Saturday 24 October 2009

At last a day off: I made it round the farmers market this morning in the pouring rain, and now the house is resounding to gales of laughter as both kids have discovered Douglas Adams' original Hitchhikers adventure game.

Last night's gig was quite riveting, I thought. Ten very different pieces, all with something to say, performed with amazing concentration and polish by McFalls and guests. And some excellent musical camaraderie over pizza beforehand too.

So thanks to composers Matt Seattle, Marie Fielding, Corrina Hewat, Lori Watson, Aidan O'Rourke, Fiona Rutherford, Innes Watson, Simon Thoumire (what was he doing in there?), Karen Marshalsay (and her bray harp) and Karen Tweed, soloists Angus Lyon and Shona Mooney, and everyone else who for various reasons came along and made me think 'bloody hell, there's a lot of talented people in the room', including Mairi Campbell, Dave Milligan, Sally Beamish, Carolyn Sparey, Sarah-Jane Summers, Donald Hay, Mary Macmaster and probably loads more that I can't remember at the moment. And well done to Simon T and Dave Francis for cooking up such a great project. 

For me it was a bit like going through all the adrenaline highs and lows of preparing for a gig, but without doing any actual playing, unless you count hitting a pane of glass with a hammer, my sole musical contribution. There was a crowd of composers sitting around me at the back, and you could sense the collective will being beamed down to the stage of 'come on, this is going to work' whenever an difficult bit was coming up. Dave dragged me down onto the stage at the end to join everyone else and look sheepish.

warming up

We also discovered a brilliant way of amplifying acoustic gigs, by putting a stereo pair of 414s on the stage, and feeding the signal (by mistake) at a lowish level to the PA speakers above the audience, so far into the house that it wouldn't feed back. It sounded very transparent and natural. In fact I didn't even realise it was on until about three pieces in.