Saturday 24 January 2004

I'm back at my desk after an unusual afternoon spent packing people's shopping at the http://graphics.asda.com/ASDA_Corp/topNavImages/but008_off.gif&imgWelcome=http://graphics.asda.com/ASDA_Corp/topNavImages/welcome001.gif">Toryglen Asda, to raise money for the Strathclyde Autistic Society. I was unexpectedly nervous about this, but it was great fun and we emerged with bucketfuls of cash ... 

It's been a busy week.  On Tuesday, Catherine Murtagh (marketing supremo), Margaret Friday (marketing helpmeet) and I had a meeting in The Lighthouse with Stephen Cappello, our perpetually hat-wearing designer, and Al Bell at Bell Graphic. After only one cup of coffee, Stephen had come up with the idea of spray-painting a lamb with the word 'LION', which we all liked a lot. In fact, the café threw us out for laughing too much. Then we spent a further hour musing on the possibilities of making stand-up cardboard cut-out versions, T shirts, inflatables ... so the morning passed rather quickly and there were still a lot of things waiting to be done.

Kellie's music, a computer and a pencil have occupied me a lot: on Tuesday I printed out all the remaining parts for March's recording, and then on Wednesday night I sat on the train and began to mark them up. I was going through to Edinburgh to hear Moishe's Bagel, a kind of klezmer/Balkan/jazz combo with our very own Greg Lawson on fiddle and mandolin. And, joys of joys, Phil Alexander started the show with a melodica solo.  I sat in the genial company of a bunch of musicians (various members of the SCO), and the excellent tabla player Guy Nicholson with his even more excellent moustache gave me a lift home in his van.

Yesterday I fitted in an interview for WDR with Tom Daun (which we recorded in the Orchid House at the Botanic Gardens), and then I listened to his great Christmas harp album while sitting up in bed marking up more Kellie parts ... and then today, while driving back from Toryglen I considered the idea of arranging Stina Nordenstam's I See You Again for Lisa Milne and the quartet. Too difficult an atmosphere to try and re-fashion perhaps.  

But in the meantime I've realised just a bit too late that there's a big organ solo part Bach's cantata 170 Vergnügte Ruh, that I'm playing with the SCO next week. What's more, it's marked by Bach 'a 2 Clav.' and the SCO organ only has one manual, so there's a bit of finger-twisting to be done to get all the notes. I'd better go and learn it.