Thursday 18 October 2012

Well, I didn’t get the 3rd Mackintosh edit done, so I still have more jobs to do than there is time available, and will have for a couple of weeks yet.  But as of this week, the ‘bass culture in Scottish musical traditions’ research project is spluttering into life: expect a lot more news on this once all the engines are running. Amble dropped in on Saturday and after the essential sharing of cakes we had some fun with a laptop and a digital piano, and have made some plans to practise with some actual old pianos before getting Alasdair to join in singing on top.

This concert which took place in London last night tells a slightly depressing tale: the performers were all appearing for no fee, and the beneficiary of this benefit gig was the ensemble’s organisation itself. Doing a gig for free is in the hope of getting more is common practice of course, but for an established and extremely successful group with a 40-year history it’s a miserable precedent to set. To be fair, it was only the first gig of a rather impressive tour schedule, but even so, if you have to play your own benefit gigs at that level, what hope is there for everyone else?

Anyway, I’m probably only reacting in a jaundiced fashion to this as a result of an unexpectedly early refusal from a funding partner for a ConCal project next year. We still have the budget to make it happen in less extravagant form, so it’s not a disaster, but it’s disappointing nonetheless. It’s interesting that very few of the voices raised against Creative Scotland last week were from classical music, I suspect largely because orchestras in Scotland have their funding direct from the Scottish Government. What’s so special about orchestras that they’re above the rest of us? Incidentally, the reason that we have almost nothing to do with Creative Scotland is quite close to that articulated by Corinna in the article linked to above …

Still, I have been reading Chris Ware’s Building Stories and Alasdair Gray’s 1982 Janine, both of which smash through the reader’s expectations with virtuosity and great gentleness too. Hooray for good work, whoever funds it. I was relieved to hear Armando Iannucci standing up for the ‘make good programmes and they will come’ principle in broadcasting last month. If our arts organisations and artists were allowed to concentrate on making good work, all the other stuff that the politicians insist upon might just come too.