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Harmonica 2007 - the annual NHL festival, H2007 takes place this weekend, 26-28 October 2007, at the Bristol Folk House. Confirmed artists include one of the UK's brightest blues players: Pete G; one of the best chromatic players in the world: Willi Burger; Donald Black, a traditional Scottish Celtic player. Brendan Power, Julian Jackson & Eddie Martin will also be there. The Bristol Folk House is celebrating it's 85th Birthday between September and December this Year.
For information on the last festival visit the H2006 Festival page
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- The chromatic harmonica on Howard Goodall's theme music for Mr Bean's Holiday is played by Phillip Achille.
- Ronnie Hazelhurst died on Monday October 1st aged 79. Harmonica players will remember him for the incidental music for the BBC TV programme Last of the Summer Wine, which featured the harmonica for 30 years and provided such steady employment for our best chromatic players. Here is my favourite version of the theme - played by Douglas Tate.
- NHL Harmonica Day 8th September at the Billiards Club, Sible Hedingham, Halstead, Essex, CO9 3NA.
Lots to look forward to: workshops, open mic and an informal concert - doors open 10am. Park at Rippen Court and walk through to the Billiards and Social Club. Follow the instructions to park at the back and walk to the back door. For more information contact Derek Yorke on 01787 460230 or Clive Moles on 01787 461534.
Click here for a local map
- The Chromatic Weekend takes place on 9-10 June, in Solihull, Birmingham, building on last year's successful course. A couple of places have become available so if you want to join in this weekend of chromatic tuition and playing click here for more details.
- The NHL Spring Festival on Saturday 12 May, in King's Heath, Birmingham was a great success. For all the details click here. Lee Sankey, Jim Hughes, Giles Hedley.. , workshops, concert, shops, jam and open mic sessions. Many thanks to Tony Stokes for all the work he has put into making this a better festival every year.
- Philip Achille played Larry Adler’s composition, Genevieve, and some music from the "Carry On" films at the
concert of British Film Music at the BBC PROMS on Saturday night, 14 July.
If you just want to hear Philip's performance of Genevieve you can click here.
To watch the editied version (without the early applause) broadcast on BBC2, 28 July, click here.
For a time you can listen to the full concert on the BBC Web Site - "PROMS - Listen Again" - The concert starts a few mins in and Phillip plays after about 30 mins. The concert went out again on BBC Three on Tuesday 17 July and it will be on BBC2 Television on 28 July. Don't miss this chance to see a harmonica player as the main soloist in PROMs concert at the Albert Hall. The boy done good!!
- Philip Achille appeared in the excellent How Music Works programme presented by Howard Goodall and produced by Paul Sommers for Tiger Aspect and Channel 4. This was the last of the four programmes and it dealt with the role of bass lines in music of all types. Click here to watch Philip play Bach's Air on a G String. The series is starting again on Channel More4 (Freeview) on Thursday evening, 21 December when the final two programmes will be shown, back to back, starting 9pm. This copyright material is used with permission. See here for more details on Philip. The bass player was Oroh Angiama.
Anyone with an interest in music will get something out of this series which covers melody, rhythm, harmony and bass. Lots of great examples from pop, jazz, folk and classical.
- Cyril Davies was the first British amplified blues harmonica player and with Alexis Korner introduced Chicago Blues to the London club scene, setting the stage for Mick Jagger and friends. You can learn more and hopefully you can add your memories about the artists and times by visiting the web site being built to document his life and times - from trad to skiffle to country blues to the blues boom.
http://cyrildavies.com
 Philip Achille was awarded the Tabor Prize at the presentation ceremony for the final of the BBC Young Musician of the Year on 20 May 2006. Click to download the short video. Philp reached the quarter final. This is a great achievement by our best chromatic player who was also the joint Youth World Champion at Trossingen in Nov 2005, and an inspiration to our other young players. Click here for more information on the Tabor award, and here for the BBC YMOY competition. Philip also played at the recent Douglas Tate Memorial Service.
- A Blue Saturday was held at Knowle near Birmingham on June 17th, 2006. See the Blue Saturday Event page for more information on this day of Blues Harp teaching and practice for both beginners and more experienced players. Another successful event organised by Tony Stokes.
- The Chromatic Weekend was held in Birmingham on 10-11 June. The event was a great success. It included workshops on playing technique, music reading, playing with accompaniment and looking after your instrument. Look out for the next one on this website. Over 40 people took part. An early version of the reprinted Tommy Reilly Chromatic Harmonica Course (2 CDs) (which is being redone by Barbara Tate) was shown.
- The Spring Festival on 20 May, 2006 at Knowle near Birminghan was a great success and the best ever. The organiser, Tony Stokes, deserves all the thanks he received in the feedback on NHLNet. Thanks also to everyone who delivered all those great workshops. Most people stayed on for the evening open concert. Paul Lamb called to say how much he had enjoyed his first ever visit to one of our local events.
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- The SuperTAB symbols used to add TAB to sheet music and
documents containing music is described and made available as a TTFont on our new SuperTAB page. We use this in NHL publications such as Harmonica World.
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- We have started to develop a new Help Section to
provide assistance on learning to play and listen to harmonica music. Some gift
recommendations on teaching materials and music to listen to are posted in this Help
section
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A new "Name the harmonica player" competition is being tested and your feedback would be appreciated. The blues version has
run for three years with five correct answers. I am getting good feedback on the new one featuring chromatic players. Click
here to try it.
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- A Celebration of the life of Tommy Reilly 24-26 September 2004. Tommy died on Sept 25, 2000, and he is buried in the local churchyard. His widow Ena organised a workshops by Jim Hughes and Douglas Tate, a get together with the party of Japanese players who had flown in to participate, and a music concert, in the village of Frensham where they spent much of their life together.
The event was a big success and Ena would like to thank all those who performed or attended. The Sunday evening concert in the Church raised about £1500 which was donated to the church.
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- A Harmonica Day was held on Saturday September 4th, hosted by the members of the "Four in Accord" harmonica quartet in Sible Hedingham, Halstead, Essex. It was well attended and was a big success. Congratulations to the organisers Derek Yorke and Clive Moles.
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The 2004 Spring Festival on Saturday May 15th at the Kings Heath Cricket and Social Club, in Birmingham, was a great success. Mat Walklate, Laurie Garman, Paul Gillings, Ben Hewlett, Jim Hughes and his harmonica group and Duncan Moules great workshops, and everyone who wished played in the evening concert. We even had a chromatic and tabla duet. Many thanks to Tony Stokes and Ricky Cool and his band for organising the event.
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- Ian Grant, one of the best know Scottish moothie players died suddenly on Wednesday 24 September 2003. He was looking forward to playing at the Bristol Festival. Some 200 or more people attended Ian's funeral in Edinburgh and most of the music played at the service was traditional. After the service many of his favourite tunes were played at a gathering in a local hotel. The musicians moved on to Sandy Bells Pub where Ian had led the Sunday afternoon session for many years, and once again a session broke out in his honour. Ian had a good send off and will certainly not be forgotten. The Sunday afternoon session will also continue.
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- Will Atkinson, the finest exponent of traditional harmonica in England, died peacefully at the age of 95 on Wednesday morning, 30th July, 2003, in the presence of his family. Will was a shepherd and farm worker who lived all of his life near Alnwick, in the North East of England. He was featured on some of the " Voice Of The People" field recordings issued on the Topic Label. He also appeared at folk festivals, particularly in the Border area. He had close contacts with the Scottish traditional moothie players. Another bridge to the past has gone.
Will started out on the melodeon, moved to a chromatic accordion, and then onto the diatonic tremolo mouth organ. Throughout his life he was part of the traditional music scene in Northumberland, and he played with local 'dance' bands, including the "Cheviot Ranters". He did not read music but he had a very large repertoire of traditional tunes. Fortunately there are a few friends who have learned many of them and will keep the tradition alive.
There will be an article on Will and his music in a future issue of our magazine Harmonica World. Click to listen to Will playing Will Atkinson's March by Jimmy Lindsay. A four part march originally written for accordion competitions.
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- A long lost piece of music written by Joaquin Rodrigo and performed by Larry Adler in 1957 has been found and made available again by NHL member René Haboyan, from Paris. Click here to read his announcement with details of where to get copies of the score. The story behind its discovery will appear in the next issue of Harmonica World
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