Wednesday 30 September 2009  
Glendrynoch Lodge, Isle of Skye
After Chris and DG arrived in Scotland on Monday morning, we convened for an afternoon rehearsal and then made an early start yesterday in two vehicles, Alison driving the harpsichord in the van, and me with the harmonium in my car.  The drive to Portree was long but beautiful: we dropped in on David Markland at his Crafts and Things shop in Glencoe Village, and fitted in an impromptu photo session at Eilean Donan.

let's not use this one

the Nova Scotia contingent

We were in no particular hurry, managed to avoid getting involved in any road traffic accidents, unlike last time, and my Honda Jazz managed an all-time high score on the fuel economy gauge, although it bettered it on the way home, hitting 61.9mpg at Invergarry.

It was really nice to be back in Portree again: a happy audience for a fun gig. At the beginning of the second half, when we were getting our picture taken for the local paper, we asked for suggestions for what we should say as the shutter opened and the responses were ‘sex’, ‘cello’ and ‘Gordon Brown’.

the thermostat in the church toilets really does go from -15 to 10 Celsius

Then it was back to Bill and Deirdre Peppé’s wonderful house for good food and drink well into the night. I’m now writing this outside and can report that the midgie season is not yet over …

morning croquet on the lawn - Chris won

Saturday 26 September 2009

My cold finally gave in and went away, just in time for the next week to get even busier than I thought it already was. We have a wee tour ahead (come and see us), and I'm also submitting a funding application to a public body for a future project, which is a process best done a bit at a time, as it's a deeply dispiriting thing to do. My favourite question in the form asked whether 'we had considered environmentally friendly materials and production methods'. This from an organisation that's still insisting that we submit our application by mail on more than 25 sheets of paper (many of which are just their instructions), which it tells us will then be photocopied several times to be read by the assessors. Still, sustaining me through this process is the possibility that if dates, travel and other unseen factors all come together, next weekend I might be spending an afternoon in a studio with a lot of people playing ukuleles: yes these people. That's cheering, isn't it?

Continuing the nostalgic online shopping, this came in the post today: I had a copy in the 70s and somehow lost it. Not only does it contain Freddie Phillips's original arrangements for two guitars, but also how instructions for how to make the sound effects of Windy Miller's windmill and Jonathan Bell's combine harvester.

Wednesday 23 September 2009

An even less productive day today (mostly) after making it to bed at 4am last night, at the end of an excellent party with some BBC ex-colleagues. My Mexican flan wasn't bad either.

Here in the west end of Glasgow, instead of religious fundamentalists we have militant agnostics.

Tuesday 22 September 2009

Yesterday I thought I'd got over my cold, but it's back with a vengeance. So there's not much work getting done here through the aches and pains. In last week's Guardian they were giving away facsimile classic comics every day, and in the 1978 Whizzer and Chips appeared this:

Yes, gullible children were being lured into spending their pocket money on a comic with the promise of a ... melodica!

Friday 18 September 2009

Thanks to Jamie Maclean for drawing my attention to Melodyne first thing this morning. It's very clever and faintly sinister: in their demo, it's just another way to make music sound bland.  But we're sure it can be put to much more creative and entertaining use ...  

I've had a stinking cold for three days now. So I made it to Special Collections at Glasgow University Library in time for it opening, to look through Henry Farmer's bound volume of Schetky's music for some songs. Then, photocopying duly ordered, I declared the rest of the day a day off and I was knocking on Greg's door by 10.40 so that we could go to the Western Baths for the next couple of hours to steam out my cold. Then we sat outside the patisserie on Byres Road eating cream horns, watching this year's intake of students go by. When I was cycling home, one of our neighbours hung out of his car window to wave as he overtook, which led to an impromptu community action meeting across the road when I got home. In a long-overdue burst of public-spiritedness, last night I went to a meeting of our local community council, and I now have a list of tasks to accomplish in order to improve our immediate environment. 

After dinner I wielded garden tools until Scott Williams brought me a new 'Rooster' beer and some promotional clothing; I told him off for the antique state of the brewery website, and now I've just checked and seen it's had a major facelift - sorry Scott!  Tonight I've started on 'Community Activism 101', writing a letter to deliver around the neighbourhood tomorrow morning.  Quite busy for a day off really.

Thursday 17 September 2009

Even if I pare down current projects to a minimum, there's still an awful lot of work to be done here at my desk. After four hours I haven't even started on the day's task no.1. But I did manage a quick chat with Simon Thoumire, whose homemade youtube album Self Portrait 2009 is here -  I could hardly watch the Darth Vader section for laughing. If you've got Spotify you can hear him here too. 

Last night I went for a walk around the block and the sun was in just the right place for this building to look quite impressive. Or at least not much like the suburban west end of Glasgow.

Last week, the Niekku album arrived wrapped in this (ripped open and turned inside out), which I haven't had the heart to throw away. There's an allegory there but I don't know what it is.

Tuesday 15 September 2009

Here's an unfathomable ponderable: I've just realised that Alex Neilson, who plays drums on Alasdair Roberts' Spoils album, was also the drummer for legendary recluse Jandek's first ever performance (and some subsequent appearances). This means that I'm two degrees of musical separation from Jandek. Can't quite believe this. On the other hand, it's estimated that no musician in the UK is more than three degrees of separation from Brian Eno (I'm two).

If you've got bored with the homeopathy joke from 27 July, then this one is very funny too.

Sunday 13 September 2009 
on the train north from London
We’ve been in London having a great time at a family wedding, and on the train I’ve been reading Bruce Haynes’s book The End of Early Music, which is hugely entertaining and provokes all kinds of reactions, as you’d expect of a well-researched and occasionally wild polemic. 

For one thing it makes me feel rather old: I mean, I must be getting on a bit if OUP have published a book that expresses many prejudices that I share. For example, how wonderful it is to see this in print … 

… symphony orchestras and opera companies are gradually appearing in their real form as a glorious anachronism, an expensive and obsolete relic, maintaining the fiction of an unbroken performing tradition to Romantic times.

… and to hear of Susie Napper’s incredulity at seeing someone in tails conduct a Bach aria. Yes, such a thing is patently ridiculous. And what a relief to read Bruce’s cogent criticisms of the performing style of several well-respected ‘early music’ ensembles, illustrated with audio examples available on the OUP website. Plus, his two-paragraph demolition job on the Tallis Scholars and their ilk as 'predictable … competent but boring, without message … "easy listening" … "feel good" music' made me want to stand up and cheer. It was the unimaginative performances of such Oxbridge-influenced groups that first got me interested in studying early English music back in the 1980s. I could tell the compositions were great, but I could also tell that they should really sound much better than the comforting halo of choral mush which was obscuring many of their most exciting aspects, even with the occasional inappropriate mannerism thrown in as ‘expression’.

Bruce and Susie N. have a curious place in Concerto Caledonia’s history, at it was in their house in Montréal that DG, Chris and I finally made it into the same place at the same time back in 2004, rehearsing with Suzie in their front room, and the three of us staying in the house in their back yard. There was a huge building site across the road at the time, so everything was covered in an inch-thick layer of dust, but it didn’t matter. 

Anyway, I still can’t quite agree with Bruce’s encouragement for composers to write in a ‘Period’ style, which he thinks will get the early music movement out of our ‘cover band’ mentality. If you’re dealing with the music of the past, a cover band mentality is really the sanest and most useful approach: you can still decide whether you want to be a club singer 'singing the songs of' Tina Turner, or the Bootleg Beatles doing a big-scale tour with staggering levels of attention to historical detail. Starting to compose what Bruce calls 'correctly attributed fakes' can lead you into a very strange personal relationship with history if you’re not already firmly rooted in the present. For example, one of my favourite records is The Dukes of Stratosphear’s Psonic Psunspot, a whole album written, performed and recorded in the style of 1968, but in fact made some 20 years later with great wit and skill by XTC, as a 'correctly attributed fake'. But XTC hadn’t been a covers band up until then: from 1977 on they expressed rather well the spirit of their own time, albeit with an enthusiasm for the music of the past. Besides this, composing 18th-century music might be a useful exercise for the musician, but what possible use is it to the musician's audience?  It's a bit like writing poetry in 16th century Scots.

That aside, the book is a wonderful snapshot of what the early music movement appears to be about and how far it’s come, taken from an extremely useful and informed point of view. I hope as many as possible of us read it, to find out about ourselves, and to give us plenty to argue about as to what might happen next.

Thursday 10 September 2009

This week's triumphant eBay purchase. It's only taken me 20 years to find a copy.

Wednesday 9 September 2009
on the very busy Edinburgh-Glasgow train: First ScotRail don't seem to have twigged yet that lots of people might want to travel to Glasgow on the day of a football international at Hampden ...
I've been over at Edinburgh University Library to pick up my reading material for the next month or two. But the real shock of today is that it's finally stopped raining: I think this is the first dry day for about 3 weeks. Sunshine too!

Yesterday Hamish Napier came over and we spent the day listening to various styles of folk piano playing, and trying to figure out how they work. Every time we came up with some guiding technical principles, we found some great playing that broke all of them. Isn't that brilliant?

Monday 7 September 2009

Of all the people qualified to make claims over copyright, Damien Hirst scores very low indeed. I love the idea that you can buy Cartrain's artwork signed with one of Hirst's stolen pencils. But have the pencils been sharpened yet? And what would the financial loss to Hirst be if they were?

later
I suppose I can now safely let on that last Tuesday's phone call with repercussions was to offer me a post beside these fine people as a lecturer at the University of Glasgow, an offer I'll take up next August.

Sunday 6 September 2009

I'm coming round from my first decent night's sleep in over a month. The news this morning that racists might be given a mainstream political broadcasting platform had me thinking further about Wednesday's post. Is it only in music that it's acceptable to use lazy racial stereotypes?  Terms like 'black music' are still used quite loosely, outside the context of history. The MOBOs, awards for 'Music of Black Origin' are named more carefully, but you do get things like the late Stephen Wells's crushing dismissal of Belle & Sebastian as "real-pop-hating no-talents celebrating their own inadequacy with music so white it's translucent".  To be honest, the charm of B&S is largely lost on me too, but I don't think it's because they're white. 

I watched this last night: basically a 60 minute advert for the Beatles' back catalogue dressed up as a documentary. But even coming through a freeview box into my stereo, the remastering job on the material sounds absolutely stunning. Two hundred quid for the box set of mono CDs is pushing it though.

There's a few days left to object to the planning proposals for Otago Lane. Somehow this wee haven of civilisation has survived the developments on either side of it so far.

Wednesday 2 September 2009

Just back from excellent dosas with Barnaby at the Banana Leaf (with coconut chutney, wonderful fresh mango lassi and more to celebrate Onam 2009), to notice that So What from Miles Davis's Kind of Blue is based on the ground OOIO - perhaps there should be a Stirling Castle head of Miles. 

Over coffee and tea in Montgomery's, we mused about 'bottom up' music and the assumption that most British musical traditions are 'top down' with the tune being the most important bit. The grounds that underlie early harp music and pibroch are definitely 'bottom up', and this made me think of Don Letts' assertion that bass culture is Jamaica's gift to the world. Rightly or wrongly (courtesy of the slave trade), Jamaican culture is also Scottish-influenced. Bass isn't necessarily just a black thing ... but perhaps trying to claim reggae as Scottish is pushing it a bit, even with Sly Dunbar and Peter (Mackin)Tosh.

Tuesday 1 September 2009

I'm just beginning to mellow out a bit after the frantic rush of the last few months. A pair of bullfinches have been regular visitors to the rowans in the back garden, leaving a carpet of half-chewed orange berries on the ground beneath. When they reach up or down for food their necks elongate hugely, changing their whole body shape.

I've had time in the last few days to be a consumer/audient/passive recipient of culture. I really enjoyed watching the BBC footage of Enter Shikari at Reading, especially the way they took the trouble to thank the security staff before and after encouraging the crowdsurfers to breach the barriers. What nice boys. I watched Radiohead's set too: I've never really got into their records as there's only so much of Thom Yorke's self-pitying whine I can take at one go, but watching them play live is a treat, even if Jonny Greenwood's Alex James haircut is annoying (that's just jealousy on my part). And TMBG's excellent Friday night podcast is back: the absolute shamelessness of the 'science made cool enough for kids' idea is quite brilliant.

A phone call came in this morning with some wide-ranging and welcome repercussions.

Saturday 29 August 2009

I've been transcribing bits of an 18th-century keyboard manuscript into Sibelius while listening to John Zorn and carrying on various Skype conversations, which is maybe a strange way to relax when exhausted, but I can think of worse things to be doing.

Yesterday I was in Edinburgh to go to the library, visit Ursula Leveaux and her family, and hear Kathy singing Bach cantatas with the Ricercar Consort, which was great. I'd never heard the bottom drop out of the world before at that moment in the Actus Tragicus where the soprano goes up to the D flat at 'Ja komm, herr Jesu': amazing.  And no 16' bass instrument in any of the three cantatas, didn't miss it at all.

There was just time for a bit of inevitable bumping into unexpected people in the street afterwards (the best bit about festivals), including Grant who told me that he was now going to vote for Scottish independence as a result of 1) the admirable freeing of Megrahi and 2) coming to one of our gigs. "You can't make me responsible for that!" "It's only one vote." Without the pressing requirement to be prepared for lots of different concerts, I even managed to fit in a quick couple of pints of excellent EPA in the Doric with Bill Lloyd before we got the train back to Glasgow.

Thursday 27 August 2009

Home again. Through the exhaustion I've lain on the sofa and watched the triumphant return of Shooting Stars, and furthered my musical education by listening to the first two Public Image Ltd albums.

Last night's show was really satisfying: a pleasing piece of programming. And it's hard to go wrong with singers of the calibre of Michael Marra and James Gilchrist on the stage. We started with Michael singing Of A' the Airts, which led into DG and me blasting our way through the Marshall-Burns set with harmonium and fortepiano. Then James came in for Urbani's Red Red Rose and the Battle of Bannockburn, we introduced Schetky's song and quartet with The Tippling Philosophers, and rounded off with Michael at the fortepiano (worth the price of admission on its own, surely) for Green Grow the Rashes. That felt like a show.

Urbani's Battle of Bannockburn engaged the audience much more than I thought it would, with a cheer for Michael's announcement of 'Total Rout of the English Army' and plenty of laughs, especially for the ludicrous Victory dance, and 'The English falling down into Halbert's Bog'. Mr Marra's rehearsal ad-libs were even funnier, including the hitherto unknown descriptive section 'Alec pulls a flick-knife' and an irresistible victory dance, leaping from side to side while flicking the V's repeatedly at the defeated enemy. In the show James somehow also managed to get laughs out of the tortuous text of The Tippling Philosophers, which is a virtuoso feat - I just about managed to keep up with him on the piano.

Speaking of which, Alison pointed out yesterday that I'm a much happier person sat behind a fortepiano than I am behind a harpsichord. If only they were easier things to look after. As Meg Munck put it yesterday, from a maintenance point of view it's an instrument that has all the disadvantages of the harpsichord and all the disadvantages of the piano. But a good one does sound wonderful. And to be able to make a big throaty roar without drowning out everyone else on the stage is good too.

Michael Amadeus Marra contemplates a new career as a historical pianist

Bill and Barnaby were on the Today programme on Radio 4 this morning! Listen here at 1h42 in. The heads have their I's and O's (and the occasional II) unequally spaced which I think may have some significance too ...

later
I've just remembered the key points of two related conversations over the last few days. I was moaning to Steve Player on Saturday about the idea widely held that in Burns's time foreign musical influence was limited to the upper middle class in the cities, and that out in the country musicians stuck to their native Scottish repertoire. This assumption was casually made with no supporting evidence at the beginning of a very recently published academic book on Scottish fiddle music. 'Total bollocks' said Steve: quite apart from all the foreign dances that were taught in the country, Niel Gow even had a favourite Corelli sonata. But how did this assumption come about? Well ...

When Burns wrote his drinking song Willie Brew'd a Peck of Maut, he mentions Rob (himself), Willie and Allan, but we know that at least some of the time they were joined by one Christoff Schetky, the German cellist and composer. But (says Michael from the songwriter's perspective) it's obvious that 'Christoff' wouldn't fit the song. So this is how foreign culture gets written out of history: it doesn't fit the song! 

Today I found this artwork by Susie, on a post-it note in the kitchen.

Monday 24 August 2009
in the minibus on the way to Edinburgh again
Gig no.3 is cooking nicely for tonight. Kathy Fuge sounds wonderful as always, it's great to have Sarah back with us for the first time in ages (we haven't played anything with two violins for a couple of years) and the core team of Chris, DG and Alison are all on top form. So now we head east in a quest to conquer an unflattering acoustic.

squinting in the sun: L-R Sarah Bevan-Baker, Chris, Alison, Katharine Fuge, DMcG, DG

I'm going to be restrained, and not write here of the unpleasant contractual wrangling that's going on behind the scenes: perhaps another time. Let's just say that it's deeply and needlessly exhausting, when I'd much rather be concentrating on making satisfying worthwhile music and bringing it to an audience.

late (midnight-ish) in the bus going back
I really enjoyed tonight's concert, except when I was playing: for some reason I was much happier when I was listening or talking to the audience.

Again, we ran over by about 25 minutes ... and this show had seemed short. My estimates have clearly been way out, but I think some of the overrun also came from us saying in rehearsal "oh put another verse in, it sounds great".

Financial and contractual wrangling is now complete - what a huge waste of time and energy that was.  A lesson learned to conclude all contractual negotiation and neutralise all associated bullshit before actually rehearsing the shows. And also a lesson that no matter how straightforward, professional and helpful the people you deal with are, there can always be someone else within the same organisation who can make your life miserable.

Sunday 23 August 2009

Two down, two to go. At the end of our soundcheck last night I was too tired or distracted to remember to ask someone to keep the air conditioning on in the hall during the show: Barnaby had spotted on Thursday that this was the reason that his pipes had stayed miraculously in tune throughout the day. So by 10 minutes in last night, the room was warming up and steaming up, and certain crucial instruments were already wandering way out of tune (and I could see the audience fanning themselves with their programmes). I mustn't forget that little detail tomorrow. A fun gig though ... but it is hard to tell in the rather antiseptic acoustic of the Hub.

Most of the happy band clambered into the minibus afterwards (Andrew had successfully blagged his way past all the police cordons for the Edinburgh Tattoo and parked it at the front door) and once we were under way Liz produced a bottle of Knockando, Iain McGillivray some cases of beer, various foodstuffs including Iain's carrot soup appeared, and my resolve to abstain from alcohol until this was all over crumbled to dust.

After a couple of shows of improv and dance music, now we've got to play baroque for a couple of days - discipline, discipline.

Anyway, special mention in last night's show must go to DG's playing of Chiling o guiry, accompanied by lute, guitar, wire-strung clàrsach and harpsichord, which gradually turned into an elaborate game in which no-one really knew how swung or straight, in time or free, the next beat was going to be. A bit like a very relaxed cat-and-mouse chase where we never quite figured out who was chasing who.  I'm normally very disparaging about musicians enjoying themselves on stage too much, as it can be very dull for the audience, but I think that particular bit of fun might have transmitted itself out to the house.

Saturday 22 August 2009
in the minibus with the dance band on the way to Edinburgh, passing round Henderson's oatcakes
We're well on the way to tonight's gig, our dance band is cooking and we might even have rehearsed enough, all within the time available. It makes things rather easier to be in the company of quite such talented and experienced musicians: I was expecting this one to be very hard work to put together, but everyone seems to understand exactly what is required.

I even gave myself the early part of the morning off to go to the farmers market today.

Thursday night's show overran by 25 minutes (it was billed as a 60 minute show) but I'd explained to the audience that this was going to happen and that it would have been such a waste not to let everyone do their thing. So I finally got home at 1am. The problem with having four different gigs in a row, and being nominally responsible for them, is that you don't really have time to digest the experience of each one, except in as much as it's useful learning for the process of doing the next.

behind a forest of mic stands, L-R: Alison McGillivray, Alasdair Roberts, Chris Norman, Barnaby Brown, DMcG, Martin Carthy, Patsy Seddon, Bill Taylor 

So rather than considering all the interesting musical things that happened (and there were many different tunes left in my head) I'm left thinking about the shortcomings of the acoustic, or how on earth we get the minibus anywhere near the venue.

Time for my last doze of the day - at least this morning I managed not to wake up till about 7am.

Thursday 20 August 2009

Woke to monsoon conditions this morning. Yesterday's rehearsals achieved lots I think: we felt like a band, and I heard lots of sounds I'd never heard before. For example ... Martin Carthy singing Lord Randall accompanied by gamba and wire-strung harp, Alasdair Roberts singing the Book of Doves with all of us joining in at various points (and new site-specific lyrics about the Perseids in August), Patsy and Barnaby's jawdropping Salve Splendor from the Inchcolm Antiphoner with triplepipes, and Chris's flute pibroch with two harps (one bray) and viol. When Martin and Alasdair started figuring out Joy to the Person of My Love together, cameras were reached for ...

Tuesday 18 August 2009

Why does it always pour with rain whenever Andrew and I are moving my harpsichord round to the church for rehearsals? 

Last-minute preparations of various kinds have been going on here, digging through Burns's letters and other books for some relevant readings, ironing, compiling some notation, and even doing some practice. I dropped in on John Butt this afternoon, who's got some Edinburgh Festival concerts of his own coming up (and a big recording), and we agreed that one inevitable feature of preparing performances or recordings is that things go wrong. So I'm about to embark on eight days solid of things going wrong. Best to accept this now I think.

Sunday 16 August 2009

I've been mired in concert preparation all day today, but was occasionally distracted by what sounds like instant Steve Reich.

I thought this was an Onion-type spoof for the first couple of minutes. A loop showing footage of the fire at the entrance to Glasgow Airport a few years ago, and a five-minute news piece explaining that this was caused by ... now, what could it be? A few misguided and rather inept individuals who couldn't even work out how big the door was? Nope, it was the NHS! Yes, socialized healthcare (as the Americans call it) causes terrorism and sets airports on fire. Welcome to Fox News ... I wonder if it feels nice to have such a hallucinogenic view of the world. 

It was so windy here last night that most of the apples have already fallen from the James Grieve tree in the back garden - they taste great, but it would have been nice to wait till they were bigger ...

Saturday 15 August 2009

I'm finally getting down to the nitty-gritty of musical preparation for next week. But before I started today, a moment's work avoidance on YouTube turned up this unexpected clip of me playing melodica and glockenspiel in Fred Frith's 'Screen' in a room at Aberdeen University: I can now see how inaccurate my attempts at repetition were. Then there's this one. And this great old clip of Fred showing an unusual solution to the problem of how to play variations on fiddle tunes. 

later
Oh well, so much for the budget balancing. Today's news is that the harpsichord which the festival hired for our concerts 'didn't turn up'. Thanks to Noel for rescuing us with his excellent Denzil Wraight instrument (which I played on Mungrel Stuff). Denzil also makes Cristofori pianos (sigh).

much later
My Mananan harpsichord recital was on Radio 3 today - I eventually listened to it while mowing the lawn later on. Hmm, I played pretty much everything too damn fast, and the Rameau Gavotte was a complete splash-fest as I was far too tired. But the Couperin Passacaille was pretty cool: made me wish I was French. 

Friday 14 August 2009

The various obituaries that I've seen for the amazing Les Paul (only a couple of weeks ago I was urging Kris to go and hear him play in New York while he was still alive) don't mention that besides being a unique player, and inventing the solid-body electric guitar and the multi-track tape machine, he also invented home recording: he and Mary Ford would set up their futuristic rig in whatever house they happened to find themselves in on tour. That's quite a list of things to get to before anyone else.

Thursday 13 August 2009

A very busy couple of days here: after an intense flurry of negotiations and budget-wrangling from Andrew, today we went from potentially losing quite a lot of money in the next couple of weeks to coming in confidently on budget. So I'm going to bed rather less stressed than I was when I got up. 

When not writing about potential research, I've been entertained by visiting singers here in my study. Yesterday morning Kathy Fuge came and sat on the windowsill to sightread some John Clerk over my shoulder, and then today Alasdair Roberts popped in to run through his songs for next week. These kind of distractions are always welcome. Tonight I've been transcribing his song The Book of Doves so that we can come up with an arrangement in rehearsal a bit quicker than we otherwise would.  

Tuesday 11 August 2009

I'm buried in schedules, paper, notation, logistics and a related research proposal this week. Catherine Motuz mentioned the 'Nap of Death' the other day, which is when you fall undesirably asleep during the day after flying east. I'm still fighting it off after nearly a week: I've just managed an afternoon nap of about 3 minutes' duration instead. Is that a nap of 'petite mort'?

This was a fortuitous find in a charity shop in Lochgilphead. While from the outside it looks like a run-of-the-mill primary school geography book from 1963, it's really a beautiful story by Astrid Lindgren with spectacular naturalistic B&W photographs, one of a series. It's completely captivating even now: I wonder what the kids at Lochgilphead Primary School made of it in the 60s. I must resist trying to collect the set ...

Sunday 9 August 2009
Crinan Hotel, on holiday
It was cheering, if not completely unexpected, to hear Patsy's voice leaking from someone's headphones when going round the excellent Kilmartin House museum today.

If you haven't already seen and heard it on E4, youtube, or channel4.com, then the episode of Skins scored with my Debussy playing recorded at Ardkinglas and Abbey Road, is on Channel 4 on Wednesday night.

Friday 7 August 2009

Back home, gradually catching up with a huge backlog of stuff through the fog of slight jetlag. Patsy came round this morning and we had a good blast through some of the tunes for the concert on 20th which bodes very well. Then I turned on Radio 4 while making lunch to hear an excellent explanation of equal temperament and meantone on More or Less, which was quite unexpected.

You can hear last Saturday's Caraquet gig with Suzie & co. on Espace Musique next Thursday 13th at 8pm (Montréal time). 

Thursday 6 August 2009
Heathrow Terminal 1
I slept on and off on the way back, aided by having two seats to myself, and hindered by, at one point, four babies screaming simultaneously.  Even after a night’s sleep, Heathrow is a dismal place, claustrophobic and depressing. But once you’re outside again, it throws into relief the sheer beautiful impossibility of these huge elegant monsters out on the tarmac that somehow make it into the air and back down again. And just happen to use unfeasible amounts of oil ...

This was in the Herald yesterday - yes, it is depressing that in Scotland we still have to have the basic arguments about playing on old instruments, but Jonathan Mills says very nice things about us ... and I'm delighted that people are snarling up their noses at my presence in his festival. Ha ha ha ...

later, at home
Catherine just sent me some photos from Tuesday night's late gig ...

starting the Marshall-Burns set

a happy boy with a big farty Estey blasting through the Bedding of the Bride - note flask of water and glass of beer on the top, we've been playing for over 4 hours by this point

standup moment

a rare photographic record of the whole Vortex

Wednesday 5 August 2009
Starbucks, Elgin St, Ottawa
Yesterday was always going to be the busy one. We convened in my suite for breakfast and headed over to St Brigid’s so that I could get the harpsichord to somewhere approaching 440 and 1/6 comma meantone, and we could rehearse a bit in the downstairs space.  It’s been nice to spend a whole week playing in meantone: there’s something very soothing about playing half-decent major thirds, and they also make even a less-than-brilliant harpsichord sound much better.

Then it was back to the hotel for an essential nap.

We had a good couple of hours’ rehearsal time in the main space upstairs which gave us a chance to work out where we're all going to be on stage, and this was progressing fairly well until the CBC producer noted that the stereo picture on the broadcast was turning out a bit lop-sided. After a good 20 minutes of us trying different formations with less and less good grace, I finally suggested that perhaps the stereo picture should really be CBC’s problem rather than ours. When the producer told us that the sound of the broadcast “to the whole nation” was part of our responsibility, I finally snapped and offered the alternative view that we were primarily responsible to the people who’d paid to see us play, and that perhaps CBC themselves could be responsible for broadcasting this to the rest of Canada in an acceptable format. We had quite enough responsibilities already, thank you very much. I didn’t sign the contract that they sprang on me on the day either, as it was ‘all rights’, so I wonder if the scheduled broadcast at the end of this month will happen …

Our knight in shining armour, Marie B, arrived cheerily to tune, and to take DG and me out for a walk in the rain to get us out of the building and improve his frame of mind. There was a variety of food on offer at the back of the downstairs venue, so I didn’t even have to go out to get myself a backstage curry.

Gig no.1 was good fun. For such an enormous, imposing-looking space, the acoustic seemed good, and the audience laughed at all our jokes, which always helps. DG quipped that we were only playing the CPE Bach trio sonata because it was in our contract that we had to play some ‘real chamber music’, following this off-mic with ‘OK guys, let’s get this over with’. Then we all realised that we’d better play it really well if we weren’t going to look very stupid.  The Martin harpsichord had the wonderful motto on the lid ‘indocta manu noli me tangere’ – as an audience member correctly shouted out, this means “untutored hands, do not touch me” – I offered the suggestion that this would also make a useful tattoo: where you put it is up to you.

By the concert itself I had just about (but not quite) mastered the short octave (broken octave really) on the harpsichord, which with its keyboard shifted up to the 440 position was the wrong way round: the sharps were at the front half of the keys, and the octaves at the back. So some of the basslines came out unexpectedly angular, or in at least one case unexpectedly amusing.

Globe-trotting sackbut impresario Catherine Motuz and Jennifer brought us beers afterwards (I was saving mine for later), then we went downstairs to an audience who were really up for having a good time, and kept us playing for nearly another two hours. Chris was showered with flowers and presented with whisky when at midnight it became his birthday (five years ago he was also sung Happy Birthday by the audience in Ottawa – and then again by a barbershop quartet in the Manx Bar afterwards). There are far too many moments to remember, but some of my favourites were … DG’s octave violin intro to ‘Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog’, which so much resembled Purple Haze that someone shouted out ‘Jimi Hendrix!’; the amazing 16ft Sub Bass on the big Estey harmonium which growled and farted just the right way in Hacky Honey, while the 4ft on the top sounded like violin feedback (Hendrix again); and asking the audience to express their desire for us to keep playing by buying us beer – after an initial response of ‘Are you serious?’ this worked.  

It’s a very interesting dynamic, playing sometimes delicate music acoustically to a crowd who are up for exuberance. DG and I both found ourselves instinctively playing more quietly when the audience clapped along – not that we minded them clapping, but it masked what we were doing, and while participation and enthusiasm are great, listening is good too. It’s a difficult line to walk without a PA, but the acoustic in the space was so good that I’m sure we were right to play without mics.

my instruments had flowers on ...

It was also interesting to monitor our different responses to a crowd who are really up for hearing a load of fast tunes. I’m very happy to play fast tunes, but then within about a minute my resistance kicks in and my desire to fight the session mentality takes over. I think Chris is far more at home in exuberant crowd-pleasing mode, and DG is somewhere in the middle, gently subverting the session atmosphere by playing outrageous things on whichever violin is in his hands at the time.

The late night series at St Brigid's was, incredibly, sponsored by a brand of chin rest, so Chris pointed out that DG was using their lucrative invisible model …

We finally left well after 1am, and repaired to my suite. Catherine joined us, to make up for her wimping out when we invited her to party with us in June 2004 after a gig with Suzie in the Montréal Baroque Festival. To be fair, she was working for the festival that time round.

later, Ottawa airport
Somehow DG and I were both awake enough this morning to have breakfast out on my balcony before he left – Chris had already gone for an early flight. Then I was off to Starbucks to catch up with a few days’ worth of unanswered email, before Jennifer came with her customary efficiency to deliver me here – it’s always good to get a perspective on a festival from someone who’s involved in the endless day-to-day running about making things happen. Jennifer’s perspective is particularly entertaining ... but now I hope I’m exhausted enough to get on the plane and fall asleep.

balcony breakfast

Monday 3 August 2009  
flying to Ottawa from Halifax
Well, Vortex 3 has achieved two rehearsals for our two gigs tomorrow night, which included choosing the set list for the second gig: we’re almost prepared. Still to be negotiated are the questions of what keyboard instruments are available, and crucially from my point of view, who is going to tune the harpsichord(s). DG spoke to Marie Bouchard earlier (merci pour le chocolat, Marie) who revealed that she’s the only harpsichord tuner in town, but she has three gigs in two days to play herself, so tuning for everyone else understandably shouldn’t really be her top priority.  Tuning for a broadcast when you’re playing in it too is horrifically stressful (for me) – what if a string breaks? what if several strings break? what if the instrument is a heap of junk anyway? I’m not a keyboard technician by trade, I play the damn things. I can get them to sound OK, but I trust the professionals to do it properly when there are microphones and/or big audiences around, or when I’d rather simply concentrate on doing a good gig, or having a meal beforehand instead of grappling with the details of sixth-comma meantone with a wolf between G sharp and E flat, or a recalcitrant four-foot. And I certainly don’t want to be tuning when I’ve got two slightly under-rehearsed gigs to play one after the other. Our plan B is to dump the harpsichord from the second show if there’s no way of getting it in tune. It’s hard to believe that a festival on this scale can’t get harpsichords tuned for its concerts.

Tomorrow we can’t get into the venue until after 3pm as there are three different concerts there between 12 and 3. You know what, I’m going to stop writing about this as I can feel my breathing becoming shallower just thinking about it. We’ve done everything we can, and given them all the information we've got. Now I’m going to relax, stick my headphones on and listen to the Maria Kalaniemi Trio Tokyo Concert: the first 10 seconds of this record, where Maria and Timo launch gently into 'Napoleon' are just about the most comforting music I know.

When I stepped out of the front door at Moneyville, this morning there was a pipe band playing in the distance for Natal Day …

8.45pm
Cartier Place Suite Hotel, Ottawa  
Whew – just as well we checked out the venue tonight.

The spaces are fantastic: a huge deconsecrated church (really huge) with a wonderful clubby space downstairs for our late night gig.  But … the harmonium is at 436Hz and the harpsichord they wanted us to use is a charming but neglected old Rainer Schütze from 1970 which should probably be in a museum (Catherine Motuz later revealed that it was on her 'harpsichord blacklist' from some years ago). By some remarkable coincidence we walked past another harpsichord-like shape in the green room downstairs, I whipped the cover off to find a wonderful Willard Martin Flemish single, and immediately proclaimed ‘We’re using this one’ at which Carlo the production manager only just failed to conceal his disgust. Or despair or something. To be fair he’d just found out that we didn’t need the enormous Estey harmonium until the late gig, after he’d arranged for a removal team to come and move it down the stairs between shows. Sorry Carlo. After an hour or so of phone calls, we have a piano tuner coming to take the piano down to 438, I’m going to come in the morning and get the Martin down to 440 (it’s about a quarter of a semitone sharp) and Marie, many blessings upon her, is going to tune it at 6pm for the first show. Argh … I think I managed to keep my cool when I was trying to find out what the tuning arrangements were and was calmly asked ‘Don’t you tune?’ ‘Yes I do, but not for a broadcast and certainly not when I’m playing two gigs the same night.’ I didn't add 'I can work the sound desk and the lighting board as well, but I don't expect you to ask me to do that, do I?’.

Bleah. Now it’s time for dinner.

10.45pm
Less grumpy now after an efficiently served Thai meal at Lemongrass. We all have our own suite with a kitchen, so we stocked up on food at Boushey’s Fruit market across the road. Having a fridge is excellent, and having a kettle is fantastic as I have a stash of nice tea bags with me, and can have some now and fill a flask tomorrow.  So the plan for the morning is to wave at each other from our balconies and then convene for homemade breakfast before our 15 hour working day. So much for having the morning free for preparation and relaxation …

the other two vortices consider cheese

happiness on tour is a stocked fridge

Sunday 2 August 2009
The Coastal, Halifax
Still sunny. Going to call DG while awaiting breakfast.

Checking the news, appalled, furious and depressed at the extradition to the US of Gary McKinnon. When will someone somewhere have the balls to tell the USA, just sometimes, to ... get lost ?

the record on my bedroom wall at Moneyville is strangely familiar

Saturday 1 August 2009
driving back to Halifax from Caraquet
Just after writing Thursday’s entry I got bitten by a spider in Shediac …

It wasn't too late when we arrived in sunny Caraquet, surrounded by windsurfers and very good places to eat.

melodica and clarinet jam over a 17c Italian ground getting out of hand

one configuration of the rhythm section had Nick and me sharing an organ bench so that he could leave his percussion station and play harmonium 

We spent so much time in rehearsal that our planned swim didn’t happen, but the lunchtime food at Café Phare made up for it. The most perfect seafood chowder I think I’ve tasted meant that I had to have a dessert as well, which was a cheesecake exactly as it should be, but better. Our photographer waitress Julie came to the gig too. Instead of going swimming, I inducted Suzie into the techniques of melodica tuning and the drying out of reed plates: not as much fun, but melodica playing brings with it its own disciplines.

Lunch was supremely good today at Grains de folie too, where again I succumbed to dessert (which normally I’d never do before a gig), in this case an improved banana: improved by slicing it in half and surrounding it with choux pastry, custard, cream and icing. Vive la banane.

There plenty of random occurrences in the gig itself, all lovingly captured by CBC Radio-Canada: lots of opportunities to take advantage the Oblique Strategy which reads ‘Honour thine error as a hidden intention’. (I’ve been reading this.) But a concert that attempts to make a coherent whole out of a repertoire of tango/early Italian/Scottish/Acadian/klezmer is always going to take some risks. We also fitted in three pieces from the George Bowie MS that I’d found in the NLS a month or two ago – the Scots Chaconne in particular is really good fun, but not in any way easy.

happy band post-gig

"Mince alors!" is only funny in Scotland

We found another portable Estey organ in the church, which had been left there by some nuns (so we were told …): if we’d been able to find the priest, we’d have negotiated a price and left with it in the car to take to Nick’s.  But we couldn’t find him anywhere, so we had to settle for taking it outside and photographing it with its distant cousin which we’d borrowed from DG.

Post-gig beer was a particular pleasure, accompanied by lobster rolls and fries. It wasn’t until this point that I found out that Mark was a qualified Alexander teacher. We eventually left Caraquet two hours later than intended. If you were in Caraquet, you would leave later than intended too.

Thursday 30 July 2009
chewing on a cherry Starburst (we don’t get those in the UK; in Canada they don’t have the lime green ones), on the road between Halifax, NS and Caraquet, NB. Kris and Nick are singing rounds 
For a few years I’ve had a ‘no Heathrow’ policy, and on this trip it would have been so expensive to enforce it that eventually I thought ‘Sod it’ and booked myself onto flights through London. And to my great surprise the transfer from Terminal 1 to Terminal 3 was extremely smooth and stress-free, I wasn’t too grumpy after getting up at 4am, and I got to Halifax on time.  Then it took me two whole hours to clear immigration, I finally made it to the baggage hall, and …my bag had stayed in Heathrow.  This also happened almost five years ago to the day, probably the last time I flew Air Canada to Halifax. 

Having been up since midnight Halifax time, yesterday I was far too tired to make decisions, so our rehearsal with Suzie and Mark consisted of playing stuff through, messing around a bit and deciding ‘let’s leave that to percolate for a while’. In a programme that includes early 17^th century Italian songs, early 18^th century Scottish instrumental music, some Acadian traditional songs, klezmer tunes, and a Tango-habanera by Kurt Weill, Suzie is playing lots of melodica, and I’m doing a bit of singing. Some mistake surely?

Happily installed at Nick and Liz’s place, I had a mid-evening nap before a very welcome meal and a late evening outing to go double dutch skipping in a parking lot. As a complete first-timer, I did manage to get into the ropes but never managed more than three jumps before my confidence collapsed in a tangle.

Awake this morning at 6.30am (not bad at all for the first night in a new time zone) today’s rehearsal actually included some useful decision-making from us all. And now my big red suitcase has turned up and is safely in the car, I have clean clothes on again, and there’s about 5 hours’ driving still to do. I wonder how long Kris and Nick will keep singing. I may have to join in.

Monday 27 July 2009

I'm back from a grand day out at the Big Tent festival yesterday with McFalls and Michael Marra, playing two sets, one indoors and one out. It's very much a local festival, and the great food on offer makes it a bit like being at a farmers market in a big muddy field, where there happen to be a couple of music stages.

I'd loaded up the harmonium and driven about 300 yards away from the house, when I looked down at my feet and realised that my shiny shoes were rather inappropriate for the day to come, so I turned back, and it's just as well I did, as within 10 minutes of arriving my boots looked like this ...

For lunch it was hard to choose between local cheese, spit-roasted beef, arbroath smokies, or ...

Insert your own joke below, or watch this one. Oddly enough, I didn't see them get any customers ... but the sign made me laugh all day.

Here's a glockenspiel's-eye view of our line check ...

Thursday 23 July 2009

Today at about 2pm, I sat in a rehearsal room at Berkeley with my feet up on the harmonium, listening to Michael Marra sing Schenectady Calling Peerie Willie Johnson, accompanied by Mr McFall's Chamber. The world instantly became a much better place.

Later, I relaxed in the bath, listening to John Cage reading from his Indeterminacy stories, with David Tudor providing other sounds. OK, they weren't actually there, I found them on Spotify, but that was pretty good too.  Then I made friends with a curious fox cub in the garden ... got to wind down somehow.

Wednesday 22 July 2009

I'm reworking our 20 August concert again for the n-th time - Alasdair Roberts is magically free once more, so now we have the wonderful luxury of both him and Martin Carthy singing. What I'd love to do is just wait until we're all in the same room and then put the show together, but unfortunately the Edinburgh Festival has print deadlines that have to be met more urgently than that.  So I've spent the morning juggling running orders and tunes in my head, and writing grumpy programme notes that don't really explain anything. I hate writing programme notes, and usually refuse. I still hold to Jimmy McGovern's maxim that 'I'd rather be confused for 10 minutes than bored for 5 seconds'. As an audience member I'd rather leave a concert thinking 'What the hell was that?' and determined to find out, than clutching a programme containing an essay that answers all my questions, so that I can put my mind at rest and then just forget about the whole experience.

My digestion's just about recovered from Monday when Matthew Gelbart came to visit, and he had such an appetite that we had three set lunches at the Wee Curry Shop between the two of us, an unheard-of indulgence. So my lungs haven't been up to the serious melodica practice which needs to be done before Sunday's gig with McFalls and Michael Marra at the Big Tent.

One happy side-effect of shopping in real greengrocers whenever possible rather than going to the supermarket is that you hear more interesting music in real shops: some of the shops even have a PRS licence for it. Things I wouldn't have heard if it wasn't for local food emporia include The Dub Side of the Moon, and Rachel Unthank's remarkable cover of Robert Wyatt's Sea Song, which I've just heard again ...

Sunday 18 July 2009

I was back at the eye hospital again yesterday - returned here to an email deluge to be slowly waded through. One of the things I did before going on holiday was write a letter to Private Eye correcting Lunchtime O'Boulez's notions about blind musicians, and they printed it ...

Tuesday 14 July 2009
Kilmalieu
I’d forgotten just how vicious midgies can be – last time we were here was one October when all the midgies had given up for the winter. Already I’m covered in bites in unexpected places, and then my iritis decided to return, the day after I finally got off the drugs from its last outbreak. It might have been encouraged by me continually holding my head in the smoke from a succession of ever-larger bonfires on the beach, in an attempt to smoke the little buggers out.

looking up Loch Linnhe to Ben Nevis from Rubha na h-Earba

Still, today I discovered that I have something of a dependency on bakers – on a tip-off that there was a good bakers shop in Acharacle, we stopped there at lunchtime today and I bought at least one of just about everything in the shop: it’s the first time I’ve seen a bakery or any of its products fresh for a couple of weeks. They had about ten different kinds of bread, none of them had poncey French or Italian names, and the positive effect on my mood was instant.

impromptu land art/promotion with a burnt stick

Sunday 12 July 2009
Kilmalieu
Put up a rope swing, and built a driftwood fire on the beach. A good day.

Thursday 9 July 2009
Modsary, near Skerray – on holiday
Last week descended into a bit of a rush, with a full-on admin assault, including the programme material for the EIF, sending out the notation and some mp3s for that, tracking down some elusive musicians, and amongst other things, writing my CV for the first time in several years. Somehow I got it all done in time for my 5pm Friday deadline, and put my mind to packing suitcases instead.  At about 8.15 I set my computer to back itself up for the final time and discovered that somehow since that morning, my main portable hard drive had died. Completely. Not a spark of life whatsoever. So I abandoned the packing and jumped into the car in search of the one computer shop still open, which I eventually reached just in time, after a long detour avoiding a major road traffic accident at the Clyde Tunnel. My packing ended up very much last-minute, but I still managed to fit in most of the case of Ceilidh beer that Scott Williams gave me while I was cutting the hedge on Wednesday night. It’s very good indeed (‘Buy it in Sainsburys’, he says).

Here in Sutherland we have the company of swallows, twites, butterflies and rabbits; on the beach at Coldbackie this morning were the resident fulmars and a visiting ringed plover. It’s a surprise to me that Coldbackie beach isn’t always full of people, as to me it’s famous: somewhere there is a photo of me there aged 4, lying on a rug to keep the sand off, happily reading the Highway Code. 

Coldbackie beach on a warm but cloudy day

I haven’t done much reading since we got here: so far I’ve only been dipping into Amphigorey again, prompted by overhearing Stephen Johnson quote Edward Gorey over dinner on the Isle of Man , and I’m working my way through Sandra Rosenblum’s Performance Practices in Classic Piano Music, a book I tried and failed to track down about 15 years ago. It’s particularly enjoyable reading books on 19^th and 20^th century performance practice, as you sometimes pick up that sense of crusading underdog zeal that's come from the realisation that the whole world is doing it wrong and you know why!

I didn’t have time to put anything onto my iPod specially for holiday listening, so I’ve returned to some old standbys, including what might be my favourite folk music record ever, the first album by Niekku. I only have a cassette copy that I took from Trevor Woolston’s LP in Swaledale in 1987. Värtinnä were playing at the Swaledale Festival that year – they were still an acoustic band then – and I’d just bought a Walkman Professional and was recording everything in sight, on BASF chrome tapes from the cash and carry.

The LP skipped in a couple of places, and I’ve lost my carefully written-out tracklisting, but wow, what an explosion of talent on that record: Arto Järvelä, Maria Kalaniemi, Liisa Matveinen, all fresh from the Sibelius Academy’s traditional music course. I could only admire (and be a little jealous of) Arto’s great taste or good fortune at being in a band with five supremely talented young women. And I was very excited at the prospect of a similar musical earthquake happening here after the RSAMD started its traditional music (or as it’s inexplicably titled ‘Scottish Music’!) course. I’m still waiting for that supergroup to emerge.

Oddly enough, even since eBay has hoovered up all musical ephemera in its path, I’ve never seen a copy of the LP since. It gets mentioned in obscure Finnish discographies, and I recovered my tracklisting from the GraceNotes CDDB database, but does it ever come up for sale? Not that I’ve seen. I wonder if Olarin will see to a CD reissue sometime. It might give all of us working within musical traditions something to aspire to.

shipwreck at Torrisdale Bay

Wednesday 1 July 2009

I'm coming out of sleep deficit just in time to have an enormous pile of stuff to do before Saturday morning. Today I sent out all the remaining scores to everyone for our Edinburgh gigs, and started to assemble the running orders to go in the printed programmes. I thought this particular task would just take me an hour or two rather than most of a day: identifying the original source for every tune isn't always straightforward, but it does give the running order a certain authority in print. Meanwhile, the distribution of scores and parts by email has led to the discovery of a new swearword: 'PDFing'. As in 'I've still got the PDFing parts to send out'.

While typing I've been listening to Kate Bush albums on Spotify: I hadn't realised that Eligio and Zan were both playing on 'Aerial' - this makes them infinitely cooler than I am, damn. Still, they both got their names spelt wrong in the credits, so we're quits (see name in lights below).

©2009 David McGuinness
all opinions are those of the author - you don't have to share them