Thursday 16 September 2004

The Celtic Connections interview is here (click on 'LISTEN AGAIN') and will be until next Tuesday - I show up about 90 minutes in, and it includes sneak previews of a track from our new album and one from Chris Norman's new one too. Producer Sandy's choice of dub reggae melodica genius Augustus Pablo to introduce me was inspired.

This morning brought a productive meeting about the 2005/6 season, in which we will now be giving performances of the Bach St John Passion (with Mark Padmore) and Handel's Messiah. After a very bad experience with a conductor back in May 2002 I'd decided that even playing in those pieces was now a thing of the past for me, so I took the scores up to the attic and I left them there. It's not that I don't love the music, it's just that the process of putting it together was deeply unpleasant. But looking at it from a different perspective, here I can take the responsibility to ensure that the mistakes of the past are repeated as little as possible. 

What it is that I hated about playing those pieces? Well, it turns out with the benefit of hindsight that all of them were 19th/20th century cultural accretions. For a start, there is the  irrelevance of much of the conductor's presence in the actual performance (although he could be very useful in rehearsal) - so we won't have a conductor. I hated the false distinction between chorus and soloists - so we'll have the soloists singing in the choruses. I hated the ritual of the calls for applause at the end, everyone taking their turn for their little moment of glory - so we won't do that, we'll all acknowledge the applause together and then get off.  Ah, that's better. Now how does the music go again?

This afternoon I did the final proof-reading of my paper on 18th century basslines in Scots fiddle tunes. And now to accounts ...