Yesterday I played the piano for a birthday party in Ashbourne, Derbyshire. It was dark by the time I arrived in Ashbourne and I hadn’t had the best of journeys. It had been quite slow and a section of the M1 had been closed. This meant that I’d had to navigate my way through some of the smaller roads for part of the journey. This all added time to my trip, but I was still in good time.

I usually use a digital piano on most of the jobs I do, but on this occasion the people who booked me (Iain and Helen) had their own beautiful grand piano. It was a Yamaha C3 and it was a joy to play. Also, not having to set up any equipment makes things easier for me. I am usually happy to play my digital as it has a fantastic sound and most real pianos I have to play are dreadful and barely good enough for a pub singalong.

The bulk of my work consists of weddings which requires me to play many genres of music, but for this birthday party I was asked to play a mixture of jazz and swing. This made a refreshing change after all the Cockney singalong gigs I’ve done over the Christmas period (see my other blog HERE). I did stray away from jazz and swing at one point when I played some Beatles and a few Billy Joel songs.

Most of the people there were into music in a big way, and some of them played the piano as well as other instruments. It is so nice for me when I have an appreciative audience to play for. The evening went well and Helen enjoyed her birthday party as so did all the guests.