guest artists

Wednesday 30th July 2008

5:22 p.m. CET Monday night started off fairly quietly but got busier as the night went on. The audience’s reception was very good but even better when Karen came and sang a few numbers at the beginning of my last set. She sang Nobody Does It Better and Fly Me To The Moon on her own, then we sang Can You Feel The Love and The Rose together with some nice harmonies. At the end of the evening I had a request for Heaven by Bryan Adams which I hadn’t played for a long time but it went down very well.

Variety was the order of the evening last night, with three people (all passengers) contributing apart from myself at various points of the evening. Firstly a guy called Mark played his own arrangement of Autumn Leaves at the end of my second set, which was excellent. During my last set, a group of German students came in, and one of them asked if she could sing Dream A Little Dream so I just about managed to play it from memory despite not having any music for it, and it went down so well that she ended up doing two more numbers, Killing Me Softly and Save The Best Til Last. Finally, at the end of the evening another girl asked if she could sing The Rose, which she did and was also very good.

The recently-released film Mamma Mia based on the musical featuring the music of Abba is currently showing in one of the two on-board cinemas on the ship, so I have had a few requests for their music during the past few days; the other day I played Super Trouper, and last night I played S.O.S.

Only one more week until this contract comes to an end, it has gone very quickly. Having recently been in touch with the agency, there’s a good chance that I will be back on this ship for most of October.

11:55 p.m. BST Not the best night tonight, although Dave Taylor from Live Business was on board and he came to hear Karen and I sing a duet during my last set, which he and the audience seemed to enjoy.

Monday 28th July 2008

4:05 p.m. CET Last night was quieter than Saturday but still went well, with help from a large group of keen Germans who were sat behind me who were singing along to some of the songs. During my last set one smaller group got up to leave but as soon as they heard me launching into The Scientist they quickly back-tracked and sat down again! At the request of two of the older members of the larger group I ended up by playing a part-instrumental / part-vocal version of Shape of My Heart by Sting, which I hadn’t played before.

Last night I met Karen, the new relief Ent’s manager, who is covering for Gareth from tomorrow while he has his regular three trips off. It turns out that she is a singer as well; this afternoon we went up to the piano bar to go through a few numbers and they sounded really good. We may even do a couple together tonight.