Posted in music

Recalling playing accordion for Hawick High School musical shows in the late 1980s

My waking up brain was just trying to work out which years were which for the three years I played accordion accompaniment for school musical shows at Hawick High School. Luckily the British Newspaper Archive includes Southern Reporter back issues recording details! So my brain doesn’t need to torment me any longer.

Fiddler on the Roof was first for me, in June 1987. This was a particularly lovely musical to play accordion accompaniment for the singers on stage. With special highlight “Sunrise, Sunset”. Which I still play by memory many years later. Here is the report of the show coming soon, in the Southern Reporter, 28 May 1987:

Report of upcoming Fiddler show being presented by "pupils of Hawick High School, in conjunction with TVEI". It follows "last year's energetic 'Jesus Christ Superstar'". It will be on June 17-19 (Thu-Sat) in Hawick High School Assembly Hall, beginning at 7.30pm.

A year later we were playing Oliver! – again a lovely musical to play for. Though not one with such a prominent role for the accordion. It was still a very enjoyable show to be part of. Here is the Southern Reporter of 9 June 1988 announcing it coming soon:

Report headlined "It's Oliver!" on at the school June 22-24 at 7.30pm. Tickets £1.50 for adults, £1 for children and OAPs.

And finally I played accordion accompaniment in 1989 for the Hawick High School production of Joseph and his Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. My main memory from that as the accordion player accompanying is thinking that the song “Those Canaan Days” by Andrew Lloyd Webber is phenomenally reminiscent of “Sunsrise, Sunset” that I played for Fiddler On The Roof two years earlier! Here is the report of the upcoming school show from the Southern Reporter, 8 June 1989:

"Pupils stage Joseph", with shows coming June 21-23 at 7.30pm in the school hall. Staff involved are credited and the report says pupils "will entertain you throughout the show, with songs and different musical skills." Also: "A production team has been formed from members of the cast, with each having another task to perform from ticket designing to lighting and publicity."

Sadly there are no review/writeups after the performances that I can see yet in the British Newspaper Archive. There may have been something in the local Hawick News paper, but that’s not yet been digitised in the online archive for the relevant years (nothing yet post 1952).

Happy memories anyway. The small group of school pupils playing the musical accompaniment for these shows sat at the left below the main stage. I remember in one of the years – very probably Fiddler in 1987 – my long-term violin teacher Peter Chamberlain coming over and being rather stunned to see me playing an accordion for a change!

Accordion practising plans

I’ve played the piano accordion since the age of 4, in 1976, and have also been learning the chromatic button accordion since two years ago. Sadly my progressive neurological illness means that I can’t play my squeezeboxes very often. And because I often lose fine control of my right hand, playing the accordions at all can be very difficult. I am grateful just to manage any practice, and don’t tend to systematically practice things, and can be a bit flighty.

As a statement of intent, and posting here to encourage me to do it, I’m planning to concentrate on three pieces of sheet music over my next series of practice sessions. These pieces will be played on my more familiar piano accordion.

  • My Fair Lady medley (Russian arranged)
  • Thank You For The Music by ABBA
  • Speechless from live action Disney Aladdin (my own arrangement)

All of these I can play to an extent already, but need to put more concentrated effort into focused practice, so they become more natural to play. I may even promise to put up a recording or two here in due course to show my progress.

Wish me luck!

3 pieces of sheet music lying on top of each other. From left to right an ABBA book of accordion music, including Thank You For The Music, a Russian "Musical's History" book of accordion tunes, and a self printed (and self arranged) set of music for Speechless from Aladdin.

Plans for the new season

Autumn is by far my favourite time of year, and always feels like a fresh start. I suppose in part due to living through such a huge number of academic years, both at school, and throughout many years of university study. But it’s also the season with my birthday in it. And wedding anniversary. And I adore the colours and smells at this time of year.

I always feel inspired to make fresh plans in Autumn. So I thought I’d jot down here some of the things that I’m up to and will be doing in the coming months.

Academically I have an academic journal paper going through peer review at the moment. Another one is nearly ready to get a couple of folks to hopefully read it for me before sending it out for peer review. And I have several other ones in earlier stages of development. All Scottish historical, a mix of sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

I’m currently well into a new research project, which will also hopefully ultimately turn into an academic journal paper. I discovered by chance the intriguing story of a German accordionist travelling around nineteenth-century Scotland, performing, as well as tuning and repairing accordions and other instruments, including pianos. This deserves to be written up, and as an accordionist myself I am more than happy to do so! On the downside I have found nearly 300 historic newspaper references to him. So many that as I type them up I’m indexing them in a giant spreadsheet. This will help me pull out overall patterns, including, for example, the huge number of places he travelled to and offered his services in around Scotland over 50+ years. I am now 2/3 through the spreadsheet typing. Currently typing up so very many detailed reports of his musical performances all over Scotland! Looking forward to the analysis and writing.

The annual interactive fiction competition IFComp is currently running, and I have a game entered in there. Very modest hopes re my final placing. I will just be happy if I improve on my previous entry! But it also prompted me to work on a new game. Again parser, traditional text adventure style. This new one I’m developing has a historical bent. It’s more ambitious in scale. Having finished the previous game has given me confidence that I can tackle something bigger. And I’m having fun working on it. Still early stages though.

In other things I want to return to my chromatic button accordion learning – I have played piano accordion for nearly 50 years. But the chromatic button accordion – all buttons, no piano keyboard element – is a new challenge I started last year. I was saddened this last week at the closure of French accordion makers Maugein. They made my gorgeous wee box that I got new from them last year. I am extremely grateful to them.

I also want to return to my language learning. Particularly Scots Gaelic, which I have a very long-term interest in. But also Russian, which I have been learning on and off for some years. I’m rather conflicted with the latter right now, for unsurprising reasons. But my long-standing interest in the language is in spite of everything that Putin and his forces are doing illegally and immorally in Ukraine.

I am also making time to listen to some audio adventures from Big Finish that I have a backlog of. And each week I’m rereading and reviewing (elsewhere, on my Dreamwidth blog) another story in the canon of Sherlock Holmes short stories.

So some fun plans! All, of course, having to fit around my progressive neurological illness. But it’s nice to make some plans now. It feels like the right time.

Here’s a photo from my husband, taken just a couple of days ago, that captures the current season well.

Autumnal leaves, a mix of red, orange, green and brown. All still on the tree, but going to fall soon.

My personal top 10 favourite ABBA songs

This year marks 50 years since ABBA won the Eurovision Song Contest with the song Waterloo. I don’t remember watching, though would have seen it with my parents. But I was extremely young, born only two years earlier. However in the following years I quickly adored ABBA music, though much else in the 1970s passed me by! As we got into the early 1980s, the last years of ABBA, I especially appreciated their later songs. And that love continued to the present day.

I thought I’d draw up a list of my top 10 favourite songs. Prompted by recent ABBA favourites lists, such as this one from the BBC’s Radio 2 and its listeners. It is incredibly hard to pin down just 10 favourite ABBA songs. But here are the 10 I’ve chosen. Not in order of preference, but in chronological order of release:

  • Thank You For The Music
  • Knowing Me, Knowing You
  • Angeleyes
  • Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)
  • The Winner Takes It All
  • Andante, Andante
  • The Way Old Friends Do
  • Head Over Heels
  • I Let the Music Speak
  • One Of Us

I can’t order the full top 10 by preference, but here are my top 3 favourite ABBA songs of all time that I can confidently pull out:

  • 1st. Andante Andante
  • 2nd. The Winner Takes It All
  • 3rd. Knowing Me, Knowing You

Five years ago I was lucky to be able to visit the ABBA Museum in Stockholm. I would thoroughly recommend this to any fellow ABBA fans out there. Though allow plenty of time for your visit! There is so much to enjoy.

Black on white ABBA logo