Thursday 22 April 2004

I've been occupied with a lot of non-ConCal-related activity recently. On Saturday I'm off to Belfast for BBC Music Live to accompany Catherine Bott in Carissimi's Lament on the death of Mary Queen of Scots, so I've been playing some Frescobaldi this afternoon to get me into 17c Italian improvisatory mode. We'll be on Radio 3 on Monday night - I think we're first after the interval, at about 8.30pm. 

And I got a phone call yesterday asking if I can go to Spain next month to play some Debussy(!), rehearsing from this Monday. So I have 20 pages of Debussy to learn as well (if I can arrange babysitting coverage for the Spain trip) which is a bit different really. I've been turning down orchestral gigs, but this one is with the wunderkind conductor Ilan Volkov who I'd like to see in action, having heard lots of good things about him. A friend (who can remain nameless for the time being) and I cooked up the idea recently of starting a message board type website called conductorwatch.com. The idea is that musicians (and audience members) could contribute insider knowledge as to a conductor's competence, character, or lack of both - then gradually conductors would accrue a rating and an informed picture of their work would emerge. Why is such a thing necessary? Well, as any orchestral musician will tell you, real conductors are thin on the ground - there are some wonderful examples of talented charismatic musicians, but there's also a surprisingly large number of clueless charlatans around, and it would be nice for us to know who they were before committing to sitting in front of them waiting to be told what to do (and someone else paying lots of money for it).

There are still bits and pieces of admin left over from the March tour, box office cheques arriving, invoices to be chased: it's pretty tedious at this stage, when I'd like to be able to sign off the whole project and concentrate on something new.  I still haven't paid everyone for the Kellie record, but I just spoke to our friendly contact at the Foundation for Sport and the Arts, and their side of the admin process is under way, so I hope everyone can hang on another week or three for their well-earned dosh.

I followed Andy Partridge's recommendation in the Guardian a couple of weeks ago and tracked down the limited edition re-release of Judee Sill's first album - sort of Joni Mitchell meets Van Dyke Parks. Not my usual kind of thing, but it's wonderful. I waved my copy at BBC senior producer, and fount of all musical knowledge, Stewart Cruickshank the other day and said 'tell me about Judee Sill' - after an instant off-the-cuff encyclopedia entry he said: "that album only sold a couple of thousand in the UK, but for pretty much everyone who bought it at the time, it's their favourite record". Now that's a musical achievement, isn't it?

A bit of Ebay trawling a couple of weeks ago netted me an Estey missionary folding harmonium - I'll pick it up in Canada in June. It only took me a couple of years to find one: I was feeling a bit left out, as Chris has one in Baltimore (I played it in Alabama) and David G has one in Nova Scotia. I also found this.