Blog Archive
David McGuinness's blog, from 2000 to 2018: all opinions were his!
Sunday 3 June 2018 - What News side 2
(continued from Side 1) The Fair Flower of Northumberland This tune is hexatonic in G major with no 7th, and the arrangement is another one that moves a drone …
Saturday 2 June 2018 - What News side 1
Following on from the de-mystification parts 1 and 2, here's a song-by-song summary of some of what I did. The Dun Broon Bride Mixolydian in E (but we slowed t…
Friday 1 June 2018 - What News de-mystification part 2
(continued from Part 1) By this point, I had some interesting instruments to play, and I had the songs, but what was I going to play? I wanted the parts to be a…
Thursday 31 May 2018 - What News de-mystification part 1
In a spirit of de-mystification, here are some notes on how I came up with the piano parts for the What News album. Most of this may only be of interest to thos…
Thursday 1 March 2018
After a protracted gestation period, the album I started recording with Alasdair Roberts and Amble Skuse about four years ago, What News, will finally be releas…
Sunday 29 October 2017
I’m just back from a hugely enjoyable visit to Ardkinglas with Mhairi Lawson, where we had the great pleasure of staying in the house as guests, besides giving …
Saturday 29 July 2017
In the run-up to the SAY award a couple of months ago, I read something that struck me as rather shocking, but haven’t had time to think about it since, until I…
Tuesday 4 July 2017 - unique 25th anniversary limited edition print
To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the first ever Concerto Caledonia gig at the Edinburgh International Festival in 1992, Joe Davie has painted two portraits …
Monday 12 June 2017
I got a wee surprise checking out some of our back catalogue on iTunes the other day. It's been moved from one distributor to another, and unfortunately the new…
Thursday 17 November 2016
OK, so you’ve heard our Nathaniel Gow’s Dance Band album. You may even have bought a physical or digital copy to get the wonderfully informative boo…
Sunday 11 September 2016
The dance band is back in action again in Glasgow next weekend at Maryhill Community Centre, for a ceilidh with Maryhill Integration Network. Aaron’s also…
Monday 23 May 2016
For a group that tends to work on projects rather than playing loads of gigs, we’re about to have an almost unprecedented flurry of concert-giving, courte…
Monday 28 March 2016
I went to see hinterland last night in the ruin of St Peter’s Seminary near Cardross. Tramping through mud in the dark with a light-up stick, until the va…
Tuesday 5 January 2016
Quite a few stories in the press recently could be summed up (or preferably dismissed) as ‘people can be arseholes on twitter’. One of yesterday&rsq…
Sunday 25 October 2015
I’ve not been blogging for a while. Partly, I’ve been very busy, but also, I’ve found my own opinions less and less interesting. When twitter …
Monday 7 September 2015
Well, today is the 15th anniversary of this blog (Catherine Motuz reminded me, as she did 5 years ago), and it’s been quiet for a bit. This is largely bec…
Tuesday 4 August 2015
Sometimes the only way to get a substantial piece of work done is to physically remove yourself from all the potential distractions. So I’ve spent the las…
Saturday 18 July 2015
I’ve started editing the audio from our sessions last month. It’s not a job I could say that I enjoy: in one sense, it would be great just to hand t…
Wednesday 8 July 2015
This morning I left the house at 8am, walked 5 minutes to the station where I had a chat with John Butt across the platform, got four hours’ work done on …
Friday 3 July 2015
Well, that was fun. We now have our first dance band gig under our belt, and a record in the can. Well, more specifically it’s in a ProTools session and o…
Friday 5 June 2015
I’m about to become a working musician for a wee while, largely due to the wonderful Cottier Chamber Project which kicks off in Glasgow tonight. On Monday…
Thursday 7 May 2015
I’m slowly recovering from a really fun gig last night as part of West End Baroque. I now have even more admiration for Alexander Reinagle, and his introd…
Sunday 3 May 2015
Listening to the radio in the car this morning I heard the great version of Lord Macdonald’s Reel recorded in 1986 by Aly Bain & Lee Cremo, chosen by …
Monday 30 March 2015
I was at TradTalk on Saturday, where I’d been asked to kick the day off with a toned-down reprise of a deliberately combative talk I recently gave in Newc…
Wednesday 18 March 2015
The Edinburgh International Festival launched its programme this morning, and it looks rather good. I was curious to see what music would be included at this st…
Thursday 26 February 2015
Annandale Water Services I'm on my way back from a welcome day out in Cumbria. The sun shone, the hills looked great, the air was fresh etc. I had a morning m…
Friday 23 January 2015
I signed off the proofs for the Purcell CD booklet this morning, and as I write, Barnaby Brown is behind me at a table, editing video of Bill Taylor playing fou…
Thursday 1 January 2015
A Good New Year to everyone, unless of course you think UKIP are a good idea, in which case it’s probably better that some gentle form of crisis befalls y…
Monday 17 November 2014
It's been a busy weekend. I dropped back in to the sessions at Green Door for Matt Kivel's album and played a bit of piano, and while I was there Sam Smith also…
Friday 7 November 2014
It's not often I come out of a gig not wanting to hear any other music. But last night I was so entranced for an entire evening that I didn't want it to wear of…
Sunday 19 October 2014
I visited the Distil residential in New Lanark yesterday to talk about the Bass Culture project, but as should always happen with any artistic enterprise, it en…
Sunday 28 September 2014
Here’s the Stodart square piano in its current state. Do you think it’ll be ready for Friday’s gig in Kilmardinny House? We do have a backup p…
Friday 19 September 2014
It’s the morning after the referendum vote, and Scotland appears to have a democracy hangover. Let’s hope that the right-wing parties in Westminster…
Sunday 31 August 2014
I’ve just had the Estey reed organ out of the cellar to prepare it for active service with Adrianne Greenbaum in a couple of weeks. I’ll be playing …
Friday 8 August 2014
It’s nice to be revisiting our Purcell disc after such a long time away from it – if I say so myself it’s sounding rather good. It’s so …
Saturday 2 August 2014
I’m not often grateful for a day of torrential rain, but today it meant that I could get on with a job which is at least a year overdue, and make some ser…
Monday 21 July 2014
You may have thought that Robert Mackintosh was an obscure Perthshire/Edinburgh violinist from the 1780s whose several attempts at mainstream success were doome…
Wednesday 25 June 2014
Well, the iPad did its work a treat on Sunday, and I could enjoy basically being at a huge party for Shirley Collins: photos here and here. The Belles of London…
Monday 9 June 2014
Here are my colleagues rehearsing for last night’s Cottier Chamber gig to launch the Tobias Hume album. Our wee band version (as opposed to the big band v…
Friday 2 May 2014
You really want one of these. It's on iTunes and youtube; physical copies which include both of Joe Davie's Hume paintings are available direct from us. I'll b…
Monday 24 March 2014
Our Tobias Hume album is now scheduled for release by Delphian in May. Here's a preview. {youtube}WzW2XNUrK3U{/youtube} And while you're on YouTube, check out o…
Sunday 16 March 2014
Someone asked me after yesterday’s gig if I get nervous beforehand. Yes, I suppose so, but not immediately before the concert: it’s more spread out …
Tuesday 11 March 2014
OK, I’m finally going to join the 21st century, and at this Saturday afternoon’s gig at Ardkinglas I’m going to go paperless, and just have an…
Sunday 23 February 2014
A very strange thing happened last night: I went to an orchestral gig and really enjoyed it. Admittedly the presence of Fred Frith on the bill meant that my enj…
Thursday 6 February 2014
This week I have learned not to be quite so critical of talking heads on TV music programmes who talk rubbish (no names), as I had the experience of finding out…
Wednesday 22 January 2014
Preparation is a wonderful thing. I went along to Olivia’s Celtic Connections gig last night, and mentioned to Helen as I was leaving the house that last …
Wednesday 8 January 2014
It’s not often I can sit in front of a screen for long without getting bored and wanting to do something: I’ve pretty much given up on watching movi…
Sunday 5 January 2014
A Good New Year to everyone. And yes, with a certain referendum coming up, it has felt a bit different from usual. This morning’s reading on the subject i…
Tuesday 31 December 2013
As the year draws to a close, I’ve finally had time to start listening to the Purcell’s Revenge session tapes from April, which are very entertainin…
Monday 2 December 2013
Thanks to Karen Marshalsay, this morning I managed to read some of the Robert ap Huw MS for the first time. I hadn’t realised he played the harp at the co…
Sunday 1 December 2013
Since Calum sent me it yesterday I’ve been checking the final version of our Hume album, which is still great fun to listen to even now - a good sign. It&…
Tuesday 29 October 2013
This morning I was up in Glasgow University Library Special Collections for a bit, looking at Abraham MacIntosh’s 1796 book of tunes with its basses &lsqu…
Thursday 17 October 2013
Drumelzier Last night I was at a very cheering gig where West End Baroque were playing Purcell and some 18th-century Scottish music in a room above a pub. If yo…
Saturday 21 September 2013
I’m just back from another quick trip to London to visit the RMA conference. All week I’ve had one of those colds where you never know what your sym…
Sunday 15 September 2013
on the train north from Euston Much to my relief I’ve got a train seat with a power socket this morning. If Maslow’s hierarchy of needs now includes…
Sunday 8 September 2013
My melodica made it out of the case for the first time in a while to rehearse for this Friday’s gig with Alasdair Roberts and Olivia Chaney. In amongst th…
Sunday 18 August 2013
I’m in the thick of editing our Tobias Hume sessions from exactly a year ago. It always takes longer than I think it’s going to, but then everything…
Saturday 3 August 2013
It’s the last ever Skins on E4 on Monday. In the meantime, here’s my mix of the music from Skins Pure, which I put together while sitting out on som…
Monday 22 July 2013
Here’s Gabrielle Aplin’s song for Skins, and here specially for all of us music geeks are the credits: Gabrielle Aplin – vocal, backing vocals…
Monday 15 July 2013
I’m taking a break from my strict regime of sitting on rocks looking at the sea and the hills, and occasionally having a swim or a bike ride (heard a corn…
Monday 8 July 2013
Bruichladdich I might have been a bit tired when I heard The Four Blazers’ Peanut Butter on WFMU on Saturday, but it struck me as quite brilliant: click h…
Tuesday 2 July 2013
I’ve been spending quite a bit of time in the civilised surroundings of the Special Collections reading room at the National Library of Scotland, as Karen…
Sunday 9 June 2013
Hooray for local concerts: on Tuesday we all walked from our assorted homes to rehearsal for probably the first time ever. On Tuesday Alison played three viols …
Sunday 2 June 2013
It was my turn to be on the Early Music Show this week: a repeat from three years ago, but it does feature Bill Taylor and Barnaby Brown on harp and pipes. Also…
Sunday 12 May 2013
If you have a spare ear over the next week, have a listen to yesterday’s Early Music Show (the shorter podcast version should be available outside the UK)…
Tuesday 7 May 2013
Our Mackintosh album has been getting some nice reviews: there’s this one, and this one, and this feature as well.
Monday 6 May 2013
"Hiding. Yeah, I’ve been hiding" (Peter Blegvad, 'Chicken'). Not really. But one consequence of doing too many interesting things is that there is no time…
Wednesday 20 March 2013
What a busy couple of weeks it’s been. We have a new album out at last: I don’t know why it hasn’t appeared on iTunes yet but it does appear t…
Sunday 3 March 2013
The Mackintosh album hits iTunes and everywhere else next Monday, but if you can’t quite wait till then, you can buy it here and we’ll get it to you…
Wednesday 27 February 2013
I’ve been listening to a lot of Kevin Ayers records for the last week or so: it’s been strange hearing him discussed on the radio and in the mainstr…
Tuesday 19 February 2013
I’ve got a day with no appointments in it today to catch up on a huge backlog of unanswered emails – sorry if yours is among them. On Sunday I was i…
Friday 8 February 2013
Today was unexpectedly eventful. Aaron McGregor’s been researching repertoire for our Purcell’s Revenge in Aldeburgh, and looking at late 17th centu…
Saturday 26 January 2013
Preparations for our Easter extravaganza at Aldeburgh are now well underway. Repertoire, logistics, money, instruments, and lots of other things will gradually …
Thursday 10 January 2013
On Saturday’s Music Matters on Radio 3 you can hear me and Tom Walker in some Burns songs, recorded on Tuesday with the 1793 Broadwood piano in the 1812 G…
Saturday 5 January 2013
A Good New Year to you. This humble blog has been going in fits and starts since 2000 but I couldn’t let the new year go past without noting that a far mo…
Sunday 23 December 2012
Plenty of column inches have been filled in the last week or so (and some more today) over Alasdair Gray’s piece on “Settlers and Colonists”. …
Friday 21 December 2012
On Wednesday night Alasdair and I were doing our ballads thing in front of a packed and extremely attentive audience at the Glad Café, which was hard wor…
Sunday 16 December 2012
I’ve been doing funding applications again. Some make more sense than others, but the public ones currently make a big thing of ‘evaluation’. …
Saturday 8 December 2012
Buy physical copies of our albums from our website here and we’ll send you one of each of our new badges. They are a bit good.
Saturday 1 December 2012
List pieces in the papers can be lazy, but something leapt out at me from this one in the Guardian about favourite pieces of 20th-century music: Nico Muhly&rsqu…
Tuesday 27 November 2012
I got to be a musician briefly this evening. Yesterday I sat down to play the piano and had decidedly fat fingers so I’ve been on a strict regime of Hanon…
Wednesday 21 November 2012
Our bass culture blog is up and running here. On Monday I dropped in on Red Note's Noisy Nights in the City Hall bar, where Amble was getting a piece played. It…
Wednesday 14 November 2012
So, our Mackintosh album is mastered, the booklet notes are written and delivered (on time!), and now I can look forward to watching it start to look like an al…
Sunday 28 October 2012
There have been lots of tributes (but not nearly enough) to the great Michael Marra this week: his writing, his voice, and well … just him really. I&rsqu…
Sunday 21 October 2012
I moved my edit suite back out in the autumnal colours of the garden to make the most of the sunshine today. This made the work much more pleasant, but at one p…
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. B…
Sunday 30 September 2012
The Mackintosh album is gradually taking shape. It’s strange to go back to recordings where we had a bit of a ‘the next take will be the best one&rs…
Sunday 16 September 2012
Went to hear Carthy & Swarbrick last night in Milngavie. When Swarb’s playing comes into focus it sparkles in its invention and sheer nerve even now, …
Friday 7 September 2012
My mind is reeling a bit from a damburst of ideas yesterday. I’ve been in admin mode this week, with several funding applications to write (that’s o…
Friday 31 August 2012
Over lunch with Barnaby yesterday, he mentioned an ongoing conversation he’s been having with Andrew Lawrence-King on our assumptions about rhythmic freed…
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&…
Wednesday 22 August 2012
Tom, Alison and I revisited Hume briefly this afternoon in preparation for our live appearance on Radio 3’s In Tune this Friday – we’ll be on …
Friday 17 August 2012
There's lots to report on this week in due course, but in the meantime here's a sneak preview of some of yesterday's recording session at Crichton: Tobias Hume'…
Thursday 9 August 2012
Well, summer came back to Glasgow eventually. On Tuesday Alison, Brianna and I had a sunny Hume planning meeting in the excellent new Botanics café &ndas…
Sunday 5 August 2012
Some activities are incompatible with multi-tasking, for me anyway. Rehearsal is one: everyone’s in the room to concentrate on making music, so any other …
Sunday 29 July 2012
What's this? And where do all those strings go?
Sunday 8 July 2012
On Thursday Alasdair and I were back in the university concert hall with more ballads. I took the dulcitone with me this time, so our version of Hind Horn, base…
Thursday 5 July 2012
I have lots of writing to do, so it was excellent light relief the other night to watch a few episodes of Revolver from 1978, with Peter Cook goading the audien…
Thursday 28 June 2012
On Monday I gave some attention to the rhyme schemes in Hume’s songs, which require a bit of thought as to how to make them convincing. For example, &lsqu…
Wednesday 20 June 2012
It’s strange to go to bed when it’s still light outside, at 11pm. Now that last week’s rain is finally over, I tried setting up my scanner wit…
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 logis…
Wednesday 23 May 2012
It’s been great having Suzie visit town on the final leg of her world tour: yesterday included a bike ride along the river, and a lot of sitting around in…
Friday 18 May 2012
I must have mentioned before my ever-growing dislike of Steinway pianos, not necessarily for the sound they make, but for the homogenising effect they have on c…
Thursday 14 June 2012
I spent this afternoon over at Alison’s, where with the help of a viol, a pile of books and a computer (and a lot of preparation beforehand) we distilled …
Sunday 13 May 2012
I’ve spent most of today doing some background reading for our forthcoming Tobias Hume project, in the hope that once I’ve got all the homework done…
Friday 4 May 2012
on the last train home from Stirling I’ve been at this year’s Distil showcase, which is always interesting. Special mention from tonight’s con…
Monday 30 April 2012
Interesting news today, with the High Court ruling that ISPs must block The Pirate Bay site, and the inevitable kneejerk shock reaction about the goverment taki…
Saturday 21 April 2012
I was very sad to hear of the death of clarinettist and conductor Alan Hacker on Monday. Alan was one of my teachers at York in the 1980s, and it’s not to…
Saturday 14 April 2012
I’m just back from holiday, and as recommended by Graham Linehan, I’ve just been watching this old lecture from John Cleese on creativity. It gets p…
Sunday 25 March 2012
atter. I think this was my first proper weekend off this year, and I really needed it after organising two gigs in the past week. The second one was the memori…
Saturday 10 March 2012
In preparation for the Kenneth Elliott memorial concert in a couple of weeks I’ve been PDF’ing parts again, which is a necessary but frustrating tas…
Saturday 3 March 2012
on the train back to Glasgow – worth the extra £15 to sit in first classAbout a week ago I was rehearsing in Alasdair Roberts’s kitchen with Stevie Jones and Ma…
Friday 24 February 2012
Sadly, our Ardkinglas concert next Friday has been postponed, so if you want to hear me wrestling with a fortepiano while Kathy sings Haydn and Schetky, you&rsq…
Monday 20 February 2012
I’m delighted that Charlie Gore’s mammoth database of fiddle tunes in old sources, the Scottish Fiddle Music Index, has made into online form here. …
Sunday 19 February 2012
I’ve managed to find time this week to reacquaint myself with Haydn songs for the upcoming concerts with Kathy Fuge. Joy. Matthew Gelbart has just publish…
Wednesday 8 February 2012
My bike now has now attained celebrity status with its own webpage. It’s feeling a bit sorry for itself at the moment, as one of the after-effects of my c…
Monday 6 February 2012
I nipped into town to hear Fiona Rutherford’s New Voices commission for Celtic Connections yesterday: some of it was very beautiful and some of it was ver…
Saturday 4 February 2012
I couldn’t be a writer. I finally sent off a book review last weekend a month after deadline, and the relief of not having its overdue-ness hanging over m…
Monday 23 January 2012
I’ve just been watching Skins go out on E4 – you can hear my Vivaldi arrangement for tuned and untuned percussion here. And you can also see the gre…
Saturday 14 January 2012
I have a stinking cold so have spent most of today immobile on the sofa or in the bath, trying to chase illness away with steam, daal, or industrial quantities …
Friday 6 January 2012
Just one thing - buy Jim's new album. Somewhere on someone's hard drive (Steve?) is a recording of Jim singing his epic Lord Douglas in Snape Maltings with us b…
Thursday 5 January 2012
It’s a New Year and I’m spending some time organising concerts again at last. Not that I love the organising particularly (I certainly don’t) …
Sunday 18 December 2011
It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything here, although my twitter feed will bear witness to the fact that I haven’t disappeared completel…
Wednesday 23 November 2011
Discussions are now underway in varying degrees of detail for interesting new ConCal projects in summer 2012 and early 2013, and a possible short tour for an ol…
Wednesday 16 November 2011
Today I managed to get just a little bit of research done on a ConCal programme for next year: the problem with having space in my diary to do something like th…
Sunday 13 November 2011
When a Victorian school is no longer a school ... (taken on the way to X-ray on Friday)
Friday 11 November 2011
It’s Friday night, I have one of these and am listening to this. Yesterday was always going to be busy - a full day’s work while builders were repla…
Saturday 29 October 2011
The male part of our family has been out on a marathon cycle ride today, that somehow included picking up a Chinese carry out and going to see the new TinTin mo…
Friday 28 October 2011
I dropped into the CCPR at lunchtime to hear Will Page, Chief Economist at the PRS talk about the UK (and Scottish) music industry which was riveting, if not al…
Saturday 22 October 2011
Kelvindale station, opened in 2005, is a bit strange. I’m really glad it’s there even though I seldom have occasion to use it: Hyndland is marginall…
Thursday 13 October 2011
There’s a very enthusiastic review of Revenge in November’s fRoots magazine, and also on their website here (if you’re reading this several mo…
Tuesday 8 November 2011
I had an instructive encounter with an old Italian instrument on Friday, when at St Cecilia’s Hall I tried to play some Scarlatti on the 1574 Trasuntinis …
Thursday 6 October 2011
It’s been a busy week for obituaries, what with Bert Jansch (I was just listening to Bert and John just the other day) and Steve Jobs: I’ve temporar…
Sunday 2 October 2011
Here’s a scene from this morning’s percussion recording extravaganza, for the forthcoming series of Skins. Lots of fun was had, and thanks to Pam D…
Tuesday 27 September 2011
I’m in a better frame of mind again, after working through a rotten cold when the sensible thing to do would have been to go to bed and wait to get better…
Monday 19 September 2011
There were lots of interesting people at Kenneth Elliott’s funeral this morning, to give him a fond send-off. I sat next to John Kitchen, who had to canc…
Friday 16 September 2011
I now rely on this brilliant piece of technology to get me about the city. If you’re interested, I’ve recently finished reading this wonderful col…
Tuesday 13 September 2011
As a ‘music creator’ you’d think I’d be happy about the extension of copyright term to 70 years, but it really looks like a cynical move…
Friday 9 September 2011
Sad news this morning of the passing of Kenneth Elliott, whose work on the history of Scottish music was vast in scope, and still unsurpassed in rigour and dept…
Tuesday 6 September 2011
When I was still a hairy undergraduate in 1986 (see photo from a few weeks ago) the violinist Fran Turner got me a gig playing with some baroque chamber music p…
Saturday 3 September 2011
I started listening again to last June’s Mackintosh session tapes while cutting the grass this afternoon: it’s much easier to get an idea of what&rs…
Friday 2 September 2011
I was interested to hear reports of the Israel Philharmonic’s Prom being disrupted last night in the Albert Hall: different accounts of it are here and he…
Wednesday 31 August 2011
I’m in bureaucracy land this week, and reconfiguring computers so that I can eventually get on with some work. Thank you in particular to ProTools for rem…
Saturday 27 August 2011
In the course of today’s clearing up I found a BBC Bach recording that we made in Perth in 2005, with Iestyn Davies, James Eastaway, and one John Butt gue…
Tuesday 23 August 2011
I’m just back from a morning-after-gig hill walk with Catherine Motuz, now visiting from Montreal rather than visiting from Basel. Halfway down the hill I…
Monday 22 August 2011
EdinburghPlaying a 30’ set at 2.30 in the afternoon is quite strange: you’re just beginning to find your way and get a feel for the audience and the…
Friday 19 August 2011
My work rate shot up this week when I abandoned my desk and its numerous distractions, and took my aging Dell laptop out to the hammock in the garden, where the…
Monday 15 August 2011
I’ve had the archiving bug for the last week or so, with all my spare time spent sifting through boxes of scores, cassettes, photos, programmes, reviews, …
Thursday 11 August 2011
The ever-knowledgeable and erudite Sandy Semeonoff has just been here to record an interview on my sofa for Celtic Music Radio, where Revenge will be Album of t…
Wednesday 10 August 2011
I’m making a rare stage appearance tonight with the ScottishPower pipe band at Piping Live, in a performance of Martyn Bennett’s Mackay’s Memo…
Wednesday 3 August 2011
There’s an evocative recollection of our appearances at Snape here – and lots of other intriguing pieces too: with a few random clicks I found a per…
Tuesday 2 August 2011
Scottish cultural icon attends his first Concerto Caledonia gig. from the Sunday Post, 1st September 1946 Revenge got a nice review in the Times a few weeks a…
Thursday 28 July 2011
I’m back home and re-adjusting after three action-packed days in Lewes, most of which were spent with Shirley Collins and Katy Cooper in Shirley’s b…
Monday 25 July 2011
Glasgow airportRevenge of the Folksingers is now available on iTunes. Get there now! I got up at 4.25 this morning and got here, to find our one-hour flight del…
Friday 22 July 2011
from Private Eye a couple of weeks ago ...
Thursday 21 July 2011
Went into town with Allan Wright last night to hear Jozef van Wissen at Nice n Sleazy’s. If you’re going to play an archlute gig in a bar, then Joze…
Wednesday 20 July 2011
I started my working day today with a tape measure, working out exactly what size of flightcase foam is required to keep the dulcitone snug now that it's back i…
Thursday 14 July 2011
BruichladdichI’ve been looking at Britten’s version of The Beggar’s Opera, and how he very carefully ‘ramps’ between dialogue and …
Saturday 9 July 2011
If you were going to start an early music magazine, would you really call it The Messiah? I hope we get reviewed sometime just to be able to cite them …&…
Wednesday 6 July 2011
We’ve dug out the CD that I compiled over a decade ago to listen to in the car with the kids: on it is what I considered an appropriate young person&rsquo…
Monday 4 July 2011
BruichladdichI’ve been reading Bill Bruford’s autobiography, which is as well-wrought and considered an account of being a serious performing musici…
Wednesday 29 June 2011
back at the eye hospital again, slightly bleary after being kept awake most of Monday night by a party next door … On Monday I was over at Alison’s…
Friday 24 June 2011
north of York, on train 3 of 4 home from AldeburghAs usual I’ve been too busy to write anything here while lots of interesting things have been going on, …
Wednesday 15 June 2011
I could never be a writer. The three emails I had to write on Monday morning finally made it to my outbox at 7.15pm tonight. I’ve got lots of very useful …
Tuesday 14 June 2011
Lots of interesting deliveries today, even before the new album arrives. From Matt Seattle, his new edition of the William Dixon pipe MS, now available here, an…
Sunday 12 June 2011
Port of Menteith, next door to the tower with the carillonRe-reading Stuart Sutherland’s classic Irrationality, I’m reminded of one of the reasons f…
Saturday 11 June 2011
In the last week or two I’ve spotted some really nice vintage 70s 3-speed bikes around the west end, and eyed them jealously. Here in Glasgow we’re …
Friday 10 June 2011
By the time I made it to my 11am meeting this morning, I’d cycled along the river, gone to the dentist, had a swim, sat in the steam bath, had a cold plun…
Monday 6 June 2011
Mr Brooker on Spotify today: as I also grew up having to pay for records, I see Spotify’s fiver a month as a fantastic bargain. And I worked in the BBC f…
Sunday 5 June 2011
Just back from the West End Festival parade: no dodgems this year, sadly. SambaYaBamba (rear view)
Saturday 4 June 2011
It’s gearing up for festival season here in Glasgow: generators are appearing all over Kelvingrove Park in readiness for all the music stages that will po…
Sunday 29 May 2011
The backlog of unanswered mail, undone tasks, and general stuff has reached a critical level here, so I’ve had to spend some of this week backing out of p…
Monday 23 May 2011
When I spoke to DG this morning he'd just had a bath in which he had been contemplating quantum physics. Which has nothing to do with it having been a bit windy…
Sunday 22 May 2011
Just back from a very useful visit to the eye hospital. For once it wasn’t sunny when I left (torrential rain), but as they hadn’t dilated my pupils…
Wednesday 18 May 2011
Ah. I have a red eye again, a big bulging one. So it’s back to the steroids and one artificially-dilated pupil for good measure. I keep bumping into thing…
Sunday 15 May 2011
back again We got back from Ardkinglas yesterday morning after the first AMcG/DMcG duo concert for a couple of years. Before making it to Glasgow we had a quick…
Friday 13 May 2011
I slept in this morning before eventually getting up to do some harpsichord practice for tonight, through the fog of exhaustion from the week so far. Whether or…
Thursday 12 May 2011
My favourite moment from last night’s concert in the Signet Library to the extremely well-informed audience from NADFAS was probably when the stage lights…
Tuesday 3 May 2011
Merchandise! test product
Sunday 1 May 2011
I'm taking it easy today after spending yesterday engaging with redundant technology of a different sort from usual, negotiating thirteen 19th-century locks on …
Saturday 23 April 2011
You can hear me plunking away on my dulcitone behind Mairi Morrison on track 14 of this compilation of indie Glasgow kind of stuff in aid of the relief effort i…
Thursday 21 April 2011
It's been a while since I checked in here, for the rather uninteresting reason that I've been very busy with micro-management rather than exciting photogenic la…
Wednesday 30 March 2011
As I type I'm downloading what we hope is the final version of the album master: I've had a few days off from listening to it so I'm looking forward to hearing …
Thursday 24 March 2011
5.45pm yesterday: Why are two cellists in concert dress carrying a virginal along the pavement, just across the road from the scene of Tuesday's police operatio…
Tuesday 22 March 2011
Lots of organising to be done today after last night's board meeting and AGM, where we enjoyed the hospitality (and amazing tortilla soup) of our chair Sandy Ma…
Wednesday 16 March 2011
After taking a break from it for a few days, I listened to most of the new album today while walking from place to place in the sun. It's still all holding my a…
Friday 11 March 2011
I was at a hugely enjoyable concert last night with John Tilbury, Rhodri Davies and Michael Duch playing a programme of things by and inspired by Cage. Particu…
Saturday 5 March 2011
After some final frantic editing of final mixes this week, I headed over to Delphian Records HQ yesterday for mastering. Unfortunately when I left the house in …
Saturday 26 February 2011
I've been meaning to post a new tune from our archive on our soundcloud pages every month - this month I've just made it in time. It's here too ... {Soundcloud}…
Tuesday 25 January 2011
I've been burning the midnight oil two nights in a row: last night on a speculative funding application for what will be a very interesting project if it comes …
Thursday 24 February 2011
My depression was lifted considerably at lunchtime today by a performance of John Cage's One by Simon Smith. The determined non-intention of the piece was exqui…
Sunday 20 February 2011
After lunch in the Rio Cafe yesterday, we dropped in on the folks next door at the Cottonrake bakery, where master patissier Stefan has decided to name a pie af…
Sunday 13 February 2011
Studio 1, University of Glasgow I’m sitting with my feet up watching Steve Portnoi working very hard on the Revenge mixes, which are sounding great. Our b…
Thursday 3 February 2011
I really like turning up to play overdubs on someone else's record. It's a very different discipline from being in the room with the musicians, where (hopefully…
Saturday 29 January 2011
Remarkable musical experience of the week was watching Barnaby having a musical conversation with Prakriti Dutta, he in canntaireachd and she in Sargam syllable…
Saturday 22 January 2011
Remember in September I took a picture of an old bakery sign? Well, this morning the shop beneath it reopened as a bakery, and I was its first ever customer, na…
Friday 21 January 2011
It's Friday night and despite the fact that I have at least another day's work to do before the week is over, I am celebrating in the following ways: 1) a trip …
Monday 17 January 2011
Well, Skins opens in the US on MTV tonight: it's quite amusing to have played a tiny part in the 'most dangerous show ever'. Bike weather again at last, Knog li…
Saturday 15 January 2011
A.L. Kennedy's FAQ page is full of wisdom. My study floor has less piles of paper on it than it did this morning. And Thunderbird is a rather good IMAP email cl…
Friday 14 January 2011
Ugh, I hit the wall with a vengeance today after a very busy week. I have to be quite ill for the prospect of daytime TV to be a welcome one, but I spent a coup…
Friday 7 January 2011
Distracted by the John Byrne covers for various Gerry Rafferty and Stealers Wheel albums now lying around the room (Can I Have My Money Back is a better album t…
Thursday 6 January 2011
Can you guess what this is? It's an inside view of a Broadwood grand piano from 1844, albeit a rather special one that's just been gifted to the University of…
Saturday 1 January 2011
A Good New Year to you ... paper lanterns were the latest addition to the Glasgow skyline just after midnight. When not engaged in traditional New Year activite…
Thursday 30 December 2010
Ah, listening to session tapes has rarely been so pleasurable. But I've been carrying them around on my phone and working in some strange places: yesterday's ve…
Tuesday 21 December 2010
Today I took the first steps towards getting the Revenge of the Folksingers CD out by June. Hmm, there's quite a lot to get done before then. Today'…
Monday 20 December 2010
This is what the railings next to the house looked like earlier today: it's rarely got above freezing for four weeks now. It looks like a 'Return of the Revenge…
Thursday 9 December 2010
Home again at last: it took two days to get back from Suffolk, with a stop off in Carlisle so that we could drive the M74 in the daylight. The road surface was …
Sunday 28 November 2010
Watching the snow fall heavily outside. Given the weather forecast, I wonder whether tomorrow really was the best choice of day to make an 8 hour drive. And I …
Wednesday 24 November 2010
I'm just back home from a session on cultural policy with Simon Frith and Martin Cloonan (a research colloquium, to give it its Sunday name): how should the sta…
Sunday 21 November 2010
<80s nostalgia> Once I was getting up this morning I finally put an end to nearly 30 years of waiting and listened to Dave Stewart & Barbara Gaskin's …
Saturday 20 November 2010
Home again and listening to Bartók for some reason, having successfully negotiated a couple of gigs, getting up in front of people again and playing far …
Saturday 13 November 2010
No day off this weekend, oh well. I'm a bit tired after some very intensive listening at the Distil Showcase in Stirling last night, but it was great to be in a…
Tuesday 9 November 2010
Most mornings when I start work I either write a list, or pick up one I've already written, that gives a realistic estimate of what I expect to achieve in the c…
Tuesday 2 November 2010
It's November and the fieldfares have returned. A cheery picture of Shirley was peeking out of the Grauniad today - and this is newly available from Alasdair, a…
Sunday 31 October 2010
You get a better-educated class of guisers round our way. Susie has just gone out to go round the houses in her costume made of crocheted plastic bags, along wi…
Wednesday 27 October 2010
I find it remarkably easy to be disinterested in classical music. Not the music in and of itself, but present-day classical music culture, and hence what the mu…
Tuesday 26 October 2010
At long last today I've made some serious headway in the organisation of our forthcoming concerts, whew. And over the last day or two I've been remembering how …
Sunday 24 October 2010
More Apple gripes: the presentation I painstakingly put together this week complete with embedded video won't play on Macs, because PowerPoint 2010 isn't out fo…
Monday 18 October 2010
Got a copy of Wavelab Elements in the mail today, which I was planning to use only for very basic editing and mastering tasks, but I think it might also be up t…
Sunday 17 October 2010
Somehow this makes the work of the White Stripes look rather trivial and pathetic. It's Afrirampo, in case you haven't figured out the Japanese, and they make a…
Friday 15 October 2010
OK, I know I used to work there and I can tell you all the worst things about it too, BUT even so ... There. Now if you're British and that doesn't get to yo…
Tuesday 12 October 2010
My admin day on Sunday easily became two very long days. So what a relief to actually engage with some music today, when Pieter Wispelwey dropped in to play in …
Sunday 10 October 2010
A long-overdue day at my desk today catching up on all the email I haven't answered, contracts I haven't signed, and general undone stuff. There's quite a lot o…
Friday 8 October 2010
I was reminded today of why I’ve managed to gradually move my life away from the classical music world. The classical recording industry has changed hugel…
Tuesday 5 October 2010
At lunchtime today I stopped off on my bike at our local bookshop - I was just going to place an order and go away again, but I got talking to David Kinnear abo…
Sunday 3 October 2010
Congratulations to Linn for their Gramophone Label of the Year award on Friday. They're now in generous mood, so you can buy our 3 Linn albums for the price of …
Saturday 2 October 2010
Exhausted from wage-slavery (of the least toxic kind). Hooray for the weekend company of WFMU and also for this from I Fedeli sent by Catherine Motuz, which fea…
Monday 27 September 2010
Forgot to post this picture taken in Hyndland St by the market on Saturday. As you can see, the signwriter didn't really plan ahead and stre-t-c-h-e-d out the t…
Sunday 26 September 2010
A busy day today, but I did get most of my work done lying in the hammock in a sunny garden so that’s OK. This morning I pretended I was on holiday by coo…
Wednesday 22 September 2010
It's difficult to insure a dulcitone when the specialist musical instrument insurance company hasn't heard of it. So now it's officially a celeste.
Monday 20 September 2010
Day 1 with students. I also delivered lots of clothes to the aforementioned seamstress, and did some post-purchase dissonance management. 'Post-purchase dissona…
Sunday 19 September 2010
Distilling lots of related but slightly differing documents down into something comprehensible is a long and tiresome process. But at least I'm not trying to do…
Saturday 18 September 2010
I spent this morning shopping for clothes in an attempt to increase my level of general sartorial deportment to at least one degree above scruff-bag. I did quit…
Thursday 16 September 2010
Yesterday I finally snapped, and after seven weeks of trying to be comfortable using an iMac, I still completely failed to do simple tasks in Excel without fla…
Tuesday 14 September 2010
Thanks to the people at Gear bikes for recommending one of these to attach to the saddle of my Dahon after one of my three rear lights died the other day. They …
Sunday 12 September 2010
This from the very tall Mr Shrigley - sign the petition please. I particularly enjoyed the cow watching Wayne Rooney fall over. I was back at the eye hospital t…
Friday 10 September 2010
Yesterday morning I found myself singing in a 30-piece girls' choir (actually singing in it twice, as we doubled up 15 singers - no hang on, it must be 16 inclu…
Wednesday 8 September 2010
Catherine came over yesterday - the plan had been to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the first entry in this diary/blog/whatever by going for a walk, but the …
Monday 6 September 2010
I spent this morning emailing and thinking about ways to work with Tallis & Byrd's Cantiones Sacrae of 1575. Then I loaded my bike up and headed for the uni…
Sunday 5 September 2010
I've just re-read James Sturm's Market Day, which is very beautiful indeed. But I've been putting off reading it again for a while, as its tale of a life of hig…
Friday 3 September 2010
I'm just back from a very cheering visit to GAMTA to hear them sing, which was great and might be something to do with this (OK, it is). Other than that, the la…
Tuesday 31 August 2010
I'm sitting at my desk at 11pm with a celebratory glass of Guinness having got to the end of draft 1 of an arrangement. Some people (myself included) can only g…
Sunday 29 August 2010
I haven't achieved a great deal this weekend other than getting my brain around its second new operating system of the month. Having got to grips with OS X on t…
Friday 27 August 2010
There are few things more irritating than parents who bang on about their offspring's achievements, but ...
Wednesday 25 August 2010
I might have a bit of arranging and production work to do in the next week or two, which necessitates preparation by listening to Stevie Wonder, Barbra Streisan…
Tuesday 24 August 2010
Our Revenge of the Folksingers show is now here. We also have a likely possible release date for our Robert Mackintosh CD, in May 2011. Speaking of CDs, there …
Sunday 22 August 2010
A very rare outing to the cinema last night to see The Illusionist (or L'Illusioniste if you prefer). It's absolutely stunning: one to catch on the big screen, …
Saturday 21 August 2010
Susie and I are just back from a visit to the Sonic Soak at Govanhill baths. When we got there Peter Nicholson was playing the cello and singing in a near-perfe…
Friday 20 August 2010
It rarely occurs to me to think of myself as Glaswegian unless I'm somewhere else: that's the thing about living here I suppose. But the death of two particular…
Monday 16 August 2010
A very interesting meeting this morning with Marjorie Rycroft and Paul Boucher about developments at the Montagu Music Collection; we've got a sick child here a…
Saturday 14 August 2010
in the hammock, now that the sweary footballers and their airhorns in the field next door have finally shut up after 7 hours I’m connected up to various u…
Friday 13 August 2010
I don't normally like lists, but this one is really good. If only I were about to go on holiday, I would take all five books with me.
Wednesday 11 August 2010
A trip to Edinburgh yesterday to pick up a new toy - thanks to all involved in its journey.
Sunday 8 August 2010
in the garden Today brings this excellent interview with Ali Roberts in the Observer. His new album is superb: I haven’t mentioned this before, as I feel …
Tuesday 3 August 2010
Today I actually held in my hands the long-awaited new edition of the Balcarres Lute Book by Matthew Spring. It's huge, heavy and really rather impressive.
Monday 2 August 2010
My first day at university today. I'm going to follow the various pieces of advice I've been given: ask everyone else on my corridor what A levels they did, joi…
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.…
Monday 26 July 2010
Lunenburg I made it into Halifax on time to be ferried by DG and Chris down to Lunenburg for rehearsal, finishing at 3am UK time. Somehow the music seemed muc…
Saturday 24 July 2010
flying from St John’s Newfoundland to Halifax OK, I take back whatever I wrote about Van Dyke Parks’s Discover America album being vacuous. I’…
Thursday 22 July 2010
I finally sent off the notes to Jordi Savall today, so I have time again to do things like cut the grass and prepare properly for next week's concerts. Yesterda…
Sunday 18 July 2010
Back at my desk with screens full of email to deal with - this is just what I need.
Saturday 17 July 2010
on the CalMac ferry in the sun The valiant crew here have just managed to get 10 extra vehicles onto the ship, to cheers and general approval. It's a bit of a s…
Friday 16 July 2010
Islay Holiday drawing to a close here. This photo should sum up Scottish holidays. I’ve been swimming in Loch Indaal a lot too. Also special mentions to…
Friday 2 July 2010
I finally pressed 'submit' this morning on a big grant application that's been taking up my attention one way and another for six months and more. Scoring off f…
Wednesday 30 June 2010
I'm not even going to begin to explain why someone rang me first thing this morning to check if I might be available to produce a session involving Napalm Death…
Sunday 27 June 2010
Look at what can now be bought at a very reasonable price in a local food emporium of great taste. It also provided an excellent response to Shirley's rehearsal…
Saturday 26 June 2010
on the train home from York On Saturdays it’s sometimes only a few quid more to travel first class, so here I am in a comfy seat, and a nice man has just …
Sunday 20 June 2010
My twitter for non-tweeps is now here. For Father's Day, Susie took me on our bikes for a glorious afternoon of work avoidance at the Glasgow Mela (where we bum…
Saturday 19 June 2010
I'm sitting up late tonight (probably as a result of the killer Enric Rovira hot chocolate I had earlier) putting together a folder of notation for Friday's gig…
Wednesday 16 June 2010
I'm up to the neck in funding application forms here (well, just one enormous online form actually, which is about a couple of weeks' work to complete). Meanwhi…
Sunday 13 June 2010
I was interested to hear this programme on 'Chinese' musical clichés this morning: any radio programme that brings in discussion of encoded meaning in mu…
Friday 11 June 2010
Almost a day off today. I managed to fit in a trip to the bank, doing some accounts from the tour, and taking my bag to the cobblers to get it re-sewn, but spen…
Thursday 10 June 2010
Back home: I've been far too busy to post anything here for ages, which is a bit ironic given that it's meant to be a Concerto Caledonia blog. When the band are…
Monday 31 May 2010
flying home from CDG On the way home again, after an enjoyable couple of days being very well looked after. Everyone at the festival, hotel and theatre was unfa…
Sunday 30 May 2010
Hotel Chenal, Beauvais Things are going very well so far: a friendly hotel, a friendly and generous festival, and a very friendly restaurant for a great meal la…
Friday 28 May 2010
Three interesting pieces on music in the Grauniad today: Robert Thicknesse trying a bit too hard but making some good points about opera, Robin Denselow on what…
Thursday 27 May 2010
Exhausted from the 'last day before project starts' flurry of incoming emails and resulting tweaks to the schedule. Roy brought my newly-serviced harpsichord ba…
Wednesday 26 May 2010
As you might have seen on our homepage, we now have a Concerto Caledonia twitter feed - follow us and we might (might) keep you updated with photos and news fro…
Tuesday 25 May 2010
Last-minute preparations of various kinds are underway here while the sun shines outside. Just a week after hearing it on Irene Trudel's show on WFMU, this lon…
Sunday 23 May 2010
Air Canada cancelled DG's return flight from our upcoming gigs, without even notifying us. Thanks guys. Time and money wasted. Meanwhile, I'll also be disappoin…
Saturday 22 May 2010
Summer has arrived, for the time being at least: it’s genuinely hot and after a visit to the farmers market and cutting the grass I feel that I’ve d…
Wednesday 19 May 2010
I've been reading this. And getting my fingers around the eccentricities of Mackintosh's piano writing.
Tuesday 18 May 2010
Roy O'Neil came and took my harpsichord away for a long-overdue service tonight. This wee video is a touching demonstration of why the world needs music nerds. …
Monday 17 May 2010
I've finally made it to the end of scanning the Mackintosh parts and making them into PDFs to send to everyone. I'm working from a really dirty set of photocopi…
Saturday 15 May 2010
OK, I'm giving you nearly a week's warning. Fred Frith is playing a solo set in Edinburgh next Friday, and you don't even have to buy a ticket first to get in. …
Friday 14 May 2010
By 9.30 this morning I was inhaling the seaweedy aroma of a very still Loch Fyne, before heading to Ardkinglas to remind myself of how nice David and Angela's M…
Thursday 13 May 2010
Still in management mode here, but today I should also get down to making some repertoire decisions about which Mackintosh tunes we might play and record in a c…
Monday 10 May 2010
I only just heard the news about Morris Pert: shame I never got to meet him. Alison came over this afternoon so that we could send out everyone's CD session fe…
Friday 7 May 2010
OK, I won't write anything about the election here, other than to say that to salvage some degree of relief or cheeriness I am clinging to the thought that with…
Thursday 6 May 2010
Election Day: I've already voted by post. If you want a neat illustration of what a disaster it will be if the Tories get in, yesterday I drove past one of thes…
Wednesday 5 May 2010
At the eye clinic this morning, the consultant greeted me with 'wow, you have superhuman vision'. Really? Apparently I'm 6/3, which is 20/10 in old money. But o…
Tuesday 4 May 2010
I really enjoyed hearing Charlemagne Palestine's Schlongo!!!daLUVdrone on WFMU this morning - you can hear a 15' excerpt here, but you'll have to imagine the te…
Monday 3 May 2010
It's taken me four and a half days to clear the backlog of email from being away for six. And that's with having my phone and laptop with me to deal with the qu…
Thursday 28 April 2010
Home again, dealing with the mail backlog, putting away lots of things, wav files included. Among the mail was my postal vote form, with its needlessly difficul…
Wednesday 27 April 2010
on the train home from Euston Somehow in the last 24 hours I made it to Surrey, rehearsed an entire programme with Kathy, watched Stevie Wonder on the telly, s…
Tuesday 26 April 2010
on the TGV Basel-Paris I’m just about awake after a very busy couple of days. Catherine’s poster and tireless promotion paid off which a friendly a…
Saturday 24 April 2010
Basel, bei Catherine Motuz The journey turned out to be trouble-free after all: I particularly enjoyed the way you have a choice of three countries to enter whe…
Friday 23 April 2010
in the air, leaving Heathrow Terminal 5 It’s been a trouble-free journey so far, going according to plan, which usually makes me nervous that it will all …
Wednesday 21 April 2010
I was off on my bike to the other-worldly surroundings of the Arlington Baths this morning with Bill Lloyd. The pool is quite beautiful in the sunshine, the wat…
Monday 19 April 2010
A day of writing and practice ahead, with an excursion at some point into the bright, cold weather to stop me becoming completely sedentary. Sunday mornings at…
Saturday 17 April 2010
Just back from a very windy bike ride. Now, what's wrong with this picture? Yup, no vapour trails. There's been an uncannily clear sky here for several days n…
Wednesday 14 April 2010
I have lots of notes to learn, or re-learn, as there are two fortepiano programmes to master in the next week and a bit, and in the second one the whole thing i…
Monday 12 April 2010
Spring has sprung, and just over a week after coming off the steroids, I have a red eye again, so it was back to the familiar welcome of the eye hospital yester…
Monday 4 October 2010
New listening for today - two breathtaking new songs from Olivia which bode very well for December's project in Aldeburgh, and the Neil Young album that's just …
Monday 5 April 2010
Isle of Lismore Among my holiday reading is this which includes the play version of The Fall of Kelvin Walker, Kelvin being in Alasdair Gray’s words &lsqu…
Friday 2 April 2010
Lots of things started moving very quickly this week. On Wednesday I finished writing the CD booklet notes, and then when I wasn't at the university yesterday I…
Tuesday 30 March 2010
Queen Street Low Level station, FREEZING I'm on my way home from a long day's work at Delphian HQ working on the master of our Edinburgh live CD, which unless w…
Monday 29 March 2010
Barnaby came over this morning and we slaved over a hot Word document for a few hours. Then I practised some Haydn, and this evening started on a recorded versi…
Friday 26 March 2010
I've been writing; it takes me a long time. I also fitted in a bit of recording on a 28 year old project, and on Wednesday spent a happy hour and more in Tchai…
Sunday 21 March 2010
Looking for this I found this and am none the wiser about either. Dan Bodah played a track from the LP this morning. I'm finishing off another funding applicati…
Saturday 20 March 2010
Settling into what I hope will be a quiet weekend here, catching up on unanswered and unopened mail. Yesterday in the morning I headed for the Rosneath peninsul…
Thursday 18 March 2010
There are lots of reasons why I like this: for one thing, my home recording efforts aren't quite so well lit. Bill Taylor came over this afternoon with a small …
Wednesday 17 March 2010
Back from the Western Baths with Greg, where we repaired after some mandolin testing. Yesterday my copy of the new CD by Chris and DG arrived in the post, and…
Tuesday 16 March 2010
Oh no! My lifestyle plans for after August are shattered. Healthier lifestyle plans are celebrated in this book, which keeps luring me away from my desk and ove…
Monday 15 March 2010
I'm starting the day by looking at some CD booklet design drafts ... later on I'm going to crawl out of my hermit hole here and go to a concert: that will be ra…
Saturday 13 March 2010
40 zebra finches in a room. One of them (at about 46 seconds in) thinks he's Fred Frith.
Friday 12 March 2010
Pre-10am harpsichord overdubs this morning were brought to a premature halt when I swiftly realised that quarter-comma meantone doesn't go with a 16ft sampled s…
Thursday 11 March 2010
I'm trying to keep momentum going by recording first thing in the morning, so three organ parts were in the can by 10am today, and I also programmed some rubato…
Tuesday 9 March 2010
By 9am this morning I'd put added two harmonium overdubs to the ongoing dance band/sampling experiment. After a bit more work on that I stopped for an early lun…
Sunday 7 March 2010
Back on the Dahon today for a trip into town before clearing out the greenhouse: spring has arrived. While I was in town I picked up a vinyl copy of this at Mon…
Friday 5 March 2010
Hope you watched last night's episode of skins and didn't notice my singing at the end, while Ollie was channeling his inner Tony Hadley to win fair maid, and t…
Wednesday 3 March 2010
Just when I was thinking that I really should be listening to 6music to show solidarity, WFMU played the Dokaka version of Stevie Wonder's I Wish. Where did the…
Tuesday 2 March 2010
Work avoidance strategies for today included taking the dishwasher to bits and successfully putting it back together again, so that it's functioning with a few …
Saturday 27 February 2010
Here's the aerial view of my sample-trimming workspace this morning after visiting the farmers market. The stylophone behind the MIDI controller keyboard is to …
Friday 26 February 2010
My addiction to WFMU continues - great new tweaks to their iPhone app too. Speaking of radio, you can hear my Mary Queen of Scots programme on Radio 3 on Sunday…
Sunday 21 February 2010
I've been rediscovering the joys of the great WFMU on my phone. This morning I was particularly enjoying the very curious choice of music being played off vinyl…
Friday 19 February 2010
With an assortment of the great and the good - McCartney, Lloyd Webber, the National Trust - all stepping up to the plate to offer to save Abbey Road studios, I…
Wednesday 17 February 2010
One of several excellent birthday presents from yesterday (design by Matt Jones).More active than this and more measured than this. I'm up to my elbows in fun…
Monday 15 February 2010
Much as I'm enjoying not being a practising musician for three months, it's quite strange to be spending my time planning projects that are in the future, witho…
Sunday 14 February 2010
This weekend was thrown off course by my ill-advised attempts to put up a sliding shower door. I got it done in the end, but I'll never trust a B&Q self-ass…
Friday 12 February 2010
I finally had the chance to listen to Paddy McAloon's home-made epic Let's Change the World with Music today, after getting a sneak preview from the multitrack …
Wednesday 10 February 2010
I have to draw your attention to this very admirable enterprise - explore and enjoy. And email Steve to congratulate him. I'm trying not to be too distracted by…
Sunday 7 February 2010
Over the last couple of days I've had a few brushes with technology, with varying degrees of success. I got my harpsichord down from its usual position up again…
Friday 29 January 2010
Lovers of the quirkier parts of Glasgow west end culture (including the peerless TchaiOvna) still have time to object to the development that would entirely sur…
Thursday 28 January 2010
Still at my desk with proposals and budgets for later in the year, and occasional breaks to play guitar right hand studies. I've been listening to this, and got…
Tuesday 26 January 2010
Soup of the day: French Onion and Thyme (heart buchanan, lunchtime meeting with Chrissy). Tea of the day: Brodie's China Keemun (bought in Jenners food hall yes…
Monday 25 January 2010
The Edinburgh Larder, with chorizo, lentil and parsnip soup and Gunpowder tea I'm halfway through my day as a Radio 3 presenter, and thought I'd use a couple of…
Sunday 24 January 2010
I'm gradually getting through the week's email deluge, and also found time today to walk up to Greenside Reservoir (still frozen over). The new series of Skin…
Saturday 23 January 2010
It was very sociable at the farmers market this morning, where I bumped into various neighbours, Alison (fresh back from working in London) and Maeve (visiting …
Wednesday 20 January 2010
We're making serious headway now with ConCal plans for the year ahead. If it all comes off, we'll have up at least three, and possibly five, recording projects …
Tuesday 19 January 2010
I felt quite healthy yesterday, fitted in a bike ride and swim. Well, it lasted a day. Barnaby wangled me a ticket to Bobby McFerrin's school show this morning …
Saturday 16 January 2010
I would very much like one of these.
Friday 15 January 2010
Back from a quick dash to Edinburgh this morning with Alison, to spy out the venue for a concert in May 2011 at the invitation of the nice people at Nadfas. Qui…
Thursday 14 January 2010
I'm writing the first draft of a radio script at my desk: it's late, and I'm surrounded by paper, with a glass of Guinness Foreign Extra on my left and a mug of…
Saturday 9 January 2010
from the kitchen window this morning from the front gate - more usually the street resembles an overcrowded car park The pond at the bottom of our road became…
Wednesday 6 January 2010
New Year Resolutions always get sticky a few days in. I spent most of last year working for other people: it was all on fun projects (I only did jobs I really w…
Tuesday 5 January 2010
More snow this morning, and it's not due to get above freezing for another week yet: this is really unusual. I'm going to ease myself back into work today, afte…
Saturday 2 January 2010
Strange musical synchronicity of the day coming up. I listened to The Troggs Tapes for the first time this afternoon, still filling gaps in my musical education…
Wednesday 30 December 2009
Encouragement for those of us who like playing 'toy' instruments is here - but this comes first.
Tuesday 29 December 2009
It's just possible that what sounded quite like a CD last week could become one, so plans to post our Edinburgh Festival recordings online are on hold for a wee…
Tuesday 22 December 2009
Having listened to everything up close and at a distance, the next test is to listen to it in company. I dipped my toe in on Sunday night playing Rob Howarth a …
Sunday 20 December 2009
It's all white here. I was back in the eye hospital yesterday, after achieving only one week of not putting steroids in my eye since April. At least it's the ot…
Friday 18 December 2009
I'm still being a producer today, hiding indoors from the cold, editing and listening to Edinburgh recordings, but I also found time to buy a Christmas tree thi…
Thursday 17 December 2009
I'm doing some audio editing at the moment - not something I've done for ages - tidying up yesterday's work with Steve Portnoi, who came over to remix some of t…
Tuesday 15 December 2009
Yesterday included a much-needed hour of helpless laughter, at the Òran Mór panto, a suitably ridiculous tour-de-force, much of which defies analy…
Sunday 13 December 2009
Thanks to Jim Donegan for his 'I've just heard you playing the harpsichord on the radio' text last night - after a bit of investigation, I discovered that Iain …
Friday 11 December 2009
I'm enjoying being out of a performing phase for a while, and using the time for what seems like a lot of civilised lunch (or occasionally cup-of-tea) meetings …
Sunday 6 December 2009
I've been completely wiped out this weekend, possibly as a result of a gregarious Friday evening, spent first in the Research Club with future university collea…
Thursday 3 December 2009
A moment's silence please, to mark the passing of my Sony SRS-T55 travel speakers, which have kept me entertained in hotel rooms, on holidays, and in various re…
Wednesday 2 December 2009
Still largely desk-bound here, grappling with a large research proposal for 2011, and various projects for 2010 to be tweaked, moved on, or turned down. I had a…
Friday 27 November 2009
At last, a day at home at my desk with no urgent performance deadline looming. I think this means I might be able to start on lots of long-awaited projects. But…
Wednesday 25 November 2009
flying home from Paris Charles de Gaulle Well, yesterday was our third shot at the Love and War show and it’s been different every time. Some of it (usua…
Tuesday 24 November 2009
Hôtel de la Cathédrale, Rouen (enjoying the French ads on Spotify) Sunday’s rehearsal at Clare’s went extremely smoothly, and after a s…
Sunday 22 November 2009
flying to Gatwick I’d intended to take the train south today, but the Sunday morning timetable was pretty much nonexistent, added to the fact that the lin…
Saturday 21 November 2009
It's No Music Day (just gone midnight here) - this year's suggestions from Bill Drummond include some great things to do on Sunday. I've been piecing together s…
Wednesday 18 November 2009
A very convivial lunch at the Glasgow Art Club today where Alison and I were the guests of David and Hazel Smith. On the way home in the rain I finally remember…
Monday 16 November 2009
One thing I've learnt this year is that if you make a worklist of things to be done on Monday morning, it will probably take you all week to score them all off.…
Sunday 15 November 2009
For a number of reasons, it's not really been a week for diarising here. But I've been busy preparing the scores for next week's Tiger Lillies date, which took …
Sunday 8 November 2009
Have been out cycling in the sunshine today. Also contributing to the sunny mood is a date in my diary next June for a gig in York with Shirley Collins and Kate…
Thursday 5 November 2009
Yesterday morning Alison and I headed to the Jeffrey Room in the Mitchell Library, where a rather good fortepiano by Neupert now resides, along with three other…
Tuesday 3 November 2009
Till the weekend, you can hear August's concert from Caraquet with Suzie & co. here, even if you're not in Canada. I'll have a listen when I'm done practisi…
Sunday 1 November 2009
I'd spent part of yesterday reading through and timing some Schetky songs, before being entertained by a few troupes of guisers, and heading out by bike to Bill…
Thursday 29 October 2009
After taking some books back to the library in Edinburgh this morning, I had two different music technology tasks to accomplish. The first was trying out the 17…
Wednesday 28 October 2009
Looking up at a cupboard in the triage room in eye casualty this morning, I spied an interesting VHS video collection on the top: Snow White, Beauty and the Bea…
Tuesday 27 October 2009
I spent ten hours today preparing the notation for next week's Edinburgh concert; at the end of this I have a sore red bulging eye. Bugger. And someone around h…
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 d…
Thursday 22 October 2009
A packed auditorium awaits tomorrow night's Distil Showcase. Corinna Hewat, Dave Milligan and Ella
Wednesday 21 October 2009
With the second (Stirling) leg of breakfast this morning, I had an excellent treacle scone for dessert from Baynes. Being a commuter for a week is tiring, but I…
Tuesday 20 October 2009
Mathieson's Bakery, Stirling I'm here with a pot of tea and an indifferent bridie (Baynes along the road was better, but you can't sit in there), dealing with v…
Wednesday 14 October 2009
Isle of Lismore More wisdom from Fripp on 9 October: periods of Doing Nothing have usually accompanied all the major transitions in my life, including Guitar Cr…
Tuesday 13 October 2009
Isle of Lismore,on holiday I can just about get online here via the mobile phone GPRS signal, and today I read in Robert Fripp’s diary for 6 October (when…
Thursday 8 October 2009
I'm caught up in organising mode for the Distil Showcase in Stirling in a couple of weeks: 10 composers from the traditional music scene writing for Mr McFall's…
Monday 5 October 2009
flying to Glasgow I picked up the hire car at Dublin airport, learning a valuable lesson: never believe a car hire quote on the web without reading every single…
Sunday 4 October 2009
flying to Dublin My €9 Aer Lingus breakfast this morning included unlimited amounts of wholemeal soda bread, yum. In fact it included unlimited amounts of …
Saturday 3 October 2009
Hampstead,London At about 3pm this afternoon I was standing in Air Studio 1, coaching the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain in some backing vocals. And thinkin…
Wednesday 30 September 2009
Glendrynoch Lodge,Isle of Skye After Chris and DG arrived in Scotland on Monday morning, we convened for an afternoon rehearsal and then made an early start yes…
Saturday 26 September 2009
My cold finally gave in and went away, just in time for the next week to get even busier than I thought it already was. We have a wee tour ahead (come and see u…
Wednesday 23 September 2009
An even less productive day today (mostly) after making it to bed at 4am last night, at the end of an excellent party with some BBC ex-colleagues. My Mexican fl…
Tuesday 22 September 2009
Yesterday I thought I'd got over my cold, but it's back with a vengeance. So there's not much work getting done here through the aches and pains. In last week's…
Friday 18 September 2009
Thanks to Jamie Maclean for drawing my attention to Melodyne first thing this morning. It's very clever and faintly sinister: in their demo, it's just another w…
Thursday 17 September 2009
Even if I pare down current projects to a minimum, there's still an awful lot of work to be done here at my desk. After four hours I haven't even started on the…
Tuesday 15 September 2009
Here's an unfathomable ponderable: I've just realised that Alex Neilson, who plays drums on Alasdair Roberts' Spoils album, was also the drummer for legendary r…
Sunday 13 September 2009
on the train north from London We’ve been in London having a great time at a family wedding, and on the train I’ve been reading Bruce Haynes’s…
Thursday 10 September 2009
This week's triumphant eBay purchase. It's only taken me 20 years to find a copy.
Wednesday 9 September 2009
on the very busy Edinburgh-Glasgow train: First ScotRail don't seem to have twigged yet that lots of people might want to travel to Glasgow on the day of a foot…
Monday 7 September 2009
Of all the people qualified to make claims over copyright, Damien Hirst scores very low indeed. I love the idea that you can buy Cartrain's artwork signed with …
Sunday 6 September 2009
I'm coming round from my first decent night's sleep in over a month. The news this morning that racists might be given a mainstream political broadcasting platf…
Wednesday 2 September 2009
Just back from excellent dosas with Barnaby at the Banana Leaf (with coconut chutney, wonderful fresh mango lassi and more to celebrate Onam 2009), to notice th…
Tuesday 1 September 2009
I'm just beginning to mellow out a bit after the frantic rush of the last few months. A pair of bullfinches have been regular visitors to the rowans in the back…
Saturday 29 August 2009
I've been transcribing bits of an 18th-century keyboard manuscript into Sibelius while listening to John Zorn and carrying on various Skype conversations, which…
Thursday 27 August 2009
Home again. Through the exhaustion I've lain on the sofa and watched the triumphant return of Shooting Stars, and furthered my musical education by listening to…
Monday 24 August 2009
in the minibus on the way to Edinburgh again Gig no.3 is cooking nicely for tonight. Kathy Fuge sounds wonderful as always, it's great to have Sarah back with u…
Sunday 23 August 2009
Two down, two to go. At the end of our soundcheck last night I was too tired or distracted to remember to ask someone to keep the air conditioning on in the hal…
Saturday 22 August 2009
in the minibus with the dance band on the way to Edinburgh, passing round Henderson's oatcakes We're well on the way to tonight's gig, our dance band is cooking…
Thursday 20 August 2009
Woke to monsoon conditions this morning. Yesterday's rehearsals achieved lots I think: we felt like a band, and I heard lots of sounds I'd never heard before. F…
Tuesday 18 August 2009
Why does it always pour with rain whenever Andrew and I are moving my harpsichord round to the church for rehearsals? Last-minute preparations of various kinds…
Sunday 16 August 2009
I've been mired in concert preparation all day today, but was occasionally distracted by what sounds like instant Steve Reich. I thought this was an Onion-type …
Saturday 15 August 2009
I'm finally getting down to the nitty-gritty of musical preparation for next week. But before I started today, a moment's work avoidance on YouTube turned up th…
Friday 14 August 2009
The various obituaries that I've seen for the amazing Les Paul (only a couple of weeks ago I was urging Kris to go and hear him play in New York while he was st…
Thursday 13 August 2009
A very busy couple of days here: after an intense flurry of negotiations and budget-wrangling from Andrew, today we went from potentially losing quite a lot of …
Tuesday 11 August 2009
I'm buried in schedules, paper, notation, logistics and a related research proposal this week. Catherine Motuz mentioned the 'Nap of Death' the other day, which…
Sunday 9 August 2009
Crinan Hotel, on holiday It was cheering, if not completely unexpected, to hear Patsy's voice leaking from someone's headphones when going round the excellent K…
Friday 7 August 2009
Back home, gradually catching up with a huge backlog of stuff through the fog of slight jetlag. Patsy came round this morning and we had a good blast through so…
Thursday 6 August 2009
Heathrow Terminal 1 I slept on and off on the way back, aided by having two seats to myself, and hindered by, at one point, four babies screaming simultaneously…
Wednesday 5 August 2009
Starbucks, Elgin St, Ottawa Yesterday was always going to be the busy one. We convened in my suite for breakfast and headed over to St Brigid’s so that I …
Monday 3 August 2009
flying toOttawa from Halifax Well, Vortex 3 has achieved two rehearsals for our two gigs tomorrow night, which included choosing the set list for the second gig…
Sunday 2 August 2009
The Coastal,HalifaxStill sunny. Going to call DG while awaiting breakfast. Checking the news, appalled, furious and depressed at the extradition to the US of Ga…
Saturday 1 August 2009
driving back to Halifax from Caraquet Just after writing Thursday’s entry I got bitten by a spider in Shediac … It wasn't too late when we arrive…
Thursday 30 July 2009
chewing on a cherry Starburst (we don’t get those in the UK; in Canada they don’t have the lime green ones), on the road between Halifax, NS and Ca…
Monday 27 July 2009
I'm back from a grand day out at the Big Tent festival yesterday with McFalls and Michael Marra, playing two sets, one indoors and one out. It's very much a loc…
Thursday 23 July 2009
Today at about 2pm, I sat in a rehearsal room at Berkeley with my feet up on the harmonium, listening to Michael Marra sing Schenectady Calling Peerie Willie Jo…
Wednesday 22 July 2009
I'm reworking our 20 August concert again for the n-th time - Alasdair Roberts is magically free once more, so now we have the wonderful luxury of both him and …
Sunday 18 July 2009
I was back at the eye hospital again yesterday - returned here to an email deluge to be slowly waded through. One of the things I did before going on holiday wa…
Tuesday 14 July 2009
KilmalieuI’d forgotten just how vicious midgies can be – last time we were here was one October when all the midgies had given up for the winter. Al…
Sunday 12 July 2009
Kilmalieu Put up a rope swing, and built a driftwood fire on the beach. A good day.
Thursday 9 July 2009
Modsary, near Skerray – on holidayLast week descended into a bit of a rush, with a full-on admin assault, including the programme material for the EIF, se…
Wednesday 1 July 2009
I'm coming out of sleep deficit just in time to have an enormous pile of stuff to do before Saturday morning. Today I sent out all the remaining scores to every…
Monday 29 June 2009
Back at my desk again: I tried to have an afternoon nap today, but clearly I'm the wrong kind of tired. This morning, at Josh Dickson's invitation, I went along…
Sunday 28 June 2009
Ronaldsway airport, Isle of Man (which is definitely NOT like this) I'm on my way home from the last three days spent in the idyllic surroundings of Port Erin i…
Thursday 25 June 2009
It's that time of year I think. Lisa's ill so our Friday night gig is cancelled; I seem to remember this time last year doing lots of preparation for a gig that…
Monday 22 June 2009
My currently sedentary lifestyle was broken helpfully today by a couple of lunchtime meetings (and a curry) in town, which also served as an excuse for half an …
Thursday 18 June 2009
I'm still dividing my time between practising and organising. I've been re-visiting the François Couperin Passacaille in B minor, a piece I first played …
Tuesday 16 June 2009
I've established myself a practice discipline which seems to be going well, or would be if there were several more hours available in every day. I need to get m…
Friday 12 June 2009
Somehow I've got myself into the position where I'm putting together eight separate concert programmes (ten really, but three of them are much the same), beside…
Wednesday 10 June 2009
I'm digitising large piles of performance material, as it's much easier to email someone a part that I've got on a hard drive, rather than climbing up to the at…
Tuesday 9 June 2009
Just cycled back from lunch with Steve Portnoi to talk about possible recording projects, and once again I'm surrounded by preparations for our Edinburgh concer…
Thursday 4 June 2009
I've spent most of the last couple of days stuck at my desk making an arrangement of Pietro Urbani's 1799 setting of 'The Ever-Memorable Battle of Bannockburn' …
Tuesday 2 June 2009
It's been very hot for the last few days, so the wildlife around here has been showing itself in different ways. Dunnocks on the ground, and lots of chattery co…
Friday 29 May 2009
I've been buried in admin for most of this week, most of it resulting from our AGM on Monday. But over the last day or two I've been able to start work on the d…
Sunday 25 May 2009
I don't normally have much sympathy for Tory MPs, but if you want an enlightening perspective on the expenses row that's been dominating the headlines here for …
Friday 23 May 2009
on the Edinburgh-Glasgow train Another library day, after spending a lot of this week preparing for the company AGM. In today's lunch break between the rooftop …
Monday 18 May 2009
Luton Airport I made it to Cambridge in the end, for a very sociable meal, a trip to the pub, and some flying of remote control helicopters, then this morning I…
Sunday 17 May 2009
on a stationary train at Stansted AirportUnusually, my Easyjet flight south was 80' late, so I've missed two Cambridge trains and I'm sitting on a third, which …
Friday 15 May 2009
After a summery week when I've been moving the contents of my desk outside to work in the shade of a tree in the garden, today was wet, cold and miserable, so i…
Tuesday 12 May 2009
Well, I got home from yesterday's 13 hour trip, turned my computer on and there was a bang and a flash of white from the power supply. So ... this week will be …
Monday 11 May 2009
flying out of Brussels airportGreg and I have been in Belgium for the day playing at Scotland House, the Brussels home of the Scottish Government as part of a p…
Saturday 2 May 2009
on the second of tonight’s four trainsI'm speeding north from Leeds to Edinburgh after a most entertaining day in Saltaire, which began with a visit to Pa…
Friday 1 May 2009
on the second of today’s five trainsBack at the eye hospital again yesterday, boring boring boring. Anyway, thanks to the bizarre pricing policy on the ra…
Wednesday 29 April 2009
My adversary iritis came back with a vengeance yesterday: three hours in hospital and now a very red sore eye with an artificially dilated pupil, bleah. Still, …
Monday 27 April 2009
Hooray - skins got a BAFTA! We weren't even watching the show last night, as when we saw Bryan a couple of weeks ago he said 'oh come on, we're up against Coro…
Sunday 26 April 2009
At long last I've produced my first academic output for many years, presenting a paper in the safe welcoming environment of yesterday's Musica Scotica conferenc…
Saturday 25 April 2009
RSAMD Opera School In 45 minutes at lunchtime on Thursday I managed to record an improvisation for melodica and delays: perhaps listening to Robert Fripp's Expo…
Thursday 23 April 2009
This was the scene in here later on Monday afternoon, committing some Mackintosh and Gow to hard disk. Thanks to unaccustomed amounts of sunshine, I mixed and…
Monday 20 April 2009
This week I have to distil some of my reading from the last few months into a coherent and comprehensible argument for a paper I'm to give next weekend, and lat…
Friday 17 April 2009
I'm back in the eye casualty waiting room at our local hospital with a red eye ... again. One of the side benefits of keeping an online diary like this is that …
Monday 13 April 2009
I've spent the morning with Susie in the garden rehabilitating a 1978 Raleigh Honey that we found in the depths of the cellar nearly 10 years ago when we moved …
Thursday 2 April 2009
Can't let the week go past without a brief mention of Maurice Jarre. His music was a major part of my musical development, as my gran's favourite tune on the pi…
Tuesday 31 March 2009
I seem to be spending most of today on the phone, and still have a huge pile of email to get through. At least it's mostly about interesting stuff. And spring i…
Monday 30 March 2009
on the train from Odense to Copenhagen airport It’s 8 o’clock, I’m on a comfortable and quiet train headed through a sunny spring morning. Ti…
Saturday 28 March 2009
Odense, Denmark After a long journey, we’re being very well looked after here in Odense by lots of extremely nice and efficient Danish people. After a dod…
Thursday 26 March 2009
Yesterday went something like this. I sat in a traffic jam on the M8, and was an hour late for the session at Castle; looked down at my hands in our second take…
Tuesday 24 March 2009
Castlesound really is a very civilised place to work. Resident engineer Stuart Hamilton somehow made my harpsichord sound quite spectacular, even though the roo…
Monday 23 March 2009
Yesterday I dropped into Castlesound where I haven't been since recording with McFalls in January 2001. Frightened Rabbit were due to arrive soon after me, so I…
Friday 20 March 2009
As a welcome break from working on the Tiger Lillies stuff, Iain and Mairi came over this morning to see if we could get harpsichord to work with some pipe tune…
Saturday 14 March 2009
I haven't got a great deal done in the latter part of this week because on Thursday I packed most of my study into boxes in preparation for the chimney being li…
Tuesday 10 March 2009
Well, I had a day off on the Sabbath, and now I'm starting to get my head around our gig with the Tiger Lillies, listening to the show tape from last time, revi…
Sunday 8 March 2009
Very tired today after last night's Bongo Club appearance, but what a great audience to play for: the McFall's home crowd. my lair at soundcheck The excellent A…
Thursday 5 March 2009
Rehearsing with Michael Marra in Mr McFall's front room is a good way to spend a Thursday. He had me multitasking on harmonium and glockenspiel - I've never tri…
Wednesday 4 March 2009
Just back from the second day of rehearsals in the excellent surroundings of Mr McFall's Chamber's Morningside home. Unfortunately my masterplan to cycle there …
Monday 2 March 2009
Lots of practising and diary maintenance today, juggling various activities in the next couple of weeks, and pencilling some in over the next couple of years. A…
Friday 27 February 2009
I'd planned to spend today in Edinburgh at the manuscripts department of the National Library, but when I got there, I was politely turned away. Still, at least…
Tuesday 24 February 2009
It's been a preparation day here, trying to fix the handle on my harmonium case and failing (a job for a professional really), sterilising my melodica's breath …
Monday 23 February 2009
Spring seems to have arrived, along with swarms of tiny but bold and acrobatic long-tailed tits watching my bike maintenance, and the occasional rare visit from…
Friday 20 February 2009
I was in Edinburgh yesterday for a couple of errands, and some very useful reading and thinking time on the train. But for most of this week I've been working o…
Saturday 14 February 2009
An excellent surprise in the mail today: Timo Alakotila's sent me the scores for a couple of tunes (including Melos, which is on his myspace just now), which wi…
Friday 13 February 2009
There is a large pile of books on the floor to my right awaiting my attention. Yesterday afternoon I was in Edinburgh to meet Simon and Dave about a Distil-rela…
Tuesday 10 February 2009
While reading about old Edinburgh music shops, I've been listening to the Pet Sounds sessions album (and a Rolf Harris stylophone demonstration disc) and I noti…
Sunday 8 February 2009
It's all white outside again. Susie and I made it back down the road from Ardkinglas today before the snow came: we were there to hear Ken Aiso and Annette Isse…
Wednesday 4 February 2009
I was lecturing at the RSAMD this morning - having painstakingly put all my illustrations into a PowerPoint file, there wasn't any way of showing it and I had t…
Monday 2 February 2009
on the train to London Well, of all the days to choose to nip down to London for a quick session in Abbey Road and dive back home again on the sleeper, I pick t…
Saturday 31 January 2009
This was the scene near midnight last night when I emerged from the Wee Curry Shop as the guest of a splendid bunch of BBC employees. Yes, these people are resp…
Friday 30 January 2009
Like lots of other people today I would guess, I have a pile of John Martyn vinyl by my desk as the soundtrack to the day. I only saw him play live a couple of …
Monday 26 January 2009
As places to sing Auld Lang Syne go, on stage between Robbie Shakespeare's bass rig and 1100 people in the Fruitmarket is one of the more visceral. Lots of very…
Wednesday 28 January 2009
My son Robbie took this picture of a nearby cycle lane on Monday. At our local hospital the council has instituted free parking but with a maximum stay of 4 hou…
Tuesday 27 January 2009
After spending the morning pursuing and eliminating what had seemed like more practical options, today I found myself booking Abbey Roadstudio twofor a session …
Sunday 25 January 2009
I've spent most of this morning (through the fog of my cold that won't go away) trying to figure out how to get my laptop setup to reliably boot up and work: I'…
Saturday 24 January 2009
It was getting seriously 80s/90s Glasgow indie-pop in rehearsal today, as at one point we had Edwyn Collins, Norman Blake of Teenage Fanclub, and Duglas T Stewa…
Friday 23 January 2009
I've had so much to read and do this week, and spent so much time on the phone about various possible future projects, that I haven't had any words left in my b…
Saturday 17 January 2009
I spared an hour today for a bit of arranging of our Joe Raposo track, although I really want to get stuck into reading Defining Strains, which I only came acro…
Thursday 15 January 2009
Recovering from a long and tiring day yesterday, spent at Ardkinglas recording Debussy on the wonderful 1928 New York Steinway A, for an episode of the forthcom…
Monday 12 January 2009
While learning Pagodes I spotted this ...
Sunday 11 January 2009
One of the highlights of my cultural calendar is (if time allows) watching the BDO world darts championship on telly in the first week of January. I don't gener…
Wednesday 7 January 2009
I'm trying to juggle budgets, diaries and music for two projects simultaneously at the moment, which is quite taxing: both are urgent, even though one of them w…
Saturday 3 January 2009
A good new year to everyone. I spent this afternoon rehearsing with the Orange Juice Dub Arkestra, largely as an excuse for me to play the stylophone, which I t…
Monday 29 December 2008
Yesterday I met Alison for a walk in Pollok Park, along with the great and the good of the city taking their Sunday constitutional - well, we did meet Fiona Fra…
Saturday 27 December 2008
In amongst the holiday preparations, lots of musical things fell through my letterbox. Among them were a CD-R containing the manuscripts of the Hertel trumpet c…
Tuesday 16 December 2008
Today I found myself in the rather strange position of researching a project by listening to some of my own records. I don't think I've heard Mungrel Stuff for …
Saturday 13 December 2008
The latter part of this week got busier. Alison and Liz Kenny joined me in the British Library café on Thursday for tea and cakes: Liz assured me that th…
Tuesday 9 December 2008
Quote of the week from Jimmy McGovern, cited by Russell T Davies in Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe on screenwriting last week: "I would rather be confused for 10 …
Saturday 6 December 2008
the café at Sandyflat I've just managed to tear myself away from the newly-arrived Acme Novelty Library 19 for long enough to write this. For the last we…
Tuesday 2 December 2008
I've just been out with a shovel and a bucket to the nearest grit bin, to try and make the pavement around our house a bit less treacherous. There was some ligh…
Monday 1 December 2008
It's cold here now, cold enough for cycling to be a scary business: if the ice on the hills doesn't get you, the low sun in an oncoming driver's eyes might. Thi…
Thursday 27 November 2008
My cold still hasn't gone away, so rather than venture out into the weather (which isn't that bad actually) I'm sitting at my desk surrounded by the bits of pap…
Monday 24 November 2008
Day four of my stinking cold here: today I didn't so much throw in the towel as pick one up, spending the afternoon at the baths with Greg, where we agreed to s…
Saturday 22 November 2008
Lots of admin and planning getting done here for forthcoming gigs and recordings, all still pencillings in the diary but requiring much time and effort nonethel…
Wednesday 19 November 2008
Just back from lunch at the Wee Curry Shop with Alison, where we finally tied down the shape of a potential ConCal recording that we first planned out about six…
Tuesday 18 November 2008
Today I wasted 4 hours trying to work out why my laptop was now producing random short bursts of white noise with certain tracks loaded. Ignoring the advice on …
Friday 14 November 2008
Sadly, the Flipron gig I was hoping to go to on Sunday has been cancelled, but in partial recompense the copy of Barry Andrews' single 'Win A Night Out With A W…
Thursday 13 November 2008
BL again, desk 131 I’ve got an unexpectedly free day after what I was going to do this afternoon got cancelled at the last minute, so I’m back here…
Tuesday 11 November 2008
British Library Rare Books and Music Reading Room, desk no. 106 I made it to London last night in time to catch the end of a party at Lucy’s (which I wasn…
Monday 10 November 2008
on the train to St Pancras Glasgow airport’s had an internal refit of sorts: the security hall is a vast improvement, but once you’re through that, …
Friday 7 November 2008
Returning to academic pursuits after a break of a couple of decades turns up some nice discoveries, not least being able to access the British Library catalogue…
Thursday 6 November 2008
Listening to this while having a skype conversation with Catherine Motuz this morning got my brain moving a bit. The music is carefully worked out, but it still…
Tuesday 4 November 2008
Even though I might make it to the British Library next week, it's good being able to plan work that doesn't necessarily involve travelling, and it's refreshing…
Saturday 1 November 2008
It's my first weekend at home for two months: when not further refining repertoire for a future project I've been picking apples (more off the ground than the t…
Tuesday 28 October 2008
Now that all of those concerts have been accomplished, the future can begin to present itself. So lots of logistical arrangements were underway today, including…
Monday 27 October 2008
Sure enough I ended up in the bar with Kate and Stephen before Saturday evening was out, taking up Stephen's recommendation of Fever Tree as the basis of a good…
Saturday 25 October 2008
on the London-Brighton train I’m on my way to tomorrow’s Early Music Show/Brighton Early Music Festival gig, enjoying the luxury of a whole evening…
Monday 20 October 2008
Next Sunday I have my last gig for quite a long time, at Brighton playing in this, and then a little cabaret with Mr Bowman and Ms Bott afterwards. It should be…
Sunday 19 October 2008
When we first started going on holiday to the west of Scotland and its islands, you would habitually see wonderful seafood being landed, but you couldn't buy an…
Wednesday 15 October 2008
view from the laptop Isle of Lismore The other (possibly more important) thing about playing classical music is that it sets out clear failure/success parameter…
Monday 13 October 2008
Isle of Lismore The total lack of phone signal on stage at ABC2 meant that I couldn’t call Catherine for her sackbut solo after all, but Robbie recorded a…
Thursday 9 October 2008
I'm working unexpectedly late tonight: having dug out the soundboard recording of our gig last year with the Tiger Lillies, I'm now doing a quick premaster job …
Wednesday 8 October 2008
We were just about to leave for the Future Pilot AKA rehearsal at A-side Studios last night when I got a skype message from Catherine M asking where the rehears…
Tuesday 7 October 2008
A very very wet morning: the kind that presents two options. Either stay indoors and wait for it to stop, or clad yourself from head to toe in waterproof clothi…
Saturday 4 October 2008
8.30am at breakfast I suppose when we arrived at 1am last night we should have taken it as a bad omen that the hotel reception was covered by full riot-control…
Friday 3 October 2008
driving to Dundee about 11.30pm We’ve just played our first gig of the week at Mugdock Country Park. I didn’t even know there was a theatre in the v…
Wednesday 1 October 2008
back home It took me all of Monday and Tuesday just to get through the accumulation of paper that built up around my desk over the past week while I've been awa…
Sunday 28 September 2008
9am, Crazy Mocha, Shadyside, Pittsburgh, with a big cup of sweet chai and an obscenely unnecessary peanut butter cup cheesecake that I saw here yesterday, but f…
Friday 26 September 2008
bedtime in Pittsburgh We seem pretty well (but not fully) prepared for our Fort Dusquesne extravaganza tomorrow night. Alison and I have managed to fit in two e…
Wednesday 24 September 2008
flying toPittsburgh We really didn’t know what to expect from yesterday’s gig at The Castle in Boston University . We knew it was for the Philosophy…
Tuesday 23 September 2008
between Kansas City and Boston We’ve hitched a lift to Boston with Steve Karbank in his Beechjet 400A, and it’s a very civilised way to travel.…
Monday 22 September 2008
Kansas CityMy body clock hit back with a vengeance this morning, waking me up at 3.15am. On my early morning walk I realised that although Brussels has Manneken…
Sunday 21 September 2008
Kansas City Well, as Wallace once said, “That went as well as could be expected.” I got here without ever having to stand in a queue, wait around fo…
Saturday 20 September 2008
flying to Philadelphia I haven’t been on a plane since Boxwood two months ago, and I’d forgotten how incredibly noisy it can be - I’m keeping …
Thursday 18 September 2008
This afternoon 'I are been mostly' sorting out notation for next week. Given that excess baggage charges are becoming an occupational hazard, part of today's jo…
Tuesday 16 September 2008
on the train home I’ve spent the relentlessly rainy morning getting ID cards, usernames and passwords for various libraries in Edinburgh. Going to a new m…
Sunday 14 September 2008
I've just taken a break from standing up a ladder wielding electric hedge trimmers, and over lunch I've been reading Robert Philip's keynote address from last y…
Thursday 11 September 2008
After a few years of resistance, I finally gave in yesterday and bought a laptop. But not an iBook like every other musician I know seems to have, a used Dell D…
Tuesday 9 September 2008
It's dawned on me that the next couple of months are going to be very busy indeed, so I've been trying to clear the various piles of un-dealt with paper that ar…
Tuesday 2 September 2008
In the mail today from Kirsty in Halifax came her helpful repertoire suggestion for our forthcoming Pittsburgh concert: an Edwardian 'march descriptive' for pi…
Monday 1 September 2008
I nipped back to the studio last night to do my harmonium overdubs, so that today would be a day off. Alison was in Scotland today with a day off too, so we met…
Saturday 30 August 2008
Back from an enjoyable afternoon at Green Door Studio doing overdubs for Alasdair Roberts, with Gordon Ferries on 19th century guitar and Alison on gamba. I rea…
Friday 29 August 2008
An intriguing morning at the Queens Hall today, where the Jerusalem Quartet's recital was disrupted five times by political protestors, and then again by a brok…
Thursday 28 August 2008
I've just woken up from two hours asleep on the sofa - oops. I was in Edinburgh this morning to listen to Steven Osborne play some great Messiaen in the Queens…
Wednesday 27 August 2008
I walked past the fridge the other day and saw this - Susie gave me permission to post it here. Nothing much of interest's been happening to me really, apart …
Thursday 21 August 2008
Alasdair Roberts came round this morning with his guitar and we played through a song or five. I could tell from the look in his eye when I mentioned the possib…
Wednesday 20 August 2008
I like it when people send me interesting things that they've made. While I'm still digesting Fred Frith's acoustic guitar CD, today's mail brought Bill Drummon…
Tuesday 19 August 2008
on the 2030 train to Edinburgh Let's hear it for private enterprise: a burst of expletives rather than a cheer. I had a hospital appointment today to see a hand…
Monday 18 August 2008
Back from a weekend in Edinburgh and Portie. It didn't rain for two whole days: this is rare at the moment. First, I must correct an error from a couple of week…
Thursday 14 August 2008
A very welcome day at home after last night's gig. By Tuesday I was sauntering through rehearsals in a nice relaxed way. Which was foolish: I'd forgotten how E…
Monday 11 August 2008
on the way home from Edinburgh - I cadged a lift from Alison Green, my bike's in the boot Today was marathon Israel in Egypt rehearsal day, with three sessions.…
Saturday 9 August 2008
on the 0900 train to Edinburgh, with a bike I'm starting a few days of being a professional musician (in as far as a musician is someone who makes sounds - regu…
Wednesday 6 August 2008
Just back from a family outing to the Britannia Panopticon for a meeting of the Bonnie Scotland Tent (Oasis #021) of the Sons of the Desert. For the uninitiated…
Tuesday 5 August 2008
I'm having a long-awaited afternoon back at my desk, after avoiding any notions of productivity for a week and more. There's still four-week-old mail to be open…
Sunday 3 August 2008
Well, I'm halfway through my fortnight of not having to go near a musical instrument, which has been rather good. If only I didn't have to go near computers eit…
Wednesday 30 July 2008
Ha! Got it this time ... Also today came an invitation from Sushil to play some Daniel Johnston songs, to celebrate World Mental Health Day later in the year.…
Tuesday 29 July 2008
My favourite exchange of the day today was at the bank when I was paying in a cheque and the clerk said 'I should charge you £5 for this, but the manager…
Monday 28 July 2008
Home again. I've been lying in the hammock in the back garden making conversation with the foxes who trotted through or stopped for a scratch. OK, I did most of…
Saturday 26 July 2008
flying from Halifax to Toronto Time to backtrack a bit. After teaching on Wednesday I made it into the Parish Hall just in time for Edmund's shape-note hymn sin…
Wednesday 23 July 2008
back on the sofa at Solomon House, Lunenburg, NS I've moved house to the Butlers' place overlooking Mahone Bay. Sadly I got up just too late today to watch the …
Monday 21 July 2008
Lunenburg, NS - on the very comfy sofa in the guests' parlour at Solomon HouseI've carved some free time from my schedule today after a crazily busy weekend. Sa…
Friday 18 July 2008
flying from Toronto to Halifax I've just moved at great speed from Terminal 3 of Toronto airport to Terminal 1 after my flight in from Glasgow was two hours lat…
Tuesday 1 July 2008
Well, one gig cancelled, but another few turn up instead. There's been some good movement today on the concert diary front for next season. And ... a release da…
Monday 30 June 2008
After a 9am visit to the physio this morning, I was powering through my worklist for the day, discussing the details of arming a burglar alarm with our very eff…
Thursday 26 June 2008
A moment's silence please for the passing of Andrew's old Mercedes estate after 240 000 miles. In amongst all the other things going on today, we managed to fit…
Saturday 21 June 2008
I'm just home from a splendid hour and a half in the Britannia Panopticon which I've always wanted to go to, hearing Stu Brown and co. playing Raymond Scott tun…
Wednesday 18 June 2008
I'm stuck here at home waiting for a promised deputation of builders to come and replace the window broken in April. After they've kept us waiting for 2 months,…
Thursday 5 June 2008
The big research funding application that's been taking up my every spare synapse for the past few weeks finally got submitted today, with 25 minutes to spare (…
Saturday 31 May 2008
In the post today came a copy of Matthew Gelbart's extremely interesting new book - to my shame I hadn't even realised it existed until John Butt told me about …
Wednesday 28 May 2008
It's a very wet day here, the first for weeks. It will probably rain for all of June now, to maintain the average West of Scotland level of damp. All of my free…
Tuesday 27 May 2008
More new artwork - some jpegs in my email today of the design for our forthcoming 7" single. And it looks fantastic. We hope to have product in time for my trip…
Thursday 22 May 2008
The Red Red Rose in its remastered and repackaged version is now for sale here!
Saturday 17 May 2008
Yes, it was me last night on the radio asking Vic Galloway questions about the Caledonian Forest, and making him dance to this. But then dancing round a radio s…
Wednesday 14 May 2008
flying north from Luton, surrounded by noisy coughing I'm heading back home after a very quick visit to London for an interview today about potential research f…
Tuesday 13 May 2008
Nostalgia corner ... Writing with a proper pen requires decent paper, and on my bookshelves I found this, one of a boxful rescued from the cupboards of a Glasgo…
Sunday 11 May 2008
in the garden, in the company of a pair of collared doves On Friday I returned to the School of Scottish Studies Archive and had a fascinating couple of hours l…
Wednesday 7 May 2008
From Robert Fripp's diary, 11 April: Turn a seeming disadvantage to your advantage. The greater the seeming disadvantage, the greater the possible advantage. Fr…
Monday 5 May 2008
I'd forgotten it was a holiday today. Rather than fiddle around with WaveLab any more, I fiddled around with this instead, and rode it around the neighbourhood …
Saturday 3 May 2008
I thought I'd engage with technology this morning, installing a new DVD drive in my computer in an attempt to get WaveLab to burn CDs properly. While I had the …
Friday 2 May 2008
on the Edinburgh-Glasgow train This morning Gary West introduced me to the Sound Archive of Celtic & Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh for the…
Sunday 27 April 2008
This interesting article appeared in the Guardian yesterday. Would any Canadians like to comment? I've thought for some time that reluctant nationalists like my…
Saturday 26 April 2008
The promised Hertel CD-R arrived from the Conservatoire Royal de Bruxelles yesterday, just after today's recording had been postponed for a while. So instead I …
Monday 21 April 2008
Apologies to anyone wanting to buy a copy of The Red Red Rose, since the recent global shortage took hold. The good news is that a remastered version is on its …
Thursday 17 April 2008
Isle of Lismore, outside in the sun after an only slightly foolhardy pre-breakfast dip in Loch Linnhe Another busy week, one way or another. On Friday I was at …
Thursday 10 April 2008
Once again, I've been far too busy to type anything here. I don't normally drive to gigs if I can help it (to be honest I don't drive at all if I can help it) s…
Friday 4 April 2008
Very tired this evening. DG is over on this side of the Atlantic as the two of us have a couple of concerts over the weekend. It's only when we started playing …
Sunday 30 March 2008
flying north from Luton. Route home from Purcell Room: walk along the Thames (unexpectedly beautiful), bus, train, bus, plane, taxi, c. 4 hours view from the …
Saturday 29 March 2008
I'm very glad to have reached the weekend, even if I have to get on a plane later today. There are least two very nice things indeed to look forward to in the n…
Sunday 23 March 2008
Some of this weekend's preparatory musical tasks: - copying figures into the keyboard versions of Dieupart's suites from the chamber versions - chopping up bits…
Thursday 20 March 2008
I'm fighting off iritis again, with a very sore eye indeed - it feels like a losing battle to be honest. It may only be a matter of time before I'm back at eye …
Monday 17 March 2008
Home again after four days of music making, listening and experiment at distil, somewhat exhausted. Supposedly I was a 'tutor' but as in any good teaching situa…
Sunday 9 March 2008
I'm recovering from a very nasty bug here: I'll spare you the worst of the details but for most of Friday I was unable to get up off the sofa except for necessa…
Monday 3 March 2008
It's been a bit windy here recently: this was a road sign on our street until the wind got the better of it. I've been reading some reviews of last week's con…
Wednesday 27 February 2008
on the train to Edinburgh(being a professional musician for a bit) I spent a few spare moments at the weekend starting to mix the tune that I've been recording,…
Thursday 21 February 2008
Yesterday's news, after jamming with Barnaby in the kitchen: Sardinian triple pipes go really well with organ, Scottish smallpipes with harmonium. Today I've be…
Tuesday 19 February 2008
If you missed Vic playing 'what time is arse' on Radio 1 last week, it's still available as the first track on his podcast for another couple of days. The secon…
Sunday 17 February 2008
I've spent the whole of this afternoon in the garden tinkering with bikes, after a kind freecycler gave me his 1953 Humber (and a beautifully aged Brooks B83 sa…
Wednesday 13 February 2008
Apparently one of my home-made tunes is getting a play on Radio 1 tonight, in Vic Galloway's show. Does that make me officially cool? Look out for 'What time is…
Sunday 3 February 2008
Garden report: a fat bullfinch keeps returning to eat the blossom off the plum tree, and a blackbird-robin-blue tit hierarchy is developing in the customer base…
Sunday 27 January 2008
It was an excellent idea to go and hear Nordik Tree last night. If someone can explain to me why Finnish music has always touched me more deeply than Scottish m…
Saturday 26 January 2008
I just packed my harmonium off in a taxi for Timo A to play tonight. Did Radio 4 really play some Jandek this morning? And last night did Radio Scotland really …
Thursday 24 January 2008
There's serious amounts of preparation going on here for next week's concerts. I'm excited about the dance band stuff - I've no idea what it will sound like, bu…
Wednesday 16 January 2008
Loads of research- and media-related admin to do. But rather than try to think about music at the same time, I took the middle of the day off and went up here .…
Monday 14 January 2008
Most of today I've been at my desk, battling with a grant application for a research project. Which shouldn't be a demoralising thing to do, but it is. So I've …
Friday 11 January 2008
So the Westminster government has been banging on again about how necessary nuclear energy is, without actually making any hard assurances about anything. And t…
Thursday 10 January 2008
Well, our house survived Tuesday night's storm, but now it's raining. A lot. I was going to run lots of errands on my bike today, but sitting at my desk working…
Sunday 6 January 2008
I'm managing to resist watching the darts on the telly. Mostly. I've spent lots of time instead with Sibelius and Photoshop, preparing scores for the dance band…
Thursday 3 January 2008
At long last I've started properly putting together the music for the dance band. Psychologically, having a folder full of scores is a good point to reach. Ther…
Wednesday 2 January 2008
A Good New Year to everyone. Here's a present!
Monday 31 December 2007
A week of holidays so far and lots of things done, and lots of time spent doing nothing. Some interesting discoveries though ... Lots of entertainment can be ha…
Monday 24 December 2007
In the West End of Glasgow, the traditional pastime on Christmas Eve and Hogmanay (for me anyway) is bumping into unexpected people in Byres Road and standing a…
Monday 17 December 2007
I've been back at the eye hospital this morning for my iritis check, so I now have more drops and a schedule for weaning myself off the steroid ones, whoopee. B…
Thursday 13 December 2007
This morning I made the promised return visit to Kevin Earnshaw and the court cave at East Wemyss, this time on BBC business with John Purser and Fiona Fraser. …
Tuesday 11 December 2007
on the train home from Edinburgh the view from platform 4, Haymarket station, 7.15pm I'm in the middle of a week of being a professional musician playing in the…
Sunday 9 December 2007
Back home yesterday, I spent what energy I had (not much) bringing the CD sales accounts up to date for the last six months or so. This morning I've been entran…
Thursday 6 December 2007
The Ship Inn, ElieAfter the rather sterile but cheery environment of the Eastgate Theatre in Peebles on Tuesday, it was fun to be at St Peter's Church in Kirkca…
Tuesday 4 December 2007
driving south from Aberdeen (Alison's driving, Mhairi's in the back)We played our first gig of the week last night in the Cowdray Hall, which must have gone qui…
Sunday 2 December 2007
A last day of preparation here before this week's tour with Mhairi and Alison. Unfortunately I spent the morning in eye casualty after my iritis returned (it's …
Friday 30 November 2007
Happy St Andrew's Day. The drivetime show on Sunny Govan Radio was playing Scottish music in celebration so I got to sing along to the Bay City Rollers while ma…
Thursday 29 November 2007
I'm back home from a very useful day in London rehearsing with Mhairi and Alison for next week's tour. As Alison put it, these concerts have been in the book fo…
Monday 26 November 2007
Greenfinches are fighting over peanuts, and fieldfares are calmly eating out fallen and not-yet-fallen apples in the garden. The study is even tidier than usual…
Thursday 22 November 2007
Happy St Cecilia's Day. Classic FM's Arts Daily podcast features Alison talking about Katherine's Get a Life Fund and tonight's concert. Listen or download it h…
Tuesday 20 November 2007
It feels like I'm slowly coming out of musical hibernation. I spent a little time this morning improvising into the computer on top of the clunky reggae groove …
Sunday 18 November 2007
Yes, it is me quoted at the end of this article in today's New York Times. But The Scotsman got the best photo. And there's another new tune on my myspace page.…
Saturday 17 November 2007
It's been in the back of my mind for some time to do some reading on what listening is. As I've gradually become convinced that good listening is what makes a g…
Thursday 15 November 2007
It's amazing how much time can be taken up by the simple tasks of putting up some shelves and installing and configuring computers. The business of preparing wo…
Sunday 4 November 2007
I completely forgot that I'd taken this photograph on the way to Fred Frith's improvisation workshop last weekend. It seemed singularly appropriate. On the su…
Saturday 3 November 2007
At my desk, after a morning visit to our local church's annual November jumble sale where I bought my old bike two years ago. This morning's bargain was a pile …
Wednesday 31 October 2007
I was lecturing at the RSAMD this morning, and I suggested that when playing anything older than contemporary music, you should adopt the attitude of a tribute …
Sunday 28 October 2007
On the busy train home from Aberdeen It's good occasionally to fulfil an ambition. If anyone asked me over the last few years which musician I would most like t…
Thursday 25 October 2007
I'm gradually uncovering more and more piles of paper in my study which require action. Until today, I hadn't even unpacked from August's trip to Canada. But a…
Sunday 21 October 2007
Home, doing stuff. I got delivery of the new edition of the Marshall collections by the Highland Music Trust (highly recommended, and ridiculously cheap for wha…
Friday 19 October 2007
Lismore Just when I thought I was somewhere remote, who should I bump into in the shop today but Mike Lean (last spotted back stage at the Tiger Lillies gig in …
Thursday 18 October 2007
on holiday, Isle of LismoreWe visited the absurdly spectacular Castle Coeffin today, a ruin on a hillock on a cliff. It's very very quiet here but it's not isol…
Sunday 14 October 2007
Radio 4 listeners may have noticed that Katherine's tune Carson's Lilt is serving as the sig to this week's drama The Tenderness of Wolves. I think she might ju…
Friday 12 October 2007
flying north from Stansted - I must use the train more often, there's no excuseThis morning I sat in Ossie's barber shop in Camden, being expertly and soothingl…
Wednesday 10 October 2007
Just home, late, from a very busy day, which was lightened by two phone calls. One, a serendipitous conversation with Fred Frith about improvisation workshops h…
Tuesday 9 October 2007
Various things are gently coming together here. Concerts for the coming season are taking shape (not starting till January though), and my study is gradually ch…
Wednesday 3 October 2007
Just back from London on the sleeper this morning. One lesson learned there was that if Bill Carter invents a new cocktail - the 'Tiger Lily' in this case - the…
Sunday 30 September 2007
me this morning so that's where it got to
Wednesday 26 September 2007
Andrew and I had one of our marathon business meetings today which seemed very productive. Next season, which had looked like a bit of a disaster with some conf…
Sunday 16 September 2007
Now that the CD's out, I've updated the gallery with some photos from the various Lion recording sessions.
Friday 14 September 2007
I'm quite enjoying being a non-performer for a bit. I was a happily entertained audient at the BBC on Tuesday night with the Fife Youth Jazz Orchestra, Martin T…
Tuesday 11 September 2007
There are already games that go with certain movies: the Withnail and I drinking game, the Wizard of Oz/Dark Side of the Moon thing, and I dare say plenty of ot…
Friday 7 September 2007
I was giving Sushil a shot of my bike today, and soon after he asked 'Do you have a turntable to listen to?' 'Yes.' 'Good.' And he gave me a 7" piece of black v…
Thursday 6 September 2007
This morning started with a trip to the sorting office to pick up an eBay-sourced Yamaha Pianica 36 melodica: it seems like quite an old one. Later on, Andrew c…
Saturday 1 September 2007
I'm just home from hearing Cantus Cölln doing early Bach cantatas and the motet Jesu meine Freude in Edinburgh. What a relief to hear that music played and…
Friday 31 August 2007
I made it to the hat shop today and emerged not with a pork pie, but a cashmere cap very much like the one I left behind in a London pub in October 1998 at the …
Wednesday 29 August 2007
Today's my first proper day off at home for about three months, I think. I'll gradually deal with the countless piles of books and papers that litter the study.…
Friday 24 August 2007
Good rehearsal. Then good dinner. a moment of levity Hermann Goering in his Bavarian bellhop phase, as played by Adrian Stout Emily's patented paper bag sun hat…
Wednesday 22 August 2007
Back at my desk late, writing arrangements for our encores. The Tiger Lillies are very impressed with Andrew - Day 1: Adrian S's bass came apart (after it got r…
Tuesday 21 August 2007
Catching my breath after our first day of rehearsal with the Tiger Lillies and Keith Lewis. Hard work. Fantastic fun. Buy a ticket for Saturday if you can. Emil…
Saturday 18 August 2007
Eat your heart out JK Rowling: Haymarket station in Edinburgh now has a platform zero. I'm now heading home after cycling in the relentless Edinburgh rain betwe…
Wednesday 15 August 2007
The Tiger Lillies arrangements are coming on: Martyn's songs are still growing on me even now, so I'm looking forward to next week very much. I also saw Keith L…
Monday 13 August 2007
On Friday you can hear the Janis Joplin gig from St Magnus on Radio 3 at 1pm: oddly, we're credited as Concerto Caledonia, even though we hadn't branded ourselv…
Saturday 11 August 2007
I'm shackled to the computer today working on the Tiger Lillies arrangements. You can get a sneak preview of some of the material for our Edinburgh concert here…
Tuesday 7 August 2007
Newark Airport Having a very calm journey so far. DG reminded me to check in online from Kirsty and Ethan's place last night, so I've got front row aisle seats …
Monday 6 August 2007
Halifax, late This morning started strangely, as I came downstairs in the Sherbrooke telephone exchange to find a teapot, two boxes that kettles had come in, bu…
Sunday 5 August 2007
driving along Prince Edward Island to the ferry Last night's concert with Suzie and Betsy in the Indian River Festival was made even more dramatic by the thunde…
Saturday 4 August 2007
Moncton, NB just after midnight Too tired to write much, so here's another photo story from the day that's been. my hotel room office this morning, where I got …
Friday 3 August 2007
Moncton, NB just after midnight A great big hotel room with free internet and an ironing board: whoopee. I'm back there now after a very long camera blocking re…
Tuesday 31 July 2007
Lunenburg, NS It dawned on me yesterday that this is the first time I've done a tour with more than four dates in it since I worked in theatre 15 years ago. Som…
Monday 30 July 2007
Shelburne,NS chez Forbes and Yola Christie Arriving at the Osprey Arts Centre yesterday, I took my suitcase up to the dressing room, and there on the clothes r…
Sunday 29 July 2007
Annapolis Royal,NS – at the home of Geoff and Judi Butler I’m sitting up in bed listening to the birds out on the shore, after the thunderstorms in …
Friday 27 July 2007
9am,Glasgow airport You can still get porridge for breakfast here. This is good. Flight is delayed but porridge is tasty. I don’t usually have a pint of G…
Tuesday 10 July 2007
I've been reading Wimbledon Green by Seth, a book that he takes considerable pains to point out started as doodling in his sketchbook and is not a serious fini…
Thursday 2 August 2007
on the road from Georgeville, NS to Moncton, NB A wee photo album from yesterday. DG sporting the haircut I gave him in the morning. I didn't tell him until aft…
Monday 2 July 2007
On holiday, hooray. It's a short walk across the road to ringed plovers, wagtails, oystercatchers, terns and shelducks. And not far to Islay House Community Gar…
Saturday 30 June 2007
Time now for a proper recap of the St Magnus Festival experience. ST MAGNUS FESTIVAL DIARY Wednesday (20th) 'Oh Lord, won't you buy me a ... Honda'. Andrew di…
Thursday 28 June 2007
Still no time to write a proper account of the last week, but here's a photo album in the meantime. the band, L-R: DG, AMcG, Malachy Robinson, DMcG, Katy Birche…
Wednesday 27 June 2007
Home again from our four concerts in Orkney. I've had no time even to think about writing diary entries, but a full account with pictures will follow here in du…
Monday 18 June 2007
At last - a big box of Lion CDs arrived today! And they look great. So we'll take some to Orkney to sell, and make it available for pre-order on the site in a c…
Thursday 14 June 2007
Yup, I've been too busy to write diary entries for the last few days. On Sunday and Monday we were on a family outing to London so that I could be Susie's PA an…
Friday 8 June 2007
This week has gradually become taken over with impending concerts, and the St Magnus Festival in particular, as there is quite a lot to be thought about beforeh…
Tuesday 5 June 2007
On Springwatch tonight, Simon King was in the very phonebox that appears on the inside of the digipak of the new Lion CD. 4 million people watching, and he didn…
Sunday 3 June 2007
Well, today I made it all the way to Wordsworth House. (FX: cheer) I didn't run over a deer. (cheer) Louise Horsfield gave me my own private tour of the house…
Friday 1 June 2007
Getting things done gently. At lunchtime I performed this score, in the Kilpatrick Hills (although to be honest there were two of us rather than 17, and we stoo…
Wednesday 30 May 2007
Yesterday was one of those days when nothing quite seems to go the way it should, with lots of important tasks left undone for different reasons. But by the end…
Sunday 27 May 2007
in a car coming back from Perth I've been a professional musician for a day, playing in the SCO for Bryn Terfel's recital at the end of the Perth Festival. For…
Wednesday 23 May 2007
Katherine's tunes will get an airing on Radio 3 tomorrow morning. Hooray. Nye Parry was in Glasgow being an external examiner at the RSAMD this week, so on Tues…
Sunday 20 May 2007
Today I was going to go to Wordsworth House and try out Bob Deegan's new William Smith harpsichord, but at 11.59am precisely, a faun decided to have a go at cro…
Tuesday 15 May 2007
I played Sushil a rough mix of work-in-progress 'What time is arse' yesterday, and he said it could be the new Roobarb and Custard theme; Alison, on the other h…
Monday 14 May 2007
Note the sunny day reflected in the window here.
Sunday 13 May 2007
Spotted on the way to the RSNO Junior Chorus concert this afternoon, a long-hidden shopfront.
Thursday 10 May 2007
Speaking of good singers, I got my copy of Suzie LeBlanc's album Tout Passe in the mail yesterday, and have managed to listen to most of it today. When we were …
Wednesday 9 May 2007
Flying north from Stansted again Afriendly audience awaited Alison and me in Leicester last night, after Kate Fawcett and her family settled us into the hall in…
Monday 7 May 2007
The Lion CD now has its own myspace page at www.myspace.com/lioncd. Please be its friend. Meanwhile, my mental health is being maintained, or at least modified,…
Sunday 6 May 2007
I'm clearing up a bit here, as my study is a landscape of unfinished piles of stuff. In one of the piles of stuff is a DAT of our first studio broadcast from 19…
Saturday 5 May 2007
Just to chuck in my tuppence-worth about the fiasco surrounding 100 000 spoilt ballot papers in Thursday's elections ... there's no need for a judicial enquiry …
Thursday 3 May 2007
In the interests of finding out what other strange things are being done with Monteverdi, we went along to see Les Ballets C. de la B’s VSPRS tonight at t…
Tuesday 2 May 2007
The artwork for the Lion CD has finally arrived and looks great. Happy happy joy joy. If we'd agreed to the first design suggested by a different record company…
Saturday 28 April 2007
I'm flying north from Luton, after getting the sleeper to London on Wednesday night and spending two days in a Soho basement playing harpsichord and organ with …
Tuesday 24 April 2007
Business has been a bit static for a while: busy, but static. Lots of adminstrative trivia have been too tedious to write about here, but this week things began…
Monday 16 April 2007
Writing programme notes (I really hate programme notes, why did I agree to that?) and digging out info for our accounts. Bleah. At least earlier today I jumped …
Saturday 14 April 2007
An unexpected day at home alone today, so an opportunity to ignore further the vast pile of admin and drudgery waiting on my desk, and devote some thinking time…
Thursday 12 April 2007
Suzie's album Tout Passe is out - you can hear three tracks here.
Wednesday 11 April 2007
I had this morning free to catch up with various admin tasks, but I spent most of it being domestic instead, probably inspired by the magpies who've successfull…
Monday 9 April 2007
Special thanks today to the various people along the banks of the Kelvin who unexpectedly gave me high fives as I cycled past. The first three were 9 or 10 year…
Sunday 8 April 2007
Back home from holiday by the Tweed. I've been reading a little publication by Jim Inglis called The Organ in Scotland before 1700 (Schagen, 1991), which I enjo…
Friday 30 March 2007
It's demo city here, as Martyn Jaques has sent a huge pile of songs for our forthcoming Monteverdi tribute at the Edinburgh Festival, and I have to think about …
Thursday 22 March 2007
I've taken delivery of some very interesting demos for a project this summer, which I have to keep quiet about for a few days yet. Meanwhile, the Scottish Parli…
Monday 19 March 2007
back in Possilpark library Not having concerts to prepare for means that I can tackle some long overdue paperwork. Yesterday's tasks, besides beginning to clear…
Thursday 15 March 2007
There's lots of listening to catch up on back at home: the second edit of Suzie's album 'Tout passe', and the BBC recordings of our Bach concerts at Perth. And …
Wednesday 14 March 2007
on the train back from Mallaig Contentedly drowsy, coming back from an excellent visit to Skye with Bill Drummond, where we enjoyed the wonderful hospitality a…
Tuesday 13 March 2007
on the train to Mallaig I really enjoyed playing French music in Perth yesterday. It's hard to feel stressed when playing Rameau or Marais. In fact, if you feel…
Monday 5 March 2007
It's been a lot of work preparing for our first concert with a medium-sized group for nearly a year. Having the focus of a performance certainly keeps you busy,…
Sunday 4 March 2007
Yesterday's concerts started spectacularly well with Alison's Bach cello suite, after which DG and I snatched defeat from the jaws of victory with a rather nerv…
Thursday 1 March 2007
DG arrived yesterday, and his suitcase arrived a few hours later, and we had a preliminary scout through most of the music for Saturday's concerts. The second c…
Sunday 25 February 2007
on the Newcastle-Glasgow train I'm going home again, after the briefest of trips to the very excellent venue of The Sage Gateshead for an 11am concert this morn…
Friday 23 February 2007
flying home It's pathetic. Flying air berlin, I'm 40 years old and I'm still amused that the plane is a Fokker. I'm on my way back from a very useful evening an…
Thursday 22 February 2007
From yesterday's Guardian, this wonderful piece by John Tusa about what it's like to run an arts organisation. I think I agree with him on virtually everything,…
Tuesday 20 February 2007
Not much time for diarising at the moment. Amongst other things, I have to prepare and practise two concert programmes (Allan's been here doing harpsichord main…
Thursday 15 February 2007
This morning started well and badly: well, with the arrival of some first edits from Suzie's album 'Tout passe'; and badly, with a certain BBC news reporter (at…
Sunday 11 February 2007
Susie's 9th birthday party here meant that we had the loan of a PS2 and singstar, which is too much fun to resist. Before the party invasion began, Susie and I …
Friday 9 February 2007
I'm uncommonly tired today, after this week entailed an unexpectedly large amount of reading: all of it worthwhile though. This afternoon I was in Edinburgh - I…
Tuesday 6 February 2007
A nice surprise in the mail this morning from Bill Drummond: a wee book of scores. You can see the scores at www.the17.org under "members' scores". I particular…
Monday 5 February 2007
A beautiful clear sunny day: amazing colours in the sky and on the ground, on the drive to and from Perth. Not that I was driving: Andrew kindly offered to be m…
Sunday 4 February 2007
In amongst catching up with email and other stuff, today's preparation for tomorrow's recital consists of figuring out roughly what I might talk about onstage, …
Wednesday 31 January 2007
I don't play solo harpsichord recitals very often, so today is dedicated practice day. Allan Wright came round yesterday and did some much needed regulation wor…
Monday 29 January 2007
Uh. A welcome day off today after taking DG to the airport this morning at 6.30 and getting caught in an amazingly convoluted traffic diversion so that I spent …
Saturday 27 January 2007
I can't not mention last night's rehearsal with Future Pilot AKA The Burns Unit, where the basic guitar/bass/drums foundation were joined by kora, highland bagp…
Friday 26 January 2007
A peaceful sunny morning after a busy day yesterday. Glasgow University Concert Hall is a strange place to play, largely because it has no raised stage, and abo…
Tuesday 23 January 2007
Still no DG here: he omitted the vital "+1" from the day that his flight gets in on his schedule ... so today I had a chance to catch up with CD business: artwo…
Monday 22 January 2007
I've atoned for two visits to the supermarket over the weekend, by cycling to the greengrocers in the sunshine this morning and returning with panniers full of …
Saturday 20 January 2007
I painted windows instead of practising today: work avoidance can take very practical forms. If you're looking for some cheap entertainment, and I mean cheap, …
Friday 19 January 2007
Practising. Long overdue. I've just realised that for the next two months I have to be able to play some quite difficult music, properly. As you can see, I've b…
Tuesday 16 January 2007
Sunshine today at last. I had a very necessary Alexander lesson from Evelyn, fixed my puncture, rode my bike, went to primary 5a's Roman Museum, starting fiddli…
Saturday 13 January 2007
on the road to Aberdeen, just passing the NCR factory where the workforce got sacked the other day It's pouring rain, Alison Green's driving, and I'm catching …
Tuesday 9 January 2007
Last night's percussion rehearsal was hysterical, as Alan Emslie, surrounded by all kinds of noise-making kit (drums, cymbals, chains, and not this kind of kit …
Thursday 4 January 2007
A Good New Year to everyone. First things first: at long last I can reveal what John Purser and I have been up to for the last year or so. We've been making a 5…
Friday 29 December 2006
In this age of internet shopping, local shops are a good thing. The nice people at Sound Control and I have taken it in turns to be patient with one another thi…
Monday 18 December 2006
I've spent most of today proofreading the score of a chunk of Hamish MacCunn's opera Diarmid against a scan of the composer's MS. As a result my brain is now a …
Sunday 17 December 2006
Wednesday was the only time I had to myself this week, and I spent a lot of it on company bank account-related tasks. But there was also time to install the lat…
Sunday 10 December 2006
I have been doing some practising today: well, learning of music really rather than practising it. The more Beethoven-esque patches of Schetky's music demand mo…
Wednesday 6 December 2006
I took most of today off to go Christmas shopping, partly at my desk and partly on foot (and on the bus - some things might have been too big to carry on the bi…
Tuesday 5 December 2006
A lesson learned from yesterday's concert: practising is over-rated. I didn't practise for yesterday at all, just played 10 minutes of Hanon exercises a few tim…
Monday 4 December 2006
Just back from today's lunchtime concert (and a quick curry in Perth with Alison and Andrew), so hooray for Perth Concert Hall's backstage crew. We staggered of…
Thursday 30 November 2006
This and this explain why the Lord Provost's car was in the park as I walked through it this morning. At lunchtime I went to hear Catriona McKay and Chris Stout…
Saturday 25 November 2006
I'm listening to the not-quite-finished new album by Moishe's Bagel, which Greg dropped round with late last night, as a prelude to the two of us sitting laughi…
Tuesday 21 November 2006
As it's been no music day today, I've been reading about music instead of listening to it or playing any. This from an interview with Fred Frith at www.fredfrit…
Monday 20 November 2006
A joy lost in the digital domain. Last Tuesday I carelessly dropped my turntable's stylus onto a record label and wrecked it. Then when the postman came to deli…
Saturday 18 November 2006
Melrose On holiday for the weekend. Hooray for kind babysitters and other generous relations. Last time I stayed here was in May 2001, when it was called the Bo…
Monday 13 November 2006
On Friday, at the third attempt, I finished editing the set of Katherine's tunes that we recorded back in September - they're here. Go listen. I spent most of y…
Thursday 9 November 2006
I had far too much to do today, but it was lightened by a very enjoyable hour in a studio with virtuoso actor Tam Dean Burn, and an impromptu attempt to sell an…
Tuesday 7 November 2006
I found these photos from Saturday, and this one, and this one. And while wandering around Flickr, also this. Live melodica on stage. Useful board meeting last …
Sunday 5 November 2006
To Glasgow University concert hall tonight to hear Ronald Brautigam play Haydn on the university's Paul McNulty fortepiano. Fireworks indoors and out. Astonishi…
Saturday 4 November 2006
What a busy day. I spent this morning at the Beacon Bonanza: the huge local jumble sale sort-of-thing where I bought my beloved £20 bike last year, and th…
Friday 3 November 2006
Tomorrow at Glasgow's own organic vegan café-bistro-record shop-brewery-library-performance space Mono, is the launch party for 'Get While the Getting's …
Wednesday 1 November 2006
I noticed that John Oswald and Chris Cutler are playing in Glasgow on Saturday night, so this is probably a good place to point out that you can download Oswald…
Friday 27 October 2006
home It's not been a week for writing diary entries. The trees are looking great here though, the rowans in the garden now bright red as the leaves gradually di…
Saturday 21 October 2006
flying to Newark again As Gaël Minetti was driving me back to Dorval airport, I thought about what a lot has happened since he picked me up there nearly a …
Friday 20 October 2006
1.30am Sessions all done, rather satisfying too. We finished with Les Pélerins, arranged for voice, gamba, harmonium, tabla and the strange sound of me a…
Wednesday 18 October 2006
Day two at St-Augustin de Mirabel. Last night the jolly boys (now rechristened HTF: Hommes à tout faire, after an ad for a local odd job man on our paper…
Tuesday 17 October 2006
I finally got the internet to work in my hotel room after today's sessions. Had forgotten that I'm registered here as 'Mac Guinneff' which I quite like, but it …
Monday 16 October 2006
Now settled into my hotel room in downtown Montréal, taking stock of the day. We've been rehearsing at Suzie's place, adding Sylvain 'Mr Cool' Bergeron's…
Sunday 15 October 2006
5.45am Greater Moncton airport Uh. A fun concert last night, very useful preparation for this week's recording. Even if I did some of the rehearsal with earplu…
Saturday 14 October 2006
Time for a quick lunch to escape from the very noisy film crew and the pouring rain before tuning the harpsichord. DG, Betsy and I worked our way through the ne…
Friday 13 October 2006
Back at the Motel after two days of rehearsal at the Monument Lefebvre in Memramcook. Yesterday's pouring rain gave way to warm sunshine today; and yesterday's …
Thursday 12 October 2006
Chocolate River Conservatory of Music, Dieppe, NB, Canada 10am. Slept successfully in a huge if basic room, rendered more friendly by Radio 4 podcasts and Flipr…
Wednesday 11 October 2006
Glasgow airport 11am. The airport is deserted. No queues, so time to buy some nice whisky to share with the Jolly Boys, and to have a breakfast of porridge, kip…
Sunday 8 October 2006
I caught the end of Sting-sings-Dowland live, on Radio 3 when I was out in the car earlier. I read some sneering reviews, but I have to say I liked it, and I'd …
Thursday 5 October 2006
One un-trivial matter arising from going to Pittsburgh last weekend concerned the very visible signs everywhere at checkin announcing Continental's new weight r…
Monday 2 October 2006
Home. The new Flipron CD 'Biscuits for Cerberus' is on the mat, in its handmade sleeve. Go to Tiny Dog and buy one, or several: any album that starts with the l…
Sunday 1 October 2006
Pittsburgh airport Starting my journey home. This morning I sat in Crazy Mocha on Ellsworth Avenue where I sat nearly 4 years ago on my last visit, but this ti…
Saturday 30 September 2006
Pittsburgh, 8am Sitting up in bed in comfortable surroundings, assembling various bits of paper into a folder for tonight's concert. Most of the programme I've …
Thursday 28 September 2006
In the air between Glasgow and Newark On my way to Pittsburgh after a week and more of rest. A 14 hour journey perhaps isn't the best way of easing myself gentl…
Monday 18 September 2006
Having some time off.
Thursday 14 September 2006
It's been a week for bumping into people unexpectedly. My favourite was on Monday when as I emerged from Haymarket station in Edinburgh, Bob Deegan was wheeling…
Sunday 10 September 2006
A day off, buying furniture and a tree, and planting the latter. A good thing to do. Well, we got through the last few days somehow. We recorded a lot of music…
Wednesday 6 September 2006
Thanks to the wonders of Bluetooth, here's one of yesterday's commemorative photos from Sushil's phone.
Tuesday 5 September 2006
Coming to the end of a full day. I've just been writing a bassline for Richard Leveridge's tune for 'The Tippling Philosophers', after the tune we had in rehear…
Monday 4 September 2006
Gently back to work after a couple of very welcome days off, with a bike ride, lots of playing in the garden, and time to watch and be enthralled by The Devil a…
Saturday 2 September 2006
Well, DG and I played a good gig yesterday I think, to a very supportive audience with some very welcome friends in it. Once you get on stage and the adrenaline…
Sunday 27 August 2006
I was at home yesterday while some of the family were at the enormously civilised Edinburgh Book Festival again, in the company of First Minister Jack McConnell…
Friday 25 August 2006
An interesting conversation with David G last night. BAA, the airports authority here, has specifically banned violins and cellos from being carried onto planes…
Wednesday 23 August 2006
on a train again, Bangor-Glasgow via Crewe Yawning. Yesterday my exhaustion tipped into complete shutdown: I'm not quite sure how I had the energy to do last ni…
Sunday 20 August 2006
We went to hear Martin and Eliza Carthy playing in Milngavie last night, in the cozy (well, hot and sticky actually) confines of the Fraser Centre: just like be…
Friday 18 August 2006
on the Edinburgh-Glasgow train I still think that the best thing about festivals is the opportunity for hanging around on the street and seeing who you bump int…
Tuesday 15 August 2006
very late I'm now starting to catch up with two weeks' worth of unmade decisions: choosing which concerts to play, putting programmes together, booking flights …
Friday 11 August 2006
Another reluctant diary entry. But today was Katherine's funeral. I've been lying in the bath, listening to the Höökensemblen, and toasting Katherine …
Tuesday 1 August 2006
For some reason I feel compelled to write something here today, but nothing seems quite appropriate. It’s too early after the day’s events for the c…
Sunday 28 July 2006
Back home. The first person I met on leaving the airport was a minicab driver who whined and moaned angrily about how long he'd had to wait for me to get my lug…
Thursday 27 July 2006
with DG, driving back from Shelburne - lots of soft fruit from this morning's farmers market on the dashboard Now inhumanly tired after a great fun gig to an au…
Saturday 27 July 2006
Halifax Airport, Nova Scotia Waiting here for my 75-minute delayed but mercifully direct flight back to Glasgow. It took me 11 and a half hours to fly here via …
Wednesday 26 July 2006
bedtime - Lunenburg, Nova Scotia Well, I wonder if I should even attempt a chronological account of the last few days at Boxwood. I've just spent the first par…
Friday 21 July 2006
in the air somewhere over the Atlantic Last night, in amongst packing, practising and being relieved that the temperature had dropped below sweltering, I signed…
Wednesday 19 July 2006
Today is forecasted to be the hottest day ever on record in the UK. Not ideal for getting all the things done I would like to, before heading to Canada: practis…
Thursday 13 July 2006
still on holiday Yesterday's papers, full of the news of Syd Barrett's death, made me want to reach for my Barrett LPs, but they're at home of course. They are …
Tuesday 11 July 2006
still on holiday Apparently the Westminster government has decided to build some more nuclear power stations. I wonder if the Scottish Executive will use its po…
Saturday 8 July 2006
on holiday It's good to have time to think. Things gradually unravel in your head while your foreground activity is contemplating clouds or birds, clambering ac…
Saturday 1 July 2006
7pm, on the Kennacraig-Port Ellen ferry Well, the other three are getting ready for their concert in the East Neuk Festival and I'm going on holiday. I'll call …
Friday 30 June 2006
on the Edinburgh-Glasgow train An early start this morning for Katherine to drive the four of us through to St Cecilia's Hall to rehearse for our concert there …
Wednesday 28 June 2006
Driving back from Crail with Andrew after dropping in on the rehearsal for Arvo Pärt's Stabat Mater with Paul Hillier and co. A quick chance to say hello t…
Monday 26 June 2006
on the Stansted express I've just had a long and enthusiastic conversation with the train conductor about headphones. He said he could tell by my white Sennheis…
Saturday 24 June 2006
near Tetbury, Gloucestershire Alison and I are here as the guests of Martin and Elise Smith to give a private concert tomorrow afternoon to the Friends of the …
Tuesday 20 June 2006
Sample clearance continues apace: 3 out of the 4 contacts are made and positive now. The sense of relief is palpable already. On the way back from walking my da…
Monday 19 June 2006
I finally bit the bullet today and started contacting record companies and publishers about sample clearance for the Lion CD. But my latest work avoidance strat…
Saturday 17 June 2006
I got up far too early this morning. Yesterday I wasted four hours pulling two PCs apart and swapping hard drives and soundcards around, only to give up and put…
Wednesday 14 June 2006
Plenty of paperwork to deal with at my desk after an excellent board meeting and AGM last night. At least I can do it to good accompaniment after Sandy brought…
Saturday 10 June 2006
I'm swinging in the hammock in the back garden, just back from being a (fidgety) audient at a concert at the university, with Alan Hacker playing clarinet quint…
Monday 6 June 2006
Back at my desk after a weekend of sunshine. Saturday was a sunny day of joy in Edinburgh at the wedding of Ursula Leveaux and Adrian Sankey - lots of music (Ka…
Friday 2 June 2006
A very strange thing happened to me today … For a BBC project I've been researching the work of Bill Drummond, which is less straightforward than you mig…
Thursday 1 June 2006
You can hear Katherine playing the nyckelharpa and talking about it (in Swedish) about 17'30 into this programme (thanks to Alistair Low for the link). www.sr.s…
Wednesday 31 May 2006
Stansted airport (again, only 20 minute delay this time) Last night's concert in Salisbury Cathedral was quite good fun in the end. Playing in an over-generou…
Tuesday 30 May 2006
on the train Waterloo-Salisbury 11.50am, and the fourth train of the day (3 trains and a bus, Alison's just corrected me). Surrounded by enough food for an army…
Saturday 27 May 2006
A very welcome visit from Nye Parry last night prompted me to have a listen to the silophone this afternoon. It's a huge disused grain silo near Montréal…
Wednesday 24 May 2006
I'm sitting in a corner of the Glasgow's Henry Wood Hall as a recording session goes on around me, steaming gently after getting soaked through on the bike jour…
Thursday 18 May 2006
Lots of paper today, including a pile of mail I haven't had time to open, and the harmonium and celeste parts of Shostakovich's The Age of Gold for a recording …
Wednesday 17 May 2006
Stansted airport I'm very sleepy, my plane's two hours late. Wonder if I can type coherent sentences. I think Stansted is the least offensive of the London airp…
Thursday 11 May 2006
on the Newcastle-Carlisle train I've been sitting on the Millennium Bridge in Gateshead in this morning's sunshine admiring the view, and saying hello to the …
Tuesday 9 May 2006
Inspired by Allan Wright's recital at Glasgow University a couple of weeks ago, I ordered up a copy of Soler's Fandango to learn, and it arrived today. It's one…
Monday 8 May 2006
Half-listening to Handel Coronation Anthems as mental preparation for a concert next week. Hmm - can't say I really like them much. The best of Handel's music h…
Sunday 7 May 2006
There hasn't been much written here for a while, because time that I would normally spend on cultural musing has been spent lying around in a hammock in the bac…
Sunday 30 April 2006
Back home in Glasgow by 11pm, after a 4 o'clock concert in the Wigmore Hall and time for dinner for afterwards in Carluccio's with old pals Simon and TIna. Not …
Wednesday 26 April 2006
I'm a bit bleary of eye this morning, after legendary producer Stewart Cruickshank's BBC leaving party last night at Oran Mor. Just about every indie band from …
Monday 24 April 2006
A day at the piano, aching wrists as a result. But the Janis Joplin songs are coming along nicely. Well, not nicely, but appropriately on the whole. I also spen…
Monday 17 April 2006
I made an interesting discovery yesterday, which is that I now live 5 minutes' walk away from the building I was born in. I'd always assumed that the mysterious…
Tuesday 11 April 2006
I'm sitting in the garden enjoying the evening sunshine and the spring light between torrential showers. This afternoon Lisa came over and we had our first blas…
Friday 7 April 2006
Back from a short holiday to explore more fortepianos with Alison today, in Glasgow this time. And we seem to have found one! Now we just need to negotiate the …
Monday 3 April 2006
Yesterday I jumped on my bike and made it into town just in time to catch the end of David G's set with Ferintosh: sounded great too. This morning he and Andrew…
Friday 31 March 2006
The Future Pilot AKA single featuring our good selves is now available from Rough Trade here.
Thursday 30 March 2006
Stansted airport Alison and I had a grand day out today at Finchcocks trying out pianos and a harpsichord for the Schetky recording. Bill Dow had kindly prepar…
Wednesday 29 March 2006
Glasgow airport What a busy week it's been. I think I averaged no more than 4 hours' sleep a night until last night, so I'm still in major sleep deficit. I can …
Wednesday 22 March 2006
Hmm, haven't posted here for a while. I blame a combination of family-related sleep deprivation and being (fairly) busy with preparations for the coming weekend…
Thursday 9 March 2006
Just back from a concert in St Andrews, in 'professional musician' mode: it's not often that I'm there in university term-time. St Andrews students are, on the …
Friday 3 March 2006
I took delivery of two Gator cases today: a flightcase for our newly-acquired Ahlborn H6 fake chamber organ, and a trolley case for my Estey harmonium. The case…
Wednesday 1 March 2006
Inspired by the sunshine and the freezing cold, I've been spring cleaning: clearing out my study of unnecessary clutter in the hope of a more relaxed working en…
Tuesday 21 February 2006
This morning I finally listened to the mastered Lion CD properly on good headphones in a quiet room. It's only taken me a month and a half to find an hour when …
Friday 17 February 2006
If you would like a sneak preview of our version of the Buzzcocks song 'Boredom' with Lisa Milne and Chris Norman, you can hear it here as part of Irwin's WFMU …
Wednesday 15 February 2006
More time-wasting today courtesy of the Bank of Scotland, and the latest chapter in the saga of my attempts to find out how much money is in Concerto Caledonia …
Tuesday 14 February 2006
on the Edinburgh-Glasgow train, Squeeze singles playing on my iPod I made it to St Cecilia's this morning in time to help move the 1755 Kirckman into the hall,…
Monday 13 February 2006
Just about mellowed out enough now to be able to do some serious practice for tomorrow's concert. I tuned the bottom G# on my harpsichord down to F for the firs…
Wednesday 8 February 2006
How long my work list has become. But I had a good day's practising yesterday for next Tuesday's recital, with my mental state starting at 'why I am playing all…
Saturday 4 February 2006
Yesterday - morning: company accounts; afternoon - playing tunes on fiddle and melodica with Greg; evening - Hummel Mass with SCO. Today - day off. It was ver…
Thursday 2 February 2006
on the Edinburgh-Glasgow train I had a very nice time playing the organ in Hummel's Mass in B flat tonight: one of those rare gigs when I feel 'in the zone' pre…
Wednesday 1 February 2006
I've had an unusually productive day today. I began it by coming up with a possible programme for us to play at a contemporary music festival, then after talkin…
Sunday 29 January 2006
Lots to reflect on from the last few days on this sunny winter Sunday, after a fun gig last night in Perth. I'm completely exhausted but that's fine. For one th…
Friday 27 January 2006
Luxury. A whole day in Perth with the hall to ourselves, Karine and Michael, and only a couple of photo calls for distraction. I think we're ready for the gig n…
Thursday 26 January 2006
Well, DG and Chris overcame their jetlag mightily yesterday (mostly) for a packed and exhausting if exhilarating day. The five of us spent a long morning choosi…
Tuesday 24 January 2006
I spent a lot of today on the phone, but organising non-classical music is much less stressful than classical, so I can't say I've minded. We're going to play l…
Sunday 22 January 2006
I'm pretty much preoccupied with next Saturday's concert, preparing some notation, and the general logistics or lack of them: it's certainly nice to be writing …
Tuesday 17 January 2006
This morning was spent in St Cecilia's Hall with Alison, trying out instruments for our Schetky CD. There can't be many places in the world where in one corner …
Friday 13 January 2006
Well, tomorrow afternoon Alison and I might be playing Geminiani and Vivaldi in the brand new recital room at Glasgow City Hall. I'd assumed it wasn't happening…
Tuesday 10 January 2006
It's changed from fresh exciting sparkly winter weather, to wet windy hiding-indoors winter weather. So I've been very happy to spend the afternoon by the fire …
Saturday 7 January 2006
Just back from London - door to door in less than 3½ hours: hooray for Stansted. In the mail waiting for me was a CD of demos from Michael Marra, a liste…
Thursday 5 January 2006
in the air, heading for Heathrow Last night's board meeting was unexpectedly entertaining, as Katherine and Alison both came too, fresh from holiday by the shor…
Tuesday 3 January 2006
Joy unbounded. A phone call this afternoon from Catherine Bott backstage at Perth Concert Hall, holding my lost hat in her hands. There is more rejoicing in hea…
Sunday 1 January 2006
Well, a Good New Year to everyone. This morning Robbie and I took advantage of the almost complete lack of traffic on the roads to find our way to National Cycl…
Saturday 24 December 2005
It must be the holidays, as I've actually had time to think about music. Yesterday afternoon I went through all the Schetky keyboard material again, weeded and …
Thursday 22 December 2005
If you missed us on the radio last night you can listen again here for a week (click on the Radio 3 Radio Player link) - we're in A Bach Christmas 43 with Fiona…
Monday 19 December 2005
I've had a sneak preview of Wednesday's Bach broadcast, which is very interesting indeed. It's always revealing to hear something from a different angle after t…
Sunday 18 December 2005
A wet day today, the first in ages. Not that it stopped us going out for a father-and-son cycle ride for a couple of hours this morning. Billy Connolly's theory…
Friday 16 December 2005
The version of Beethoven's Sir Johnie Cope mentioned below does in fact exist. I have heard it with my own ears, and much as I would like to post it here, will …
Thursday 15 December 2005
A search for Future Pilot and 'Eyes of Love' at www.bleep.com will also find the track 'Changes', featuring all four of us (including DG's answering machine fid…
Friday 9 December 2005
A nice mention of Geminiani in the Financial Times CDs of the year today. Yesterday I was 12 floors up in Glasgow University Library looking at keyboard music (…
Monday 5 December 2005
I've had a day off now, so it's back to my desk and the admin resulting from Saturday. But first, some backtracking. We made it onto the stage of Perth Concert …
Wednesday 30 November 2005
At long last I got to think about the music for our Bach concert this morning, rehearsing with Iestyn in the excellent surroundings of our chairman Noel's house…
Tuesday 29 November 2005
As well as having an hour to ourselves on Radio 3 on Sunday, we got played on Radio 1 on Saturday! Rob da Banks played Future Pilot AKA's 'Changes' (which featu…
Sunday 27 November 2005
First things first - for the next week you can hear our appearance on today's live Early Music Show here. On Friday I took my own advice (see diary 22 June 05…
Sunday 20 November 2005
Ugh. Got a cold. Had a useful couple of days though. On Friday a meeting, concluded with a handshake, means that we now have an agent again, and an orchestral m…
Thursday 17 November 2005
Yesterday was my first chance to see inside the new Perth Concert Hall, and very cheering it was too. For a start I hadn't realised it's only an hour away on t…
Tuesday 15 November 2005
I'm sitting on the Glasgow-Edinburgh train, having just finished writing in a translation of the text of BWV 170 into my score. I only studied German for two ye…
Monday 7 November 2005
An early morning meeting today could have some very positive outcomes in due course. On a completely unrelated task I then went to the library to look up Johan…
Friday 4 November 2005
Full marks for nerve to Leon McCawley, who halfway through his lunchtime recital at the RSAMD today, stopped to ask a member of the audience in the front row to…
Thursday 3 November 2005
An entertaining day. The students at the RSAMD were very alert and intelligent for 10am: more alert than I was actually - they successfully convinced me it was …
Wednesday 2 November 2005
There's been a sudden outbreak of activity of all kinds, and not just Halloween, Diwali and the approaching Guy Fawkes night. I'm beginning to make some headway…
Sunday 30 October 2005
I've been checking the Lion CD to see if it makes sense - the real shock has been listening to it at home with a real CD player as the source rather than my iPo…
Wednesday 26 October 2005
The picture shows my Estey folding reed organ from 1952 pressed into service as a table for a portable SADiE editing system. So now only two years in, the Lion …
Saturday 22 October 2005
OK, I haven't written anything here for ages, but it doesn't mean that nothing's been happening. It's just been a bit dull on the whole and without obvious decl…
Sunday 16 October 2005
The moon rising behind the summit of Ben Nevis, from Kilmalieu.
Tuesday 4 October 2005
On Sunday night Alison and I played St Cecilia's Hall to a very appreciative and listening audience. We did wonder afterwards if there were too many notes in th…
Friday 30 September 2005
Damp windy weather has set in here, but the Lion CD is progressing apace: the vocal tracks are now mixed and sounding great. I suspect that this will have a kn…
Tuesday 27 September 2005
Just back from London rehearsing with Alison for Sunday's concert. On reflection it is a bit strange to travel 450 miles just for a morning rehearsal, but it wa…
Friday 23 September 2005
Another date change: our Burns gig in Perth is now on Burns night! I bumped into Nic McGegan (check out his new site) at the counter in Heart Buchanan at lunc…
Thursday 22 September 2005
Still ill, but getting things done today. The date of our John Passion performance has changed, so there's a lot of chasing of people to be done to check whethe…
Sunday 18 September 2005
It's my turn to be ill now: that was inevitable really. So I hide on the sofa under a duvet and read about Bach's slurs between snoozes. Occasionally I get as f…
Thursday 15 September 2005
Nursing a sick daughter again. But lots to do here, catching up on ConCal correspondence. I also have a pile of Bach scores to get re-acquainted with, and John …
Thursday 8 September 2005
Bad Science. A good read though. And the homeopath joke here just seemed timely after the sign I saw at the weekend. I spent most of today tidying up around my …
Wednesday 7 September 2005
Another visit to Edinburgh University this morning, with a 100% cocoa hot chocolate with chilli from Plaisir du Chocolat on the way. On reflection, it seems a b…
Monday 29 August 2005
A free afternoon in Edinburgh. To Drumsheugh Baths, where I had the sauna suite to myself, and the refurbished pool almost to myself. Stayed far longer than in…
Thursday 25 August 2005
I'm sitting in the Edinburgh Playhouse watching Scottish Ballet's tech rehearsal of a Balanchine show to music by Stravinsky and Webern. Which is quite a nice …
Saturday 20 August 2005
Not many diary entries here for a while: some news to report though. Those nice people at Radio 3 will be recording our first Perth concert for transmission in …
Friday 5 August 2005
On holiday. For holiday I reading I brought Philip Tagg's hugely entertaining Ten Little Title Tunes (as recommended by Fred Frith) which argues from the UN Dec…
Saturday 3 September 2005
Proposed research is still taking up lots of my energy: I had lunch with our chairman Noel O'Regan in his garden in Edinburgh today; this after a chance meeting…
Wednesday 27 July 2005
Various strands of thought came together this morning in a simple idea. Why don't musicians have coaches? If you're in an Olympic team, you have a coach giving …
Tuesday 26 July 2005
I got up early this morning to edit the vocal tracks further, and was in the edit suite by 7.30am, taking many liberties with Lisa and Mary Ann's intonation. Th…
Friday 22 July 2005
Yesterday turned into a bit of an adventure. I got up at 5am to fly to London, a flight which was admirably hassle-free. Clearly enough people haven't yet reali…
Wednesday 20 July 2005
Playing Bach in the 21st century: 1. I had an interesting conversation the other day with a colleague who was engaged to play on two different recordings of the…
Tuesday 19 July 2005
On Thursday, Alison and I will be playing Geminiani live on Radio 3's In Tune, around 7pm I think. Meanwhile, I'm just about getting used to the sound of Lisa's…
Sunday 17 July 2005
Work is now under way in earnest on the vocal tracks for SADN II. I've just about done rough edits of everything, so now I can listen to it all in different env…
Friday 15 July 2005
I had a fun afternoon at Butterstone yesterday with Lisa Milne and Jamie Maclean, working quickly and getting five songs in the can in very little time indeed. …
Wednesday 13 July 2005
First things first. If you're reading this before Saturday, click here and vote for no. 6, thus increasing the chances of Alison's Geminiani CD getting a good c…
Sunday 3 July 2005
Which is more polite? 1) Glasgow, July 2005 or 2) Montréal, June 2004
Saturday 2 July 2005
I've been playing Nathaniel Gow's fiddle tune Coilsfield House for at least 20 years in various forms, but it's only yesterday that I finally went to Glasgow Un…
Thursday 30 June 2005
Alison's Geminiani CD comes out tomorrow (with a few harpsichord solos thrown in from yours truly) - I got mine in the post today. Audio clips, and copies for s…
Wednesday 22 June 2005
At 3.30pm yesterday afternoon I was paddling on a beach in Orkney. At 8.15pm I was in the front row of Fred Frith's solo gig at the CCA. And a completely jaw-dr…
Monday 20 June 2005
Ring of Brodgar, Orkney - about 12.45am
Friday 17 June 2005
St Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall, Orkney I'd always thought that when an orchestra looked bored, or disengaged, on stage, it was a function of the personality or s…
Thursday 16 June 2005
I'm sitting in our accountant's office. Our accountant is late, and I have to leave to be somewhere else in 15 minutes, so the potential usefulness of our meeti…
Tuesday 14 June 2005
I spent part of today in 'professional musician mode' in a recording session of two Handel arias, which was a rather dispiriting experience (in fact to take my …
Sunday 12 June 2005
Back home again after the last Geminiani gig of the season, in Warwickshire. It went very well indeed, although I ran out of music near the end with general tir…
Friday 3 June 2005
I spent this afternoon improvising with Raymond MacDonald: well, we played for about half an hour and sat with some peppermint tea and chocolate the rest of the…
Monday 30 May 2005
Today was that rare thing, a sunny Bank Holiday Monday. And as it reaches its conclusion, I wonder why anyone would want to live anywhere other than Scotland. O…
Tuesday 24 May 2005
Recovering from a stinking cold. At last this week I don't have any pressing deadlines, other than a concert on Saturday, so it's a chance to catch up on lots o…
Sunday 22 May 2005
I forgot a few things from last week ... Marc Marnie's excellent exhibition of digital prints was showing at The Village in Leith as we played on Tuesday (and …
Thursday 19 May 2005
Tuesday's SSO recording session was unexpectedly cancelled, so the remaining gig of the day was in Leith folk club with Chris and co. I didn't feel like a drink…
Monday 16 May 2005
Travelled down to London on Friday night for the unexpected Geminiani gig in Tudeley. As Alison drove us to Kent on Saturday afternoon, Joe and I compared vers…
Wednesday 11 May 2005
on the Mallaig-Glasgow train It's a perfect day for what is unquestionably one of the great train journeys of the world. It's sunny, it's still, the trees have…
Monday 9 May 2005
Very sad to have missed Sushil's onstage popcorn making with Lol Coxhill and co last week. Over the weekend, in amongst a visit to a country park and consuming…
Friday 6 May 2005
Summer evenings are nearly upon us. I've just been trampolining in the garden while listening to the CBC recording of our 'joli bois' gig in Halifax, NS last su…
Thursday 5 May 2005
Flying home from Heathrow Tuesday was Kevin McCrae's funeral. Hundreds of people. Dougie McLean somehow managing to sing 'Caledonia' while playing the guitar to…
Monday 2 May 2005
Newcastle I was wondering whether this hotel expressed the triumph of style over substance, given that the first room they put me in had a constant noise from t…
Thursday 28 April 2005
Inspired by a short phone call to DG before he headed for Halifax airport tonight, I had a go at playing harmonium and melodica simultaneously. It works! We'll …
Sunday 24 April 2005
Yesterday I went into town to meet Norman Motion who was kindly acting as delivery man for my Estey organ which Alistair Edmondson has been rebuilding. And it s…
Monday 18 April 2005
Heathrow airport It must be tough being a slightly myopic air stewardess. Having to work in confined spaces, and deal with recalcitrant passengers in subdued li…
Friday 1 April 2005
The editing is coming along nicely, hampered only by the mysterious disappearance of some audio from the hard disk, which meant I had to redo some tricky edits …
Monday 28 March 2005
It's a bank holiday, so it's a day of unrelenting rain. Oh well. I now have first edits of almost every track of the Lion CD and it comes to about 84' of music,…
Saturday 26 March 2005
I'm now beginning to devote some energy to upcoming projects: I have a pile of first edits for the Lion CD (SADN II) to listen to, I've peeked at the recording …
Sunday 20 March 2005
You should be able to hear my interview with Janice Forsyth here for a few days yet: click on Arts Show - Fri and I'm about 30 minutes in. And we got a nice rev…
Tuesday 15 March 2005
business lounge, Heathrow airport I'm on my way home after a very enjoyable day in Walthamstow playing through Kapsberger, Piccinini and Frescobaldi with Matt …
Wednesday 9 March 2005
Fiddler Tam is now for sale in our shop at conbrio, and new reviews are in for both this and RRR. I'm getting to my checklist of stuff to do from about a month …
Monday 7 March 2005
A long-awaited day off at the end of four weeks of being a professional musician. Our Kellie CD got a brief but very nice review in the Times on Friday. Yesterd…
Thursday 2 March 2005
Thought for the day: No matter how good a musician you are, if you're going to stand in front of an orchestra, you have to be able either to demonstrate or to a…
Monday 28 February 2005
Queens Hall, Edinburgh This week I'm abandoning my principles and being a professional musician, playing in the SCO to earn some money. It's difficult to say w…
Saturday 26 February 2005
My favourite memorable moment from yesterday (a day which had many) - It's about 11pm, we've done a great concert in the Barony Hall in Glasgow, and have been i…
Thursday 24 February 2005
on the train home from Edinburgh, late Whew. First of two gigs with La Haïm tonight. Purcell suffered a bit from the sudden imposition of an audience (it f…
Monday 21 February 2005
One of many jobs accomplished over the weekend was writing part of a suitably inflammatory press release to accompany the Kellie CD. I got myself successfully i…
Thursday 17 February 2005
in the air between Montréal and Heathrow The showcase at Rideau was fun: we were the entire Joli Bois company complete with Sylvain radiating cool guitar…
Wednesday 16 February 2005
Québec My time zone assimilation strategy is going well: on Monday night I had a short evening nap followed by some great food with Betsy at Rumi, late. …
Monday 14 February 2005
in the air between Heathrow and Montréal On Friday we revisited Nenthorn, two years to the day since we first drew up and set up in the space the builder…
Friday 11 March 2005
A couple of bits of press were brought to my attention yesterday. The Scotsman liked the Bach on Sunday, and Mojo magazine included I Trawl the Megahertz (just)…
Thursday 10 February 2005
Yesterday Alison and I managed to waste a valuable hour of rehearsal time by driving to the wrong Linn factory to pick up the Kellie discs - oops. Still, the r…
Monday 7 February 2005
Well, we're back in business. Roy arrived with a large van at 10am this morning to load up the harpsichord and digital piano: the ingenious bread-board type car…
Sunday 6 February 2005
Well, today I finally ran out of work avoidance strategies, and starting learning the music for this week. Some such strategies were legitimate (a family outing…
Wednesday 2 February 2005
I'm now down to the last few preparations for next week's concerts and recording: a few tunes are flying around our email accounts. Must remember to prepare tom…
Saturday 29 January 2005
The Seabrook's Crisps mystery has been solved (and they weren't all tomato sauce flavour after all). Hooray! Sharp-eared listeners to Radio Scotland may have he…
Wednesday 26 January 2005
Very mysterious. I went to the post office first thing this morning to pick up a parcel that I'd missed on Monday. It was a box of Seabrook's tomato sauce flavo…
Tuesday 25 January 2005
http://news.scotsman.com/features.cfm?id=90682005 A long evening spent on administrative niceties: gathering the notation for next month's concerts and recordin…
Monday 24 January 2005
morning: an encounter with the NHS. My experience is that it is often populated by wonderful medical staff who are crippled by a communications infrastructure t…
Sunday 23 January 2005
We finally went to see Vanity Fair today to hear my appearances as Reese Witherspoon's pianistic stunt double. And a rather good film I thought - she's fantasti…
Saturday 22 January 2005
Thanks to everyone who voted for us on Radio 3's CD review: we got 13 minutes of prime Saturday lunchtime airtime today as a result. This morning's mail brought…
Friday 14 January 2005
Still ill. I can just about do one thing at a time, but my usual multi-tasking is completely out of the question: walking and talking are a bit of a struggle. S…
Wednesday 12 January 2005
Oh no. I'm ill. On Monday night I had the feeling that my body was being taken over by something I couldn't control, then I felt a bit better yesterday morning …
Tuesday 11 January 2005
Whew. I've delivered the final set of edit notes and booklet blurb for the Kellie disc at last. John Purser's notes are as entertaining and as wittily written a…
Sunday 2 January 2005
I'm in the land of the first edit. I'm finishing my notes on the first edit of the Kellie for Linn Records, and have finally got to the position where there is …
Thursday 30 December 2004
In amongst the holidays, things are ticking along nicely. Joe Davie's artwork for the Kellie CD cover arrived and is brilliant as expected. A sneak preview is o…
Friday 17 December 2004
This morning's been unexpectedly exciting. I've been editing away at the quartet CD and was just finishing the tweaks of a few tracks when the post arrived, inc…
Monday 13 December 2004
Having the loan of an editing suite makes for a very civilised way of working. It's set up at my desk, so that rather than having to go out to a studio, I can u…
Wednesday 8 December 2004
Very sleepy. But this is largely due to a late night spent in a couple of bars with harpsichord builder Bob Deegan, and bass maestro Malachy Robinson, who were …
Friday 3 December 2004
First things first. The Red Red Rose CD is now available - and very red it is too. Check out the audio samples on our CD page. I listened to it in the car yest…
Monday 29 November 2004
CDs have suddenly taken over. The Red Red Rose arrives at Delphian Records tomorrow, so I've been preparing mp3s for this site and a group email to encourage so…
Thursday 25 November 2004
I'm just back from a few days in London. Contractual restrictions prevent me from describing it in detail here, but amongst many other things I learnt a Bollywo…
Tuesday 16 November 2004
Editing continues apace - Kellie is turning out nicely, and copies of The Red Red Rose should be in our hands by 1 December. Yesterday's mail brought my copy of…
Friday 12 November 2004
North Reading Room, National Library of Scotland I'm sitting here patiently at a desk waiting for some manuscripts to be brought up from the store. A kind pers…
Wednesday 3 November 2004
It's been an eventful week and a bit since my last diary entry. Last week I was writing some music for a radio project and one morning I found myself writing do…
Saturday 23 October 2004
Well, it was an enjoyable few days playing for Mackerras. As we left the Usher Hall stage on Thursday night (you can hear the concert on Radio 3 on Monday) I sa…
Wednesday 20 October 2004
on the train home from Edinburgh On Monday night Katherine and I drew up our first fixing list of the players we're going to ask to do the 2005/06 orchestral wo…
Sunday 17 October 2004
Went to the first night of the instal festival last night with Sushil K. Charlemagne Palestine was fantastic: at a Bösendorfer covered in soft toys he made…
Thursday 14 October 2004
I'm just back from a brief visit to London, which included an enjoyable curry with Matt Wadsworth to plan our trip to New York in April. But we were both a bit …
Sunday 10 October 2004
Well, the vibrandoneon turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. It makes a nice enough sound (as far as I could tell in the car park of Queen Street station)…
Tuesday 5 October 2004
My vibradoneon appointment's been postponed until Saturday, and I'm feeling a bit under the weather (a cold lurking, I think) so I'm at my desk formulating my c…
Saturday 2 October 2004
It's been nice not being a playing musician for a while. A chance to listen and think for a bit. After a bit of eBay bidding, I got a Yamaha melodica in the pos…
Thursday 16 September 2004
The Celtic Connections interview is here (click on 'LISTEN AGAIN') and will be until next Tuesday - I show up about 90 minutes in, and it includes sneak preview…
Sunday 12 September 2004
Autumn has arrived, fresh breezes bringing a kind of elemental excitement. Or as my daughter Susie said yesterday sitting on top of the fence: ‘it’s…
Thursday 9 September 2004
I had a grand day out on Tuesday, visiting Tony and Eve at Nenthorn School to record Tobias Hume's Lamentations with Alison, and also some melodica overdubs. …
Saturday 4 September 2004
In the occasional idle moments of a pleasurable domestic day, I learnt some Tobias Hume, played around on the cheap but effective aluminium djembe I bought in E…
Friday 3 September 2004
on a train I had a day at home yesterday, the first to myself for several months. So it was a chance to get ahead with lots of tedious paperwork, accounts and u…
Monday 23 August 2004
A day off. Last week brought some very interesting plans for the 2005-6 season. Can't give too many details yet, but I've got a fair bit of budgeting work to d…
Sunday 15 August 2004
home again I'm listening to the B minor mass on the radio live from the Proms, which Katherine and Alison are both playing in. It's nicely balanced between rath…
Thursday 12 August 2004
St Martin's Churchyard, East Woodhay, Hampshire I'm on a short break from recording Geminiani cello sonatas with Alison and Joe 'Master of Sarcasm' Crouch: they…
Sunday 8 August 2004
flying to Newark The sensible thing to have done this morning would have been to lie in bed and recover, before going to the airport for the flight home. But Be…
Saturday 7 August 2004
in the air between Ottawa and Halifax We must be tired, because we were invited to a party last night ('the beers are on us' said Jamie) and we all gave it a mi…
Friday 6 August 2004
hotel room, Ottawa We only had an hour's rehearsal and sound check scheduled for last night's gig (and we got less than that, because we had to wait for the Vie…
Thursday 5 August 2004
in the air between Halifax and Ottawa, too early in the morning A fun gig last night. We had lots of rehearsal in the course of the day, and a long lunch break …
Wednesday 4 August 2004
10.30am in the car between Clementsport and Saint-Bernard, with Chris, DG and Betsy We've just stopped briefly so that I could jump out and buy a couple of punn…
Tuesday 3 August 2004
driving to Saint-Bernard On Sunday we were near New Glasgow, and today we're headed for just past New Edinburgh. Yesterday was a day off: some practice, then of…
Monday 2 August 2004
2am, on the road back to Halifax from Lismore (both Nova Scotia, not Yorkshire and Argyll) Well, things got more complicated on Saturday. I got to Halifax to st…
Friday 30 July 2004
in the air heading for Newark The flight from Glasgow to Newark's become a bit familiar to me recently. As ways of getting to the eastern side of North America …
Sunday 25 July 2004
It's been holiday time, although I did manage to fit in trawling through a lot of the session tapes for SADN II which was great fun, and buying another melodica…
Tuesday 6 July 2004
Well, I would have hoped that by now I'd have recorded all my contributions to Chris's new album, but it didn't work out that way. I've recorded nothing. On Sun…
Sunday 4 July 2004
on train York-Glasgow, teeming rain outside On Thursday I had a whole day at home - the last proper one until about September - so I spent it practising Geminia…
Sunday 27 June 2004
The voluminous post-concert/recording correspondence has taken some entertaining turns. Names have been removed from the following excerpts from today's mailbox…
Saturday 26 June 2004
Well, the harmonium nearly made it back in one piece - two panels came apart in transit, but this morning a friendly joiner has glued and clamped one of them an…
Monday 21 June 2004
in the air between Montréal and Newark: some backtracking to catch up on ... Father McGuinness celebrates the Messe de la mélodica (drying out t…
Friday 18 June 2004
photo: recording venue and frisbee park en route Montréal-Terrebonne There are election posters everywhere here, almost all adorned with smiling photos…
Wednesday 16 June 2004
Montréal, driving to rehearsal in Chris's car Chris, David G and I are staying in the 'coach house' at the back of Susie Napper's house, so for the last …
Sunday 13 June 2004
It's been a weekend of frantic domestic work-outs, and bits of advance planning: booking flights, hotels, tidying up email that's about to hit the 'more than ur…
Thursday 10 June 2004
I'm back from a few days in Kent and London as part of Alison's backing band playing the Geminiani cello sonatas, and I'm left with a curious quandry, choosing …
Wednesday 2 June 2004
The sleeve design for The Red Red Rose arrived the other day (see CDs page). And I use the word 'sleeve' advisedly, as the front cover photo is a shot of the sl…
Wednesday 26 May 2004
I'm now well into preparations for a summer to be spent as a working musician again. I'm currently downloading a stack of mp3s from Suzie Leblanc and David G: l…
Wednesday 19 May 2004
I'm just back from a couple of days at the home of Delphian Records, preparing the final edit of The Red Red Rose. It's now over 15 months since the last record…
Monday 17 May 2004
Some concert possibilities have opened up in the last week or so for February and September next year. So the CD release schedule is starting to look like: A re…
Thursday 6 May 2004
Work: the planning of future activities, and the laying to rest of the administrative burden of past activities. But ... last night I went to hear JPP in Edinbu…
Monday 26 April 2004
Postscript to Belfast trip: I found out today that the guy I passed in the hotel lobby on Saturday who looked remarkably like Karlheinz Stockhausen, was Stockha…
Sunday 25 April 2004
Very tired, iritis returning, I may spend tomorrow morning in Eye Casualty in the hospital across the road when it opens ... Anyway ... last night in Belfast wa…
Thursday 22 April 2004
I've been occupied with a lot of non-ConCal-related activity recently. On Saturday I'm off to Belfast for BBC Music Live to accompany Catherine Bott in Carissim…
Tuesday 6 April 2004
A few things I have learnt recently: 1. my son looks great in a kilt; 2. one of the finest breakfasts in existence is party left-overs, provided you weren't at …
Saturday 27 March 2004
Well, spring any day now it certainly is. At last a day to be spent outdoors, rather than on the various administrative tidyings-up going on around my desk: bud…
Thursday 18 March 2004
Just made it back home again after Kellie recording sessions at St Jude's on the Hill in London. Perhaps I would be a bit less tired, but not much, if we hadn't…
Sunday 14 March 2004
L-R: AMcG, DMcG, KMcG, DBGWell, there's far too much from the last few days for me to report here in the time available, so I'll save it up for later. In the me…
Tuesday 9 March 2004
Well, yesterday turned out even busier than expected, as halfway through the afternoon Lisa was advised by her doctor not to sing. By one of those diary miracle…
Sunday 7 March 2004
Two days into rehearsal so far, chez McGillivray père. Assorted illnesses appear to be lifting, and music has come to visit from time to time, which is a…
Tuesday 2 March 2004
on the plane north from London Yesterday was very busy, so busy that I didn't manage to fit in a meal at any point. The upshot of all of this is that when Mira …
Sunday 29 February 2004
One of the most useful pieces of advice at melodicas.com is to use a shot glass to keep the screws in when you take the thing apart: the perfect screw receptacl…
Friday 27 February 2004
That rare thing today, a day with few distractions. So, I spent an hour or so on musical matters this morning - yes, practising - before diving headlong into th…
Wednesday 25 February 2004
I had some time this morning to think about music for once, and the prospects for some interesting things to happen in a couple of weeks' time are very good ind…
Sunday 22 February 2004
A sunny bright day at home, tweaking and printing out parts, and that all-important psychological step of assembling music in a folder for our tour. The print p…
Monday 16 February 2004
An active week has passed. Much editing of arrangements, editing of audio, editing of schedules, editing of publicity material, chasing of money (interminably),…
Monday 9 February 2004
on the tarmac at Baltimore airport (Newark is temporarily closed to incoming traffic) We passed a civilised morning at Norman Towers, Chris working on his compu…
Sunday 8 February 2004
A beautiful sunny snowy morning in Baltimore. On our arrival last night, we just had time for a relaxing beer before an unusual gig at Memorial Episcopal, the h…
Saturday 7 February 2004
on the road to Baltimore (413 miles), listening to Car Talk Well Columbus, Ohio was fun: Simeon and I were staying with the wonderful Sabrina Bobrow, who kept u…
Wednesday 4 February 2004
on the tarmac at Glasgow Airport Hmm, given the recent grounding and security alerts, perhaps Wings' With a Little Luck isn't the most tactful choice of pre-fli…
Monday 2 February 2004
I'm working very late trying to tie up as many loose administrative ends as possible before leaving for the US later this week. My flight west is the same one t…
Saturday 31 January 2004
At home nursing a head cold - it's tempting to blame the guy sitting opposite me on the train the other day, who repeatedly coughed in my direction while still …
Thursday 29 January 2004
These diary entries might be few and far between for a while, as the screen on my obsolete but efficient Psion 5mx crashed yesterday. Psions (no longer made) ar…
Sunday 25 January 2004
I'm sure it's not just in music that it's getting more difficult to get paid on time. I'm in the frustrating position of waiting for money to come in from vario…
Saturday 24 January 2004
I'm back at my desk after an unusual afternoon spent packing people's shopping at the http://graphics.asda.com/ASDA_Corp/topNavImages/but008_off.gif&imgWelc…
Sunday 18 January 2004
A real day off, to spend drinking tea, mending punctures on my children's vehicles of recreation, that sort of thing. After I spent Thursday evening feverishly …
Monday 12 January 2004
While I was away this review of SADN appeared in The Guardian. Thanks to Iain McGillivray for spotting it.
Sunday 11 January 2004
Kennedy Airport, NYC Yesterday morning I made a preliminary shopping expedition in the direction of Times Square at a temperature of -19°C, then took the su…
Friday 9 January 2004
New York City photo L-R: Paul, Chris, me very jet-lagged, Jamie after disastrous haircut An uneventful flight here yesterday (also lacking in sleep unfortunate…
Monday 5 January 2004
Over the so-called 'holiday' season, I prepared the editions of the Kellie symphonies for March. Besides the printed sources, there's at least one contemporary …
Saturday 20 December 2003
I mentioned to a journalist the other day that the Buzzcocks' Spiral Scratch was an important milestone in the history of British music, and he laughed. 'No I'm…
Saturday 13 December 2003
At long last I’ve got rid of most of the backlog of admin from recent events and I’m able to start planning ahead to March’s projects. I spen…
Sunday 30 November 2003
A very nice review of SADN has appeared at BBCi.
Saturday 29 November 2003
Travelling through the deluge on the train, for the second performance of Handel's Israel in Egypt with the SCO and Nicholas McGegan. Could be the Red Sea c…
Wednesday 26 November 2003
Time for a bit of catching up. David G arrived on Friday and we played through a few baroque bits and pieces that we haven't played before, interrupted at one p…
Thursday 20 November 2003
I was lecturing at the RSAMD this morning, teaching at Glasgow University this afternoon, and practising like crazy inbetween, in preparation for David G arriv…
Tuesday 18 November 2003
Well, I took the plunge and re-installed Windows, so the last 24 hours have been a bit chaotic as a result. I'm gradually coming to the surface again now. Today…
Thursday 13 November 2003
Most of this week is going past in an exhaustion-fuelled daze. On Tuesday I dropped in on the Kellie quartet rehearsal in the morning, and then called Fiona Tal…
Sunday 9 November 2003
All partied out, my hotel coffee machine is making me peppermint tea (having forsworn caffeine for the duration of the trip to aid with jetlag), I've got breakf…
Saturday 8 November 2003
To get an affordable flight to New Orleans I needed to include a Saturday night stopover, so I had a free day today. After a couple of hours' sleep, I took the …
Friday 7 November 2003
This morning we said our fond farewells to the fine Mobilians of Alabama (apart from all the flute players who are coming tonight of course) and hit the road, A…
Thursday 6 November 2003
Well, any hopes I had about beating jetlag by being so exhausted that I'd sleep for hours, were dashed when I woke up at about 4am. After a bit of dozing I put…
Wednesday 5 November 2003
Well, we finally arrived at our hosts' place at 4.20am after my navigation skills left a bit to be desired, and I went straight to bed after 27 hours of travel.…
Tuesday 4 November 2003
Well, I left the house at 7.10 this morning, 15 hours ago, to set off for a few days playing as a guest with the Chris Norman Ensemble. I'm now in Chicago O'Har…
Saturday 1 November 2003
Just back from a week in London studying radio technique with the great Piers Plowright, who I've always held in awe for having produced Ivor Cutler's first rad…
Saturday 25 October 2003
Since this time last week, we've had confirmation that the Kellie recording is going ahead. I have mixed feelings about this. I'm delighted that we'll get the …
Saturday 18 October 2003
First things first - Spring Any Day Now is now available in our CD shop. So go and buy one. Or several. Stocks are a bit low just now, but we're expecting a loa…
Monday 13 October 2003
on the plane home from Charleroi The things that go through your mind when an audient at a concert: in most local languages, the National Orchestra of Belgium …
Sunday 12 October 2003
on the plane to Brussels I've come to the end of my week playing in the SCO, the highlight of which was standing with a fine fish supper watching the moon rise …
Wednesday 8 October 2003
A tense few hours await me at my desk this afternoon and tomorrow as it gradually dawns on me that I've left it very late to book venues for the forthcoming tou…
Sunday 5 October 2003
First things first, the funniest news story of the year so far. So if you're one of the people I've waved to from that webcam, now you know what I was really …
Friday 3 October 2003
Today is a sort of transitional day from last month's events, into the preparation for what's going to happen in March. I've just made a list of all the things …
Friday 26 September 2003
very late, on the road home from Nenthorn, Adrian driving rather fast I spent today embroiled with various CDs one way and another. Mhairi and Adrian picked me …
Tuesday 23 September 2003
A welcome day at my desk, and around it, dealing with the various money, diary and general organisation things left over from the weekend, and trying to get to …
Sunday 21 September 2003
A82, heading south this time (Alison's driving the van). We're now heading back to Glasgow after last night's gig - beautiful weather again. A photo session awa…
Saturday 20 September 2003
in the car on the road to Fort William, just after Glencoe. It's a stunning day to be driving up the A82 (Katherine's driving actually). We're a bit late for ou…
Friday 19 September 2003
Just time for a quick report on this week. On Tuesday afternoon Chris Norman and the guys came over, and we had a quick rehearsal in my back garden, with Rod Ca…
Monday 15 September 2003
The weather's now changed to humid, sticky and oppressive. Much like it was for most of last summer, strangely enough. I'd forgotten how effective it is at indu…
Monday/Tuesday 8/9 September 2003
Just after midnight, Robertsbridge, East Sussex. I've just checked into my B&B and thought I'd write about some of today's adventures before sleeping the sl…
Saturday 6 September 2003
Just to mention that David G and I will be guests on Radio Scotland's Travelling Folk with Archie Fisher on Thursday 18th at 1915 GMT. we might play a tune or t…
Wednesday 3 September 2003
Today's my last day with space in it for quite a long time, so I'm catching up with many bits of business for the upcoming concerts. The long list of phone call…
Monday 25 August 2003
I'm just writing this to avoid having to deal with the mountain of paper on my desk, which I've been ignoring for a week or two on the pretext of having a lot o…
Friday 22 August 2003
Well, the Handel was great, if utterly exhausting. It was certainly a beneficial experience to be challenged by someone who does what I do much better! Emmanue…
Wednesday 20 August 2003
The Edinburgh Festival continues apace. It's the performance of Poro tonight, so I've had a long-awaited morning off and a trip to the gym in preparation for th…
Thursday 14 August 2003
We've started SCO rehearsals for Handel's opera Poro with Emmanuelle Haïm. When I mentioned to Radio 3 presenter Donald Macleod that I'd be working with…
Sunday 10 August 2003
I had my hearing tested on Thursday. I'd figured that given the abuse my ears have had over the years, it would be interesting to see if they've suffered. I've …
Tuesday 5 August 2003
Well, summer has finally arrived, it's actually hot, and I'm dividing my time between the following outdoor activities: phone calls to various promoters and ar…
Saturday 2 August 2003
Wendy and Lisa were round on Thursday (no, not that Wendy and Lisa) to start looking at the songs for our Edinburgh concert (sold out, judging from the EIF webs…
Saturday 26 July 2003
I'm sitting in the garden enjoying the evening sunshine, listening on headphones to last night's work. I was down at Finesplice yesterday to listen as Ben Turn…
Thursday 3 July 2003
The new CD Spring Any Day Now will (barring last minute interventions of chaos, always a possibility) have its American release on 16 or 23 September, depending…
Thursday 26 June 2003
Just back from a week at the St Magnus Festival in Orkney. One of the highlights for me was Yuri Torchinsky and his wife Dina giving a devastating performance…
Thursday 19 June 2003
Only time now for the briefest of progress reports: here goes. The Red Red Rose CD booklet notes are now written, second edit suggestions written up. I'm puttin…
Saturday 14 June 2003
Another 8 bars tonight, in the Usher Hall. Really enjoyed it. Speaking of musical economy, on Friday I had a rare experience worth recounting. When you work i…
Saturday 7 June 2003
When not playing 8 bars of Saint-Saëns (in Dundee last night) I've spent the last week and a half mired in Edit Hell. It's not that bad really, just a lot …
Tuesday 27 May 2003
I realised a long-standing musical ambition today - well, I went to the rehearsal for it anyway. Saint-Saëns' 3rd symphony is one of those great tacky piec…
Monday 26 May 2003
A day off ! Gardening ! I'm just back from Inverness, where I joined a Free Church singing psalms on Sunday morning, which was unexpectedly moving. Besides the …
Thursday 22 May 2003
I spent yesterday in sessions for a BBC programme about metrical psalms, specifically Psalm 23 'The Lord's my Shepherd'. This was a chance to play and sing thr…
Monday 12 May 2003
I've just got back home from a fun few days in London working on a movie soundtrack at the kind invitation of Custer LaRue (seen here pretending to think very h…
Tuesday 6 May 2003
Right now I've just got too many things to organise at once. I've got the session tapes from the Kellie Castle recordings to listen to, David G rang tonight so…
Saturday 26 April 2003
Dipping my toe back into the diary. Well, the first edit of the duo CD with Mr Greenberg is finally done - it looks like we might call it 'Spring Any Day Now'…
Wednesday 19 March 2003
This was the view from my doorstep when I got home tonight. As good a way as any to say farewell to this diary for a while. Things are coming together for the…
Monday 17 March 2003
Another meeting with Marie this morning to look at next year's commitments. No matter what happens with the SAC, the orchestral sessions for the Kellie CD, and…
Wednesday 12 March 2003
I was going to spend today at the computer marking up takes for the Delphian CD, but it was such a beautiful spring-like morning I found myself walking through…
Thursday 6 March 2003
8am, Euston station, London. I haven't had time to write much here for a while, as I've been making rough edits of the Nenthorn material, and going through the …
Thursday 27 February 2003
At long last I'm taking a break from playing - in fact my performing diary is worryingly empty over the next few months, just a few gigs here and there. So for…
Saturday 22 February 2003
Backstage at the Queens Hall, Edinburgh: I'm playing organ in the SCO this week for performances of Haydn's Nelson Mass with Nicholas McGegan: great fun. But it…
Monday 17 February 2003
Katherine's just sent me some of the photos she took last week - now on the gallery page ...
Sunday 16 February 2003
On Friday off we all went to Kellie Castle. Most of us were travelling together and stopped off in Colinsburgh, alerted by Mhairi's unexpected cry of 'Dougie's…
Wednesday 12 February 2003
Today we've been rehearsing again for tomorrow's recording in Kellie Castle. A slightly less blessed state of unprepared-ness prevails, but nothing worth losin…
Monday 10 February 2003
[late] I picked David G up from the airport on Saturday. For some reason, the car hire place still let us hire a van to move the harpsichord, despite the fact t…
Thursday 6 February 2003
More last-minute preparation today: Marie and I met first thing this morning, mostly about the logistics of moving everyone around next week, then I trudged thr…
Wednesday 5 February 2003
Yesterday was my last undisturbed day at home before next week's recordings, so I tried to make the most of it. All the notation went into a folder at last, I p…
Monday 3 February 2003
At 1am last night David Greenberg and I were discussing on the phone what we could do with the Earl of Kellie's Reel (it wasn't quite so late in Halifax, NS), a…
Monday 27 January 2003
I'm sitting in the Special Collections department of Glasgow University Library waiting for a pile of 17th and 18th century psalters to be brought out from the…
Tuesday 24 December 2002
Did I say something about a holiday ? All I've got to do is prepare the performance material for one concert and three recordings, listen in detail to the Octob…
Friday 20 December 2002
Played in the Vivaldi 4 seasons with the SCO again last night - Alexander Janiczek is doing a refreshingly wonderful job, stripping away all the 'traditions' th…
Monday 16 December 2002
We finished the Requiem recording yesterday, but I'm heading back to Dundee again today (on the train this time) to rehearse for the coming week playing Vivaldi…
Sunday 15 December 2002
I'm in the middle of sessions with the SCO playing organ in the Mozart Requiem for Sir Charles Mackerras, who's been on very cheery form all week, eager to show…
Monday 9 December 2002
I spent an anxious day yesterday watching the news reports of the huge fire in Edinburgh, as it all happened in the block next to St Cecilia's Hall, complete wi…
Thursday 5 December 2002
I've been getting down to the business of preparing for the various things we're doing in January, finalising programmes, preparing editions, it all sounds very…
Saturday 30 November 2002
Happy St Andrew's Day and all that stuff. After me moaning about the clampdown on live music in public places, I was delighted this morning by a jazz quartet i…
Thursday 21 November 2002
Back at my desk again, after two more visits to casualty, with a lot of mail to answer and bills to pay. I'm now wearing a eye-patch borrowed from my son with …
Sunday 17 November 2002
Chicago O'Hare airport. I don't like O'Hare much, too many people in not enough space. My abiding memory of being here last time was pushing my way through the …
Friday 15 November 2002
On the Ohio turnpike in Andy Thurston's truck. We're on the way to our Cleveland gig tonight at Case Western Reserve University. Andy's driving while I sit here…
Wednesday 6 November 2002
I've had lots of listening to do, what with the session tapes from last week and a real copy of 'The Caledonian Flute' arriving from Chris. I have to learn the…
Tuesday 29 October 2002
I got up at 4.45 this morning to take David G back to the airport - since then I've spent the morning trying to put away all the detritus that results from 6 da…
Thursday 24 October 2002
Yesterday's rehearsal bodes well for the rest of the week - we've tacked the baroque-d Frank Zappa Echidna's Arf onto the end of the bizarre Geminiani arrangeme…
Thursday 17 October 2002
I did a radio interview on Tuesday to plug next week's concerts - you can hear it for the next few days at www.bbc.co.uk/radioscotland - follow the links to the…
Sunday 6 October 2002
We've had much humming and hawing this week over recording venues for the end of the month, and we've settled on the stone-vaulted Crichton Collegiate Church in…
Monday 30 September 2002
Today I finally managed to finish preparing all of the notation for October's concerts and recording, with a final burst of photocopying, scanning, printing, pe…
Saturday 28 September 2002
In Prague airport, flight home delayed by 2 hours. I've never been to Prague before, and the architecture is breathtaking, but recent Westernisation has include…
Wednesday 25 September 2002
Yes, we're back online after a little glitch of a couple of days. Apparently our hosting company simply.com, rather than renewing our subscription last March, …
Saturday 21 September 2002
Well, since I got back home, things have got a bit frantic. I had a useful meeting with Delphian Records on Wednesday, where me managed to pin down most of the…
Monday 16 September 2002
In the air between Toronto and Glasgow, I'm on my way home after three days' intensive playing with David Greenberg in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Between the two o…
Friday 6 September 2002
Despite never having been there before last week, I was back in East Sussex yesterday after only 36 hours, this time on BBC duty to have lunch with Joanna MacGr…
Tuesday 3 September 2002
On the train to Luton Airport. On Friday Marie and I went to a meeting to convene a consortium of groups led by the SCO, looking into the live presentation of c…
Wednesday 28 August 2002
Well, Saturday's concert seemed to go OK. I don't play solo gigs very often, as mentally it's a completely different experience from sharing a stage even with …
Wednesday 21 August 2002
I've been having a mercifully quiet week or two, concentrating on essential pursuits like sitting in the garden with my daughter (summer finally arrived this we…
Friday 9 August 2002
We've been staying out at a suburban hotel near Ravinia, where the place names are all things like Highland Park and Glencoe, but the place is completely flat. …
Thursday 8 August 2002
Now in the air above Lake Erie on the way to Chicago. Tuesday was kind of memorable: a nice train journey to Washington DC, and then Chris picked me up at Union…
Wednesday 7 August 2002
I'm sitting under the stars in the 'Leonard Bernstein Artists' Pavilion' at Tanglewood in Massachusetts, while the SCO finish their concert with Schubert's 3rd…
Monday 5 August 2002
"It says Wisdom on my toothbrush, Revelation on my bag" (Peter Blegvad) Park Central Hotel, New York (on tour with the SCO, playing the harmonium). As before on…
Monday 29 July 2002
The weather's still foul: humid, wet, hot and airless. The long-range forecast isn't looking too good for the outdoor prospects of Friday's gig at Aberdour eit…
Tuesday 23 July 2002
There was a nice plug for next Friday's concert in yesterday's Herald, calling us a 'vibrant little band' led by 'the dynamic McG, who plays classical keyboards…
Sunday 21 July 2002
We're back from holiday, and most welcome it was too. In amongst the relaxation I did manage to fit in the odd bit of work (yeah, odd). I successfully retuned…
Saturday 3 July 2002
Stuck on the tarmac at Heathrow, not yet en route to New York. In Glasgow the weather finally brightened up for the day on Thursday, so that we could have a pic…
Tuesday 2 July 2002
The weather is still unremittingly awful (see 14 June) - this stopped being funny some time ago. When I was in the Wighton Collection a few weeks ago there was…
Thursday 27 June 2002
Just got back from Orkney after a few very busy days at the St Magnus Festival, working for the BBC. There were some terrific gigs this year, my favourites bei…
Thursday 20 June 2002
I've got an afternoon set aside to set to preparing an assortment of publicity material - photos and blurb for forthcoming concerts, and for a couple of brochur…
Friday 14 June 2002
On the bus home from Dundee: I had another two RSNO gigs there today, but I had the afternoon off, so I spent it at the Wighton Collection in front of a micro…
Saturday 8 June 2002
On the Edinburgh-Glasgow train: I only seem to write diary entries in transit ... We had some good news this week: an agent in New York wants us to do a US tour…
Sunday 2 June 2002
Yet another diary entry written on the train - en route to Edinburgh this time for yet another RSNO gig. This one is an unashamedly tacky 'Jubilee' open air bas…
Saturday 25 May 2002
The train home from Aberdeen offers some dramatic watery sights as it travels down the east coast: waves crashing against seawalls, rivers in spate, a lifeboat …
Friday 24 May 2002
I'm on the train to Aberdeen for a couple of RSNO gigs: it's been a while since I wrote anything here, because I've spent every spare minute recently practising…
Wednesday 15 May 2002
In the sky en route to London. I have to be at a meeting there tomorrow afternoon, but I hadn't taken into account the 25 000 Spanish and German football fans h…
Friday 10 May 2002
I was going to spend the last couple of days practising for next weekend's gig with Mhairi and Adrian, but yesterday was almost entirely taken up with catching …
Monday 6 May 2002
Lots to do again. The ConCal board meeting and AGM is tomorrow, I've just read all 18 pages of the Scottish Arts Council's Music Strategy for 2002-2007 (which …
Tuesday 30 April 2002
Busy, busy. It's nearly midnight, I've been drafting and budgeting possible programmes for an open-air concert in August which I hope will come to pass. My e…
Sunday 28 April 2002
I've just looked out of the kitchen window and seen hailstones bouncing off the lawn. That's April for you. The studio-cum-concert hall where we recorded Mun…
Sunday 21 April 2002
Belfast City Airport again: waiting to take off this time, looking out at the rain on the tarmac. Possibly the best thing about this place is the complete absen…
Saturday 20 April 2002
A couple of hours to kill in Belfast City Airport: not the entertainment capital of the universe. I was going to bring my accounts to work on, but it's too earl…
Wednesday 17 April 2002
Well, my work rate has now increased from completely stationary to very sluggish. We've had the painter in (no, that's not a euphemism for anything biological,…
Tuesday 9 April 2002
Time to put another date on the events page - there's more to come, but we're still sorting out venue and personnel availability. This is the first time I've s…
Friday 29 March 2002
This week we heard about our Scottish Arts Council funding for next year - not as much as we'd hoped for, but enough to keep us ticking over nonetheless, so Ma…
Sunday 24 March 2002
At last we've confirmed the date for our next Edinburgh gig in October - I've fought shy of posting concert dates on the website for a while, until I can fix up…
Tuesday 19 March 2002
Well, last Thursday's encounter with David Greenberg was a lot of fun. I was giving the 50-minute version of the 'DMcG's guide to putting on concerts without l…
Wednesday 13 March 2002
It's been an eventful week so far - on Monday I had a fruitful meeting with the guys from Delphian Records, who are keen to do some stuff with us. At least two …
Friday 8 March 2002
I had a terrific time playing in John Adams's Fearful Symmetries last night. I don't normally get nervous before concerts, but yesterday I noticed I was quite …
Tuesday 5 March 2002
I had an entertaining afternoon today in the first rehearsal for John Adams's Fearful Symmetries. The correct keyboards are (wait for it) stranded on tour with…
Monday 4 March 2002
My Monday morning is cheered by a very nice review of Mungrel Stuff in Classics Today, sent to me by Linn.
Saturday 2 March 2002
Whenever I think I'm going to get some thinking time or a bit of a break, something always comes along just in time to stop it. On Monday the RSNO rang me up t…
Saturday 23 February 2002
I'm stuck in Stansted airport with a three hour delay to my flight home after an afternoon concert with Katherine McGillivray in Harlow ("Harlow - gateway to, u…
Saturday 16 February 2002
It's been a week mostly of writing to people and filling in forms: the forms were our annual application to the Scottish Arts Council for the money that pays Ma…
Friday 8 February 2002
I've been rushed off my feet this week playing in the SCO with Thomas Zehetmair, who is much cheerier than last time, and his conducting's more fluid too. It's…
Monday 4 February 2002
My diary entries have been a bit sporadic recently: I'm not sure why, but it's useful to blame it on the foul weather and sense of dark foreboding and inertia t…
Tuesday 29 January 2002
Much number-crunching to be done today on the recording budget for The Gentle Shepherd. Record companies don't like shelling out for musicians anymore, and und…
Saturday 26 January 2002
I've just added an mp3 of outtakes from the Clerk sessions to the recordings page.
Tuesday 22 January 2002
I'm typing this on the way home from 4 days of sessions at Calum Malcolm's place, exhausted even though I didn't play a note. In the breaks we seemed to talk ab…
Wednesday 16 January 2002
It's been difficult to get back into the swing of work after a pretty much showbiz-free holiday. It doesn't feel like I've got going again yet, and I'm startin…
Monday 7 January 2002
Back to work today - I went for a swim at lunchtime, and for no real reason other than it was staring at me, in the rest room (part of the Turkish Bath Suite, n…
Sunday 23 December 2001
I've been dividing my time recently between string arrangements for Prefab Sprout/Mr McFall's Chamber, and reading about Handel: Chris Hogwood's biography, Dona…
Monday 17 December 2001
I was playing in a Messiah with the SCO last night. People assume that if you're a harpsichordist you spend the entire Christmas season playing in Messiah, but…
Saturday 15 December 2001
I went to hear the Palladian Ensemble playing in Glasgow University Chapel yesterday lunchtime. At the end of the concert, Bill got up and said 'we've got a sh…
Sunday 9 December 2001
A nice surprise this morning - Linda Ormiston rang to tell me that Mungrel Stuff is in Stephen Pettit's top 10 classical CDs of the year in today's Sunday Times…
Friday 30 November 2001
Last night's was one of our best gigs for a long time. Kate sang wonderfully, everyone contributed musically, the programme was a mix of bizarre curios and seri…
Monday 26 November 2001
I did some rudimentary harpsichord maintenance this morning. This isn't something I do often, as I'm not very good at it. In fact I'm hopeless with anything f…
Friday 23 November 2001
I bumped into a few kindred spirits in the course of today. I went along to the lunchtime concert at the RSAMD where Rob Mackillop and Steve Player were entert…
Saturday 17 November 2001
I'm sitting outside on a winter's day admiring the beech hedge's spectacular shades of brown and yellow. Thursday's concert was very enjoyable - we played on t…
Tuesday 13 November 2001
I went to hear Diamanda Galàs last night - a jolly evening of songs about Eastern European genocides in a variety of languages. I can't think of another…
Friday 9 November 2001
I had a wonderfully music-free day yesterday: I installed a CD drive into my parents' computer and got them connected to the internet at home for the first time…
Saturday 3 November 2001
Well, one concert in St Andrews in the Square down, two to go. Thursday's gig was very interesting from a musical point of view, as it was the classical core g…
Tuesday 30 October 2001
I spent today just practising at home, something I do all too rarely. It sounds like a lazy kind of existence, but it's exhausting: at 6 o'clock I fell asleep …
Wednesday 24 October 2001
I don't have much time for dairy entries at the moment, as I'm preparing the material for all three November concerts before we play the first one. I had a sli…
Wednesday 17 October 2001
Once again I fail to take a convincing holiday. On Monday I met Michael Tumelty of the Herald for a morning coffee - the results of our conversation are in tod…
Thursday 11 October 2001
Ah, the joys of scholarly life: a day (well, half a day) spent in the rare books and manuscripts room at the National Library or Scotland. Once I got going, I r…
Wednesday 10 October 2001
I did a brief radio interview for the BBC yesterday to plug the concerts - it was one of those 'I just happened to be in the building' moments. If I hadn't been…
Monday 8 October 2001
I sat up until 2am last night putting the parts together for the first two concerts in November. Being able to print out most of the performance material strai…
Thursday 4 October 2001
It's been a while since I wrote anything here. That's not to say I've not been busy - I've been overseeing the design and printing of the brochure for the Nove…
Saturday 22 September 2001
It's turned out to be a very busy week. There's been the ongoing task of putting music onto the computer for November, a bit of chasing around preparing public…
Tuesday 18 September 2001
There are some jobs which start out looking terribly simple and straightforward, and end up as never-ending labyrinths of complex activity. For example, the si…
Thursday 13 September 2001
I'm still inputting music into Sibelius: now I've got on to some Scots song arrangements by Pietro Urbani. We used one in The Gentle Shepherd, and I enjoyed it…
Tuesday 11 September 2001
Everything got overtaken by the news today - I found a mindless task to do while trying to take it all in: putting a Johann Stamitz Symphony onto the computer f…
Saturday 8 September 2001
I've been keeping this diary for a year now, and just like last year I've hit the same post-Edinburgh Festival phase of not much happening in the immediate futu…
Saturday 1 September 2001
At last a day off, and rather than stay at home on the one day I don't have to go to Edinburgh, I went back there again to the opening of a friend's exhibition …
Wednesday 29 August 2001
I still feel a bit like I've been hit by a brick after last week, but I'm gradually regaining what passes for normal consciousness. The performances were great …
Saturday 25 August 2001
I'm far too tired to write anything more than the fact that I'm too tired to write a proper diary entry. I'll catch up next week - the Gentle Shepherd performa…
Wednesday 22 August 2001
Just back from Edinburgh. We were playing in a venue with a glass roof on a sunny day - not the best way to keep baroque instruments in tune - and there wasn't …
Tuesday 21 August 2001
Today is the calm, and then the rush, before the storm. I've spent the day going through all the music thinking about cues, instrumentation, and what it actual…
Sunday 19 August 2001
We're now on the home straight before The Gentle Shepherd - time for me to get my head down and make lots of small musical decisions, having made most of the bi…
Monday 13 August 2001
When I got home this afternoon, a cylindrical package which had come in the mail was waiting on my desk, marked 'FAO Chris Norman', from David and Hamish Moore.…
Wednesday 8 August 2001
The good news is that the technical fault on the CD has been located and dealt with. The bad news is that this has put the release date back - I still don't kno…
Wednesday 1 August 2001
An updated master of the Mungrel Stuff CD was awaiting my return - I'm glad I listened through to it as there was one irritating little technical fault, which I…
Sunday 5 August 2001
It's been a week of late nights, working until 2 or 3am every night on the scores. It's nice to work free of distractions, but I've been living on three or four…
Monday 30 July 2001
I'm typing this on the flight back from Los Angeles, after a very busy and fairly sleepless six days gathering material about film music for the Radio 3 series…
Monday 23 July 2001
I had a royalty statement from the PRS waiting for me in the mail which included some income (not much, I hasten to add) from John Clerk's Miserere Mei Deus und…
Wednesday 18 July 2001
This week's holiday has occasionally been interrupted (or embellished) by packages arriving from Linn Records. On Monday came the CD booklet proofs, which look …
Thursday 12 July 2001
We're on holiday in Bruichladdich, a place well known to whisky drinkers the world over. Basically it's about twenty houses and a distillery: a commonsense rati…
Wednesday 4 July 2001
The Gentle Shepherd score is taking shape now - Ben sends me the Sibelius files of his transcriptions from the sources, and then I fine-tune them and add my ext…
Thursday 28 June 2001
This morning we had another batch of Gentle Shepherd auditions, and the cast list is filling up nicely. I've been away from it for a while, as I spent the last…
Thursday 21 June 2001
Today I've been putting together the last pieces in the jigsaw for the new CD. All that's left to go is the cover image - a quick brainstorming lunchtime phone…
Sunday 17 June 2001
I'm now more than half way through the bits and pieces of arranging for The Gentle Shepherd - one of Sir William's songs has come out like a cross between a min…
Tuesday 12 June 2001
This morning began with a trip across to Edinburgh to audition some drama students with Andrew for parts in The Gentle Shepherd. There were some good people, a…
Friday 8 June 2001
Well, after a year or so of collecting 18th century sources for the songs in The Gentle Shepherd, I finally got around this week to going them through them all …
Monday 4 June 2001
I finally finished the sleeve notes for the CD today, so I have no distractions from working on the score for Gentle Shepherd. The super-hi-fi 24 bit recording…
Monday 28 May 2001
Having sat up editing until 3am on Friday night, I had a real day off on Saturday (this doesn't happen often), and did some gardening in the sunshine. I thought…
Friday 25 May 2001
Another day glued to the computer working on the CD. It's slow and laborious doing the 2nd edit - the first one is always more fun, as you hear the record gradu…
Tuesday 22 May 2001
Tonight I put the TV on to watch Simon Schama's History of Britain on BBC2, as I knew it was going to be about 18th century Scotland. The beginning of the prog…
Sunday 13 May 2001
I'm sitting out in the garden in the blistering hot sunshine, and there's a marching band rehearsing in the playing fields across the fence. I've never heard a …
Friday 11 May 2001
We're rehearsing in the immense 1930s church round the corner from my house, so I get to walk to work after taking my son to school. This is very civilised and …
Thursday 10 May 2001
Just got back from helping move my harpsichord into the church round the corner for tomorrow's rehearsals. I spent Monday learning the music - for some reason …
Thursday 3 May 2001
A useful day. Editing of the CD is underway at one end of the kitchen: I'm doing the Geminiani songs first as they're the most fiddly. Mixing with Calum on Mo…
Sunday 29 April 2001
Nearly finished on the text of Gentle Shepherd. Meanwhile, a deeply depressing moment at lunch today - I was sitting with the newspaper, when my daughter (3) p…
Friday 27 April 2001
Very tired after a busy week, editing the text of the Gentle Shepherd on trains while travelling to SCO rehearsals and concerts. The concerts went very well in…
Monday 23 April 2001
Finished twiddling with the website tonight - a job begun and aborted yesterday. Hopefully more people will have this font (Trebuchet MS) than Gill Sans which …
Sunday 22 April 2001
I spent this morning doing the first edit of the keyboard pieces for the next CD. It's a horrible experience listening to your own solo playing in great detail…
Thursday 12 April 2001
This week's been pretty busy considering I was supposed to be on holiday, but my holidays usually work out that way. They're the only time I get any serious th…
Friday 6 April 2001
Today is a saga in itself, but the past week's been fun. On Saturday I went back to St Cecilia's once again to hear Ricordo give a terrific concert, all from me…
Friday 30 March 2001
I've spent a tiring but enjoyable day at St Cecilia's Hall in Edinburgh recording the two harpsichord pieces for the forthcoming CD. One of them is Domenico Cor…
Friday 23 March 2001
I was going to be recording the keyboard pieces tonight, but co-ordinating Calum's diary and John Raymond's babysitting has proved increasingly difficult! John…
Friday 16 March 2001
Got back home eventually on Wednesday, and headed off to the studio in the afternoon for a session. There was a nicely set up Fender Strat lying around, and a …
Tuesday 13 March 2001
1600 The first leg of the flight home is nearly two hours late, so here I am in the departure lounge of Rome airport. I had time this morning for a quick visit …
Sunday 11 March 2001
Made it to Rome yesterday, mostly hassle-free. Chris missed his connection in Paris by 5 minutes and ended up stuck there for 6 hours, only reunited with his lu…
Thursday 9 March 2001
Today was pretty much filled with last minute preparations for Rome. Solitary practice isn't something I do very much - usually I have to make do with playing e…
Tuesday 27 February 2001
At last! We have confirmation that The Gentle Shepherd is going ahead - see the 'events' page for dates. I suppose it's a bit naughty posting this now as the F…
Saturday 24 February 2001
My part-time job at the BBC threw up some interesting conversations this week. I was producing two live broadcasts: one was the clarinettist Michael Collins wit…
Tuesday 20 February 2001
Today and yesterday became unexpectedly free after the record company (no names) backed out of the Prefab Sprout project I was going to start on this week. So w…
Thursday 15 February 2001
It’s time for planning ahead once more: our annual application to the Scottish Arts Council goes in next week, so we have to think more systematically tha…
Wednesday 7 February 2001
Good news - the Edinburgh Festival want us to do The Gentle Shepherd this summer. Bad news (for me anyway) - they need a budget and all the copy for the festi…
Friday 26 January 2001
This week's gone past in a bit of a blur. My daughter Susie was ill at the beginning of the week, so I ended up working at night instead of during the day, and …
Friday 19 January 2001
I had some interesting conversations today. I was working for the BBC, producing a lunchtime concert broadcast of Andrew Lawrence-King's group The Harp Consort.…
Wednesday 17 January 2001
A day off in the middle of the week - amazing. No work in it at all, unless you count a couple of phone conversations, one with Marie about the forthcoming Rome…
Wednesday 10 January 2001
I’m still recovering from 5 days spent with Mr McFall’s Chamber, producing their next record. It had its stressful moments, but a fun time was had …
Thursday 4 January 2001
Good news - a lost email from the end of last year resurfaced, confirming a gig in Rome in two months' time. Marie and Paula are both great Romophiles (?) so i…
Wednesday 20 December 2000
My brain declares a holiday – tired from all the various projects of the last few months, and, I have to admit, a bit of token partying this week. Today …
Monday 18 December 2000
Last week turned into a bit of a Haydn-fest. Besides the Harmoniemesse with the SCO, which was deadly dull on the first night, but livened up a bit on Friday, M…
Wednesday 13 December 2000
This morning I mended the garden fence that had blown down in the night, and then went off to a meeting with our accountant, to sort out some tax problems to do…
Sunday 3 December 2000
It was difficult to make much headway with ConCal work last week – we’re waiting for some figures from our accountant to go into a funding applicati…
Friday 24 November 2000
Today's been busy. Had a meeting with Marie first thing to talk over last week's ConCal board meeting, and discuss ideas for venues and promotion. After a bit o…
Monday 20 November 2000
I've been reading the text of Allan Ramsay's The Gentle Shepherd as preparation for seeing Brian McMaster (director of the Edinburgh Festival) tomorrow. There'…
Friday 10 November 2000
Not the most productive of weeks - I've been ill. This is not something I'm used to, having inherited the stubborn constitution (and attitude) of my father, wh…
Monday 6 November 2000
It's been a while since my last diary entry - Marie and I have been ploughing on, talking to various promoters about next year's plans, and preparing a funding …
Friday 27 October 2000
Made a quick call to Marie first thing this morning to discuss the various materials we’re sending out to promoters, hustling for next year’s gigs. …
Sunday 22 October 2000
Well, holiday’s nearly over, but I managed to get a few things done in the meantime. I mastered enough of Sibelius (the program, not the composer) to mak…
Thursday 12 October 2000
Yesterday I found myself re-reading Robert Fripp's reasoning behind internet diaries. I quote: My own aim, in asking the other players to contribute Diary e…
Tuesday 10 October 2000
A whole day spent working at home with no interruptions - what luxury. In the end I did no ConCal stuff at all (apart from ringing Marie to see how she was gett…
Saturday 7 October 2000
This week I got round to some of the chores left over from last week's concerts, like filing alls the parts away. I must reorganise our music library sometime: …
Tuesday 3 October 2000
Alison and her dad, who’s a tireless supporter of the group, and generous source of accommodation for visiting musicians, dropped in last night to help me…
Sunday 1 October 2000
The concert in Crieff on Wednesday was great fun, but by the middle of the afternoon I’d become completely dispirited, as we were playing in the Hydro&rsq…
Tuesday 26 September 2000
Exhausted after long rehearsal today, but it was fun. The McGibbon stuff, which we haven’t tried out before, went like a bomb, and the Muffat pieces that…
Friday 22 September 2000
Starting to get my head around the music for next week’s gig. I always find it difficult to know exactly how to prepare for rehearsals, as so much depend…
Monday 18 September 2000
Costed out a future recording project in detail this morning, as the first stage in the search for a financial backer for it. It’s not cheap (for us anyw…
Saturday 16 September 2000
A useful couple of days' research. I spent Thursday morning in the Mitchell Library with their (possibly now unique) copy of Alexander Reinagle's book of Scots …
Wednesday 13 September 2000
Just got back from playing harpsichord in a Haydn symphony with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. I don’t normally enjoy playing in symphony orchestra…
Monday 11 September 2000
Tonight I’ve been listening to Orlando Gibbons’s consort music for a CD review I’ve just finished writing, and it’s struck me how simila…
Thursday 7 September 2000
A time for planning ahead. Our plans for a huge 4-part concert/ pub session/ rabble-rousing drawing-room cabaret (!)/ ceilidh at next year’s Bath Festiva…