Opera North - Rosenkavalier and Brahms 4, 10/12/2010

What a wonderful program:-
Richard Strauss - Der Rosenkavalier Suite
Schumann - Cello Concerto
Brahms - Symphony no 4

This was my first gig in St Georges, Bradford - nice hall, a bit dry under the ear but a bit further away the band sounded great.

And a real thrill for me was that I shared a desk with Diana Milner, my teacher from 30 years ago. We had a lot of fun and caught up on lots of news.

Opera North - Russian Programme 4/12/2010

We are in the midst of a chilly snap in the UK - our weather normally comes from the Gulf Stream over the Atlantic, tipping wet warmer weather onto us at this time of year. Unfortunately the stream took a Left to Greenland, leaving us with cold weather from the North East. So its wonderful to be working with Opera North but travelling up to Leeds has been "fun"!

We have a section of 6 for a program of Rimsky Korsakov - May Nights, Prokofiev 3rd Piano Concerto with John Lill and Stravinsky's The Firebird (1945). Am sharing a desk with Jeff Box, ex principal bass with the BBC Phil, for decades. He is a lovely guy, great sense of humour, huge experience and is still a star player at the ripe old age of......now that would be telling wouldnt it!

I write this entry from Bristol - we had rehearsals on Tues and Wed this week, the band had a gig in Huddersfield on Thursday (in theory) with a smaller string section due to the hall size, so I was not booked for that one. But am going back up tomorrow for the Leeds gig on Saturday 4/12.

I have just launched my website at http://www.stuartriley.info/, and will be publishing orchestral excerpts to that site from now on.