First rehearsal with the whole septet at Jon’s studio.

WOW! What can I say? Jon is amazing. His horn arrangements for the XL band a few years ago were excellent. His arrangements of the classical pieces for Winter Rose were great, but this is a whole other universe. Jon’s string arrangements for this tour are gorgeous!

I went to this first rehearsal with a certain amount of apprehension. Were these going to be four stuffy classical musicians, will this idea work or will we spend the next six weeks in a hell of our own design?

Well, one rehearsal doesn’t tell you lot about a person, but this appears to be a great bunch. There are the two Carlas, on cello and violin, who we will call Carlita and Carlotta for this tour, Alexis on the other violin, and James on the viola. Wow, what a rush that was! Davo is THE perfect percussionist for this group. No other percussionist I have worked with listens as well as he does… This is going to be fun! As I said at the end of the rehearsal, hearing real strings playing Jon’s arrangements makes me want to burn my keyboards!

I would suggest to anyone still wondering whether they should experience our upcoming Winter Rose tour – buy a ticket, book a flight or train if you have to, but check this out. This is going to be very special!