New MD blog

Hello! I’m APO Music Director, Andrew Taylor, and this is my new blog. A few years ago, I had a blog predominantly for communicating with members of the orchestra which, for a variety of reasons, died a death. I tried out other ways of communicating with the orchestra: a wiki website for rehearsal notes and practice tips, and a separate wiki website. Both were useful, but very labour intensive. We tried some ‘progcasts’ in 2016 and they seemed to go down quite well. Again, quite labour intensive.

So, why go back to a blog? Will it be any less labour intensive? Maybe not, but I have an APO MD Twitter account (@apomd) which I enjoy using. It’s great for communicating a bit wider than just APO players and getting some interesting and mainly-useful interaction. Moreover, I’ve been told recently that people enjoy understanding more about what I do as MD. I mean, aside from the unintelligible waving of arms that I do in front of the orchestra. That’s the obvious bit. There’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes to make APO happen and as well as some insights into my part, I hope from time to time I’ll be able to offer some guest posts from members of the committee and other APO members. Furthermore, I have opinions on musical matters which I like to sense-check outside my ‘bubble’ (as long as those who disagree with them do so politely – not always a given on the Internet, sadly), so there’ll be a bit of that, too.

I’m interested to hear what readers might want to see on this blog. Do let me know your thoughts!