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One of the most enjoyable things that I have found about running my own ensemble is the exploration of possible repertoire for future concerts. It is like chasing a rabbit warren of composers and different ensemble settings... you start off with one little thing, and then that leads to another unexpected thing... and then another...

... and in this initial exploration phase, I can lose myself for several hours, just listening and finding music that is interesting to programme in some concert in the future.

And then sometimes that is followed by a detective hunt of libraries and archives to hunt down that elusive single manuscript in the world or an equally elusive copyist or modern reprint.

Some of the time, if I'm lucky, it will have been digitised and uploaded to IMSLP or RISM.... but if I'm unlucky, it is going to require quite a good deal of sleuthing around, and then a direct request (that may or may not cost money) to the archive that holds the manuscript to see if they can make digital scans of the music.

And often they will be in old rarely used clefs or scripts, and that might need a bit of modernising for other players that might not be quite so comfortable with old music notations.

And after all of that, I tend to end up with enough programming for about 5 years worth of concerts instead of the scheduled 4 chamber concerts and 1 orchestral sized concert that we field in the year. And not all of it fits the ensemble forces that we have for the coming year!

Ah well, from all of these many interesting little bits and pieces, we should be able to piece together the main skeleton points for constructing a engaging concerts... and everything that I haven't been able to fit into next years programming, I can hoard them and hope no other group will programme them in the near future!

It is sort of quite funny, that we hunt down these rare gems... and then hope that no-one else will stumble upon them before we perform them. Sometimes, I'm even loath to share and check with the guest artist... just in case they pinch it for something else before they appear with us!

But still, I really enjoy this part of things... it brings me lots of joy to discover things, and to find performances and works that move me... and hopefully, to bring those back to life for our audience!

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