Autumn 2015, MBSM V7, MBSM My First Ballet Class, MBSM Jazz Standards

Finally - MODERN BALLET STUDIO MELODIES, VOLUME 7 has been recorded, mastered, listened through on playback (many many many times!) and is finally (at the time of writing) sat waiting fot the iTunes police people to check it out before they give it their seal of approval and release it worldwide. I never understand the timetable from hitting 'submit' and thene it going live - sometimes it takes merely 1 or 2 days and other times it can take 3 or 4 weeks. Super annoying but the hard work is done - I'm really looking forward to it going live so that people can enjoy dancing to a new collection of music. The recording process was a little different with this one - instead of mastering the whole thing and recording it straight to computer I decided to master it on my new keyboard (super geeky - Roland RD800 - super action, really amazing keyboard) and then record straight to the hard drive and send to itunes. Which would have been perfect - if the hard drive hadn't crashed which meant ALL and I mean ALL the work had been lost so I had to start work again. Actually I think the end result is probably better then the original - I've listened to the CD many times (in the car, walking Monty, sitting in my office, sitting in my flat etc) and I genuenally believe that it is a great and inspiring collection of music - a few of my personal favourite tracks include the 'Queen Medley', 'Arthur's Theme' and just for a little joke the Angry Birds game theme for little jumps. Quite fun and definitely tongue in cheek humour. 

We're now back in the busy working world of Elmhurst Scool for Dance and it is ridiculously busy - but thats ok becuase it keeps me out of trouble. I am already strating work on my next 2 releases which will be 'My First Ballet Class' (or something similar) and 'Jazz Standards' - beautiful and inspiring jazz melodies arranged for ballet. I only realised this week in class how many jazz standards I play (use, abuse etc) so it should probably make quite a nice cd. My first study intrument when at music school was jazz piano and improvisaation so it's a genre which holds a particularly special place in my heart. There are no time scales for these releases as yet - keep checking the website and facebook page - all the information will be there. 

Summer 2015 seems like a very long time ago - humungous amount of fun and talent at the now annual OPES International Ballet School - google them - seriously it has to be one of the best faculties of teachers and musicians on any ballet summer school in the UK. That along with many ceilidh gigs, orchestral gigs and other functions pretty much meant that I worked all the way through - so - i'm taking a well earnt rest in a couple of weeks and heading to the south of Spain for some sun and cerveza!!

I really hope that you enjoy the latest release and please give me a shout either via the twitter thing, facebook or good ol' fashioned email if you have any feedback - good - bad or indifferent.

Chris x