Friday 14 September 2007

I'm quite enjoying being a non-performer for a bit. I was a happily entertained audient at the BBC on Tuesday night with the Fife Youth Jazz Orchestra, Martin Taylor, the Burt/MacDonald sextet including the marvellous Keith Tippett on piano, and many others. Sadly I was so tired that I left before Raymond MacDonald played his melodica. 

Today I went in to the RSAMD to get Peter to sign a company cheque (not payable to me though), and even with no students around it took me half an hour to get across the foyer, for the number of interesting and entertaining conversations to be had with various heads of department and other staff and visitors. Some would call it networking, but I'm not so mercenary.

I put the radio on in the kitchen today at lunchtime and heard Kathy Fuge and the rest of us in the middle of Bach's Ich habe genug. And I thought, 'yes, that's how it goes (mostly)', which was quite satisfying. From here for the next week you can hear it by going to the Radio Player and selecting Afternoon on 3 Friday.

Usually when I'm settled into non-performing mode, it's very hard for me to imagine myself as a practising musician again, but just occasionally I hear something that makes me want to get up and do it. Tonight it was this: The League of Gentlemen recorded in 1980.

I think it's something to do with Fripp's reluctance to involve any part of his body in his playing other than those which are necessary (while insisting that the League of Gentlemen was a dance band). So he could go from music of extreme violence to great intricacy with no break: an Alexander Technique student's dream I think. And a great noise, even if the band messes up the end of the song, and has to be rescued from a train wreck by RF actually standing up while playing to give a cue. The organist Barry Andrews once made Martyn Jaques a wardrobe, incidentally.