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 hard about something, I can't remember what). We were recording some songs which appear in the film before the scenes are shot, so that the actors have playback to work to. One of the more bizarre moments of the trip was being called upon to sing The Trail of the Lonesome Pine at the fortepiano to the assembled company, because Custer grew up near the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, but nonetheless was  the only person in the room who had never heard the song.  Still, working on a Hollywood movie means that you get to be an 'overground' person in London, with cars coming to pick you up and move you around, rather than just taking the tube like a starving musician as usual.

The picture below shows composer Mychael Danna sitting at Finchcocks's wonderful 1801 Broadwood piano, in the rather incongruous surroundings of Sony Studio 1. It was nice to be sat there working with the cutting-edge musical technology ... of 200 years ago.  And it was a good learning experience to have to play an English fortepiano properly.  They're wild, untamed beasts compared to their well-behaved Viennese counterparts, so you have to be very careful with the pedalling or you just get musical mush. I think I got the hang of it eventually, if my desire to take the piano home at the end of the session was anything to go by