[HelenEdith]

Considering that digital photography and computer skills go together, it's not surprising to see people who are interested in electronic music, but does anyone here play a non-amplified instrument in the old fashioned way?

My instrument is the bassoon, and I get a lot of enjoyment out of playing it in amateur groups, including a wind quintet (which Stephen has a hilarious video clip of - involving a dog) a community band and an amateur orchestra. I even stand up and do a solo occasionally.

[shuttertalk]

Hey Helen, good to meet you! You sound very talented indeed!

I was trained in the classical guitar and had my fair share of performances, although these days I mostly play accoustic and electric in my church band.

Welcome to Shuttertalk!

Jules

[HelenEdith]

Pleased to meet you, Jules!

I've duetted with a guitarist a couple of times. I got hold of some Vivaldi bassoon sonatas with an accompaniment written out for guitar rather than keyboard.

Today I had a session with the wind quintet and I'm noticing that my lungs aren't back up to strength after a bout of bronchitis several weeks ago. I think I might need to do a bit more practice to regain the lung capacity.

The wind quintet meets in a school hall in Kent and the chapel is covered in a beautiful vine that turns brilliant red in the autumn. Alas, the leaves had already fallen off it when I visited today, so the camera stayed in the car. I could have gone looking for autumn colour elsewhere, but once I'd got on the motorway, I just headed home. I suppose I should have taken the old A20 instead of the M20 and then I might have been able to stop when I saw something interesting.

Never mind, there's plenty of stuff on my hard drive already which has yet to see the light of day, including some pictures taken by my other half Stephen a week ago when I did a concert with the Beckenham Concert Band. I need to put them onto our website, as I'm the one with the HTML skills. The BCB have their own website here and the webmaster commented that he didn't have enough pictures taken indoors, so he's waiting on those pictures. Some of them were taken while we were tuning up in the band room, and Stephen found that activity as interesting as seeing us performing.