That “Eureka” Moment!

If I were to exclaim “Eureka!” you’d be forgiven for thinking I’d discovered something – after all it’s an expression probably best associated with Archimedes discovery that if he plopped himself in a bath tub filled to the brim with water then, lo and behold, all of the water that spilled over the side would…

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With Family in Mind – a Mazurka for “Alice Bertha”

We’ve been looking a little more closely at a recent find that we couldn’t help but want to explore as a priority. The reason? Well, on this occasion it has a family relevance for one of out two subjects – which makes it just that little bit extra special. When you care for your family…

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A Family with Military Tradition – and Music.

This piece has been inspired by the fact that I have just rendered an arrangement of one of Tom Bulch’s military descriptive fantasias – The Young Recruit – in Sibelius software, a recording from which will be featured in this post. It had me reflecting upon how important the military tradition was within the Bulch…

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Coming Home in Glorious Colour for Covid’s Unwanted Anniversary

One of the things I wrote about during 2020 was our Project Homecoming which we created in partnership with our Project Manager, Alison Lister, and Greenfield Community College with Greenfield Arts which was funded in part by Northern Heartlands, one of the Great Places schemes, the County Durham Community Foundation, National Lottery Heritage Fund with…

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Greenfield Academy’s Unfinished Symphony

It was almost a year ago that the Friends of the Wizard and the Typhoon started work on a project, called Project Homecoming, with the young people of Greenfield Academy school with support funding from Northern Heartlands, a Great Place Scheme. That project involved engaging experience arts facilitatators to help the young people explore the…

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How did an ill-paid blacksmith from Shildon open a Music Shop?

As a researcher into Tom Bulch, I’ve been (very gratefully I might add) receiving some help from the Patron of our group, Tom’s grandson, Eric Tomkins. Eric has some very early first-hand memories of his grandfather and started looking into his grandfather’s story long before it came to the attention of this group, and as…

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Distant Echoes Return Transformed (Part 1)

For this post, we’re dipping back out of the past and into the present to give you an update on a partnership initiative the Friends of The Wizard and The Typhoon are involved in with Greenfield Community College, the school that now provides education for many of the young people here in Shildon as well…

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Perusing Old News

It’s been a good while since I posted an update so I thought it might be nice to do so just so that everyone knows this process hasn’t stalled and that we’re still working hard at assembling the lives of George Allan and Thomas Bulch. When I’ve had spare moments in the last three months…

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Revealing who Thomas Bulch wasn’t (Part 3)

This will be my third, and probably final, piece explaining another explainable misunderstanding in the musical identity of Thomas Edward Bulch, who as we, and others, have said elsewhere DID frequently compose under pseudonyms, but not necessarily all of the ones that have been associated with him. It is my belief now that Thomas Edward…

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