Standing in the rain

I spent the morning formatting music for my concert on the 27th, and then dashed off to the Royal Festival Hall for two rehearsal sessions with Roy Harper and the guys. I suppose what I’m appreciating most about this particular job is that I can focus on conducting Roy’s music whilst making sure that all the players are sounding as good as they can. I spend so much of the rest of my time carrying enormous weights on my shoulders. I’ll enter a space as composer, a director, a conductor, a producer, a peace-keeper, a note-basher and tea-maker, and it can be an excessively draining experience! There’s often a sense that if I leave the room, the cogs will immediately stop turning, and everyone will enter a state of anarchy until I return!
I’m not saying that my role in this particular gig is unimportant – far from it - but I rather like the fact that the success of the end product doesn’t largely  hinge on me. There are many more important people, doing many more important things; and more importantly, we all have a good sense of how our skills fit into the over-all puzzle. I guess this is how most people feel when they walk into work. I often have to take a deep breath before entering a rehearsal room!

That said, today's rehearsals were tiring, but they were also great fun. The atmosphere is upbeat. Occasionally a childish remark, or a double entendre will send everyone into fits of giggles for a few minutes, before we knuckle down to work again. We share food. We share jokes. I encourage Roy to share his extraordinary anecdotes. No one feels rushed. No one feels pressured. This is exactly as everything should be and a great deal of thanks have to go to Fiona for setting things up with such a sense of OCD!

Funny story. The 'cellist in our ensemble is a relatively new mum, and just before she started to play, she felt something in her bra. She rooted around for a bit, and was utterly horrified to discover that the discomfort was being caused by a piece of ham! Her son's lunch, apparently!

I didn’t realise how exhausted I was until I walked from the South Bank to Goodge Street. It struck me that I’d been in a room with no natural light for the best part of 7 hours, so it felt important to walk for a while, whilst filling my lungs with gritty smog and the smell of rain. It had obviously properly pissed it down whilst we were rehearsing. I walked up through Soho to avoid the busy streets, and then into Fitzrovia. Does anyone still call the area around Charlotte Street Fitzrovia? Every time I’m in that area, I remember that all the new Romantics; Boy George, Philip Sallon et al, lived in a row of squats close to Goodge Street in the early 1980s. The houses in that part of town are now worth eye-watering sums of money, and yet, back then, you could live in them for nothing, sign on, do a few jobs on the side, walk everywhere, and live like bohemian kings. Sometimes I think it’s no wonder that such a huge amount of creativity emerged in that era. It was somehow still possible to “have a bash” at creativity without the realities of the outside world crushing your spirit.

I look back to those days with a slight feeling of envy, but then realise that ¾ of them either died of HIV related illnesses or drugs overdoses, so feel rather grateful to have been born a decade too late!

I returned home to be told by Nathan that I have panda eyes. Poor me. Pee.

350 years ago, Pepys took “physic,” which meant he was feeling poorly and had decided to stay at home all day. It was a Sunday, so he was basically merely skiving church. He spent the afternoon reading books, and, oddly, composing music, writing that he "did try to make a song in the praise of a liberal genius (as I take my own to be) to all studies and pleasures." I thought the default in those days was to write music in praise of God, rather than liberal genius. Still, it's always good to have a nice high opinion of yourself...