Simon Little

Hello folks,
This week I spent two days at BBC Maida Vale studios as part of the band for the Barnados Oldie Composers songwiting competition sessions. The last time I worked with Barnados we were recording the top four songs from their Young Composers competition (see the original blog post here) and the process was the same this time. Songwriters were asked to submit their material to the star-studded panel of judges who chose their top four songs to be recorded at Maida Vale by professional musicians. The competition was organized by the wonderful Hellen Bach and Norman Macintosh of Charity Goods, and the sessions were produced by my good friend AD Chivers.

We had a great lineup for the sessions, which were on Monday and the following Sunday. We had Nick Mason and Steve Rushton on drums, Grant Windsor on piano, Marcus Bonfanti on guitars, the string quartet Bond and VocalWorks. There was even a string section coming in on Monday night. A really big production all round. Lead vocals were provided by Anthony Head, FTW and our very own Clare Teal.

Once the tracks are mixed and mastered they will be available for download to raise money for Barnados. Which is where you come in…

I shall of course let you know when the tracks become available. The songs were written by Trevor Wiles & Paul Hadler, Marina Florance, John Mackfall and Maggie Duffy. The songwriter with the most downloads by the deadline will win the competition. More information on the contest and how you can help this great cause can be found at the Oldie Composers website.

Rather than harp on about the session I thought it would be far more interesting for me to post a little photoblog. So here’s a gallery of some of the pictures I took from the two days at Maida Vale. I hope you like them.

Here’s a little video I shot of Vocalworks recording their backing for Marina Florence’s Cry…

And here’s a little video of FTW running through some of Loves Forever by Trevor Wiles & Paul Hadler with Grant…

Until next time. Which will be very soon indeed as my third solo album [un]plugged was mastered today with Steve Alexander and as I type the tracks are being uploaded to my Bandcamp page ready for release. Watch this space for the big announcement. Probably tomorrow in fact as I cannot bear to sit on it any longer and want to get it out there for you all to hear…

Thought I’d drop a quick post to let you know what’s been happening of late. Those of you that follow me on Twitter will already know that for the past few weeks I’ve been back at the National Theatre working on a new series of plays.

The series is called Double Feature, and we perform two short plays per night. There are four plays in total and they will eventually alternate each night. They are:

• Edgar & Annabel by Sam Holcroft
• The Swan by DC Moore
• Nightwatchman by Prasanna Puwanarajah
• There Is A War by Tom Basden

We’ve just finished three previews of the first two plays and are about to start technical rehearsals for the next two. The plays are being staged in the National Theatre’s Paint Frame which has been transformed into a unique performance space. This is the first time the space has been used to stage theatre and everyone is really excited about the project.

We have a four piece band drawn from the Duke Special gang. Our MD is Ben Castle and we are joined by Phil Wilkinson and Mark Edwards. We’ve got some great music and I’m getting a chance to play my Dano 63 again which has been great fun.

I really love working at the National on the Southbank. It’s one of my favourite parts of London. I’ve also been taking the opportunity to take lots of photos with the wonderful Hipstamatic for iPhone (my latest obsession). Here’s a few choice pics from the last couple of weeks…

The press nights are in a couple of weeks so there’s still a little while to go with previews. Hopefully see some of you there in the near future. The Double Feature runs until September 10th.

Until next time 🙂

ps. I had another lovely review for The Knowledge of Things To Come on Guitar Jar last week. You can read the review Here.