Welcomings And Farewells

It is now just one day till I launch my 3rd solo CD The Shape Of Things with a piano-solo concert at the Unitarian Church in Dublin. I’ll be following this up with three concerts in the South of England in early October 2010. I am incredibly excited. The tourdates are at the bottom of the blog.

The CD itself is a piano-solo CD recorded two days after the end of the big freeze in January 2010 in St. Peters' Church of Ireland in Drogheda, County Louth, Ireland. The cover was designed by Keith Mullins using photographs taken by Will O'Connell. It features 11 original compositions, a new composition by long-time collaborator David MacKenzie and a unique interpretation of The Late Traiin by Roesy. Although there was a composed structure to all of the tracks, various parts of some of the music were improvised in the studio.

The idea of a completely instrumental album had been brewing for a while. I’ve always put instrumentals into my live set as the piano and my piano style are such an important part of my sound and I know that people enjoy that side of my playing. Many people had been suggesting that I should record a purely instrumental piano album but I always resisted. I could always hear other instruments in my arrangements and love working with other musicians.

When I was considering recording a follow-up to Asylum Harbour, I spent a day recording piano with Brian Masterson who I’d worked with before with David MacKenzie and on Asylum Harbour itself. We went to Drogheda to record with no preconceptions, but to record whatever happened.

The sound grew organically from the beginning of the session which took place at the tail-end of the big freeze in the middle of January 2010. By the end of the day we had 13 tracks and that was definitely a CD’s worth so we decided to put it out as it was.

Since last years' Making Overtures course and its highly informative session on social networking, I've been trying to refine my online presence, hence this blog and trying to increase updates of the website. Occasional colleague Colin Morris suggested SoundCloud as a way of presenting samplers of my work and I'm really enjoying it. For the first time with this album, you can hear full tracks directly from my website – www.joshjohnston.com – as well as find out concert dates and more information about the music. You can already pre-order the CD directly from this website too. The CD will also be available from I-Tunes, CDBaby.com and various digital download sites across the world from September 25th or thereabouts.

Aside from the CD, my life is busy and far-reaching. I tried my hand at chamber music over the summer working with a young and extremely talented violinist Liz O'Neill and although the partnership didn't end up working out for us it was a major project for me which I greatly enjoyed the challenge of. I realised that I hadn't really learnt any new classical music in about ten years so getting myself back to the stage where I could tackle that sort of repertoire was a big project but a productive enterprise and we created a good sound. Maybe we can try again in the future. I'm not one for ruling things out.

I had the dubious honour of accompanying Miranda Sings at the Dublin Fringe Festival - great fun really and even more of a hoot when faced with the reaction of a real live theatre audience.

My newest go at directing a choir is a 9-piece vocal ensemble that I'm actually singing in (working title Chambrette Ensemble) and we performed in semi-public for the first time a few weeks back to an invited audience at one of our choristers' houses in South County Dublin. Despite premiere nerves, everybody - choir and audience - seemed to enjoy themselves and we're now deep back into work for our 'real' first performance in Dublin at the end of November. Lots of informal performances are being planned too - a film-shoot next week, Busking in October and carol-singing in December. Lots of enjoyment to be had !!! Watch out for us.

With launches and welcomings come departures. This summer our good family friends Kathleen and Andrew moved their family to Vancouver for work reasons much to the dismay of their respective families and this Sunday, good friend and fantastic musician Martin (who played bass on the Galway 09 sessions - still unreleased but which will eventually see the light of day - once the songs get finished) and enjoyed coffee and lunch meetups with me in Simons on South Great Georges Street on a regular basis, travels to Germany to take up residence and a new job. A lot of other colleagues and friends seem to have moved from Ireland this year - I'm wondering whether it's an adventure I'd like to try myself but haven't built up the courage to do it yet - situation in Ireland making it more tempting as the days go by. Strange sense of sadness to see friends moving on which you suddenly realise was last a regular occurence with the last wave of emigration in the 80's but at least we have the Internet and cheaper phone packages so it just makes it more important to have the Internet and Facebook in particular to stay in touch. Bon voyage Martin. The story will never be over.

Hope to see you at one of the gigs or on the road.

The Shape Of Things Live

Saturday 25th September 2010 @ 8pm
Unitarian Church, St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2
Tickets €10 available on the door or reserved by e-mail from
pigsmayfly@eircom.net
www.the-listening-room.org

Saturday 2nd October 2010 @ 8pm
Unitarian Chapel, New Road, Brighton, BN1 1UF
Tickets £8 available at the door
www.brightonunitarian.org.uk

Sunday 3rd October 2010 @ 7.30pm
Meadrow Chapel, Godalming, Surrey, GU7 3JB
Tickets £7 available at the door
www.unitariangodalming.org.uk

Sunday October 10th 2010 @ 8pm
Unity Unitarian Church, 277a Upper St., Islington,
London, N1 2TZ (next to the fire station)
Tickets £8 available at the door
http://www.new-unity.org

All the best,



Josh