Welcome

UPCOMING EVENTS

(Click on image for PDF)

To hear live in concert recordings of our 'AJSW Chamber Music Ensemble' press arrow below.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Event sponsors (click logo to go to website):

Click here for detailed event information.

See our advertisement in the latest issue of the .

Also see the National Musicians' Church - St Sepulchre-without-Newgate article from the National Churches Trust.

Katya Lazareva (viola) Ayako Yamazaki (violin) perform with the AJSW CME on July 18th. Here they are playing the Allegro from Bohuslav Martinu's 3 Madrigals for Violin and Viola H.313 at St. Peter's Church Notting Hill on the evening of 24th October 2013.

Katya's album 'The Expressive Viola' was released in October. More details at www.katyalazareva.com.

Martinu Madrigal by Katya Lazareva, Ayako Yamazaki (click to play video)

---

RECENT EVENTS

At The Forge & Foundry, Camden - March 19th 7.30

(for programme information click on picture)

Yukiko Shinohara and Jung Yoon Cho are featured in our Christmas composite

AJSW Chamber Music Ensemble - St. George's - February 20th 1.10 - 2.00pm

(for programme information click on picture)

Aiki & Asa Mori - St George's - February 13th 1.00 - 2.00pm

(for programme information click on picture)

Here is Aiki playing Saint-Saens' 'The Swan' at St George's for our 15th Anniversary concert there November 10th 2011 backed by our AJSW Chamber Music Ensemble (live recording)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

---

Our regular Lunch Concert venue in London is St Sepulchre (the Musicians Church - see its Musicians Chapel dedication in 1955 on the BBC newsreel on our Events Page)

We have appeared regularly for some years now at two venues in Bristol....St George's International Concert Venue and Bristol Cathedral. For either venue see our Events Page. Future St George's concerts are featured above.

Appreciating 2013

Thank you to all our audiences and venues for inviting us and most of all the wonderful musicians in our 62 concerts last year (2013)

A special thank you to Yukiko Shinohara our director of our own '4Tune' (4 hands on 2 pianos) and 'Inzpir8tion' (8 hands on 2 pianos) and to Kazue Yanagida for her direction of our 'AJSW Chamber Music Ensemble'. Sadly Kazue has returned to Japan but she will be helping us in Japan so more on that later. Welcome Jung Yoon Cho and all best wishes in taking over from Kazue for the 'AJSW CME' lunch concert at St George's February 20th 2014.

Here are some of the live recordings we have edited and sampled to-gether of the groups in concert.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

(Click on arrow to play audio)

  

---

Our Wessex Title Explained

Our title and what inspired it is often assumed to cover the region described in Thomas Hardy's novels based on the Wessex Region.....but he was a novelist not an historian and his geographical outline of Wessex described to suit his novels within a defined area and names he used of towns and villages pseudonyms for real places within that area. The real history of Wessex and the area it covered is more complex and over a variable area of the country as its fortunes ebbed and flowed. Our oft asked question "What are you doing in London" sometimes wearisome to answer as little can be explained in a few sentences to a half interested listener and especially the Japanese!

Wessex simply means 'West Saxons' and Sussex (South Saxons), Essex (East Saxons) and Middlesex (Middle Saxons). Wessex, unlike those counties, was never enshrined in the name of a county. The Saxons came from an area of Germany and our present Monarchy are only called the family name of Windsor due to a name change from Saxe-Coburg because of its Germanic connections and the concerns within the UK about the Royal Family's loyalties during World War I due to its relatives within the German Royal Family.

Surpressed post 1066 after the Norman invasion took over the Monarchy of the United Kingdom (s), the region of Wessex shone dimly through the ages almost as a folk memory until Hardy revived interest in it albeit with a novelist's interest to 'tell a good story' but not necessarily a factual one.

But it was the only Monarch called 'Great'...'Alfred The Great'....who established the region of Wessex as a crucial element to everything we now think of as 'English'....the 'Anglo-Saxons' (the English Saxons). Defeated by the Danish forces he hid on what we know as The Isle of Athelney close to Glastonbury in Somerset and from there rose again to defeat the Danes including taking London. Alfred believed the best way to establish national stability was to educate its people. And so began the process that grew into the British Empire that covered nearly the whole world which is why, whatever history's twists and turns may cause, there is some corner of a foreign field 'Forever England'.

Let us say then our title is symbolic of what one man can dream of and bring to a reality 'from a swamp in Somerset'.

Here is a visual explanation explaining some of the history by Ryan M. Reeves:

Alfred and Anglo Saxon England

Further info may be gained from myriad sources and Wikpedia a good place to embark on an expansive and interesting historical quest (see here).

Godfrey King 15.7.14