London Mandolin Ensemble - Blog

Concert by musicians of the Academy of Santa Cecilia, 24th May 1889.

8/6/2017

Musicians of the Academy of Santa Cecilia gave an inaugural concert on 24th May 1889 in the Palazzo Doria Pamphili Palestrina room, Piazza Navona, Rome. The concert was promoted by the Company Musicale Romana, and the programme consisted of Italian music from 17th to 19th century.

The ensemble performed on period instruments, six of which were later acquired for the collection of the Academy of Santa Cecilia, where they still appear today. All the musicians wore a jewelled daisy in tribute to the Queen of Italy, Margherita di Savoia, who was present at the concert.

The ensemble's director, Alessandro Orsini, stands far left, and Giuseppe Branzoli, seated in the foreground, holds a mandolone. The other instruments in the collection are, from left to right: a harp guitar that one of the musicians in the background rests on the harpsichord; a rebec held by the young musician behind Branzoli; a violin made by Carolus Helmer in Prague in 1814; the cello labelled Francesco Framonti, 1688, and a viola da braccio built in Venice by Johannes Marcus Grapello, which can just be seen in the hands of the musician behind the cellist.

With the exception of the Helmer violin, these instruments were either donated or purchased in 1895, the year of the Museum's foundation.

LME Concert at Westminster Music Library

27/2/2017

We're delighted to have a full house and a reserve list for our upcoming concert on 7th March at Westminster Music Library. Our programme includes two Baroque concertos and some terrific arrangements by our friends Robert Margo, Fernando Duarte and Clark Brown...

London Mandolin

Mauro Squillante visit to LME

17/2/2017

LME had a sparkling rehearsal earlier this month, when Mauro Squillante, professor of mandolin at Bari Conservatoire and Baroque music specialist, visited us in Covent Garden. He was in London for The Lute Society's Historical Mandolins meeting which took place on 4th & 5th February.

London Mandolin

V&A Mandolins

3/11/2016

LME had a wonderful visit to the V&A Archives for a private view of mandolins in the V&A Collection. Here are some of the rare instruments that were on display.

LME visits the V&A on 1st November 2016

11/10/2016

Composer Stephen Lalor visits LME

4/8/2016

Another lovely rehearsal last Monday for LME. We were really delighted to meet Stephen Lalor, renowned Australian composer and plucked string specialist, who visited London with the Australian Chamber Orchestra for a series of concerts at Cadogan Hall.
We're very grateful to have had the opportunity to learn from him, and hope he visits us again soon! Now to get our hands on his Australis Suite for mandolin orchestra...

Carmelo Catania, luthier (1908 - 1970)

10/6/2016

Carmelo Catania (1908-1970) was a Sicilian luthier who built his first string instrument (a harp guitar) at the young age of seventeen.

Luthiers in Sicily were always open to both the Baroque influence from Spain and to the innovations coming from Europe and the USA, and Catania became the first great star of Sicilian luthiery.

Catania started working on mandolins, learning the ropes of his trade very early in life in Naples, gleaning the secrets of the Neapolitan school of string instrument making and repair. At age 18, he went to Naples to work in Calace’s workshop. At age 20, he set up his own shop back in Catania, where he built his second, more elaborate, harp guitar that would become his company’s logo when his business was registered in 1936. In Rome he met luthier Luigi Embergher, and became influenced by the Roman school.

After the Second World War, the “Primaria Fabbrica di strumenti musicali a corda Carmelo Catania” recorded a sharp increase in business, peaking at 10,000 instruments sold a year, ranging from the professional to the beginner. He produced an incredibly wide range of crafted instruments on an industrial scale in Sicily. Carmelo died in 1970.

English guitar by da Silva, Jaco Vieira, made ca. 1780. Museum Number 208-1882. V&A Collection.

18/5/2016

The English guitar was a fashionable instrument from about 1750, considered easy to play and tuned in C major, although the player would use a capo, much like a modern folk-guitarist, in order to change the key. The tuning pegs were often small metallic pins that could be turned with a watch-key, to keep the strings in tune longer. This instrument was made in Portugal, a country with strong trading links with England, and its peg box is decorated with a paper 'cameo' in imitation of a jasper ware medallion, a motif made popular by Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795) from about 1770.
http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O92582/english-guitar-da-silva-jaco/

London Mandolin

Johann Adolf Hasse - Konzert für Mandoline G-Dur

29/3/2016

A recording of the Hasse Mandolin Concerto, with soloist Takashi Ochi and the Paul Kuentz Chamber Orchestra, Paris. Its a favourite of ours...

Vahdah Olcott Bickford (1885 - 1980) Founder of the American Guitar Society in 1923.

3/3/2016

Ethel Lucretia Olcott was born on October 17, 1885 in Norwalk, Ohio. She was three years old when she and her parents moved to Los Angeles, California. At the age of eight she started guitar lessons with George Lindsay, a well-known classic guitarist. From 1903-1904 she lived in Berkeley with Manuel Y. Ferrer, where she expanded her repertoire to include European guitar techniques. In 1914 she moved to New York where she gave concerts and lessons, and assisted Philip J. Bone with the publication of his book The Guitar and Mandolin.

She married Myron Bickford (Zarh), a well-known mandolinist and astrology enthusiast, in 1915. Once married, they both changed their names to Vahdah and Zarh Bickford. Vahdah was well known in the world of astrology. Astrological enthusiasts from various parts of the country would request astrology readings from her.

When she returned to Los Angeles in 1923, Vahdah, along with other local guitarists, started the American Guitar Society (AGS), then known as the Los Angeles Guitar Society. She was a major contributor to the AGS and The Crescendo magazine, and was the secretary and Musical Director of the AGS for many years. As secretary she would receive personal and professional correspondence from all over the world. As a passionate contributor of AGS, Olcott-Bickford and her husband combined their names to make the Zarvah Publishing Company. Zarvah Publishing Company worked together with AGS to provide new and renewing members with published music every year.

An avid teacher of the Guitar, Olcott-Bickford is well known for her influential Guitar Method, Op. 25, and the Advanced Course, Op. 116. Olcott-Bickford also wrote numerous articles about the guitar, and corresponded with other musicians and enthusiasts about the instrument.

She continued to live in Los Angeles, and when Zarh Bickford passed away in the 1961, she was devastated. She later remarried Robert Revere, once again changing her name to Vahdah Olcott-Bickford Revere. Olcott-Bickford played guitar, and was associated with the AGS and the Astrological Society until her death in 1980. Over the course of her long and prominent career, her work influenced guitarists around the world.