Saturday 31 July 2010
St John’s, Newfoundland
Until a wee while ago I was the only person in the departures lounge at St John’s airport. Even Tim Horton’s was shut. Hooray for free wifi and a view past the tarmac out to the ocean (and the packet of oatcakes in my bag). But it’s odd to have an airport to yourself: it certainly won’t be the case in Heathrow tomorrow morning.
It’s been a really good week at Boxwood: as usual when lots of very interesting things are going on I’m far too busy to write about them here, so a few photos will have to do. I didn’t even have time to teach any baroque classes or go to dance classes this year, as I was frantically preparing the band material for the Gentle Shepherd performance last night, but I did have 4 piano students and a listening class, all of which were excellent fun. I even played piano in the session last night, and enjoyed it!
I was singing Bauldy’s song in the Gentle Shepherd (Chris and Nick were singing too), and after forgetting the words in rehearsal I had them taped to the cheek of the harpsichord as a safety precaution – Edmund was playing it while I got up to sing. In the second half I played piano in a couple of sets with James Kelly and Bill Coulter (and a few other guests) and it was slightly disconcerting to find a collection of piano players and their pals sitting on the floor directly in front of me with recording devices and video cameras at the ready. So, no pressure then. Even in the session later on, Melanie’s digital piano was festooned not just with a couple of flutes, but an iPad, an iPhone and another couple of other machines all set to ‘record’.
Some more random recollections from the week …
In Wednesday’s listening class, the quiet and unassuming Mike’s killer instinct came to the fore in a circle game where we were all trying to make the opposite of the sound made by the person to our right, very quickly. Mike was on my right and he just turned to me and said ‘arse’ which brought to the exercise to a swift end as I fell about helpless with laughter.
This is Melanie Ryland and me sitting in piano duet formation in the Wednesday night ceilidh. In the swimmy acoustic we could barely hear the tunes coming from the all-star group on the stage behind us, so we just made a sort of big Cape Breton-funk noise between us on the ageing piano, and laughed a great deal (thanks to Margaret Ryland for the photo).
The following day at Talent Night we followed the extremely cute kids’ choir by playing ‘A Good Start’ which on the face of it was quite a good idea, as Holden Norman, whose birth the tune celebrates, had just sung on stage. He was sitting right in front of me, and having explained to the assembled musicians that it was his tune, I then proceeded to forget the B part and balls it up completely. I apologised to Chris later, and he said ‘it made me feel a bit better, that’s the bit I always used to forget as well’.
My backup melodica arrived! It’s a bit sharp but so is the piano on the 3rd floor in Lunenburg Academy, so that turned out to be quite useful.
Perhaps it’s just as well I didn’t have time to take a baroque masterclass as Laurel Swinden had brought a Focking flute sonata
What else? I sold my entire stock of ‘Late Night Sessions’ CDs on the opening night! I had time to go round Mariette’s gallery and marvel at her photos: they're much more impressive for real than they are on the web. And I even fitted in going for a short walk with DG this morning before leaving for the airport: it’s very seldom that we get the chance to have a conversation that doesn’t have an urgent concert or recording deadline looming over it.
I've been eating rather well too.