Emma Mordue

Tag: music

  • The dual faces of October

    The autumn is such a beautiful time of year, the weather turning colder, but the sunlight low and warm imparting its glow onto the damp yellowing leaves.



    It is a very busy time of year for me, as I have two regular events that overlap. The first is Scaresville – The Haunted Village. This is an annual scare attraction set in the grounds of Kentwell Hall, in Suffolk. An hour of interactive scares, taking you into rooms and out into the woods and pushing you to confront all sorts of characters and devices along the way.

    I have the absolute pleasure of being the host at the start of the event, greeting about 1000 victims a night and sending them on to their doom. All with banging tunes, witty banter, and crazy dancing.

    Once half term starts my daytimes are then filled with the sounds of children skipping around the trees, as Kentwell’s family focused Halloweenies event means I spend the days as my dryad self playing music in the magical Hornbeam Circle.

    I do adore this event, the site is beautiful, the children are (almost always) wonderful, we have so many interesting philosophical conversations as well as musical ones.

    Even the smallest of visitors able to play my drum, to which I will often join in on a recorder, sharing a musical conversation that tends to start like two separate people playing and then evolve into listening to each other and really playing together, even the really young ones, which often takes parents by surprise!

    There are new visitors and families that have been many many years in a row, some whose tiny children have played music with me before they had legs long enough to skip around the circle, that now join in the dance. I have spent time with children that seem to never stop talking at all, and some that come in unable to make eye contact, hopefully all leaving with their hearts just a little bit fuller than when they arrived – I know mine always is.

    This then requires a very quick turnaround as daytime green is removed and nighttime blue is reapplied ready for the evening’s shenanigans.

    Both events are filled with a great team of performers both professional and volunteer, and are headed up by a brilliant creative production and build crew.

    My next event at Kentwell Hall will be taking Christmas requests on the bagpipes for their Dickensian Christmas event. Details available on their website.

  • Embrace The New Things

    One thing I absolutely love is doing new things, and this past week has had two new sessions added.

    The first was for Discover And Play Club who offer holiday sessions in schools across Ipswich. I had been recommended by a school I worked at earlier in the year, and I ran two Entertain Like A Tudor sessions for them. As always these were filled with lots of music and laughter, dancing and juggling together. The wonderful feeling when a child is convinced they can’t join in at all with juggling, and we find a path together and before you know it they are trying to balance balls on all different bits of their body and call gleefully across the room that they walked like that!

    The second was for Cambridgeshire Holiday Orchestra where for the first time, assisted by Amy, I ran a session for mixed ability and mixed instruments incorporating some playing. So we learned a dance and sang a catch (or round) and learned a tune by ear using a drone as a nice safe fall back point and building up the tune. We answered lots of questions about Tudors and instruments and music and dance and went away thinking an hour wasn’t long enough! We managed to pack a lot in.

    Emma and Amy entertain the students with the bagpipes

  • Medieval musical delights

    With Boha bagpipe played by Lizzie Gutteridge, Drum by Terry Mann and Tenor Shawm by me Emma Mordue.

    This is Dance of Cleves