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 Wadsworth. Rather than taking the traditional conservatory rehearsal technique of talking about the details in the music, we just played it over and over again until it began to make sense. It doesn't quite yet, but we'll let it percolate for a while and reconvene in New York in a few weeks. We also started thinking about tunes to play on melodica and theorbo, and Matt learnt the chords for Eluun sotiisi to get us started. Just to see what would happen, at one point I tried the opening gambit of 'do you think we should do a diminuendo in bar 5?' The second word of Matt's reply was 'off'. 'Great, I've waited for weeks to get that response.' 'Yeah, just listen.' I like this way of making music.

Yet more press on the way - we had a review in the Independent on Sunday, apparently the Culture Show (BBC2) is featuring us on Thursday (I don't know how though), and I'm going on Radio Scotland's Arts Show - snappy titles eh? - on Friday with the excellent Janice Forsyth around 6.30pm.