Saturday 30 June 2007
Time now for a proper recap of the St Magnus Festival experience.

ST MAGNUS FESTIVAL DIARY
Wednesday (20th)

'Oh Lord, won't you buy me a ... Honda'. Andrew discovers that although my harpsichord won't fit in his enormous Mercedes estate, it will go into my tiny Honda Jazz.

Later in rehearsal, we discovered what a great piece Schetky's 6th quartet is.

Thursday
Lisa appeared at lunchtime to sing Ich habe genug and the Slaves Lament, and to play a pink boombox in Radio Music: you'd never believe she hadn't sung any Bach for years.

We finished early so that I could go to my Mum & Dad's 60th wedding anniversary party. Susie insisted I get up for pretty much every dance so I think I might be tired tomorrow.

Friday
Up at 6am for the taxi to Edinburgh airport: we all seemed quite awake. But after a hectic few days and some enthusiastic dancing I was in no mood for airports (in fact I'm finding this is increasingly the case in general) so I hid in a corner with iPod and earplugs, and only just made it to the flight on time. When we arrived in Kirkwall I left the others to go to Skara Brae and had a much-needed afternoon nap. When I got up they'd brought me a present of a rubber, ironically commemorating my repeated insistence in rehearsal that people rub out the markings in the parts. It does work though ...

Our wonderful festival hosts are just one aspect of festival life that St Magnus gets just right. Another is the opening reception, where with excellent food and free Highland Park, Malachy seemed right at home. DG was inevitably recognised by some Canadians. 

Then it was off to the Peedie Kirk for a first tryout of some Janis Joplin songs with DG, Alison and Mark O'Keeffe providing solos, and in one case being the horn section. Lisa grinned from ear to ear and Andrew (having just arrived after heroically driving from Glasgow with organ, double bass and cello) said we could be heard from the cathedral.

Instead of going to the pub, we ended the evening sharing a hipflask and listening to the curlews in one of my favourite places, the Ring of Brodgar, followed by some excellent chips at Kirkwall harbour.

Katy's technique for dealing with midgies in the Ring of Brodgar at midnight

Saturday
Despite the fact that it wasn't very warm (about 13C), Alison and I started the day by following Sandra Ballantine's directions to Ingeness and jumping in the sea. Fantastic. Then we had lunch with Sandra and Ian and it was off to work in the cathedral. 

There were plenty of radios around for Radio Music; unfortunately most of them had no batteries in, so Andrew had to go off to buy those. Alison's radio was kaputt, so Andrew also ended up borrowing one from the shop across the road. Mine looked great, but unfortunately made no sound at all in the piece other than an occasional crackle. Lisa got the pink boombaby again, and Katy grinned throughout the piece as before. We had tea and cakes round the corner at the Strynd tea room while some very large people got married in the cathedral (they were participants in sporting strength events apparently: pulling trucks with their teeth, that sort of thing).

In the concert I particularly enjoyed the Bach suite: we didn't seem to get in the way of it, and playing the minuet again after the badinerie makes sense on several levels. The Cage apparently divided the audience: certainly the applause was less than heartfelt after it ... While some people loved it, others assumed we were taking a break and struck up conversations while we were playing. Very entertaining in itself from the stage.

Walking back down the hill afterwards, the light at 10.15 looked like this. Time for fish and chips back at the harbour and group bonding in the festival club.

Malachy tries to explain the importance of alcohol to DG

Sunday was one of those days with lots of things in it that don't quite happen. We sort of rehearsed the Janis Joplin in the Community Centre, saving our energy for later, then we sort of had a BBC balance test until it turned out it was going to be nearly three hours later than scheduled, and Lisa and Mark had to perform Mahler 4 on the other side of town. So eventually we had a 5 minute balance test at 10pm and waited nervously for the audience to show up or get turned away (it was very full). It was definitely a gig though, with the horn section on a riser at the back and a half bottle of Jack Daniel's hidden inside the piano (Lisa couldn't find a whole one) which was easily consumed, partly on stage and partly in the dressing room afterwards. As Lisa put it, the first time she took a drink people went 'Yay', the second time 'OK', and the third time 'She's got a problem'. Anyway, all good fun and on Radio 3 on 14 August I think. Not sure if I'll listen: I remember halfway through thinking 'I'm not sure if I want to hear this in the cold light of day'. But the audience seemed to have a great time and we were suitably hysterical afterwards.

We reconvened in the club later to discuss further repertoire ideas (my vote goes to Judee Sill), and someone from the Scottish Arts Council introduced herself and gave me her card 'in case you need to get in touch'. I gave her it back. 

The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra were in town, as well as other musicians that I know from various places, and it was salutary to encounter 'professional musican' attitudes here and there in chance conversations in the street. Two in particular spring to mind: 'We've got a late night gig tonight.' 'Oh poor you'. No actually, we're planning to entertain some people and give them a good time. It doesn't require sympathy; no-one's got a gun to our heads. In fact, we're hoping to enjoy it a great deal. And the other: 'What are you playing anyway? [consults festival brochure] Ah, a load of Jock Baroque. And Bach for some decent music. Oh well. Are coming to hear me play Shostakovitch?' No, I'm not, bugger off and take your narrow-minded condescending attitude with you. ... Of course I didn't actually finish these conversations like that: I smiled cheerily and walked away as soon as was polite. But I was glad that my brushes with that kind of professionalism were just brushes. 

Alison warming up, and Meg Munck waiting for me to stop taking pictures
 so that she can tune the harpsichord

Anyway, we had to be well behaved in the club on Sunday night as next morning we had a 10am rehearsal for our lunchtime concert of Schetky, Kellie and other stuff in the cathedral. Mark Summers came from Loughborough to hear the Schetky - hooray. But the concert itself was an exercise in survival really. I don't think it came across like this to the audience, but I was heartily relieved to get off at the end, and not just because it's the first concert we've given in ages with no talking in it. We were all missing Katherine in different ways, and no-one was in a particularly good frame of mind afterwards. One to put down to experience I think.

After some much needed downtime, Andrew took DG, me and the harpsichord off to Birsay where Bertie Harvey let us into the church to rehearse for an hour or so. Then we picked up Alison and headed for South Ronaldsay and The Creel for a staggeringly good meal involving lots of fish (of course), six-hour cooked mutton, three different rhubarb puddings and four very happy and very full people.

DG grunting in an inflatable shirt outside the Earl's Palace, Birsay - 
I still don't know why he did this

Tuesday's audience in Birsay were really up for it, and I got to try my trick of simultaneous melodica and harmonium playing by jamming down bottom A flat on Bertie's little Estey organ with the end of the melodica while playing Lastrumpony. I didn't notice that we'd started 10 minutes late, so when I looked at my watch halfway through the set I started to panic, thinking that the audience would miss the bus back to Kirkwall or not get a chance to eat their sandwiches and cake afterwards if we didn't hurry up. We hadn't talked that much had we?
As the audience was heading out, many of them thanking us on the way (there's nowhere to hide) a familiar voice said hello: the voice belonged to my GP from when I was about two until my mid-twenties; and her partner in the practice was there too. Instantly I was transported to the consulting room where I would sit with a sore throat, being asked sympathetic questions. I could picture all the furniture including the little wooden kids' chair and table by the window, and the well-loved stuffed toys. But I was in a remote corner of the Orkney mainland, having just played a concert. Confused.

Once outside, Kristen Harvey taught DG Fionn McArthur's tune about the church, with Jennifer Wrigley and Alison looking on, and eventually we packed up the harpsichord and went off to get blown about by the wind near the water at Brough of Birsay. 

Driving to Stromness's Ferry Inn for vast amounts of pie, Andrew suddenly jammed on the brakes, exclaiming 'That's a brand new one', reversed back up the hill, and we watched a newborn calf trying to struggle to its feet, his mother eyeing us very suspiciously. We left them to it.

the sky over Stromness

As we were walking along Stromness Main Street, we were accosted by someone shutting up a gallery: 'You're musicians!' 'Um, yes. If this is your gallery, can we have a look?' After a good look round and a chat with Alistair Peebles and Carol Dunbar, by the time we'd walked to the end of the road (the only place in Stromness where you can get a phone signal) Alistair had bought us a bottle of wine and Alison had made up her mind, with a bit of persuasion, to buy one of Carol's tapestries. Andrew gave Alison a cash advance of part of her fee from the CD sales cash, and Alison removed said tapestry from the gallery wall with Alistair's help. A good end to the day.

Wednesday
Another 6am start for the plane to Edinburgh, and then Alison and I decided to get the bus back to Glasgow rather than travel all the way into Edinburgh for the train. Late afternoon, Andrew arrived, looking completely shattered after the getting the 0630 ferry and driving south, and now I've got Malachy's bass in my study for some reason - I think Alison and her dad are taking it to London on the train on Friday.

Thursday 28 June 2007

Still no time to write a proper account of the last week, but here's a photo album in the meantime.

the band, L-R: DG, AMcG, Malachy Robinson, DMcG, Katy Bircher, Sarah Bevan-Baker, Carolyn Sparey

inevitable photo

Andrew's unusual parking technique

There was a wedding at Birsay a couple of days previously, so Alison and DG made good use of the decorations. I'm not sure what the melodica's for though

Wednesday 27 June 2007

Home again from our four concerts in Orkney. I've had no time even to think about writing diary entries, but a full account with pictures will follow here in due course. The St Magnus Festival is a dream gig by anyone's standards, but if I start writing about it now I'll be here for hours, and I really need to catch up on some sleep.

Monday 18 June 2007

At last - a big box of Lion CDs arrived today! And they look great. So we'll take some to Orkney to sell, and make it available for pre-order on the site in a couple of weeks. We'll despatch orders from 16 July.

But now the logistics of the next couple of weeks are looming large. I've just had a late night call from Andrew with a solution to one of our little problems, which was that the harpsichord for our Saturday afternoon rehearsal is going to be at the wrong pitch and the wrong temperament, with no-one available to tune it. Oh yes, and there's a wedding happening in the middle of that rehearsal too. So I think we might just take my harpsichord after all.

Thursday 14 June 2007

Yup, I've been too busy to write diary entries for the last few days. On Sunday and Monday we were on a family outing to London so that I could be Susie's PA and media agent at the announcement of Michael Rosen as the new Children's Laureate, with her nomination being read by Shami Chakrabarti. What a treat. And plenty of time to hang out with her uncle and cousin (and find out how the next series of Skins is coming along).

On Tuesday Alison came up to Glasgow for the ConCal AGM and board meeting: an unusually long one, helped along with lots of food and some nice wine. By the end we were receiving excellent advice on a range of subjects from our board members, so I hope we managed to write it all down somewhere in our collaborative minute-taking.

After a week and a half of trying to shake off the end of a cold, yesterday I was feeling well enough to get back on my bike. There's something very satisfying about cycling along with full panniers, especially when many signed copies of the company accounts have been replaced with Aberfeldy oatmeal and Grimbister cheese.  

As a union member, I'd been looking forward to voting in the election for the next deputy leader of the Labour party, but when the voting paper arrived, there is a box that you have to tick declaring that you agree with and support the party's policies. Oh. I was hoping to vote for someone who might influence the policies, not sign up to whatever is being undertaken on the people's behalf at the moment. That went in the bin.   

Still no sign of the Lion CD here, despite our UK copies being despatched from across the ocean last week. I think the most sensible course of action is to set a release date for sales in mid-July. If any arrive before we go to Orkney next week, we'll sell pre-release copies at the gigs there. A great excuse to go to Orkney at midsummer, don't you think?

Andrew appeared on the doorstep first thing this morning for our last pre-St Magnus preparation meeting: I'd just got back from taking the kids to school when the phone went: 'Is it too early to come round now?' 'Well, where are you?' 'Outside.'

Today was my proper wood-shedding day to finish my first trawl through all the music for the four Orkney concerts. And there's a lot of it. Special thanks to Mark Summers for sending me Sibelius files of the Scketky quartets. But the most fun was reading through Bach's Suite no.2 from a completely clean score, with none of my old pencil markings in it. And what I read wasn't what I was expecting at all. I found all sorts of things in the suite that I'd never heard before, just from giving proper consideration to what Bach wrote. So many of his markings are in French, for one thing: that's no accident.  Then Alison came over to play through her Janis Joplin bits, and we decided to run away from work for an hour or two and go for a short and windy walk in the hills. 

Friday 8 June 2007

This week has gradually become taken over with impending concerts, and the St Magnus Festival in particular, as there is quite a lot to be thought about beforehand in order to play four different programmes in four days. On Wednesday Andrew and I had a three-hour meeting to go over schedules, and make sure that the numbers all still add up; then yesterday Mark O'Keeffe came over to start looking at Janis Joplin numbers, and I sat at the piano for half a day trying to remind myself how they all go. Tonight I hope to sit down with a large pile of parts and a rubber (that's an eraser, to North American readers who may have a strange image now in their heads) to ensure that we rehearse with certain composers' work unencumbered by 21st century pencilling. It's particularly important in Bach I think, for reasons I've expressed here before ...

Tuesday 5 June 2007

On Springwatch tonight, Simon King was in the very phonebox that appears on the inside of the digipak of the new Lion CD. 4 million people watching, and he didn't even mention the album. 

Budgets, schedules, and all that stuff are occupying me here. 

Sunday 3 June 2007

Well, today I made it all the way to Wordsworth House. (FX: cheer) 
I didn't run over a deer. (cheer) 
Louise Horsfield gave me my own private tour of the house. (cheer) 
The harpsichord was great. (big cheer)  
And I got home in one piece too. (That's enough cheering.)

Meanwhile, there's been much diary activity about concerts next season . Dates are beginning to firm up.

Friday 1 June 2007

Getting things done gently. At lunchtime I performed this score, in the Kilpatrick Hills (although to be honest there were two of us rather than 17, and we stood rather than lying down).

Wednesday 30 May 2007

Yesterday was one of those days when nothing quite seems to go the way it should, with lots of important tasks left undone for different reasons. But by the end of the day we had a car again, a Honda Jazz which really does seem, like the Tardis, to be bigger on the inside than on the outside.

A copy of the remastered Robert Fripp album Exposure came in the post, with its ever-welcome spoken reminders from JG Bennett of 'It is impossible to achieve the aim without suffering' and 'If you know you have an unpleasant nature, and dislike people, this is no obstacle to work'. Good music too: it seems to improve with age, and Daryl Hall's singing is wonderful.

Today I had a fascinating chat with Jim Kilpatrick about snare drums real and virtual, and drum heads. The world of traditional side-drum playing was a closed book to me, but Jim's enthusiasm and formidable knowledge (not to mention his astonishing playing) are very infectious.

If you've been watching Springwatch on BBC2 you'll be keeping up with the story of our local foxes, who have suddenly become TV celebrities. Besides this week's star Jamie, there is another slightly lame fox that I see often from my window, trailing his hind right leg, and another who always looks both ways before crossing our street: it makes me smile every time. You'll also be getting familiar with a patch of Islay that's very close to Sanaig.

Sunday 27 May 2007
in a car coming back from Perth
I've been a professional musician for a day, playing in the SCO for Bryn Terfel's recital at the end of the Perth Festival. Fortunately for me, the SCO is full of very nice people, who were very friendly and patient with my feelings of unease at sitting in an orchestra. Even getting to play Danny Boy on the piano wasn't as much fun as I'd hoped. I think professional musicianship is off my agenda at the moment: it’s good to know I can still do it but I’m not in a hurry to do it again right now.

On the other hand, I had a nice walk in the sunshine by the river, said hello to lots of friends, and got to see Nuala, who's now 7 months old, and clearly in charge. And before too long I’ll get paid, which will cover the financial costs of last weekend's encounter with a dead deer. So it’s not been a waste of a Sunday by any means.

There’s a new tune up on my MySpace page.

Wednesday 23 May 2007

Katherine's tunes will get an airing on Radio 3 tomorrow morning. Hooray.

Nye Parry was in Glasgow being an external examiner at the RSAMD this week, so on Tuesday night we headed for Tchai-Ovna (where I bought the wonderful picture of a banana by Ailsa Lang that was on the wall) before playing floodlit swingball in the garden, and playing incomprehensible nonsense on guitar and bass in the study. Excellent pastimes all. Then today I dropped in on Greg Lawson to look at an arrangement he's writing for Karen Matheson and Donald Shaw, and we ended up comparing the finer points of mandolin plectrums.

Apparently the Lion CD now exists, albeit on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, and the results of my afternoon's recording with the Tiger Lillies a few weeks ago will be released on CD on August 25.

Sunday 20 May 2007

Today I was going to go to Wordsworth House and try out Bob Deegan's new William Smith harpsichord, but at 11.59am precisely, a faun decided to have a go at crossing the M74, and met a sorry end on the bonnet of the car a few in front of me. I was left with little choice but to drive over a fresh deer carcass at 70 mph, which then left my car spewing petrol all over the carriageway for no apparent reason. So I spent the next 90 minutes by the side of the motorway near the village of Crawford, waiting for the police and recovery vehicle to show up (and getting sunburnt as a result - no hat or shelter!). Thanks to the nice people who hit the deer, and their friends for giving me a lift back to Glasgow.

Only a few minutes previously I'd been listening to Greg Dyke on Desert Island Discs and marvelling at what an intoxicating piece of music Jerry Lee Lewis's Great Balls of Fire is. Once I'd got home and recovered from the shock, I went out to mow the lawn and for intoxication this evening I had to settle for the sunset, Deuchars IPA, Abba singles and the first season of Ren & Stimpy.  

Tuesday 15 May 2007

I played Sushil a rough mix of work-in-progress 'What time is arse' yesterday, and he said it could be the new Roobarb and Custard theme; Alison, on the other hand, thought it had a touch of Grange Hill about it. Anyway, this spurred me on to try and finish it today with melodica, djembe and glockenspiel overdubs, while waiting for the gas man, ferrying kids around to various appointments, doing laundry, sorting receipts, and ... nipping to a garage to try and decide what car to buy. Not a Suzuki Ignis (see below). We're trying to continue our pattern of buying a basic used car and then hanging on to it for about a decade until it eventually falls to bits.  Our Peugeot 306’s decade is up, much like its fuel consumption and running costs. And I finally joined Freecycle yesterday, so people having been coming to the house to take stuff away that's been clogging up the cellar and attic.

My oyster card is still sticking out of my wallet after last week’s brief journey through London. It makes travelling very straightforward. By contrast, I grew up getting around on Glasgow buses and I still find them baffling. How any tourist ever manages is beyond me. There is an incomprehensible fare structure which officially changes regularly, and in practice can change from day to day: two drivers will often quote completely different fares for the same journey. And they don’t give change, so you have to carry around piles of coins if you’re considering going anywhere. Added to this the fact that a few operatives (presumably in the name of faithfulness to history) still see courtesy and helpfulness as their sworn enemies, and you’ll see why getting on a Glasgow bus requires careful preparation and mental strength.

Monday 14 May 2007

Note the sunny day reflected in the window here.

Sunday 13 May 2007

Spotted on the way to the RSNO Junior Chorus concert this afternoon, a long-hidden shopfront.

Thursday 10 May 2007

Speaking of good singers, I got my copy of Suzie LeBlanc's album Tout Passe in the mail yesterday, and have managed to listen to most of it today. When we were recording in Montréal in October, Chris said to me that it felt like satisfying work, and we agreed that this was rare. I think we sound much more integrated as a band than on the first album (La mer jolie), and I'm certainly happier with my playing and the recording, made with just three microphones and good ears. The good bits are very good indeed. And the out-of-sync bassline for Pigeon on the Gate still makes me grin uncontrollably, just as it did when I first heard it at the playback in the session. But in one tune there's a spectacular wrong note from me that crept in at a late stage in the editing: it's not even just a note, it's a whole crashing melodica chord that is ear-tuggingly wrong. Ouf. It's quite funny actually ...

Wednesday 9 May 2007
Flying north from Stansted again
A friendly audience awaited Alison and me in Leicester last night, after Kate Fawcett and her family settled us into the hall in the afternoon. Special mentions go to Kate's provision of a picnic, and to Sam's harpsichord playing (even when it was simultaneous to mine). His gong solo when he crawled into it and knocked it over was pretty good too.

In the audience was Schetky's No.1 supporter, Mark Summers. He said afterwards that it was the first time he'd ever heard anyone other than himself play Schetky's music. For one reason and another the CD recording of Schetky's music we were going to be making in a fortnight's time has been postponed, so it was good to be reminded by someone else that his music is actually worth playing. By a strange coincidence, you can hear Mark and me singing 19th century alternative words to metrical psalms on the radio soon: something we recorded a few years ago that just happened to resurface.

Rather than driving all the way back to London in one go after the gig, Alison had the bright idea of finding somewhere to stay about halfway, so at around 11.30 we found ourselves driving onto a dark and deserted farm in Bedfordshire and letting ourselves in. It was quite a relief to find other people there in the morning and to be served breakfast despite the electricity being off.  An early start this morning meant an opportunity to further Alison's river swimming research. But my misreading of the directions took us not to a river but a lake, which we later found out was in the middle of a nature reserve. That'll explain all the geese then.

cellist in deep water

A very welcome lunch at Katharine Fuge's before Alison left us to the company of Haydn, Schumann and Monteclair. After a couple of hours, we had a couple of potential concert programmes, not a bad work rate. I like Kathy's singing very much because she doesn't let 'singer stuff' get in the way of the music. To be honest, I find most classical singing very difficult to listen to: I just don't particularly like the sound that most trained singers make. And it still surprises me how few singers are genuinely led by the song and the music, rather than by their sonic capabilities or technique. I want to hear someone sing something that touches me; I don't want to hear them show off the lustre of their top F or how smooth their break is. Anyway, when our Bach Ich habe genug with Kathy goes out on Radio 3 (in September I think) listen and see if you agree. It sounds like communication to me rather than just skill, and I like it.

When I dropped into Walthamstow to pick up CDs on the way to the airport, Alison had cooked some risotto, and rhubarb to eat in the car. Hooray!  

Monday 7 May 2007

The Lion CD now has its own myspace page at www.myspace.com/lioncd. Please be its friend.

Meanwhile, my mental health is being maintained, or at least modified, by the DVD which dropped through the letterbox on Saturday, of the first two seasons of Ren & Stimpy, made before creator John Kricfalusi (or is it Raymond Spum?) was fired from his own show. Awesome. But best taken in short doses.

Sunday 6 May 2007

I'm clearing up a bit here, as my study is a landscape of unfinished piles of stuff. In one of the piles of stuff is a DAT of our first studio broadcast from 1993, which I'm now transferring to a more durable digital format. Carolyn and me playing Corrette's Les Fêtes de Flore actually sounds like music: it's pretty good. I wonder why I'm surprised. And Katherine's scordatura viola in some Biber is very cheering.

The 2nd proof of the Lion CD digipak has come and gone: I'm very pleased with it. Here you can see the return of Joe's mongrel from Mungrel Stuff, with the recording venue Crichton Kirk in the background (which will probably be cropped on the real thing). If you look closely at the cover of Fiddler Tam you can see that our canine friend is also there, jumping over the sundial: we were going to have him peeing up against the Earl of Kellie's leg but decided against it for some reason. Can't think why.

Saturday 5 May 2007 

Just to chuck in my tuppence-worth about the fiasco surrounding 100 000 spoilt ballot papers in Thursday's elections ... there's no need for a judicial enquiry or costly investigation. The instructions that came with my postal ballot paper were so willfully obscure that I, with two degrees and in the most literate sector of the population, had to read them twice to begin to understand what on earth I was supposed to do. That no-one bothered to run its civil-service-speak through any sort of plain English check is absolutely shocking: it is amazing how many people still use their education as a barrier to effective communication, rather than to aid it.

Thursday 3 May 2007

In the interests of finding out what other strange things are being done with Monteverdi, we went along to see Les Ballets C. de la B’s VSPRS tonight at the Tramway. Hmm. There were some great performances and some moving moments (the duets in particular were very beautiful), but the overall conception was a sprawling, self-indulgent mess.

I should have read the signs really. For a start, there was to be no interval. This usually means that the director/artist has no sense of structure and considers their work too important to be halted either for the audience to have a piss, or for the venue/promoter to earn any money at the bar. The show also turned out to be 20 minutes longer than advertised, which in a piece that has been running for over a year is a sign that the director has no sense of self-discipline. It went up 12 minutes late for no apparent reason as well - which shows a lack of basic courtesy to the audience who've paid their money and shown up on time. And that’s not even mentioning the pretentious ‘txtspk’ of the title.

Anyway, I used the experience to learn a few things, or have them reinforced.

For example, you can learn a lot about a musician from the way they warm up. The sax player in this show warmed up at length: you could hear him squirting his poxy jazz aura all over the venue for about 10 minutes before the show. Not a good sign. And while it was great to hear cornetts and sackbuts in a contemporary context, I thought the musical world had moved on since the days of Henry Cow. The bass player (I was convinced it was Bill Nighy until I saw him close up at the curtain call) reminded me that losing one’s hair can be a blessing.

But I think what annoyed me the most were the members of the audience who laughed ostentatiously (‘Look at me, folks, I’m getting it’), even when the ‘it’ was a very ambiguous portrayal of psychosis, or for that matter, sexual violence. The same thing happened at the Tiger Lillies gig last week, although perhaps that was more excusable as some of Martyn’s songs are very funny, and laughter can sometimes be an expression of unease. But sometimes it would take a couple of verses before some mildly inebriated twat would realise that child abuse or rape isn’t actually belly-laugh material.

Oh, let’s face it, I’m a crap audient: I should just stay at home.

Tuesday 2 May 2007

The artwork for the Lion CD has finally arrived and looks great. Happy happy joy joy.

If we'd agreed to the first design suggested by a different record company, we could have had the album released several months ago. But the look of the thing is too important, and makes a very big difference to how the listener perceives the music.

If you don't believe me, here's a wonderful example. This is the Art of Noise's Close (To the Edit) with a clever, amusing animated video. You listen and think 'what a witty, playful piece of music' (well I did anyway). And this is it with the original video I remember watching with a group of musicians in 1984 after an evening rehearsal, in Vanbrugh Bar at the University of York when I was a music student. Now the music has quite a different agenda.  

Incidentally, the new BBC Scotland building looks like this on the inside:

It's quite a long way down from the top:

Saturday 28 April 2007

I'm flying north from Luton, after getting the sleeper to London on Wednesday night and spending two days in a Soho basement playing harpsichord and organ with the Tiger Lillies (special congratulations to Malcolm Greenhalgh for negotiating a harpsichord through the warren that is Studio Sonic - and be grateful that I haven't provided a photograph of the toilets). On Thursday I thought we were just going to try a few things out, but in the space of 5 hours we had recorded 15 songs and Martyn said 'Well, that's an album!' These guys work fast.

Keith Lewis and Jonathan Mills joined us yesterday morning for more experimentation, so now we have a CD of demos and a much better idea of what might happen on 25 August in the Usher Hall.

I think it's going to be very good indeed, if occasionally terrifying, which is what you expect from the Tiger Lillies really. Early music anoraks might like to know that organ and harpsichord in quarter-comma meantone don't actually sound wrong with an accordion in equal temperament. Isn't that nice?

Unfortunately I have caught a stinking cold, so rather than spending my Friday evening off in London being sociable or culturally adventurous, I hid at Alison's place while she was away in Bristol playing a concerto. Earlier in the day I did manage to say hello to Sara Mohr-Pietsch and was so out of it that I forgot to thank her for playing one of our records on the radio the day before. And now I feel like I could sleep for a week, if I had some drugs to make the aches go away and let me stop coughing and breathe.

Tomorrow we feature on Radio 3's Early Music Show. If you've missed it you can listen again here for the next week.

later

Synchronicity dept.: when I rang Emily White this afternoon to ask her about a gig (and I've never spoken to her before), she was teaching a student one of Katherine's tunes ...

Tuesday 24 April 2007

Business has been a bit static for a while: busy, but static. Lots of adminstrative trivia have been too tedious to write about here, but this week things began to come together again. Or in some cases fall apart.

A recording project which was coming up soon is now in doubt, as the record company is reconsidering its finances. For some time now in the classical music industry it's been usual for the artists not to get paid by the recording company: our colleagues in the pop music industry have been used to this for a long time of course. The only discs we made where the record company paid the session fees were Mungrel Stuff and, amazingly, The Red Red Rose, and that was good fortune on our part I think. Now companies are thinking twice about paying even for the technical production costs (some budget labels already don't), leaving them only with the tab for manufacturing and distribution. And now in these download days, manufacturing is not the core activity it once was. So what is a record label now?

Anyway,  the artists' fees are usually the first to be taken off the balance sheet. Or as 10cc put it 'art for art's sake, money for God's sake'. Usually, we've raised the cash ourselves in order to get paid (or in the case of Spring Any Day Now, we just decided not to get paid), but at least in most cases we've held on to the copyright in the recording. There is a limit to how much of yourself you can give away .

But another, unexpected, recording project has appeared on the horizon ...

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I got my voting papers for the elections today. In the ballot for my constituency MSP, there's only one candidate that isn't called Bill.

Monday 16 April 2007

Writing programme notes (I really hate programme notes, why did I agree to that?) and digging out info for our accounts. Bleah.

At least earlier today I jumped in a loch - thanks to Bill Lloyd for showing me his secret swimming place, which you can get to from here in about 45 minutes, including the walk up and over the hill. Great views north to the mountains too. No, I'm not telling you where it is.

Saturday 14 April 2007

An unexpected day at home alone today, so an opportunity to ignore further the vast pile of admin and drudgery waiting on my desk, and devote some thinking time to our Edinburgh Festival project with the Tiger Lillies. I've been mentally mulching Edward Gorey and Monteverdi with Martyn's demos and waiting to hear what comes out in my head. It's quite tiring: I have to stop for a rest after every couple of songs. But at least the sudden outbreak of summer means that I can move my office outside into the shade of the plum tree.

clockwise from L: Monteverdi score and notebook, melodica, phone, iPod, manuscript notebook, shirt, more Monteverdi scores, lemon, mug, tea

I had another, mid-air, office at one point too. But up until today when I've been there, I've been paying far more attention to the birdsong than anything in my headphones.

Now I might just have time for a quick harmonica overdub on something else entirely before everyone gets back ...

Thursday 12 April 2007

Suzie's album Tout Passe is out - you can hear three tracks here.

Wednesday 11 April 2007

I had this morning free to catch up with various admin tasks, but I spent most of it being domestic instead, probably inspired by the magpies who've successfully built their nest in the big old apple tree at the bottom of the garden. For the last couple of years a pair have made a half-hearted attempt at nest building in that spot, but they always gave up, leaving behind a sad scattering of abandoned sticks. They don't seem to have scared the smaller birds off yet (although a coal tit was looking nervously over its shoulder between pecks at the peanuts the other day): a pair of goldfinches made a very easygoing appearance this morning.

Can you tell I'm reluctant to get out of holiday mode?

Yesterday I listened to my playing of Bach two-part inventions as recorded in Gateshead in February and broadcast on Radio 3 last week. Most of the pieces came out a bit faster than I realised, and I sometimes seem to be in a hurry for no good reason. Some music breaks through from time to time, which is good in such potentially academic-sounding pieces, but I wish I'd set myself the discipline of recording myself at home and listening back first, before allowing professionals to record me playing. My sense of rhythm isn't quite what I would have liked it to be. Bob Deegan's little Vater instrument sounds really great though.

Monday 9 April 2007

Special thanks today to the various people along the banks of the Kelvin who unexpectedly gave me high fives as I cycled past. The first three were 9 or 10 year old boys, which was cheery but not entirely implausible, but when the mother pushing a buggy behind them joined in that really made me laugh. Can you imagine what it would be like if whenever you cycled on a mixed-use path, all the pedestrians gave you high fives?

Sunday 8 April 2007

Back home from holiday by the Tweed. I've been reading a little publication by Jim Inglis called The Organ in Scotland before 1700 (Schagen, 1991), which I enjoyed much more than I thought I would, unlike Ben Katchor's collection of Julius Knipl stories which I enjoyed rather less, even though I loved the idea of The Evening Combinator, a newspaper that prints the populace's dreams. Here are my favourite scraps of source material on early Scottish organs.

from James IV's Treasurer's Accounts, 1501/2:
Item, the xxj day of March, be the Kingis command, to Jok Silvor that playis on the organis xxviij s.

Jock Silver: what a great name for an organist. At least he got paid by the king and wasn't being told by some local magistrates to do more practice.

from the Linlithgow Burgh Records, 26 May 1546, concerning the chaplain Thomas Mwstard:
... the said Sir Thomas sall [...] play upoun the organis, as he hes done in tymes bygane, and rather bettir.

 

©2007 David McGuinness
all opinions are those of the author - you don't have to share them