So like many of my friends and colleagues, I’ve not been up to much since the Newcastle gig in February. Other than a few church services, I’ve mainly been messing about with multi-tracking online, which I’m finding useful, but less than musically satisfactory. I’ve helped my coach get into online teaching (not easy: conversation with the IT peeps involved the following exchange, paraphrased slightly: “She’s not ever used email.”—“OK, we can email her instructions about how to get on the university email.”—“…?!?…”), and since then, it’s been both lovely (much time to work on myself, rather than students!), and frustrating (the coloratura is flying, but has nowhere to go!). At the beginning of this term, our Postgraduate Co-ordinator interviewed me about my research and practice, and about the importance of counterpoint, even in a general curriculum! So here we are. And after I finish this post, I’ll be multi-tracking Banchieri’s Contrapunto bestiale alla mente, trying to make all of the animals as silly as possible, to encourage my counterpoint students to take part and come up with their own animal motives to deploy against a cantus firmus!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSvx4qWWRLE