I guess my entire life has led up to this Centenary. All those hours listening to the hundreds of unfiled 78rpm records outside my bedroom as a child, the sheet music collecting since the age of nine, then discovering all the marvellous, keen-as-mustard musicians in London who are equally passionate about bringing this music to vivid life…well! It’s here. 2014. And I have a heck of a collection of set-lists. Here’s a picture from my first full-blown centenary gig, of many.
In July, with Albert Ball’s Flying Aces – headed up by the amazing dynamo (and arranger for Our Lovely Day) Nicholas David Ball – I’ll be appearing at the Branscombe Festival (more anon), in truly august company. Other performers at this small but oh-so-select festival include Sumi Jo, I Fagiolini and the Royal Marines! ABFA, as you may remember, is a band of First World War Flying Aces who happen to play exceedingly good ragtime.
(Alas, my feathers aren’t visible in the above shot.)
Matt and Zac played banjo, accordion, clarinet, guitar, mandolin, piano, piano duet, saxophone, and also did backing vocals. There were no two numbers using the same combination. 
We are, emphatically, for HIRE. Book soon. We’ll be appearing in the Buxton Festival, at Grange Park Opera, the aforementioned Branscombe, and Swaledale.
We have pacifist songs, we have laments from poppy fields, we have German songs on the inevitability of death in battle. We have rip-snorting recruiting marches, we have hilarious singalongs, and we have tributes to Red Cross Nurses in French and English. Instrumental numbers include all things 1910s including tangos, chorinhos, and of course, ragtime. And some Elgar.
(Zac on the piano, Matt on the banjo, though it was the other way round for the Red Pepper Rag.)
The 101 concerts in Canada were an absolute whirl of fascination and exhaustion: waking up at 5am to get the 5:45 Langdale bus, the 6:15 Horseshoe Bay ferry, the 7:10 Vancouver bus and Skytrain out to Abbotsford, Mission, Delta, Coquitlam, Ladner, Chilliwack and other outlying areas for 10am, 1:45 and 3pm concerts, back at 8:30 in the evening. 
I met a man who worked for Howard Hughes; a Chinese nonogenarian who led a band in the thirties that toured Brunei, London, Singapore, Buenos Aires; a Caribbean-born man who played bongos in an ensemble that was all the rage in 1940s Quebec; a tattooed lady who had played 2nd violin for the Vancouver Philharmonic in the 1950s; and so many other wonderful people. Yet more inspiration to write, which I am doing, like anything. Any gaps in the “Forthcoming Gigs” link are filled with writing.
Some interesting gigs when I got back to London in April: Singing at a vintage dining experience for London Vintage Kitchens, in this case 1913 Paris. Guests were dressed in 1913 finery while I sang and Julio Schwarz Andrade played ragtime piano. 
We did a rip-snorting version of My Blue Heaven, in French. A little bit after 1913 but nobody seemed to mind too much. B&W photos by Hanson Leatherby.
And, on the subject of writing, do hie thee to the nearest good newsagent’s and get a copy of the June/July “Chap” magazine! Stocklists are HERE. Or else just order one from their site. I highly recommend back-issues, what an array of them, but the June/July one features an article I wrote on the subject of sheet music. And also, if you go to theChap.org, you can hear a track that Matt Redman arranged, and played, using classical guitar, acoustic bass guitar, steel-string guitar (with slide), 12-string guitar, mandoline, ukulele, and bouzouki! All at the same time! And I sing. 
We recorded it especially for the article, interpreting my first-ever piece of sheet music without hearing any other versions, in the true spirit of sheet-music explorations: get it from the paper, and not from the record! If you like it, do leave a comment in the comments box!
I must get back to Monteverdi now. After spending a childhood in thrall to the Nadia Boulanger recordings of Zefiro Torna and Chiome d’oro sung by Paul Derenne and Hughes Cuenod, I get a chance to sing them with lovely lovely Emily Atkinson and wonderful musicians this Sunday in the Lovekyn Chapel!
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