Preparations for our Easter extravaganza at Aldeburgh are now well underway. Repertoire, logistics, money, instruments, and lots of other things will gradually take shape over the coming weeks. We also have plans for a couple of smaller Glasgow gigs in June, and I’ll be visiting Boxwood in July. In fact my year now has a light scattering of very interesting live performances in it, which will get me out of the house if nothing else.  Yesterday I found out that Arts Council England are going to help us fund our Aldeburgh Purcell project: I like the irony of a Scottish group being funded by the English arts council in the current political climate.

I was out at Marie Fielding’s Heart of Dingle gig last night, which was basically her transplanting of an ideal Dingle pub session from the west of Ireland to the Mitchell Theatre.  And it was much better than the average session.  So often, that session approach can end up after a couple of drinks with everyone just blasting away, the musicians having a thunderous good time, but everyone else getting a bit bored. This was on another level altogether: Marie had chosen players who are all capable of listening and shading what they do (while also having a thunderous good time, but sharing it with the audience), and as she told me afterwards ‘made a tapestry with them’. My face was sore with smiling by the end: special mention to Donogh Hennessy’s guitar playing, which was just astonishingly appropriate at all times.

Meanwhile, the 1844 Broadwood piano (not the 1793 one) is finding its way onto the soundtrack of a certain TV drama series, our Mackintosh CD booklet is off at the printers while the audio awaits very final final tweaks, and take a moment to check out Stuart Eydmann’s website: http://www.scotchmusic.com