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David
McGuinness's diary Wednesday 26 May 2004 I'm now well into preparations for a summer to be spent as a working musician again. I'm currently downloading a stack of mp3s from Suzie Leblanc and David G: lots of songs and tunes to learn for the sessions in Montréal in a few weeks' time. I'll burn off a CD tonight and listen on my walkman for a week or so before trying to figure anything out at the keyboard. And I've been spending a lot of time doing my homework on Geminiani. It now looks as though I might have at least 20 minutes' worth of harpsichord solos on Alison's record, so I'm picking the music carefully, and tomorrow will go and look at Glasgow University's copies of some of Geminiani's books, including The Art of Accompaniament [sic]. I've just got back from the eye hospital across the road: over the last month, I've seen three doctors (all of them unfailingly efficient and polite), got three different diagnoses, and three different corresponding courses of treatment. The second of the three was the one I was expecting, and the most immediately effective. Today's diagnosis was less than convincing. After a while your confidence starts to waver, and you feel like taking back some more of the responsibility for your own health. It's a bit of a contrast to my red-eye experience in Pittsburgh when I saw three doctors, and then they all talked to each other, compared notes and agreed on something before signing me out. Out of the blue this afternoon came the chance to spend a day producing some of the next Ricordo album in York in a few weeks: I said yes on the condition that some of my fee is paid in beer (not that I drink much of the stuff these days, but when I lived in York it was an essential part of the diet). Speaking of recording, I was tipped off last week to listen to the new Loretta Lynn album, produced by Jack White of the White Stripes. It's the most thrilling noise I've heard on record in ages, and a real production masterclass in terms of sequencing, atmosphere, and pretty much everything you can do with three chords. If it doesn't win several Grammys there is no justice. And my tolerance for country music is not high. Wednesday 19 May 2004 I'm just back from a couple of days at the home of Delphian Records, preparing the final edit of The Red Red Rose. It's now over 15 months since the last recording session for the CD, so some of the music has come as quite a surprise. John Abell's song is very beautiful indeed, the set from The Caledonian Muse is like a terrifying acceleration from 0-100 that takes place gradually over 4 minutes, and there are plenty of other treats too. The occasional bum notes are shared fairly equally throughout the ensemble as usual (joke). So now I'd better put the finishing touches to the liner notes and get them sent off. Monday 17 May 2004 Some concert possibilities have opened up in the last week or so for February and September next year. So the CD release schedule is starting to look like: A red red rose this summer, Kellie next February, and SADN II (or whatever it ends up being called) probably not until September 2005. I've only just starting listening to the road tapes from March, and very entertaining they are too: our first unrehearsed run-through Remember me my deir just after Mhairi got off the plane was unexpectedly moving, and there are some characteristic pieces of conversation between takes - me: 'I've just had a really great idea!' Katherine: 'oh dear'. The Friends of the Russell Collection (actually the society has a longer name than that but I'd rather type this endless parenthesis than state it in full) have printed a two-page interview with me in Soundboard magazine. Their website's not up and running yet, but one day when you click on www.russellcollectionfriends.org something enlightening will happen. My inbox was full this morning with mp3s from Suzie leBlanc, of field recordings of Acadian folk songs. And while searching for a harmonium on eBay a few weeks ago, I couldn't help but buy a bag of harmonium stop knobs, now separated from their original home above the keys. For some reason as a teenager, I craved exactly such articles, to make into badges, or ornamental drawer knobs or something. And now I have some. I won't attempt to offer any explanation or comment on this, as I find it quite perplexing. Anyway, I have the next three weeks to learn quite a lot of music, so it's about time I did some practice. Thursday 6 May 2004 Work: the planning of future activities, and the laying to rest of the administrative burden of past activities. But ... last night I went to hear JPP in Edinburgh, and they were absolutely stunning. I don't need to go to another concert this year now, as there was more than enough on offer there to keep me musically nourished for a long time. And you could tell the musicians in the audience (including Freeland Barbour, who played at our wedding 14 years ago) because they were audibly gasping, laughing, or swearing at the glorious virtuosity being unfolded on the stage. Possibly the most memorable moment of many was when bass player Antti Järvelä casually tossed his bow over onto the harmonium at the end of an arco passage, so that it landed with a satisfying clunk exactly on the silent downbeat of the next section of the tune. And done completely naturally with no hint of showbiz. I laughed out loud. These men come from the planet music. Monday 26 April 2004 Postscript to Belfast trip: I found out today that the guy I passed in the hotel lobby on Saturday who looked remarkably like Karlheinz Stockhausen, was Stockhausen. Duh. It's almost as bad as the time a couple of years ago in LA when I sat opposite Beyoncé at dinner and spent the entire evening wondering who she was. Sunday 25 April 2004 Very tired, iritis returning, I may spend tomorrow morning in Eye Casualty in the hospital across the road when it opens ... Anyway ... last night in Belfast was a very interesting exercise in playing while extremely stressed. The day started well: the flight was on time, I took the bus to the hotel in 10 minutes, and the journey from the stage to the safety of my spacious hotel room took exactly three minutes and five seconds (I checked). But ... there wasn't enough time to rehearse; the harpsichord turned out to be a 1970s Goble in equal temperament, which the tuner didn't know how to fix and he hadn't been booked to standby for the concert anyway, prompting CB to remark 'it's at times like this that you realise what the early music movement was for'; it was going to be broadcast; and the controller and head of music of Radio 3 (neither of whom have heard me play live before) and a few producers for good measure, were all there and watching. Hmm. I've found that the best thing to do in these situations is to quietly and calmly check all the avenues of possible improvement of the situation: for example, waiting for the tuner to arrive and gently pointing out that I'm only playing in sharp keys and does he know Werckmeister or Young, for example? 'No, you'll have to make do with this'. I had brought my own tuning hammer just in case, but it didn't fit the 1970s-design pins. So I went to Marks and Spencer's and bought some food instead, and then forewent the first part of L'Arpeggiata's set (even though they were great) and sat in my hotel room alternately reading the score and lying on the floor, with breaks for eating. And then five minutes before we went on, Kate and I made each other laugh a lot backstage, and then went for it (and C Bott going for it is a powerful thing indeed - listen and tremble). So I don't know if I'd win any accuracy prices but it was definitely a performance. Listen if you dare tomorrow night (I might). And then Roger Wright took us all out for a splendid meal, and we staggered out of the restaurant at 2am - not doing my iritis any favours but I didn't care. I had a very interesting conversation today with the pianist Artur Pizarro about playing from memory - he chooses almost always to play with the score on the stand in front of him, despite knowing most of his repertoire by heart. He said 'if you play something from memory three times, it will be more or less the same each time. But if you play it with the score, it will be different, because you'll pick out different bits of information from it every time.' Of course you have to learn both the music, and the look of it on the page, so that you know exactly where to look at any given point (because you're not actually reading it all) but it's a good theory I think - borrowed from Sviatoslav Richter. Although on Tuesday I must remember to ask Artur why he plays Mozart sonatas from Bartok's edition. Also on the subject of pianos, I decided against doing the Debussy after all, my life is too full already ... Thursday 22 April 2004 I've been occupied with a lot of non-ConCal-related activity recently. On Saturday I'm off to Belfast for BBC Music Live to accompany Catherine Bott in Carissimi's Lament on the death of Mary Queen of Scots, so I've been playing some Frescobaldi this afternoon to get me into 17c Italian improvisatory mode. We'll be on Radio 3 on Monday night - I think we're first after the interval, at about 8.30pm. And I got a phone call yesterday asking if I can go to Spain next month to play some Debussy(!), rehearsing from this Monday. So I have 20 pages of Debussy to learn as well (if I can arrange babysitting coverage for the Spain trip) which is a bit different really. I've been turning down orchestral gigs, but this one is with the wunderkind conductor Ilan Volkov who I'd like to see in action, having heard lots of good things about him. A friend (who can remain nameless for the time being) and I cooked up the idea recently of starting a message board type website called conductorwatch.com. The idea is that musicians (and audience members) could contribute insider knowledge as to a conductor's competence, character, or lack of both - then gradually conductors would accrue a rating and an informed picture of their work would emerge. Why is such a thing necessary? Well, as any orchestral musician will tell you, real conductors are thin on the ground - there are some wonderful examples of talented charismatic musicians, but there's also a surprisingly large number of clueless charlatans around, and it would be nice for us to know who they were before committing to sitting in front of them waiting to be told what to do (and someone else paying lots of money for it). There are still bits and pieces of admin left over from the March tour, box office cheques arriving, invoices to be chased: it's pretty tedious at this stage, when I'd like to be able to sign off the whole project and concentrate on something new. I still haven't paid everyone for the Kellie record, but I just spoke to our friendly contact at the Foundation for Sport and the Arts, and their side of the admin process is under way, so I hope everyone can hang on another week or three for their well-earned dosh. I followed Andy Partridge's recommendation in the Guardian a couple of weeks ago and tracked down the limited edition re-release of Judee Sill's first album - sort of Joni Mitchell meets Van Dyke Parks. Not my usual kind of thing, but it's wonderful. I waved my copy at BBC senior producer, and fount of all musical knowledge, Stewart Cruickshank the other day and said 'tell me about Judee Sill' - after an instant off-the-cuff encyclopedia entry he said: "that album only sold a couple of thousand in the UK, but for pretty much everyone who bought it at the time, it's their favourite record". Now that's a musical achievement, isn't it? A bit of Ebay trawling a couple of weeks ago netted me an Estey missionary folding harmonium - I'll pick it up in Canada in June. It only took me a couple of years to find one: I was feeling a bit left out, as Chris has one in Baltimore (I played it in Alabama) and David G has one in Nova Scotia. I also found this. Tuesday 6 April 2004 A few things I have learnt recently: 1. my son looks great in a kilt; 2. one of the finest breakfasts in existence is party left-overs, provided you weren't at the party concerned; 3 - parenthesis to 2. Especially trifle; 4. I like reading books with pictures in. Anyway, it's been a while since I wrote anything here, so time for some backtracking ... The Red Red Rose CD now has a scheduled release date of 26 July 2004. It should be edited by the end of May. There's still some discussion to be had about the running order, and indeed the running time. About 20 minutes' worth of music was left on the metaphorical cutting room floor during the production of Spring Any Day Now: listening back to the rejects now they're not that bad, but they just didn't fit with the other stuff, or they lacked that last degree of 'convincing'-ness. I'd like to throw away quite a bit of The Red Red Rose, but the record company are understandably wary of releasing a CD with a short running time. We'll see ... There's been a steady stream of nice emails, mostly from fellow musicians, about SADN, which is quite satisfying: the critical acceptance of your peers and all that. Work on the sequel is well under way now, with most of the material recorded. I have RRR and the Kellie disc to attend to in the meantime, and this one (SADN II for want of a better working title) involves slightly more complicated 'production' than usual. But I found time yesterday to listen to some session tapes, which were very entertaining indeed. Meanwhile I've been half- listening to Paolo Pandolfo's recording of the Bach cello suites on the gamba, which I was given months ago, and could never quite bring myself to stick in the CD player. I'm using it as kitchen background music which works rather well - I used to know the cello suites in some detail but now they seem only familiar. It's great playing, like having someone in the next room that you can eavesdrop on from time to time, rather than someone grabbing your jacket to get your attention. Or maybe that's just because I'm listening to it on the crappy little ghetto-blaster I found on top of the microwave in our holiday cottage. Last week Catherine Bott sent me a CD of a concert we gave four years ago, which was edited down for a lunchtime concert broadcast by the BBC. My solo Haydn sonata on the fortepiano hit the cutting room floor, and it was interesting to hear it after all this time - some quite exciting stuff if I say so myself, but I wish I'd taken more time in the Presto rather than careering through it without taking the time to look at the view - nerves probably. Also last week I found myself with an hour to kill in Possilpark while my daughter was at a doctor's appointment. Possil has a reputation for being one of the drug capitals of Scotland, such that minicab firms refuse to go there ('sorry, we don't have anything in that area') and black cabs say they'll send someone and then just don't. But Possil has a grand Victorian public library, complete with torch sign outside, and I sat in there with the only three other readers in the place, happily engrossed in pictures of Alexander 'Greek' Thomson architecture and Oscar Marzaroli's photos of Glasgow life from the 50s on. I came out feeling better educated. I wonder how the library matches up to its current local authority targets. I wonder what those targets are. Does 'offering citizens the opportunity to feel better educated' feature? Possibly. I can never decide whether it's delightful or a tragedy that Glasgow is full of people in lower-skilled jobs who have a huge breadth of knowledge. Ms Bott always manages to get rides with literary-minded taxi drivers here, and I'll never forget an impromptu discussion about James VI/I's court composers (particularly the Ferraboscos) with a removal man at the end of his shift in a Partick pub some years ago. A few years ago my holiday reading would have been volumes like 'The History of Piano Pedalling' or 'Perspectives on the Inverted Mordent'. This week I've been indulging my holiday pastime of devouring comics, especially Alex Robinson (Box Office Poison) and the excellent Adrian Tomine (Optic Nerve - more subtle than Daniel Clowes I think, but in the same emotional ballpark). I've also been ploughing through a recent translation of the Brothers Grimm tales for a compensatory dose of patriarchal revenge and prejudice, and Mary Anne Alburger's Scottish Fiddlers and their Music, which I should have read years ago and didn't. Shame on me. And I'm toying with the idea of arranging Steve Morse's Broad Street Strut for the quartet. When I was introduced to the music of the Dixie Dregs as a student, I thought it must be the most exhilarating music to play that there is. Saturday 27 March 2004 Well, spring any day now it certainly is. At last a day to be spent outdoors, rather than on the various administrative tidyings-up going on around my desk: budgets to balance and people to be paid. Now that the feverish activity of March is over, the rest of the year stretches out quite neatly. I'm playing on two recordings for other people: early Acadian music with Suzie le Blanc (and David G and Chris Norman) in Montréal in June, and Geminiani with Alison in August. Also in August, there's the possibility of three different sets of gigs in Canada within a week: duo gigs with DG, the Acadian songs with Suzie, and with Chris's band. And there's editing and post-production on 3 CDs: The Red Red Rose for Delphian awaits its final edit, I still have to edit the Kellie Castle material from over a year ago, and the follow up to SADN is currently a large pile of DATs, MDs and CD-Rs in a corner of my study. I don't expect that to start taking shape properly for a month or three yet. Thursday 18 March 2004 Just made it back home again after Kellie recording sessions at St Jude's on the Hill in London. Perhaps I would be a bit less tired, but not much, if we hadn't celebrated the end of the sessions and St Patrick's Day with a curry, champagne and Nigerian-brewed Guinness at Katherine's last night. I just haven't had time to even think about writing diary entries, so here's a précis of what we've been up to. Wednesday 10th, first concert at the Cottier Theatre in Glasgow. I think the afternoon rehearsal was one of the most tiring we've ever done, four hours of concentrated concentration with the added complications of a sound rig, an awful lot of lighting cues, and some serious thought about how we present ourselves on stage. And the music wasn't easy either. Putting Echidna's Arf beside Thomas Morley's almost impossible Christes Cross is quite a challenge. Still, Alex Fiennes did a superb job on the sound and Mhairi overcame her suspicion of the microphone with great skill. Quite a few people told us how moving they'd found the show - when you're caught up in the mechanics of it all you forget that the original impetus to do it in the first place is to get a reaction from people. Going from a grubby but atmospheric theatre to the immaculate Queens Cross Church in Aberdeen was refreshing, then Greyfriars Kirk on Friday gave a certain historical weight to Mhairi's singing of psalm 84 to the tune Martyrs - the Covenant was signed there and the executions took place just along the road. A five star review in the Herald cheered us on Monday morning (DG just had time to pick up a copy before getting the 0630 plane home). Sarah joined us on stage in Edinburgh for a baroque(ish) version of Piazzolla's Coral. Recording with Tony Kime in Crichton on Saturday. Freezing. I had the bright idea of us each recording a lo-fi vocal for 'I see you again' in the kirkyard after the session proper was finished, and then using a composite of our voices over the track. Unfortunately I forgot to put a microphone in my bag, so it ended up a bit more lo-fi than I'd intended, wrapping my scarf around a pair of headphones to keep the wind out and recording with that. I wonder if it will make it onto the CD ... it was very funny all listening back to each other in the van on the way home though. On Sunday we dispensed with the lighting and sound rigs to play live on the radio in Glasgow (see below). One of our most focused live performances I think. Unfortunately the contracts department at the BBC in Manchester wouldn't even start to negotiate with us about giving us the rights to release parts of it at a later date (I did try, in a rather pointed phone conversation as we were driving into Aberdeen on Thursday), so once it's off the website on Sunday it's gone. But lots of CD orders have come in since it was broadcast. I had Monday morning and afternoon to remind myself of how the Kellie music goes, and then I was off to St Albans to stay with Katherine for the duration of the sessions. K excelled herself as orchestral manager by booking a seriously good band - by 10 minutes into the first rehearsal everyone was giving me eye contact, and it was beginning to sound like an orchestra rather than just a bunch of very good musicians trying to play together. But the real adrenalin rush was in the C major overture (op1 no2) in the afternoon, which went like the Mannheim rocket it is. What a glorious noise. For some reason afterwards I had the urge to eat meat in large quantities, so Alison and I found a fantastic Turkish restaurant in Golders Green and we ate until we couldn't move. Excellent. We repeated the whole process yesterday (the musical bit anyway) with the microphones on and Philip Hobbs from Linn producing while simultaneously getting a beautiful sound from the St Jude's acoustic, some very expensive microphones and a valve desk - yum. Incidentally, the last time I played the harpsichord we used (a Kirckmann copy by Clayson and Garrett from 1981) was on Colin's Kisses 5 years ago. Then today I came home to a power cut. Sunday 14 March 2004 Well, there's far too much from the last
few days for me to report here in the time available, so I'll save it up for
later. In the meantime, for the next week you can listen to today's Radio 3
broadcast at www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/classical/earlymusic.shtml
(it's the Sunday programme). With Catherine Bott presenting, it felt more like
dropping round to a friend's house of a lunchtime to play some tunes rather than
a live radio broadcast. Tomorrow I have to remind myself of the Kellie music that we're recording on Wednesday in London, and get from 'band member' mode into 'orchestral director'. Hmm. In lieu of further rambling, here's a photo of a happy band taken yesterday at the end of our recording sessions, in Crichton kirkyard. We were very cold. L-R: AMcG, DMcG, KMcG, DBG Tuesday 9 March 2004 Well, yesterday turned out even busier than expected, as halfway through the afternoon Lisa was advised by her doctor not to sing. By one of those diary miracles that comes together from time to time, Mhairi is free (well free enough to extricate herself from what she was doing), and by 10pm last night we'd agreed that this afternoon she will fly up to sing with us. Great! So we finally have a draft set list, and a show to rehearse rather than a lot of bits. But a lot of work still to do, so I'd better go to the theatre. Sunday 7 March 2004 Two days into rehearsal so far, chez McGillivray père. Assorted illnesses appear to be lifting, and music has come to visit from time to time, which is a very good sign. Lisa rang mid-morning today and to my surprise expressed enthusiasm at having a go at the Buzzcocks song Boredom, so I've put together a very basic arrangement tonight in preparation for her joining us tomorrow. During the rash of grim opera crossover projects in the 80s, Private Eye ran a spoof ad Kiri sings the Sex Pistols. This is alarmingly close. Hmm. Tuesday 2 March 2004 on the plane north from London I seemed to spend most of the morning on the phone, delegating details, like heat light and music stands for the Kellie recording sessions, confirming start times, postage for sending out flyers, and fitting in some exercises on the piano as well to get my fingers ticking over. My mobile continued to ring for most of the day. Once in London I dropped in on the BBC to pick up Tommy Pearson and cadge a lift to the Vanity Fair recording session, so he could interview the various participants for Stage & Screen. This led to at least two fortuitous meetings: one with Fiona Talkington where she told me that they've plugged our gigs on the BBCi site, and one with a copy of SADN left lying on someone's desk at Radio 3. There's nothing particularly exciting about finding one of your CDs on someone's desk in itself, except that the case was bashed in and in chinagraph pencil someone had emphatically put their name on it in big letters so that they would get it back. In broadcasting offices, smashed up CDs with lots of things written on them are the ones that get played: pristine copies have probably never been taken out of the jewel case. So that was quite cheering. From there we left for Henry Wood Hall (listening in Tommy's hired Mercedes to the Mahavishnu Orchestra, which reminded me of the Dixie Dregs - if I had a real musical education it would be the other way round of course) and I made friends once more with Finchcocks's 1801 Broadwood piano. This time it had only been moved into the hall that afternoon, so it stayed in tune for about 2 minutes at a time. While Bill Dow was retuning for about the 6th time, to accommodate the key of B flat minor, I wandered back into the control room: 'temperament, eh?' Mychael Danna's reply: 'Nothing is in tune. It's like marriage: a series of compromises that works. You start out thinking that it's all going to be just intonation, but you end up happy with equal temperament'. Or quarter-comma mean tone of course. This was the very last session for the movie (everyone hopes) so before the final cue to be recorded, we opened a collection of bottles of beer. Now, as I mentioned above, I still hadn't managed a meal at any point and it was about 9pm, so the bottle of
Old Peculier went straight to my head and I had to concentrate very hard indeed not to screw up on the Steinway in the opening titles. Anyway, when the film makes it to cinemas, whenever Reese Witherspoon plays the piano or is accompanied singing, it's really me. Just so you know. Anyway, since then I've got on a cancelled Heathrow Express train (I thought the point of using the most expensive train service in the world was that it would actually run, but no) and sat around waiting for my flight, which is late. I'm tired.
© 2004 David
McGuinness |
concerto caledonia