Entertaining, creating and making music is not only a vital outlet for many of us creative beings, but it’s something that is critical to human life and purpose. The pandemic put a halt on this.

Wanting to lift up the spirits of my neighbours and with everyone being literally housebound, I thought I’d try to bring some joy to the community, and so, I set up a mini series of 6 concerts during the first lockdown. Although we weren’t legally even allowed to leave our houses or perform in public, my thinking was :

• I live in a purple house, this is obviously meant for sharing happiness and togetherness.

• I live in East London - this stuff normally goes down well here . . .

• My house is perfectly situated in a cul-de-sac with 3 streets of houses being able to hear and sing along without leaving their homes.

• My bedroom faces the street

• I had just invested in a recording set up, so may as well learn to use it!

• I missed playing to real people, in real time

• I hadn’t played in months and was desperate to perform!

I’m used to playing live with other musicians and having sound engineers sorting out all the necessary equipment before playing, and constantly checking throughout gigs, so this took some quick learning and it absolutely didn’t always go to plan . . . I have never missed sound engineers more than during this pandemic!

Embarrassingly, one time, I couldn’t work out for a while why everyone was shouting that they couldn’t hear very well,  it turned out that the window the amp was in front of was still closed (doh!).

Well, with each week I learnt a little bit more . . . !

The neighbours were excited to have something to look forward to, to be a part of it, and the requests started streaming in 🥳

Each Monday at 7pm the folks and families gathered outside their front doors to listen, and sing along.

⬇️ check out the video montage from gig no.1, a breakdown of the tracks with timings is below ⬇️

Timings / requests:

00.05: Acerta o Passo - Pixinguinha 

00.31: Songbird - Eva Cassidy 

01.21: And Everything Is Still - Andy Scott 

02.10: Bridge Over Troubled Water - Simon and Garfunkel 

03.36: All You Need Is Love - The Beatles 

04.25: What A Wonderful World - Louis Armstrong

enjoy!

Rosanna xx 

watch out for the next installment!