Sunday 2 June 2002

Yet another diary entry written on the train - en route to Edinburgh this time for yet another RSNO gig. This one is an unashamedly tacky 'Jubilee' open air bash in Princes Street Gardens with Bryn Terfel singing songs from the shows, and Evelyn Glennie playing the pipes. And although I thought this would make me want to throw up, the rehearsal yesterday was great fun. When you're delivering an 'entertainment' rather than an 'art' product, things are so much simpler: you don't waste time getting hung up about style (does this sound Russian/18th century/folky enough ?) you just play it and stick it all together. My favourite bit is definitely the massacre of Holst's Jupiter into 'World in Union' where I get to play a bit of gospel piano. Walking through the park to get to rehearsal yesterday was very civilised too: in the hazy sunshine, a brass quartet were playing, some wedding photos were being taken, there was a jazz guitarist playing to himself under a tree, and two star-crossed lovers rehearsing Shakespeare on top of the hill. A happy holiday atmosphere all round, and great to be able to ignore all the royalist nonsense.

I watched a bit of the 'Prom from the Palace' on telly last night as I was answering emails: when Kiri te Kanawa came on to murder 'Summertime' (it was gruesome) I did a bit of a double take, as some years ago when her awful Gershwin record came out, Private Eye ran a spoof advert for 'Kiri sings the Sex Pistols'. I thought for a moment she was going to come on and do the Pistols' 'God Save the Queen'.

I spent most of Friday in the car, doing a short tour of Fife castles. I was in Fife for the site meeting for our open air ConCal gig at Aberdour Castle in August (details coming on the events page in due course), and thought I'd hop over to Kellie Castle while I was in the kingdom of Fife. Seeing as we're planning to record a load of Thomas Erskine, the 6th Earl of Kellie's music, I figured I ought to have a look round his house. I had a quick play through one of his minuets on the huge 1829 Stodart piano while I was there.

Any other free time this week has been taken up with computer trouble - I bought a new sound card for it on Monday to enable me to transfer a load of old DATs digitally to CD, and upgrade generally to 24bit/96kHz. I'd just copied enough material for my demo for the TV production company when the thing blew up (metaphorically), and after several phone calls to the helpline in Ireland, a trip back to the shop to get a replacement, which then blew as well, it's still not working. I predict that this will be something of a time-waster in the next couple of weeks.