Friday 8 March 2002

I had a terrific time playing in John Adams's Fearful Symmetries last night. I don't normally get nervous before concerts, but yesterday I noticed I was quite anxious. The prospect of playing complicated cross rhythms very loudly on sampled kick drums and thumping toms across a symphony orchestra, on a keyboard I didn't really know, was getting to me a bit. And in the morning rehearsal the polarity kept reversing on the volume pedal I was using, so that loud and soft were swapped without warning. Bye bye volume pedal.

The gig itself was unexpectedly terrific - at one point I thought 'oops, that kick drum is far too loud and must be blasting everyone out', I looked up at Marin, and she was grinning all over her face, so I hit it harder instead. It was great to look around a symphony orchestra and see the players sitting grooving in their chairs and getting into it while playing some very complex patterns. And at the end Marin picked me first for a bow on my own - I know it's a bit pathetic and sad to be pleased about this, but it's not every day I get to be a human drum machine in a symphony orchestra, and I did feel a certain sense of satisfaction at not screwing up.  Bernard Robertson sitting next to me deserved the approbation more: he was playing almost non-stop, had only got the correct equipment that morning, and had two keyboards and twenty-odd patch changes to negotiate, which he did.

There were only about 100 in the audience - I hate to think what the financial loss on the gig was. It's very frustrating because it was an accessible programme of American music, and the audience who were there loved it. Natalie Wheen introduced the concert in friendly and non-technical terms, with Marin comparing John Adams to a good club DJ, never settling in a good groove for too long before mixing in the next one. So why was no-one there? Was it marketed wrongly? Are there just not that many people interested? Should the programme have included Grieg's piano concerto instead of Samuel Barber's to attract some punters looking for a tune they can hum? And incidentally, why was I wearing white tie and tails to play a sampler? When you compare it to the other much less cost-intensive gigs going on in Scotland that attract 100 people, it leaves a lots of questions to be answered about how music is subsidised and funded - or publicised. My fee alone was a substantial percentage of the box office gross, and there must have been more than 60 of us, including a brilliant sax quartet some of whom had come up from London, and an American soloist and conductor who are much more expensive than I. Not to mention getting EWF's keyboards over from Turkey. Food for thought.

I always try to go there with an open mind, but I also realised afresh how much I really detest Glasgow's Royal Concert Hall. Whether you're in the audience or the stage, just entering the building saps all the energy from you, it's ugly and unwelcoming, its acoustics are rubbish, there are huge areas of wasted space, and the foyer messes with your sense of direction - the best things about it are the backstage technical facilities.

I also had my first tuning lesson with Meg Munck yesterday afternoon. I spend most of my life using my ears, and have come to think that I can hear most things, so it was salutary to discover that I was completely failing to hear the right beats when trying to set a temperament. I was being distracted by the high 'wa-wa-wa-wa-wa' sounds rather than the lower pulsations that I should have been adjusting with the tuning hammer. I was so exhausted after an hour's lesson that I had to go to bed for a nap before the concert. At the Concert Hall, I told Scottish Steinway technician Norman Motion about this, and he said, 'yeah, ignore the beats and just feel the throb'. I'll practise next week.

Wednesday had a nice balance to it.  I practised Bach on the harpsichord in the morning, spent the afternoon's John Adams rehearsal in shock at how loud it is sitting in the middle of a symphony orchestra - heavy metal bands have it easy - I bought some new speakers for the study, and dropped in on Greg to help him out with a string arrangement for the Trashcan Sinatras.  Not a bad musical range for one day.