Monday 6 June 2006

Back at my desk after a weekend of sunshine. Saturday was a sunny day of joy in Edinburgh at the wedding of Ursula Leveaux and Adrian Sankey - lots of music (Karen Tweed and Peter Maxwell Davies had both written celebratory pieces) and lots of smiley people.

Many of them will be gathered together again before the week is out, after the unexpected death of Dave Brady (Bradley) a few days ago. Far too many great memories of Dave to recount here, whether of his powerful singing, wise watching over the Scottish Chamber Orchestra - officially he was the roadie but seemed to be much more than that - or his generosity with time and advice. A couple of years before he retired, I accompanied him singing Richard Thompson's song 'Strange Affair' to an almost empty City Hall in Glasgow as he finished setting the stage up for that evening's concert, one of the most moving vocal performances I've heard. One of my earliest encounters with him was a tour of the highlands in 1991 (or 92) where he said to me one day 'you know, David, for a keyboard player you're all right - most of them are fucking weirdos', which I took as a great compliment. A few days later, he brought the entire West End of Glasgow to a standstill by parking the huge SCO wagon in the middle of Byres Road on a Saturday afternoon to bring me my harpsichord back from the tour. I remember us looking out of my second floor window at the gridlock as far as the eye could see, and grinning. Harpsichords don't normally have that kind of effect. But anything that involved Dave always had an effect.

My desktop PC is on its last legs, grinding unpredictably to a halt from time to time. A shiny new one has just been delivered, but the frustrating task of configuring it can wait until the end of the week - there's far too much to be done in the meantime.