Sunday 10 June 2012

Momentum is gathering nicely with our Tobias Hume programme: we have a band, we have a very long repertoire list which I need to refine this week, and the logistics of the whole operation are starting to come together. I’ve also been trying to locate every scrap of useful writing about the composer, as he is such an elusive figure, but it has been repaying the effort. Stubborn gamba-playing seventeenth-century Scottish mercenaries with a weakening grip on reality are a bit thin on the ground in the historical record, from what I can make out.

My other reading at the moment is Keith Johnstone’s Impro, after a visit from Nick McIvor last weekend when he recommended its chapter on status as a commentary on what happens in classroom teaching.  I was in a music education establishment last week (playing the piano again, must try harder to give it up) and I picked up a couple of books that were lying on top of some student lockers. Book number one: Peters edition of Wolf songs, great. Book number two, this. Oh dear.

The Olympic torch was in Glasgow a day or two ago, and this was the only evidence I came across: these health-promoting banners tied to every available bit of railing on the route.