Sunday 26 August 2012

You can hear our appearance on Friday’s Radio 3 In Tune here: we’re on at about 52’00, then again at 1h33’45 and 2h26’40.  Alison’s playing Alison Brown’s 1660s Meares viol in the first slot rather than her brand new lira d’amore.

We were playing in a tent completely devoid of acoustic: I could barely hear the virginals, and I was sitting right at them, so thanks to Hywel Jones in the truck for making it sound like music. Excuses to follow.  I managed to mess up the intro to The Birks of Aberfeldy  as we hadn’t rehearsed that bit: the call from Radio 3 asking us for extra music came just after we’d finished rehearsal on Wednesday.  In the final set of tunes, the extreme heat under the lights meant that my middle C stopped working, which when most of the tunes are based around a drone on C is quite a challenge, so I ducked out of the third time round the first tune Mack Beth without warning. Anyway, no-one seemed to notice and it was great fun to do, and what’s more Kate Molleson took us to a splendid pub afterwards.

As we headed from the green room towards the backstage area of the tent, we were greeted by this sign, a reminder of the old Dead Ringers ‘Radio 3. Quiet, isn’t it?’ joke.

We were back in Edinburgh to visit a different pub last night, to hear Ana Silvera in the company of Sara Mohr-Pietsch. Some plotting of a future project was done over drinks afterwards …