Tuesday 30 April 2002

Busy, busy.  It's nearly midnight, I've been drafting and budgeting possible programmes for an open-air concert in August which I hope will come to pass.  

My email is full of replies to various messages I sent out earlier in the week: we've resuscitated an old notion that we had a couple of years ago, of a kind of summer-school come symposium getting traditional musicians and early music specialists together for mutual learning and some serious jamming. I've been suggesting it to various suggestible parties who might be possible partners in putting such an event together - it would be a year or two away yet I think, but it's looking promising.

I heard back from the guys at Delphian Records, who are still keen to get a record out of us - the running order I'd drafted is a bit tighter now: some 18th century Scots tune book material, with song settings by Pietro Urbani and a smattering of Georg Muffat.  The plan is to have it in the can early next year, but the best-laid schemes of mice and men gang up on glaikit musicians who take their eyes off the ball for a second, so ... fingers crossed.  I bumped into Philip Hobbs of Linn at Glasgow Airport last week, briefly enough for our conversation to get as far as 'we must catch up sometime'.  Thanks to a couple of obliging trusts, we're now about halfway towards getting enough funding to be able to record The Gentle Shepherd for Linn, as it's rather an expensive undertaking.  

This week I'm playing in the SCO in what should turn out to be rather good performances of the Bach John Passion.  It's conducted with great enthusiasm and well-chosen attention to musical detail, and the soloists are great, with Mark Padmore as the evangelist.  He's just recorded the Matthew Passion with Paul McCreesh, and was rather miffed that Alison couldn't be the continuo cellist for it, as she was away on tour with 'whatever orchestra it is she plays in' - the AAM.

I was back in the RSAMD again last week, assessing 2nd year exams this time to see what the students have learnt about baroque performance practice.  There were some really great players, including a pianist who after a year at the harpsichord played Couperin and Purcell with great fluidity and made a beautiful sound, but the singers (with a couple of welcome exceptions) seemed to think it was enough just to switch their vibrato off.  I know you've got to acquire a technique, but the lack of musical imagination got a bit depressing occasionally.  Still, the good ones made up for it, and after a long day of having someone new forcibly entertain me every 15 minutes and then talk about it afterwards, I felt quite exhilarated rather than exhausted.

Just found time today for a quick hour in the pub with the editor of The List, Mark Fisher.  We'd never actually met before, but have corresponded on and off (well, mostly off) for the last 15 years due to our shared enthusiasm for Swindon twosome XTC. Many years ago, Mark wrote an XTC fanzine and I had a suitably idiotic letter published in it in 1987 or thereabouts.  We vowed to reconvene some other time for a completely pointless evening of beer and Partridge/Moulding-related reminiscence.