The final concert day of a Septura tour (or ‘SepTOURa’ – a cringe-inducing term which I unsuccessfully tried to moniker earlier this week) is always bittersweet. It’s fun performing and socialising with great friends in a new and exciting country, but by the final day I find the desire to get home and reunite with […]
Monday morning began rather unconventionally, with a brief tremor measuring 5.2 on the Richter scale acting as my 8am wake-up call! Fortunately we were some 100km southwest of the epicentre (near Mito, where we had performed the previous day…), so there were no pictures falling off the walls or tables sliding around the room, although […]
With two concerts behind us, Sunday marked the middle of the tour, and brought with it the group’s concert in Mito, a city near Japan’s south east coast. We had been informed that over a thousand tickets had sold for our concert in Mito, which mustered an additional hubbub of an anticipation within the group […]
The tour almost finished before it began. We’d met in central London to rehearse before heading to Heathrow Airport, and the easiest way to get there afterwards seemed to be some split-fare Ubers (or ‘splubers’ in common parlance). For some reason the trumpets’ driver didn’t seem to think it was a problem to start driving […]
It has become somewhat of a tradition in Septura to use mealtimes together as an opportunity to discuss our next eating arrangements! Monday evening at The Bresolin was no exception, as we made plans to meet Dave Bremner the following morning for brunch at Goldmine, a true Wellington institution. The hearty breakfast certainly didn’t disappoint […]
Bouyant from another successful show in a rather wet Dunedin, we boarded our airport shuttle and our perky resident driver ‘Starsky’ whisked us off to the airport. On arrival in Wellington we enjoyed a short walk along the stunning Wellington Harbour, described by some as ‘mini Melbourne’. We grabbed a quick bite to eat, and […]
A leisurely 10 am start in Christchurch continued the theme of this being the most relaxed Septura tour in history. To Matt Gee’s chagrin, a couple of us even committed the cardinal sin of being slightly late for the bus – it seems that Kiwi baristas are quite laid back, and the making of the […]
It’s hard to fathom that over a week has passed since we took off from Heathrow. On Friday morning we departed Nelson, NZ with heavy hearts after a very successful residency at the NCMA. We met in the hotel foyer at a very civilised 8:30am before piling into the airport transfer which was kindly arranged […]
On our final day in Nelson we were up bright and early for another rehearsal, this time for our upcoming recording of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker. It says a lot about how busy Septura’s members are in their orchestral ‘day jobs’ that the only time we could get everyone together to do this was on the other […]
The morning after our New Zealand debut was gloriously sunny – any fuzzyness from a rather short night’s sleep quickly cleared; Pete was even heard whistling in the shower such was his happy outlook. Group warm-ups kicked the day off at 8am – Matt and Dan gave away their playing secrets, and reduced everyone to […]