NYGE Course: Summer 2007 , 19 - 24 July , a report by Edward Ball
This summer NYGE went to Winchester University to take part in the World Youth Guitar Festival, WYGF, and record a CD in one of the university’s studios, with help from John Taylor.
We started practising our pieces more or less straight away – it would be a lot of hard work to get the pieces ready for our concert in just two days time. To say that the pressure was on would be something of an understatement...
That Thursday night, we all enjoyed a great concert from the Eden-Stell Guitar Duo and Vida Guitar Quartet. It was a massively entertaining evening, which saw, amongst many others, one unlucky piece of sheet music screwed up and thrown on the floor during Leo Brouwer’s experimental piece “Per Suonare a Due”, and all four members of Vida playing the same guitar at the same time!
The next day, many of us took part in an African drumming workshop, which was an interesting and welcome break from practising but after lunch we got back to our more familiar six-stringed music machines.
In the evening concert, Gary Ryan treated us to a wide range of music which included much of his own, such as Scenes from the Wild West and Scenes from Brazil.
A considerable part of the next day was spent figuring out how to fit and arrange all of NYGE’s 26 guitarists on stage and make room for Vicky Walker, the cellist, and the Eden-Stell duo as well. Much like sardines in a tin, it eventually got sorted out, and the concert came and went very quickly as they always seem to do. Everyone had enjoyed themselves, tried their best and seemed pleased with how well it went considering how little time we’d had to practise together. 
Guitarstrophe!, all the way from Australia, rounded off the concert well with interesting pieces and some highly innovative choreography.
After the show, there was an “Oscars night” with top prize being a brand new guitar. Unfortunately no-one from NYGE won it, but between us we did manage to win a few consolation guitar accessories and, as an added bonus, we saw Chris Stell do his hugely impressive robot impression.
Sunday saw the main festival depart, and after a fun little showcase concert from the WYGF orchestras, we started practicing again, to sharpen our performance for the CD.
We began recording on Monday evening, starting with “Roundelay”, by Stephen Dodgson. We were hoping to fit in “Y Felinheli” by Colin Tommis, but time got the better of us. Everyone was genuinely gutted as it was gaining something of a cult status within the group.
On Tuesday, we recorded “LLanura” by Alfonso Montes and the Lorca Concerto by Gerald Garcia. By late afternoon, the atmosphere in the studio had become extremely warm, dense, humid and strange smells had started to come from, well, I wouldn’t want to name any names… Trying to keep about 180 strings in tune in those conditions is an almost soul destroying task and it would be hard to deny that everyone was pretty pleased when we finally finished, just in time for a barbeque.
So NYGE was over for another year. Everyone had enjoyed themselves and had a great time, as ever. A big thank you to everyone who made it possible, in particular Gerald Garcia, and Chris Susans, who, after many years of much appreciated organising, decided to make this year his last.
After returning home, getting some much needed sleep and recovering from some acute cases of tendonitis, there will be just enough time to change our grimy strings before 2008 sneaks up on us and brings with it more adventures for NYGE.
Edward Ball, member of NYGE