Happy Birthday Giacomo Puccini !!

Today, 22 December, is the 150th anniversary of the birth of Giacomo Puccini.

Next year's opera season at the Arena of Verona features two of his operas; Tosca and Turandot.

I have also featured him of course in my 2009 Opera Calendars which are available on eBay UK and on Cafepress

Exhibition at Morley

I am in the throes of preparing for a group exhibition at the Morley College Gallery.

It is called 'Sixteen @ Morley' as it is sixteen of us from Frank Connely's class who have clubbed together to rent the gallery for two weeks.

This is the second year we do it. Last year it was in Spring and was quite successful. This year it is 3-14 November so we are hoping that people will be buying their Christmas presents!

Will the 'credit crunch' affect us? We'll soon see.

My theme will be classical composers again. Last year I had 16 portraits done. This year I have over 50 so I need to select and make best use of the available space.

This photo is of my display at last year's show.

50th Anniversary of the Death of Ralph Vaughan Williams

I have done a new portrait of Ralph Vaughan Williams for the 50th anniversary of his death tomorrow. The portrait is a photoetching from one of my pencil drawings and has a background of his better known works. The border is a monoprint and represents the 'Lark Ascending'

It's amazing that he is ranked at no1 and no3 in this year's ClassicFM Hall of fame (300 classical pieces ranked according to the listeners' votes).

No1 is his 'Lark Ascending'
No3 is his 'Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis'.

Benjamin Britten on 52composers.com

This week I have been adding more content to the Benjamin Britten pages of my new website 52composers.com

I tried finding some YouTube videos of him. I was surprised how little there is available. There is plenty of other people performing his work but hardly any of him conducting or playing. A few I found had "embedding disabled by request" (by who I wonder?). Anyway I finally got one of him accompanying Peter Pears singing Schubert which I was able to put on the site.

A video I really wanted to feature was one of Dudley Moore at the piano with a parody of Britten accompanying Peter Pears. Brilliant. You used to be able to see it but it has been withdrawn. (I wonder why?)

2009 Opera Calendar

I have just finished a 2009 calendar featuring opera composers: Puccini, Mozart, Berlioz, Bellini, Mascagni, Rossini, Bizet, Wagner, Handel, Offenbach, Verdi and Leoncavallo.
It is at cafepress.
I am going to try various POD suppliers to see the differences. I will report here my findings.
Cafepress do three formats for their 12 page calendar

• Standard Wall Calendar (which I have used)
  page size 11" x 8.5" (11" x 17" when hung)
  100lb cover weight high gloss paper
  wire-o binding
  Jan - Dec 2009
  US holiday dates only
• Oversize Wall Calendar
  as above except
  page size 17" x 11" (17" x 22" when hung)
• Vertical Wall Calendar
  page size 11" x 17" (11" x 17" when hung)
  10pt heavyweight high gloss paper
  rest as above.
  

New Albeniz portrait

I have 4 of my prints accepted in the International Miniprint exhibition in Cadaques (Spain) this summer. I'll tell you about it soon in another post.

Albeniz was born near there in Camprodon so I decided to do a portrait of him. I have also done a page about him on my new website. To see it click on the above title.

I thought he composed for the guitar as you hear so much of his music on ClassicFM played on the guitar by John Williams and others. However he was a very talented concert pianist and composed for the piano. Many of his pieces have been transcribed very successfully for the guitar.

Just listen, watch amd marvel at the master Segovia playing his "Linares"

52composers.com - My new website

I am building a new website for the series of classical music composer portraits I'm working on.
So far I have been putting all my art into my www.PaulHelm.com site which just isn't getting much traffic and therefore no sales.

I have been building on-line stores at imagekind, art.com, lulu, cafepress, zazzle and various other sites with varying success. These sites are fantastic at providing a Print on Demand service but it is up to you to drive traffic to them in order to get sales. You cannot just build a store and sit back hoping for the dollars to roll in.

Having had some success with the composer portraits I have decided to build a site dedicated just to my composers. This way, if I can generate the interest I will be able to drive traffic to my stores.

I have called it 52composers.com as 52 is an easily remembered number and my plan is to produce one a week for a year. I have done over 40 portraits so far so I will have plenty of work putting them onto the new site.

Having spent a long time evaluating various site building options I have settled on using SBI for my exciting new project. I will keep you informed on progress in this blog.

Take a look at progress so far at www.52composers.com

The Cans Festival

Yesterday we went to the Cans Festival - a 3 day festival and exhibition of street stencil art near Waterloo station, London. Brilliant! Some great images by UK and international stencil artists including the great Banksy.
The sculptures and installations will be taken down tomorrow but the wall art should remain until the authorities decide on some other use for this derelict tunnel/road.
I took a load of photos which you can see here:

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/PaulHelm/CansFestival2008