Sunday 15 October 2006

5.45am Greater Moncton airport
Uh. A fun concert last night, very useful preparation for this week's recording. Even if I did some of the rehearsal with earplugs in: the film crew were plotting the lights with an incredibly loud aluminium ladder which made hearing anything rather difficult and very tiring.

I think my favourite musical moment in the gig was DG's outrageous transition into Keep It Up from La Disputeuse. You'll get to hear it if it survives on the CD.

Most of us made our fair share of uh, unplanned excitements, but I think mine was the most ridiculous. My extended improvised intro to the encore of Bisogna Morire didn't seem quite right somehow, until a voice on my right (Suzie) gently pointed out 'it's in the minor, sweetie'. Oops. That's what comes of having hardly any of the notation in the right key. Still, I don't think anyone noticed. Much. But we all agreed that in an all-male band my error would have been pointed out with much less grace: "it"s MINOR, you stoopid ******! What the ... ?" or something similarly discreet.

12pm 
Manoir Harvard, NDG
Slept beautifully for a couple of hours in a supremely comfortable bed big enough for 4 in my attic room. I'm ready for a day off now.

My room phone

11.45pm
Tired again, but in a good way, after lots of cycling (on soft tyres) on a day out in Montréal with Marie Marceau and her spare bicycle. Once I'd dealt with my duty to the rest of the week by playing Hanon exercises on her big Yamaha piano (their poor neighbours, I thought: at home I warm up on a digital piano with the volume turned down), we had some tunes including a really nice Swedish waltz, before heading out for food, and the jardins botaniques: my first lesson in cycling in Montréal traffic. Laziness got the better of us on the way back, and we took the Métro: the first time I've ever wheeled a bike down an escalator.