Not enough time to do everything? You need a girl Friday!
By JazzmousePaul Fawcus - Jazzmouse Productions Ltd
Girl Friday Virtual Assistant provides Secretarial and Administration Support Services to small and medium sized businesses. Girl Friday VA was set up in 2008, and is managed by owner Amy Carruthers. The company is based in South Derbyshire, but serves clients both locally and nationally.
If you are looking for assistance with your business administration, call handling, transcriptions, or help managing your day to day tasks then Girl Friday VA can help by taking care of your requirements remotely. Using a Virtual Assistant is an excellent alternative to employing a full or part time administrator, saving you time, money and additional office space.
There are no long terms contracts, and you may use the services as and when you need to – allowing you to manage your workflow effectively during busy periods or in times of staff sickness and holidays.
Girl Friday VA is currently launching a range of new services, which includes Graphic Design and Email Marketing. Whether you are a new business requiring logo and stationery design, or an established business looking for leaflet design or a website, you can be assured that Girl Friday will be able to offer you a great service at sensible prices.
A new website will be launched in March, and Amy is excited to be welcoming on board some new recruits to the company.
If you would like to find out more, please visit the website at www.girlfriday-va.co.uk or call Amy on 07929 726821.
Two new Albums from Gary Williams
By Jazzmouse
Gary first came to public attention when he appeared with the BBC Big Band on television paying tribute to Vic Damone. Since then he has become a favourite performer and broadcaster with leading big bands and concert orchestras including the Syd Lawrence Orchestra, the Hallé, Royal Scottish National, City of Birmingham Symphony, the Melbourne Symphony, Adelaide Symphony, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and Ireland’s RTE orchestra. He is a regular guest of the BBC Concert Orchestra for Friday Night Is Music Night and had the honour of performing for The Prince of Wales at Buckingham Palace. As a headline act on the world’s luxury cruise liners he has visited over 50 countries. Other work includes 150 performances as Sinatra in the West End’s ‘The Rat Pack’, The Magic of Bacharach, The Legend of Sinatra (with David Jacobs), Channel 5’s Open House working alongside Donny Osmond and Burt Bacharach and BBC1’s ‘Doctor Who Christmas Special’.
After weeks in the studio, I am delighted to announce two new albums due for release in March.The Sinatra album is with Chris Dean and his orchestra, featuring a full big band throughout and strings on many tracks. It is in fact my first big band album. I’ve tried to focus on the classics without resorting to the most obvious choices. There are some stunning arrangements and particular favourites include All or Nothing At All, Brazil, They All Laughed, Please Be Kind and Where or When.
The second album is a compilation of the last three CDs recorded at Abbey Road, aptly named “Gary Williams – The Best of Abbey Road. Both should be released late March and be available by post Dress Circle and online from iTunes and all the other download sites.
Please got to Gary’s website for more information http://garywilliams.co.uk/
“Michael Bublé isn’t the only person keeping the Sinatra flame alive.” Clive Davis for The Sunday Times
“Every song he sang was word and note perfect and confirmed the belief of many in his audience, now surely his “fans”, that he is the best young singer of the Sinatra era of melodies in the country, if not the world… his presentation of all of these well-loved classics was performed with a panache which would have pleased ‘The Guv’nor’ himself.” Perfectly Frank Magazine
Your website visitors have music on the brain - Graham Jones Internet Psycologist
By JazzmouseHow many times have you heard a tune on the radio in the morning and you are still mentally humming it on the way home after work in the evening? Sometimes a ditty gets stuck inside your brain and it can’t seem to work its way out.
No matter whether you think of yourself as musical or not, your brain is. Everyone’s brain responds to music and to rhythm. Countless experiments have been conducted (no pun intended..!) to look at the effect of music on the brain. And time after time the researchers find that when we hear music the inside of our heads light up with all the activity going on in our little grey cells.But, of course, our brains don’t actually know it is “music”; all it is really responding to is sound and the rhythm. A series of sounds, with different tone and pitch is what we label as music, but all our brain actually gets is sound.
And that’s important for your website. Not that you should have music on your site – though that might help. But that you should pay attention to the sound and rhythm you are constructing in people’s heads.
The chances are, as you read this, you “hear” some of the words inside your head. No-one is actually saying anything out loud, of course; all you are doing is reading. But part of the process of reading is to convert what we see into sounds – technically this is known as the “phonological loop”. We “hear” what we are seeing. So, if what we read is difficult, cumbersome, poorly constructed then what we hear is disjointed and without rhythm. The best writers are those who produce good sounds in our head with their words, whilst constructing good images in our mind with the same words.
Online, few business sites achieve this. They use long words, when short ones will do; they use long sentences, when a phrase will do; and they use technical jargon when it simply isn’t necessary. The result is that your brain can’t produce good sound. In other words the language of most websites is not very musical.
But does it need to be? Well, when we read “musical writing” we engage with it much more. We also remember it more easily and, if it is trying to persuade us, we are more likely to act on it. That’s because our brain processes music by connecting what we hear to our emotional centre and to the part of our brain which represents our physicality. In other words, music makes us feel good AND it makes us feel “human” because it joins up the emotional response we have to parts of our body. So, sometimes, music can literally make your heart thump, or get your foot tapping, or make you clap your hands. Music involves your whole body.
How many times have websites done that to you? How often have you found yourself so emotionally engaged with a website that it makes you cheer out loud? How often have websites forced you to jump up from your chair, punch your fist in the air and shout “YES”? How often have websites made your heart thump?
Probably, these things are rare – if not extreme. The reason is that the words on the website have no rhythm, no emotional connection – in short, they have no music.
Make your websites “musical” and you will find a dramatically increased connection between you and your audience because they will be hearing you, rather than reading you. And if they hear the right thing, their brain will transfer that to their emotions and to their body. And once you have done that you have them hooked.
Graham Jones helps businesses succeed online using psychological techniques. He provides consultancy, advice and mentoring to help companies improve their sales and marketing via the Internet. You can find out more at: http://www.grahamjones.co.uk. He is the author of Effective Email (http://www.effective-email.co.uk) which helps you ensure you have an efficient and effective email system which avoids time-wasting.
Jazzmouse News
By Jazzmouse2009 last quarter was our busiest in many years and I just wanted to give you a brief overview before I go into more details in the following weeks.
The end of the summer witnessed the start of a film score for Tangerine Films. Composer, Gary Holder, had written a suit of music entitled ‘Scarlet Elizabeth’ and after a meeting at their offices at Pinewood film studios we began the process of converting Gary’s midi into full orchestral scores.
One of Tangerine’s clients is JCB and tangerine had already won an award for photography for JCB’s new brand film. As news was leaked about Gary’s project we then had the very exciting prospect of recording Gary’s music with the orchestra.
Multi award winning composer and producer Keith Mansfield returned to Jazzmouse in October to commence a series of recordings cataloging some of his TV themes. Keith has been responsible for the themes for Grandstand, Wimbledon and the Athletics programs not to mention Superstars (Heavy Action) which featured as the Monday night football theme in the USA for years. Keith has also recorded a few numbers for his Jazz star wife Selena Jones who still holds the record for the longest ever stint at London’s Ronnie Scott’s club.
I was delighted to be asked to once again provide sound design and front of house (FOH) engineering for Raymond Gubbay Ltd this winter. We designed the sound for both Simply Gershwin and Sound of the musicals. These two tours featured in the busy Christmas season in the UK top concert halls. I was luck enough to Engineer the Sound of the Musicals tour which featured the superb vocal talents Ruthie Henshall, James Graeme, Deborah Myers and Tim Howar with ex-phantom MD Richard Balcombe at the helm. We have already had a repeat booking in for Raymond Gubbay Ltd for 2010.
2009 concluded with a great trip to Warsaw with the BBC Big Band for two concerts with Edyta Górniak, Monika Dryl and our very at the Sala Kongresowa on New Years Eve. A great time was had by all and I was lucky enough to fly out to engineer both concerts.
I’ll post more about these great recordings and concerts as the weeks go by but for now I hope that we all have a great 2010.
Paul aka the Jazzmouse
A Deck of Cards – featuring Flight Lieutenant Matthew Little
By JazzmouseThis popular song Deck of Cards (sometimes known as "A Soldier's Prayer Book") was written in 1948 by "T." Texas Tyler and was recorded by (among others) Tex Ritter in 1948, Wink Martindale in 1959, Bill Anderson in 1991 and Max Bygraves.
In that 1948 version, the story is set during World War II and stars a soldier whose unit, which has been fighting in North Africa, is newly arrived at Casino. One Sunday morning, some of the soldiers in that unit go to church; those who have prayer books read them during the service, but one soldier pulls out a deck of cards, prompting his sergeant to haul this apparent blasphemer before the provost marshal. As the tale unfolds we learn that the deck of cards is the soldiers “Bible, almanac and prayer Book.”
This new version is set in the Middle East and features Flight Lieutenant Matthew Little who is Director of Music of The Band of the Royal Air Force Regiment. Flight Lieutenant Little has been featured on many of the Royal Air Forces engagements including the Festival of Remembrance, Edinburgh Tattoo, Songs of Praise (BBC), and the Royal Military Tattoo 2000.
Released by Square Biz Records it is available on iTunes priced £0.79.
Click here to go to iTunes Store
The whole project was, arranged, recorded, mixed and mastered by Paul Fawcus at Jazzmouse Productions and produced by Jimmie Gray for Square Biz Records
©2009 Jazzmouse Productions Ltd
Get things done!
By Jazzmouse“Time and tide wait for no man” and in this increasingly hectic world what can we do to help this?
I have found that organisation is key. I was a ‘never ending’ list writer but rarely got anything done. Through the Creative Business Partnership I was fortunate enough to receive some business coaching and we highlighted that one of the biggest faults in many businesses, large or small, is time management and more importantly structured time management. You can make all the lists in the world but unless you can map them out during your day you are not making progress.
The first GTD (get things done) package I used was called Things. This works well on both the iPhone and Mac but was a bit lumpy and not contextual enough. Omnifocus on the other hand is a real work horse. It’s intuitive interface and simple layout make it a very quick and easy to use package. The iPhone app is very similar and they sync via my Mobile me cloud with out any need to connect your PDA to the computer. Omnifocus allows you to set times for all manner of projects and contexts and really helps plan your day and week to help you get things done.
During one of the great Jon Davey events this year I was turned onto Evernote by internet psychologist Graham Jones. Evernote is FREE! This fantastic package enables you to store a multitude of documents whether it is text, audio, a map and images. You can group items into contextual notebooks and it then synchronises it self on the web. This gives you access anywhere either on the web or via your laptop and your PDA.
If you are researching information for a blog, for example, there are handy key board short cuts that allow you to easily add notes without leaving the page you are on.
For more information on the systems and processes that we use please contact Jazzmouse or call +44(0)7850 973 469
After the full house at the Aldeburgh Festival Juan Martin has spent the summer in Spain before embarking on the Autumn concert
By JazzmouseJuan Martin Tour of Canada 2009
September 25, 2009
After the full house at the Aldeburgh Festival Juan Martin has spent the summer in Spain before embarking on the Autumn concert schedule
As Juan Martín announces his Autumn tour of Canada there are already plans afoot for his return in October 2010 with a tour in Ontario and larger cities. After the film of his large dance company made in Istanbul was played on Ovation tv Australia this Spring, we had enormous feedback. So we eagerly await the release of the film of his Barbican concert made in London with his group in May this year. It is almost ready and Flamencovision are in talks with a company for worldwide distribution to tv stations; a dvd release will then follow.
Juan’s music is increasingly heard worldwide, from the BBC ‘Friday Night is Music Night’ in August this year to the YouTube hit ‘La Feria’ and the music used on the ‘Dog Whisperer’ worldwide as well as on Spanish tv for the announcement of the bull fights.
“In Martín’s hands, Flamenco is not so much a musical style as an entire culture compressed into a quivering box of air.” The Guardian
Concert dates Canada Autumn 09:
Oct 07 Sackville, NB, Mount Allison University (CBC radio)
Oct 08 Halifax, NS, St Matthews Church (breakfast tv CBC)
Oct 09 Liverpool, NS, Astor Theatre
Oct 10 Riverview, NB, Riverview Arts Centre
Oct 11 Charlottetown, PEI, Carrefour Theatre
Oct 13 Prince Albert, SK. E.A. Rawlinson Centre
Oct 15 Fort MacLeod
Oct 16 Edmonton, AB, Festival Place
Oct 17 Kelowna, BC, Okanagan Mission Community Hall
Oct 18 Mission, BC, Venue TBA – but gig is confirmed
Oct 19 CBC Radio and tv/Vancouver
Oct 20 press and World Beat TV
Oct 21 CBC radio
Oct 22 Quesnel, BC, Billy Barker Casino Theatre
Oct 23 Vancouver, BC, Kay Meek Centre
Oct 24 Pender, BC, The Performance Centre
Oct 25 Nanaimo, BC, Port Theatre
For more information please contact Flamencovision on +44 208 346 4500
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