Category: News

Perseus Duo Blog#2 (Dundee)

A very lovely day in Dundee, we had a lovely day at the Premier Inn. Since our concert is at 730pm, we decided to walk around a bit. We went up to the Dundee Law, which is the highest point of Dundee and you can overlook the city. Though in order to enjoy such a scene one needs to make some effort. It was a mere 3 miles from the hotel to Dundee Law but it took us nearly 20mins on the car! What happened? Well, we somehow drove onto the Tayroad bridge which led us away from Dundee. There were some confusing roads so I would recommend driving slowly just to be ensure you are not leaving Dundee if you don’t intend to. Later on we went on to rehearsing at the Marryat Hall, beautiful place to play in. The host was very lovely, they brought us some sandwiches and fruits. The green room was beautiful where both of us actually had a great nap(don’t worry we didn’t oversleep) We had some very lovely audience. After that we drove to our next venue – Crieff. First concert done, 5 to go!

Perseus Duo Blog #1 (Pre-tour)

 

Since it was such a long way to the our first venue in Dundee, we decided to get there a day earlier.

We were extremely lucky to have a Gareth, a friend of ours who has agreed to take us round Scotland (big round of applause please). We decided to set off from Shrewsbury where he is from. It was still a 6.5 hours car journey.

It would not be a ‘journey’ if there weren’t any incidence. It looked like the road out of Shrewsbury was blocked because of a car crash. So we were forced to go on the small roads, and obviously there were cars trying to get into Shrewsbury using the same roads. Luckily it didn’t take too long until we went onto the motorway. We stopped at Tebay Services for a break for Gareth. Stunning place, great food, lovely atmosphere. Few hours later, We arrived at Dundee, everyone was tired so we just had a some food and went to bed.

Bone-afide Blog#5 (Ayr)

Our penultimate concert of our tour was Ayr. We took a detour on our shortest drive so far to go to Grey Mare’s Tail and walk up to the waterfall. This was beautiful and was fantastic to get some fresh air and exercise as so far we had only been driving and eating lots! We were now ready to head to Ayr via our premiere inn.

We quickly checked in and packed our bags before going to the hall. We set up in the church hall and started a quick rehearsal that was great! We then chilled out by going for a walk on the chilly coast and sharing funny videos on Instagram which helps us relax and calm nerves before the concert. We had some tasty meals brought to us by the lovely people of the club.

The concert was a great success, in the hall we had a very good audience filled with club member, students, family and trombone friends! The audience was very encouraging and were very easy to interact with and created a really great atmosphere! After the concert, we mingled with our audience and sold some CDs whilst also having some photos taken of us for the local paper!

We then headed back to our premier inn for some refreshing drinks and a local takeaway to get us ready for our last day of the tour, Dunblane.

Bone-afide Bolg#4 (Moffat)

Everyone in Howick had warned us about the drive over the mountains to Moffat. On top of this, we had winds of up to 40 miles an hour.

The drive was incredible, it turns out. We had the most amazing views of the mountains and a few Lochs.

It took us about an hour to get over to Moffat. We went to a local bakery and had Scotch pies and soup before meeting our hosts for that evening.

Katherine and Mike were fantastic hosts, we even managed to persuade Mike to come to the concert!

Katherine was the president of the Moffat Music Club and showed us to the Old Well Theatre.

This was a beautiful old church, converted into a theatre with a capacity of 70.

After a hearty italian meal in ‘Claudio’s’, we headed up to the church and performed to a full audience. We had an amazing response from the audience once again. So many people were delighted to experience the trombone in a completely different setting to what they usually do.

After the concert, we visited the local pub for some light refreshments.

Bone-afide Blog#3 (Howick)

After our lovely stay in Crieff we had a beautiful drive down the east coast to Hawick near the borders. We went first to the lovely Andy and Mary’s house who were putting us up for the night in their amazing house. Mary had made us a lovely soup and let us spend time with their dogs, which was the perfect way to relax before a concert!

On our journey to the Hall we had some bad luck and Isobel got a flat tyre – a quick session with AA and thankfully the day was saved. Finally we made it to the hall and with a quick coffee we were ready to have our rehearsal/sound check for the concert. After our successful sound check in the lovely hall, we had a few hours off before the rehearsal to relax, practice and fill up on biscuits!

The concert was lovely with a warm, excited audience sitting round tables after having a group meal. Everyone was so kind to us and many enjoyed hearing a trombone quartet for the first time! It was amazing to share what the trombone is capable of to new audiences. We then headed back to a lovely night with our hosts for curry, ice cream and whiskey before having a well earned rest before heading to Moffat.