Today I took a step forward in my quest to get my music heard and create more opportunities for creating new work which will be heard. Today I went along to the London Composers Forum Open House meetup. I have to say, I kept my expectations low. I was half expecting to find half a dozen amateur anoraks, but what I found was what I hadn’t dared even hope to find – a group of welcoming, friendly non-anorak people, all of them interested in learning and creating and giving the group’s compositions the best chance in life they can get. Wow. It was awesome.

This particular meeting had three presentations – the first was on how one composer has drawn inspiration from historico-cultural sources (if that’s actually a term) and the methods he’s used to incorporate these ideas in his music; the second was on concerto grosso form in preparation for a Forum opportunity, which I found very interesting as an orchestration analysis and which lead to some rather heated debate on the difference between concerto grosso and concerto for orchestra.; and finally a session based on one of the members’ PhD thesis on “The Drummer as Composer”, which was a very interesting introduction and I hope he’ll continue with the second part of it at the next Open House. And in between there was various discussion about projects that are on the boil and upcoming and concerts being organised. Apparently they’re thinking of getting all members to send in a list of the pieces they have languishing in drawers awaiting performance and getting those poor dusty pieces out into the world – what a fantastic plan!

So I’m VERY glad I went along at last. Kicking myself I didn’t do so earlier, when I knew they were having a workshop on writing for the organ coming up (now sadly passed – and I can’t believe that was nearly a year ago!) but revelling in the fact that I’ll now have the chance to attend the (hands-on!) percussion workshop which is coming up.