Wednesday 29 March 2006

Glasgow airport
What a busy week it's been. I think I averaged no more than 4 hours' sleep a night until last night, so I'm still in major sleep deficit. I can probably string a few sentences together here now though.

I have lots of nice memories from the John Passion experience with Mark Padmore: here are a few at random. First you might like to read The Herald's account of the performance itself: it's nice to have kept up our standard of getting 5 star reviews. Now, the random list:

~ We rehearsed the earlier version of the opening chorus with everyone reading from miniature scores because it wasn't printed in the parts. To make this possible, the singers sat on the floor beside the band to read from their music stands, and the effect of hearing 'Herr, unser Herrcher' sung very powerfully from all around the ensemble at floor level was quite something.

~ seeing James Eastaway (oboes) and Nicola Kingslake (cello) together in the band. When I moved back to Scotland in 1987 I pretty much stopped playing early music, as there was no-one to play it with. Instead I wrote music for theatre, and eventually television. Then one day in Glasgow University concert hall (where I was teaching this morning) Nicola introduced me to James and we formed a quartet with a short succession of violinists, including Lucy Russell; James was a medical student in Edinburgh at the time. Besides being a cellist of considerable imagination, Nicola is now a primary teacher, but has recently started playing again, so it was total joy to get her to go on first for the final curtain call on Monday night, taking the applause centre stage with her family in the audience, after she'd already spent a whole working day in front of her Primary 5 class. James's revival of 15 year old band in-jokes in rehearsal made me smile for a long time too.

~ Svend Brown at Perth Concert Hall very kindly laid on a meal for us afterwards: it was pretty satisfying to look round at 30-odd extremely happy looking people after a job well done. I wish I'd taken my camera, but I was in a grumpy mood when I left the house that day and I didn't.

~ Gary Cooper rehearsing in his socks as an act of keyboard solidarity

~ Richard Holloway talking to us about Simon Peter and Samuel Beckett in the final rehearsal

~ singing chorales together. In the first rehearsal we all sang chorales for nearly an hour and a half. 

~ Kathy Fuge's devastating singing of Zerfliesse, mein Herze. It was a tough exercise in professionalism to keep playing.

~ the rollercoaster ride that was 'Eilt' on the night - very fast indeed, but very exciting. Only a few bumpy rails here and there.

~ trying not to look smug (which would have been utterly inappropriate) during the final chorus of 'Ruht wohl' when i sneaked a look along the line of continuo players and thought what a fantastic bunch of musicians they were and. hang on, this is my band (for one night only).

~ similarly, looking round the group in the breaks and seeing lots of people who I really wanted to 1) hang out with, and 2) hear play. In reality though, I was completely anti-social until after the performance, spending all the breaks on my own, because I was so tired and generally feeling under stress. But then, music which costs us nothing is meaningless. And there's a very pleasant walk along the river just outside the hall.

~ Mark's first comment after we came off was 'Wasn't that a really cool curtain call?'

~ discovering that Rob Nairn (double bass) is another XTC fan. Yay.

~ Katherine presenting me with a Daniel Johnston T-shirt on the train on the way to Perth on Friday.

~ We changed the entire stage plan at least three times in the course of the rehearsals. During one of these removal sessions, Ursula Leveaux pointed out 'I need to see David breathe'. This is for perfectly valid musical reasons, but her later explanation 'knowing you're still alive makes me feel better' cheered me immensely when I was feeling half-dead.

~ (That's enough self-congratulation. Ed.)

Today has brought significant movement on next season's dates at Perth and elsewhere. It looks like we'll have a busier diary than usual.

Earlier today, Sushil gleefully handed me some copies of the new pink vinyl 7" release of Future Pilot AKA single 'Eyes of Love' which features all four of us on the AAA side 'Changes': I play glockenspiel and melodica, Katherine viola, Alison cello, and DG phoned in his fiddle solo to Sushil's answering machine from Halifax, NS. It looks wonderful and is available at Aufgeladen und bereit.

And this week also brought an email from Lisa Milne with a list of Janis Joplin songs for consideration for the Wigmore Hall in a few weeks' time. I think that might be fun.

My iPod is now rejoicing in the Höök ensemble, courtesy of Katherine. Wow. How all early music might have sounded now, if the folkies had kept hold of it after the 1960s, rather than the classical people.