Aspies For Freedom

I'm writing in response to Netty Rhodes's review of 'Letni skola stare hudby' (apologies for lack of diacritical marks). She wrote:

Hmm. That sounds dangerously similar to the Dartington Summer School, or at least what I've heard of it. That is, unless you come along with a pre-formed ensemble and a stack of music and/or are part of the "in" crowd you don't stand a chance of playing in informal ensembles. However Netty offers a glimmer of hope for Prachatice participants as she goes on to say:

Where are these online communities for recorder players? Please don't just tell me to go and google "recorder"; I would really appreciate personal recommendations.

In an ideal world my fellow members of the Devon SRP and its offshoot the Exeter Recorder Players would be my first contacts for someone to discuss summer schools (or any other aspect of recorder playing). Unfortunately it hasn't worked out that way. The monthly meetings leave barely enough time for remembering each others' names, never mind detailed discussions (or at least that's been my experience, and I have Asperger's syndrome). Even worse, I am evidently the only longstanding member of this branch not to play in any smaller groups. I would like to, but there is no way in for me. What small groups that exist don't hold audtions as such; it's more about playing with friends or friends of friends.  To this end the only "advice" I have received is to make myself known,  invite people back to my flat to play ensembles and maybe this just might lead to greater things. It's totally
impractical as I live in a cramped studio flat and have only a limited collection of consort music.

Feel free to pass on this message to Netty Rhodes.

I received a letter from a reader raising the difficulty that she has encountered in trying to move from the larger, busy, monthly SRP meeting into the smaller chamber ensembles and groups that can play together and visit a residential summer school. It is not always easy to become involved in a chamber group if you do not have the space initially to invite people in for a play-through, and have not built up a library of consort music, or if everyone else locally already seems settled in their own ensembles. The correspondent asked about on-line communities for recorder players, and other ways of meeting potential playing-partners. If other readers have experience of using the web to build recorder networks and have made contacts through such on-line communities it would be interesting to have some recommendations for sites.

I just wanted to write and thank you for acknowledging my email to you in your spring issue editorial. Apologies for not having written before 10 April but I was in the process of moving house last month and didn't have access to my broadband during that time.

It's too bad that I will have to wait until the summer issue to see if there have been any replies, when it will presumably be too late to enrol onto summer schools for this year (autumn schools, on the other hand...). I wonder if it might be possible to run an article on "How to get the most out of a residential course"...

I'm afraid there hasn't been any response to the 'message' in the spring editorial, although there is very little time for anyone to respond to an edition before the deadline of the next one.  I've just put the summer edition 'to bed' without any answers for you.  It is sometimes rather frustrating that there is so little feedback from the magazine.

Are you going to try for a summer school?  I think if I were going to start attending residential courses I would be tempted to have started with the Northern Recorder School, the reviews always sound very friendly.