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 casualty for my increasingly regular dose of ocular steroids.

A couple of weeks ago I finally bought a decent microphone: an old 414 ULS. Alison was in town for a trust meeting last night, so she came over this morning and tested it for me, playing gamba in the sitting room (the best-sounding room in the house and the only one not disturbed by the howling gale outside) while I shouted encouragement from the study. It sounded rather good. Tonight I've been listening to the showtape of the dance band from 31 January with the judicious addition of some reverb and EQ, and it sounds pretty good too! That's a relief.

Last night I was delighted to witness Ari Hoenig and his trio of Gilad Hekselman and Euan Burton - generous musicianship allied with incredible technique. And they're really nice guys.  If you're anywhere near one of their gigs this week, go along, you won't regret it. For a few days yet you can hear what they played last night here, and in a week or so once the video's edited you should be able to watch it here. 

Also this week a wee recording project has taken shape with Mark O'Keeffe, for which the sessions will be in a church about 5 minutes' walk from here, very civilised. The music is by Johann Wilhelm Hertel and is only readily available in a really dodgy edition from the 1960s. Now, one thing I learnt from Marten Root at Boxwood a couple of years ago is that it's so easy and cheap to get libraries to send you copies of their original manuscripts, that there's no excuse for not doing it if you're learning a piece. Five minutes of my time sending an email to the Conservatoire Library in Brussels were rewarded with a bill for the princely sum of 10 Euros: once I've worked out how to send them a banker's draft, they'll send me a CD-R.