ShareMonday2020 – Songbird Of Shadows

ShareMonday2020 – Songbird Of Shadows

Happy New Year everyone! A new ShareMondays tag and my favourite muse to start it all off. Happy Birthday to the wonderful Julia K, dressed as Brandon Lee (aka The Crow) for her Dead Famous party on Saturday night. She’s singing I’m In Love With A German Film Star with purity and passion, well, one of The Passions in fact, Clive Timperley on guitar! What a great party and I absolutely loved hearing two dear friends performing this beautiful and haunting song together. Thank you both!

Video by my wonderful hubby, Simon Williams!

ShareMondays2019 – Electrify

ShareMondays2019 – Electrify

Experiments with multiple exposures and ICM (in camera movement), to express the feelings and attitude of music and musicians. These images are from the first part of the Americana Festival held at Fiery Bird in Woking over the weekend. Sadly I succumbed to a bug and couldn’t return for the Saturday evening or Sunday sessions! I’m glad that I did get to see and photograph Will Purdue (above) with his band, as well as Phil Coleman, Nick Hyde and Ajay Srivastav. The musical energy really was electrifying!

Wordless Wednesday: Breathing

Wordless Wednesday: Breathing

The Sound Guy

The Sound Guy

When you go out to listen to live music, whether in your local pub, community centre or at a big arena, there’s more than just the musicians at play! This is Bern, he’s one of the volunteer interns who have been trained to play their parts at the Fiery Bird in Woking, as a sound or lighting engineer, stage manager, production crew, front of house for example. Bern isn’t new to sound engineering, running sound for The Loft in Basingstoke, assisting at various local open mics and for his partner, singer-songwriter Celia Barrett, at her performances. My hubby, Simon, has also been training with the new sound desk at Fiery Bird. I’ll stick with my photography, or “magic camera” as Celia refers to it! I just loved Celia’s reaction to a quick edit I did of this image using my phone and Snapseed. She shared the image saying “Bern takes real pride in getting the best sound for musicians and this photo reminded me that we should never forget to thank the Sound Guy. Thanks Bern”. Actually, it was the most liked image from the entire Acoustic Sessions set that I posted to Facebook. The Acoustic Sessions are a new, regular music night, hosted by Claudia Stark, local singer-songwriter and long time member of The Phoenix Cultural Centre (who run Fiery Bird). This and a monochrome from the sequence I shot of Bern were my favourites from the night too. Just something magic about the rim light from the simple desk lamp! I shall post the muted-colour image for this week’s WexMondays as a thank you to all the hard-working sound guys out there at music venues across the country.

ShareMondays2018: Sing

ShareMondays2018: Sing

The brilliant Hazel O’Connor, performing with Cormac de Barra, at the Farncombe Music Club on Saturday Night. She’s singing Rebecca to her lost but unforgotten friend. It was so very moving! I’m also entering this into this week’s Fotospeed challenge.

Under The Spotlight

Under The Spotlight

My dear friend and muse, Julia K, performing with her 80’s music band, The Diamond Hearts on Saturday evening. So much emotion conveyed in her performances! Her passion for the music she performs is palpable. The Diamond Hearts capture the hearts of their audiences wherever they perform! This high contrast mono is my entry to this week’s Fotospeed challenge. I hope that everyone out there is as entranced by Julia as her audiences (and friends!) are! If you would like to find out more about the band, or make a booking for an event please visit The Diamond Hearts

Heavenly Music

Heavenly Music

On Saturday evening, while the snow was falling outside, we were inside St John’s Church, venue for The Farncombe Music Club, listening to the heavenly sounds of Logicaltramp, a tribute to the mighty Supertramp. The wonderfully atmospheric lighting to accompany the music created a vibrant backdrop on the white walls. The whole ambience of the evening was a real tonic! The spirit of Supertramp was most definitely alive and had quite a few of us dancing in the aisles.

L’Amour Looks Something Like You

L’Amour Looks Something Like You

You came out of the night,
Wearing a mask in white colour

Kate Bush from the album The Kick Inside

The mysterious, masked musician performing with the band Cloudbusting – The Music Of Kate Bush at the sold-out 40th Anniversary show, celebrating the album The Kick Inside. I promise to unmask this special guest in a write-up about this amazing concert that we went to on Saturday night. For now, I will add this piece of mystery into the Wex Mondays and Fotospeed photo challenges.

Bouncing Buskers

Bouncing Buskers

This photo of friends and musicians, Claudia Stark and Lisa Von H, totally encapsulates the atmosphere at The Phoenix Cultural Centre‘s Big Busk in Woking Town centre on Saturday. We had all come together to celebrate music, community and culture in Woking. It was hoped that we would also be celebrating the signing of the lease on Quake nightclub, to be renamed Fiery Bird, as the next phase in the Phoenix project. Sadly the lease deadline passed, once again, without any further word on the completion! Get Surrey posted that “the council said it is looking into the matter”. Neither this latest let-down or the freezing cold could stop us partying though! I’m so proud to be part of this project and to have been part of this brilliant, fun event too.

Amy

Amy

Have I mentioned all the amazing musicians and creatives that I am blessed to know? Maybe once or twice 😉 Yesterday brought a few of us together at my friend, Julia’s, studio and rehearsal space for the filming of Amy Turk’s forthcoming YouTube release. I brought the studio backdrop, captured a few stills, Julia and Simon cooked a Tagine, Ben and John filmed and Amy provided the day’s soundtrack on harp. I love watching Amy play. It’s seemingly effortless and absolutely mesmerising. Her arms and hands flow through the moves of some graceful ballet and the music follows her lead. I love photographing musicians performing live, as it gives me a way to try to capture the essence and emotion of their performance, the connection between artist and instrument. So this is Amy, captured while lost in the music, in harmony with her harp. I’m putting this into this week’s Fotospeed challenge and I hope everyone will be enchanted and intrigued to follow this LINK for Amy’s YouTube channel. The new video will be aired very soon! I hope to be bringing more news from Julia K’s Firespark Records and Studios soon.