It’s been a fairly crazy 2 months for me & Phil Robson! We did a tour of trio gigs with Dave Whitford (plus a couple of Quintet ones) around England then came to do stuff in NYC (incl ‘Muldoon’s Picnic at the IAC) before going to Ireland to take part in Jazz On The Terrace’s ‘Return Flight of the Earls’ concert series, which was all great fun & then back to NY! On top of all of this we’ve moved house!!! As many of you know, I’m based between London & NYC now & spend a lot of my time in the US. We split the moving into two parts due to the schedule, on either side of the Ireland trip. As always, we’d accumulated more stuff than we realised so it was quite a job to do it, but we were lucky to have the help of our good friend Mark Lewandowski who is doing the post grad diploma at Julliard at the moment in NY. Phil hired a U Haul van & took on the mean streets! We’re now staying in Jersey City when we’re here, which is in New Jersey of course, but is very close to NYC & overlooks the financial district across the river Hudson & connected by the Path trains. We have musical pals in the area & so far we’re liking it a lot. Orsini our cat is also getting settled in now after being here for 5 days & the boxes are gradually being unpacked!
I’m happy to get that move out of the way so that I can concentrate on the PELT tour! I have lots of gigs & stuff to do before that of course, but that’s the big thing on the horizon & we’re all really looking forward to it. While we’ve been doing our thing over the last few weeks, Anne Rigg from Right Tempo agency, (the project manager for the tour & my agent), has been sending out posters/flyers, organising transport, hotels & all sorts of crucial background jobs so it’s a real team effort. Meanwhile Riot Squad publicity are plugging the gigs & organising radio interviews & lots of other stuff. Busy bees!
One thing I want to mention here is that the gigs will include a small element of signing for the deaf! This is because we are lucky to have the amazing Kate Shortt in the band! Not only is she a great cellist, singer, comedian etc but she’s a level 3 signer using BSL and provides music workshops in a deaf school. She’s also often signed ‘Peter and the Wolf’ with the Northern Lights Symphony Orchestra, most recently with composer Thomas Ades narrating! Obviously Kate will be pretty busy playing cello & doing BVs on the gigs but she’ll sign for some announcements & where ever she can during the shows. We really hope that this will encourage some local deaf community groups to come along.
New trailer vids coming soon & background info about the rural side of the tour! Meanwhile please follow PELT on Face Book https://www.facebook.com/UKTour2018 twitter https://twitter.com/ctobinPELT & Instagram https://www.instagram.com/ctobinpelt
Until the next time…
Christine Tobin's Blog 