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David
McGuinness's diary Thursday 30 June 2005 Alison's Geminiani CD comes out tomorrow (with a few harpsichord solos thrown in from yours truly) - I got mine in the post today. Audio clips, and copies for sale are at Linn Records. I've managed to continue the recent habit (broken on Fiddler Tam) of getting one of my photos into the CD booklet somewhere. We've had confirmation of our next live Radio 3 Early Music Show broadcast on 27 November. Wednesday 22 June 2005 At 3.30pm yesterday afternoon I was paddling on a beach in Orkney. At 8.15pm I was in the front row of Fred Frith's solo gig at the CCA. And a completely jaw-dropping musical experience it was too. I could write paragraphs here about how good he was, but instead I'll suggest that if you find out that the man is playing a solo concert on the same continent as you, sell your possessions, fly there and sit at the front. 45 minutes of some of the most highly concentrated musicianship I think I have ever heard. The venue were expecting a concert of two halves: when he came out to sell CDs from the front of the stage, someone from the CCA asked him what time he'd be finished. 'Oh, anyone who heard that will tell you - I'm finished.' I don't think she got the joke. later DMcG (with shiny forehead - it was very hot) meets his guitar hero: four eyebrows and two orange shirts.
Monday 20 June 2005
Friday 17 June 2005 I'd always thought that when an orchestra looked bored, or disengaged, on stage, it was a function of the personality or skill of the conductor. I was talking with Ursula Leveaux about it this morning, and she reckons that it's rather a metropolitan attitude that wanes the further you get from London: a kind of learnt or acquired professional cynicism that you have to adopt to fit in. Anyone who looks musically engaged or enthusiastic in that environment sticks out like a sore thumb. And the ones who don't care about fitting in, and engage and enthuse anyway, are usually the ones whose careers are based in another country. Thursday 16 June 2005 I'm sitting in our accountant's office. Our accountant is late, and I have to leave to be somewhere else in 15 minutes, so the potential usefulness of our meeting is diminishing rapidly. Still, there is a flip chart near me headed 'strategic development', and under one of the headings 'walk the process', the sub-headings are 'how do we feel the customers' experience?' and 'we need to know what customers take in their tea/coffee'. When I arrived 30 minutes ago the very polite and friendly staff here asked if I would like tea or coffee, I asked for a black tea, and a few minutes later I was served coffee. I think they might be in need of some strategic development. Tuesday 14 June 2005 I spent part of today in 'professional musician mode' in a recording session of two Handel arias, which was a rather dispiriting experience (in fact to take my mind off it I'm typing this as they record around me the bit I'm not in). Fortunately the singer is the wonderful Ailish Tynan who puts up with no BS and is great fun. This morning I pinned down dates for the final Lion CD recording sessions, mailed off a directory entry, and got an unexpected email from our company accountant saying he'd told me the accounts were ready 4 months ago. Somehow this vital email hadn't reached me, so now there is a mad scramble to get the accounts signed by the directors and into Companies House. An interesting discussion about concert intervals later this morning: Maurice Bott (who was at the concert in Warwickshire last week), Alison and I all hate them, if we're in audient mode. Intervals provide a great social opportunity for some, and a commercial opportunity for the venue to make some money on the bar, but if you've gone to a concert to be entertained rather than to be sociable, then it's an uncomfortable 20-30 minutes. What's required is some undemanding entertainment, so that those who came for 'culture' don't feel like Johnny-No-Mates. So in a chamber music concert, why not shorten each half and have the musicians playing solos on stage in the interval for optional entertainment? All the musicians still get a rest at some point; those who've come for a social experience can get on with it, and those who've come to hear some music can have some more. Come to think of it, we've done this! DG and me playing tunes in the bar in St Andrews in the Square, and in the downstairs galleries in St Cecilia's in 2002 ... And another thing: did Mary Ann really get married on the radio today? I suppose she did ... Sunday 12 June 2005 Back home again after the last Geminiani gig of the season, in Warwickshire. It went very well indeed, although I ran out of music near the end with general tiredness, and had that feeling which all musicians know of being on stage thinking 'What am I doing here?' 'Why am I playing this strange music?' The Lion CD, or SADN II or whatever it's going to be called, is back on my agenda properly again: I got some bits of editing done this week, and also some noise reduction/cleaning up on the field recordings that are in 'Road to Sanaig'. Vocal overdubs with Mary Ann Kennedy and Lisa Milne (who got an MBE yesterday!) are plotted for July, so we should be able to master it in the autumn. I also cut another track from the running order this week, so by the time it's finished there should be (as with SADN) a nice stack of discarded tracks to appear on the inevitable 20th anniversary re-issue ... This morning I checked my trusty Psion and found that a couple of years ago I'd had the good sense to transcribe the words of Psalm 12 from the Aberdeen Psalter of 1625, so that we can include the tune Bon Accord on the CD with the right words. That's a trip to the library saved. And the past week has brought a few light brushes with technology, quite apart from my rebuilding our lawnmower yesterday. On Thursday, after several failed attempts over the last few months, I finally acquired an old Hohner 36 melodica on eBay, complete with its original table stand. I wonder if it will sit comfortably on top of my Estey harmonium. My trusty PX 100 headphones gave up the ghost this week, but those nice Sennheiser people are going to send me a new pair under warranty. I still have the classic HD 410s that I bought 22 years ago, having replaced the ear pads a couple of times: my kids use them on the computer. I prefer listening on the PX 100s to pretty much everything else now: they don't have the definition or brightness of the Grados that I use for critical monitoring, but the bass is deep and warm, incredible for something so small, and perfect for listening in the city. The new white ones look quite cool with the iPod mini too, but I think they've stopped making them in black and yellow to look like the old 414s. Friday 3 June 2005 I spent this afternoon improvising with Raymond MacDonald: well, we played for about half an hour and sat with some peppermint tea and chocolate the rest of the time. It's the first time I've tried free improv on harpsichord, which actually sounds rather good; I think harmonium and soprano sax was the best combination though. It's probably 20 years since I did free improv with anyone else, and it was great to have long-unexplored avenues of my brain working in front of an audience (of one). All those keyboard-player background processes have to kick in, like 'how am I choosing my harmonic language?' and 'what attitude will I have towards regular rhythms or groove?'. But what actually happens is that these questions are over-ridden by the general attitude that you elect to adopt, or that you find yourself adopting by virtue of the kind of person you are. It's very satisfying when it works. Next time we'll record some of it to find out what it sounds like from the outside. I nearly didn't get there though. As the taxi arrived to pick me up, I noticed that the driver clearly had things buzzing in the forefront of his mind that weren't necessarily related to driving a taxi. Sure enough, about three minutes into the journey, we were heading at some speed towards the obviously stationary traffic directly in front of us. He braked sharply just in time, we skidded spectacularly to a halt, and my harmonium skidded spectacularly across the floor of the cab. Whew - no collisions. Then crunch, the minicab behind us didn't stop in time. Nobody was hurt, but I had a frustrating 15 minutes sat in the back of the cab while Mr Unfocused sorted out insurance details and displayed his detailed knowledge of the internal workings of taxi bumpers to Mr Driving-too-close. But hey, I got a free cab ride. ConCal dates for 2005/6 are gradually coming together now: I've been dealing with fixing and contracts a bit this week. And last night Alison got the first proof of the CD booklet design for the Geminiani. No-one likes it much. Hmm: a rethink required ... You can see Alison and Katherine playing in Beethoven Uncovered tonight and the next two Fridays on BBC4. Monday 30 May 2005 Today was that rare thing, a sunny Bank Holiday Monday. And as it reaches its conclusion, I wonder why anyone would want to live anywhere other than Scotland. OK, the weather's rubbish most of the time, we've got pointless violence and bigotry, institutionalised mediocrity, and people drone on about football as if it were something more than a game of chance with twenty-odd guys kicking a ball around, but ... after a spur-of-the-moment decision mid-morning to do a traditional Glasgow outing to Dunoon, today included two beautiful boat trips, a walk up a gorge (with plenty of very tempting swimming holes) and down through a forest, a fun municipal park, a classic old-fashioned Scotch bakery, paddling in rock pools, chips in the sea air at Gourock, and a peek at its wonderful open-air heated saltwater swimming pool (one for a return visit). And once the children were tucked up safely in bed, I went out to the garden and trampolined in the daylight at 10.15pm. I spent a lot of yesterday working on the garden, once I'd flown home from another Geminiani gig with Alison, this time in Weston, Herts. I played a lot more right notes this time. Alison manned the CD stall herself and sold 10 ConCal CDs: the Geminiani disc itself isn't out quite yet, so the tradition of selling people pieces of paper at CD launch concerts is alive and well. I was so tired earlier in the day that I had a nap in the middle of the rehearsal, but revived enough to do appalling improvised step dancing to Eligio's funky guitar improvisations in the interval. Not in front of the audience though. Besides showing her sales skills, Alison also demonstrated a remarkable knack at parking large transit vans: the rather dodgy one she'd hired for the day featured extra ventilation courtesy of a gaping hole in the fibreglass above the cab. Courtesy of Herreweghe's recording, in transit I've been making myself vaguely familiar with the 1725 version of Bach's John Passion. Tuesday 24 May 2005 Recovering from a stinking cold. At last this week I don't have any pressing deadlines, other than a concert on Saturday, so it's a chance to catch up on lots of unanswered mail and a bit of planning. I'm to be Katherine's external adviser (or some similar title) for her GSMD research grant, studying nyckelharpa in Sweden; Alison is cooking up an excellent project for summer 2007; and DG and I are writing proposals of an orchestral nature. This morning I dropped in to the university to hear Allan Wright's exam: when I was a student I don't think I'd have had the nerve to play two harpsichord pieces both over 13' long without a break, at 10am under exam conditions, with an audience. Sweelinck and Handel: mammoth. I didn't really like the Handel G major Chaconne before, but now I've warmed to it. The mail today brought the raw takes of the piano version of Nathaniel Gow's 'Coilsfield House' that I recorded in Halifax, NS last August. I thought at the time that it might fit on the Lion CD but now I'm not so sure, especially after I so much enjoyed playing it on the melodica in Leith last week. I might find a home for the track yet though: the Reinagle 'East Nook of Fife' variations that I recorded during the Geminiani sessions look like ending up on a tribute CD for John Paul Jones (the Scots founder of the US Navy rather than the ex-Led Zep composer). The Vanity Fair DVD is out this week too ... Two bits of listening from the 70s caught my attention in the last couple of days. One was William Malloch's bizarre orchestration of Bach's Art of Fugue, where the final fugue disintegrates into other fugues by half a dozen different composers, and then dissolves further into the sound of the orchestra tuning up: amazing. And I've been revisiting my youth by listening to Mike Oldfield's album Hergest Ridge, both in its stripped-down minimalist remix (the only version now available), and the stunning original version which is technically a bit of a mess but has much more emotional depth and the occasional musical surprise, like a nutcracker solo over what sounds like a hundred overdubbed fuzz guitars. I remember the first time I heard the original when I was about 15, after already getting to know the remix quite well: it was like removing a bit of tidy 1950s panelling to find an ornate Victorian fireplace. The original version also has a sense of danger about it: everything is at full stretch, from the playing and the mixing to the pressing itself (the vinyl sounds awful in places). Paradoxically, these imperfections make it very appealing to listen to: everything and everyone is being pushed out of their comfort zone for a musical need. Sunday 22 May 2005 I forgot a few things from last week ... Marc Marnie's excellent exhibition of digital prints was showing at The Village in Leith as we played on Tuesday (and it still is). And they're not expensive. The Geminiani final edit is now ready, much better for having had one harpsichord piece excised: there are plenty left. Alison is going to let me have veto over the booklet photos from last weekend - so she says anyway. My paper about 18th century Scottish basslines finally made it into print (beside a piece by John Butt about Bach's figuring, no less) in 'Notis Musycall' - available from Musica Scotica. If you buy one from the first print run, you can get a copy with my name spelt wrong. Although to be honest, if you can work out how to buy a copy, you're doing better than I am. Anyone who's had the misfortune to play in a group with me will know that about 45 minutes after coming off stage, when pretty much everyone else is still hanging around being sociable and having a good time, I'm sitting in a corner somewhere moaning 'can we go now?' and complaining that a group of musicians can achieve land speeds below measurable limits when it's time to leave a building. So it was very amusing some time after my daughter's stage debut as 'The Little Mermaid' last night, to find her sitting alone in the back of the car while various family members were still saying goodbye to one another, intoning softly 'Can we go home? What's taking so long?'. Welcome to the genetic adrenaline slump. Thursday 19 May 2005 Tuesday's SSO recording session was unexpectedly cancelled, so the remaining gig of the day was in Leith folk club with Chris and co. I didn't feel like a drink from the bar, so I sat with my flask of peppermint tea at the harmonium: something I should do on stage more often. I agreed at last to play a melodica solo, accompanied by Nick on the harmonium, and was very pleased indeed to obtain a hushed listening silence from a bar full of people, until an appreciative eruption at the end. The immense set of reels we played as an encore rocked too. I stopped for rather indifferent chips at the Deep Sea on the way home, which serves me right for not following the basic rule of 'only go in a chip shop that has a queue'. Yesterday Sushil in his role as 'head of networking' introduced me to Raymond MacDonald of the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra (who are going to do a gig with Fred Frith in the Glasgow Jazz Festival next month), and after we'd expressed mutual enthusiasm for various subjects, we agreed to meet up and play a bit of improv in a few weeks. Will be good to flex my musical muscles in that direction again. Depressing news this morning about Hyperion losing their appeal in court. I suppose as an editor of early music I should be pleased that my work now has recognised legal copyright status. But I'm not. Of all companies, Hyperion, a small independent company who have supported music and musicians to an unusual degree throughout their existence, and gave us our first recording break, do not deserve to foot the legal bill for such a 'victory', which could be in the region of £1m. And one of the many repercussions will be a further erosion in the culture of goodwill which pervades most of the independent classical recording industry. If you listen to Grace Notes on Radio Scotland this Sunday, you might catch my brief appearances as Penelope the rubbish percussionist. Since my appearance on Radio 3 as the French harpsichordist Sandrine Pasquier some years ago, I seem to be amassing a collection of stupid pseudonyms. I don't think Drongo McGibbons has made it onto the airwaves yet though. Oh yes, we've been getting some ConCal gigs in the diary too. Will put them on the concerts page when they're firmed up ... Monday 16 May 2005 Travelled down to London on Friday night for the unexpected Geminiani gig in Tudeley. As Alison drove us to Kent on Saturday afternoon, Joe and I compared versions of the 'duck goes into a bar/rabbit goes into the butchers' joke: 'got any breadcrumbs/lettuce?', punctuated by the appropriate animal noises. All Saints Church in Tudeley has a perfect acoustic for small scale chamber music, but the stained glass windows by Chagall can make it difficult to rehearse, as on a Saturday afternoon there is a constant stream of tourists coming in to admire and photograph them. An impromptu and increasingly busked re-arrangement of a Handel trio sonata for two cellos and harpsichord drew this remark from Timothy Kraemer (who was taking photos of us rather than playing the cello): 'that's a nice piece - who wrote it?' 'Well, Handel started it, we're just finishing it off for him.' By halfway through the concert, total mental exhaustion had set in on my part and although I could listen and hear very well, my fingers just wouldn't do what I wanted them to, and the result was a bumper crop of wrong notes. Fortunately everyone else made up for it, and Alison charmed the audience by being brilliant anyway. Lots of generous musicianship on stage. And some generous musicians in the audience to talk to in the break: Annette Isserlis (looking for a copy of SADN, I didn't have any) and Malachy Robinson, who might just join us for our Perth gig in December. Yesterday morning I made the trip from Walthamstow in East London to my front door in the West End of Glasgow in three hours exactly. A record: sometimes it can take six. But early Sunday morning motorway traffic is light, and not flying from Heathrow is almost always a good decision. Later in the day, Jamie MacDougall told me how he'd been in a museum in Vienna and seen Prince Nikolaus's octet table from Esterhazy: it has music stands built into the centre of it so that two people can sit on each of the four sides to play. The accompanying leaflet in the museum states that Nikolaus was a keen musician and played the euphonium. This mistranslation of 'baryton' conjures up a wonderful picture of Prince Esterhazy emerging from the pithead to go and play in the colliery band. And a whole lost repertoire of euphonium duos by Haydn. After a short nap I drove north to Dalguise in Perthshire to join Chris and the lads for their concert in the amazing hall that looks just like a house from the outside. Three numbers in and Chris was getting worried by the apparently frosty reception: 'Hmm. Folded arms, furrowed brows. Well, we'll cheer you up with a lament.' But the audience soon warmed to us and by the second half they were erupting into cheers every time I picked up the melodica, and heckling with good spirit. The harmonium was pretty flat though: I'd better investigate that before tomorrow's gig in Leith. Today I was in 'professional musician' mode sitting in the BBC SSO for some Handel arias with Christine Rice. For some reason the orchestral management wasn't expecting me to play in 'Doppo Notte' from Ariodante, but the conductor was, so lacking a score, I read the bass part over Iain Crawford's shoulder, which was much more fun and woke my brain up quite effectively. I'm gradually getting my study computer back into working order after having it dragged into the 21st century with a hard drive format and the introduction of Windows XP, to match the other machines in the house. So every job takes a lot longer than usual as software is re-installed and backups are recovered. Tedious but necessary - by last week it wouldn't do anything without crashing after 15 minutes or so ... Wednesday 11 May 2005 Yesterday Chris, Andy and Nick flew into Manchester in the morning and drove up to Arisaig, stopping off in Glasgow to pick me up and have a quick bounce on the trampoline. We made it to the hall by about 7pm for an 8 o'clock gig, dumped our stuff on stage and went in search of food. For some reason, no-one in Arisaig's pubs feels like cooking on a Tuesday night so Andy and I gave up at 7.30 and went to set the stage, sustained by my supplies of oatcakes, seeds, apples and a flask of peppermint tea; Chris and Nick continued to negotiate the possible appearance of soup in the restaurant at the bottom of the hill. Andy and I had fun working our way around the fact that Chris hadn't packed a junction strip, and the chances of finding a distribution box for 115volts and US sockets in the west Highlands is pretty much nil. So we borrowed some microphones, jammed a mic stand up against our slightly wiggly US/UK plug adapter and awaited their return. Chris and Nick made it to the hall around 8.05 with a set list scribbled on the side of a tourist leaflet and on we went. The PZM mic lying inside the Estey and plugged into their little AER amps sounds really good. In fact the Estey and I are successfully making friends now: I've left it with the guys for Nick to play until I meet them in Dunkeld on Sunday. The gig itself was a lot of fun: winging it with three jet-lagged Americans in front of a cozy audience by the sea is an enjoyable way to spend an evening. Most of the arrangements we know went out the window in favour of radical on-the-spot reworking. In Nick's percussion solo in McDonald's Salutation, he somehow managed to take two completely different grooves (4/4 and 6/8) and morph them together so that you couldn't tell where one finished and the other began. I'm going to listen more closely in our gigs next week - in fact I may go out to the audience and watch. And I met Elspeth MacMillan, who 20 years ago used to drive me along the single track Mallaig road at 85 mph in a Hillman Hunter estate, and encourage me to play her Bechstein upright piano. Afterwards I couldn't find my jacket anywhere (complete with credit cards, iPod, you name it). After a frantic quarter of an hour looking for it, we rang one of the bars that hadn't fed us and sure enough, I'd left it there. Chris and I had a very welcome couple of pints of Guinness before turning in. So this morning after some fine breakfast and conversation, I was able to go for a short walk around the village and then amble up the track to Arisaig station, trundling my suitcase behind me, to take an unforgettable journey that just happens to get me home. About as perfect a way to spend the early part of Wednesday as I can think of. Now we've stopped in Fort William and I'm joined on the train by some very happy German tourists. Monday 9 May 2005 Very sad to have missed Sushil's onstage popcorn making with Lol Coxhill and co last week. Over the weekend, in amongst a visit to a country park and consuming some very fine fritters on the seafront at Largs, I got the Estey back in tune in preparation for its going on tour with Chris this week. The 4 foot was way off, so apologies to anyone at the Sage who was offended by the tuning last week - I should have done it before but I didn't have time. Saturday become unexpectedly complicated after a phone call from Alison in the morning: 'You know that Geminiani concert we've got on the 11 June?' 'Yup.' 'Well, it's actually this Saturday.' 'Oh.' By some miracle everyone is free. Eligio and I both had other concerts cancelled on that day, except that I had stupidly cancelled the flights for mine so I had to buy them all over again at vastly increased prices. Oh well. So now I have Geminiani and his ilk to prepare this week as well as all of Chris's tunes. December 3rd's gig is coming together nicely, with a slightly expanded band, and it's looking good for our first choice of players to be able to make it. Just been alerted to a nice review for the Kellie in the Telegraph. Friday 6 May 2005 Summer evenings are nearly upon us. I've just been trampolining in the garden while listening to the CBC recording of our 'joli bois' gig in Halifax, NS last summer, testing the durability of my iPod. The live recording is so much better than the CD, even without Sylvain and Pierre: Suzie's singing is quite stunning. It's also nice to hear the audience laughing when Chris and I brought on scorecards after DG's fiddle solo. Email waiting from our faithful agent in Quebec tonight, looking at tour dates for October 06. A chance phone call this afternoon means that on the morning of our CNE gig in Leith a week on Tuesday, I'll be recording Handel arias with the brilliant Christine Rice. A good juxtaposition of musical activities for one day. Thursday 5 May 2005 Yesterday a programme finally took shape for Perth in December. Not sure if a deeply penitent Bach cantata has ever shared a concert with the tune 'Johnny's bare arse' before, but there's a first time for everything. Keeping them apart would give a false impression of the nature of 18th century Lutheran Pietism. (can you tell this is BS?) Monday 2 May 2005 I drove down here yesterday morning just in time for our soundcheck/rehearsal. I think DG wins the 'tiredest person' prize this time. It was very disconcerting to be playing our
JPP set of tunes, with assorted members of JPP hanging around backstage and sharing the green room. But the most amusing part of the day was walking back to the hotel and having
Matt Seattle lean out of a car and wave excitedly and blow kisses as he drove past. He was going to another gig somewhere and didn't even know DG was in the country ... My Estey reed organ passes the 'roadable' test with flying colours, although now that the wind supply works you can hear how out of tune it still is. Some work to be done there. But with the help of the trolley Alison bought for the Pearl River one when she brought it back from Seattle, I can move it easily myself, it fits in the back of the car, and when miked up it sounds pretty good. I still have to master opening the mute more gently with my right knee while playing, but that will come in time I'm sure. Quite a few fiddle players from the Northern Sinfonia went along to DG's morning class today, which buoyed him up even further after his late night jam session with Arto, Beáta Salamon and a Cajun player whose name I forget. So bits of our SADN album, and the tunes that we do with Suzie LeBlanc, all got tested in front of their native speakers. Yesterday we'd taken it in turns to be completely and utterly exhausted, DG in our afternoon concert, and me in the evening (missing the jam session, kicking myself afterwards). Helpfully I tried to show DG a short cut back to the hotel and we ended up in a multi-storey car park. I only mention this because he said 'this had better go in your diary'. One nice thing about playing in a big non-classical event is the assumption of backstage catering. So today I got to share a buffet lunch with Timo Alakotila in the green room, and I hope he was genuinely pleased and not irritated when I told him how great I thought he was. You can never tell with Finns, they don't give much away ... © 2005 David
McGuinness |
concerto caledonia
