Sunday 22 January 2006

I'm pretty much preoccupied with next Saturday's concert, preparing some notation, and the general logistics or lack of them: it's certainly nice to be writing charts rather than parts for a change, sketching out the bare bones knowing that something more interesting will happen in the room. But I'm also dealing with unwelcome distractions like my second bout of conjunctivitis in two weeks (yuk), and very welcome distractions like Catherine Bott coming over for supper on Friday before yesterday's Early Music Show (yay). 

Yesterday Gary Cooper called to see how interested I would be in playing the Brahms Liebeslieder Walzer on a big 19th century style piano. 'Very' was my response, even though Brahms and I don't necessarily go together. It's not for musical reasons, rather that he had huge hands and I haven't, so playing his music can be a bit of a struggle just maintaining the stretches. I'll have a look at the score sometime soon and see if I can bear the specified amount of pain.

I had an email from Fiona Talkington today suggesting we might just fit into Thursday's Late Junction from Glasgow. We'll all be in town, so if we can actually think of something to play it sounds quite possible.

Last Thursday afternoon I found myself holding a microphone, surrounded by (amongst others) three BBC producers, Archie Fisher, and Sushil, while John Purser taught us all the ancient battle cry of the MacNeils 'Biulacreag' and we proceeded to shout it repeatedly at deafening volume like some sort of primal scream therapy, in the empty shell of the huge studio that until last week was the home of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. I'm not even going to start to explain why.