with my fiancee for the bank holiday Easter weekend. This was extremely lovely and I hardly worried about work at all. Until I came back and the pressure hit me again like a bullet. Still, everything is great and I am sure I will remember this time fondly when I read back through this blog like some insane person stuck living in the past. Hey future Will! See you at the next score!
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