Pumpkins

Meriel stayed the night last night and we went to Quarter's Cafe first thing for an early morning cup of tea. I stayed on to do some work on Brass before heading home for a rehearsal with Helen, the Rebel Chorus' new alto, who came round to go through  her part for tomorrow's recording.

She was, thankfully, incredibly well- prepared and rather sailed her way through the music without needing to stop. An hour later, she was gone, with only time to eat one Jaffa Cake!

I continued to work on Brass before heading off to the osteopath, who, realising I don't seem to feel pain when subjected to deep tissue massage, went at me like a psychopath. As a result I feel about three inches taller and very much ready to face the world, although I'm sure I'll ache in the morning!

It's Hallowe'en and almost everywhere I look there are curious little devils and ghosts and ghouls, some with the most amazing make-up and masks. I bumped into Alex, who was off to see Jo and Russel and their kids trick or treating in Hampstead Garden Suburb, where Hallowe'en, I'm told, is something of a legendary event. I rather suspect it's a festival that Jewish people don't mind celebrating!

As we travelled south on the tube, Alex opened his bag an showed me what he was going to be wearing; a crazy mask, which he put on, an even crazier wig... "You're not doing this for the sake of Russel and Jo's kids are you?" I said... He looked a little sheepish... "Hallowe'en's so much fun," he said...

I reckon we should introduce the concept of adults trick or treating... Mind you, I imagine that might get out of control rather quickly. When I was a child, trick or treating was regarded with great suspicion as something only bawdy Americans did. There were always rumours about people putting razor blades in apples which I never really understood. Surely it's the kids doing the tricking? So why would a householder accept an apple from someone he'd refused to give sweets to? Have I missed the point?

I came home and rehearsed with Abbie, before we all went out to Muswell Hill to buy chips and pumpkins to carve in front of the telly. Abbie and I went for rather traditional faces whilst Nathan created the silhouette of a little ghost. He's so visually creative, that one.

The Light Princess

I had a meeting with Alistair from the Kaleidoscope Trust at 11am in Soho this morning. I rather like Soho at this time of the day. It feels relaxed. A far cry from the gay mayhem (or gayhem) of an evening.

I decided to stay in town and take myself on something of a cafe cruise whilst working on Brass (for the first time in any real detail.) I'm very much enjoying the process. The first step is to get some wit into the piece. In the first pass, I just crudely wrote the skin and bones of what needed to be said. It was all shamefully "on the nose" and desperately humourless. It's good to be able to begin the profess of addressing this particular issue. Rather liberating, in fact.

I walked from Soho to the South Bank and went a bit low blood sugar outside the Royal Festival Hall. Mez arrived and hurried me off for some food, warning Julie and Michelle (our companions for the evening) that until I'd eaten I might not be much company! Now there's a good friend!

We were meeting up to see The Light Princess, Tori Amos' musical at the National Theatre. There are few people in the world who are greater Tori Amos fans than me and I went in determined to enjoy the piece.

The overall experience was quite a mixed bag; it lost me, it found me, it lost me again, and then ended like a pantomime, which felt hugely disappointing.

What was great about it? The songs were beautiful; really interesting rhythms and some devastatingly beautiful melodic lines. The highest marks of all have to go to the acrobats, however, who spent the entire show finding astonishingly intricate ways of creating the illusion that the central character was floating. There were some truly magical moments.

What was less good? The orchestrations were relentless and too dense (way too much woodwind honking for my taste), I wasn't sure about the book, I thought the show was lazily directed and I wasn't wild about the choreography in terms of what was distinct from the extraordinary acrobatics. Overall it felt patchy, I suspect, because too many people had thrown their hats into the ring over the five years the show has been in development. And too many creative cooks water down any of the decent flavours of a broth. I didn't feel there was a strong central vision in the show; merely a sense that lots of different aspects had been thrown at the piece, only some of which had stuck to the canvas. Five years of development is a luxury which most shows don't have. I was quite astonished to learn that 20 minutes of the piece was cut in previews and that many of the songs were being written during rehearsals. After five years I'd expect a complete score, workshopped to within an inch of perfection!

What I'd hoped for was the space that Amos usually injects into her recordings; the sparse orchestrations drifting over the stunning pentatonic piano figures. There was rather a disappointing lack of piano coming from the pit in general. Space, it strikes me, would have saved  the orchestrations from being so disappointingly generic.

After the show we went to the upper echelons of the National Theatre with some of the cast. They were being wined and dined by a corporate sponsor and the lure of canapés is great for all starving creatives. The view over the river from up there is amazing, particularly at night, and I felt hugely privileged to be there.





Scene when she wills something

Vomiting pumpkins

I arrived in Lewes at about midday today and had a lovely walk through the town to Meriel's house. The sun was shining, the air was thick with the smell of wood smoke and the ground was covered with autumn leaves, which I would happily have kicked like a child had it not been for them being somewhat mulchy on account of the storm and the biblical amount of rain which it brought!

We had lunch at Meriel's and caught up with my godson, Will, and his sister, Jeannie, (whom I'm now instructed to refer to as my "honorary god daughter.") Both have been staying with Meriel for a couple of days whilst their parents celebrate 40th birthdays in Berlin.

Both kids are becoming rather wonderful characters. Jeannie has a tendency to sulk a little, but the sun comes out when she's feeling happy! She's plainly going to be a very fine little film actress when she grows up. Her face seems to have the ability to silently express almost any emotion in the most refined and subtle way.

Will is bombastic and freakishly intelligent. His parents aren't the sort to go on about such things; when I ask them how he's doing at school they give me the impression that he's merely pottering along. His favourite subject is history (unsurprisingly as his parents are both historians) and his favourite period is the ancient Egyptians. "What do you know about the Egyptians?" I enquired, rather patronisingly. "Too much to tell you today, in fact, it would take a whole week to tell you how much I know. The only thing I don't know a great deal about is the Rosetta Stone. People know more than me about that!"

I should point out that he's eight! A few minutes later, he struck a rather pompous pose, pretending to hold a walking stick, and said, "look, I'm Howard Carter!"

Jeanie came down the stairs at one point holding something which she presented to Meriel very proudly; "Meriel, look what I found behind the sofa..." It was a tampon. I hasten to add a clean one, but it was hysterical!

After lunch we drove in Meriel's wonderful open-topped car to Sheffield Park and Garden, a local National Trust property with beautiful gardens sweeping down to a lake. We met Hilary, Rupert and Jago there and had a very lovely walk through glorious autumn trees. The kids had a blast. Who'd have thought a  rhododendron tree could provide such a brilliant climbing frame?

The sun melted into an orange fire on the horizon. And I vanished for a while to take photographs.

We returned to Meriel's for chips and beans and I got the kids carving out pumpkins. It's something I've done every year of my life for as long as I can remember, Hallowe'en being, without question, my favourite of all the festivals. Will and I made a terrible mess carving a pumpkin which we decided to make look like it was vomiting. We placed it proudly on Meriel's outdoor wood-burning stove with a trail of internal pumpkin matter spraying out of a wide open mouth! Great fun.

As I walked towards the train station, through the darkened streets of Lewes, a set of church bells starting ringing, just as I walked past. I'm sure the locals get sick to death of the sound, but to me, it was a mournful, deeply atmospheric rural sound, a sound which reminded me of home (wherever that is) and rounded off a really very lovely day.

Chaos

We’ve just spent a hugely gruelling day at Sonica Studios in Clapham, recording four movements of the Pepys Motet with the basses from the Rebel Chorus. Sometimes I think that the Pepys Motet was sent from hell to punish me. I have never known a project smack me so regularly in the chops! It nearly sent me mad in 2010 when it was first performed, and every subsequent incarnation has been fraught with complications and general hideousness!

Today’s hideousness started with the aftermath of the storm. Before leaving the house, I’d checked the internet and seen pictures of market stalls in South East London, twisted and mangled by high winds. As a result, I was expecting the Archway Road to be a post apocalyptic scene of smashed roof tiles and broken windows, but was quite disappointed to merely find a single upturned plastic dustbin and a few twigs and leaves scattered on the pavements. Certainly in Highgate there was nothing to justify the travel mayhem, but trains were cancelled, choir members got stranded on buses and it was subsequently more than an hour before we started recording music. I guess it could have been a great deal worse, but, frankly, any delay was always going to cause problems. The music is not easy by anyone’s standards, and is liberally sprinkled with the sorts of sequences which people think will “come out in the wash” in the studio; one noticeable section of movement one, henceforth known as the “6:8-9:8 zone” is a prime example of one of those bits which singers think is too complicated to rehearse! It’s a perverse logic, but if you’re no good at counting, sometimes the only thing you can hope for is that things will all sort of make more sense with everyone else there!  

Time ticked away. By the time we were meant to finish, we’d only done three of the four movements and so we epically overran, with one of the singers needing to go, which meant we had to rush him through his lines so that we at least had his voice on the recording. Honestly, it was horrible. The feeling of time rushing through your fingers, the dreadful realisation that you’re losing at least a hundred pounds which you’ll need to pay to the studio in over-time, the embarrassment of knowing you’re trying people’s patience; singers, studio engineers...

Afterwards the studio owner said, “catastrophic overrun, Mr Till, I’m surprised the singers didn’t mutiny” and the engineer shook his head and said “too many notes.” Frankly, I just want to crawl under a stone and hide. In fact, as the session came to a close, all I wanted to do was run away. I felt ridiculous, and ashamed. Running decent, professional sessions, is part and parcel of being a good composer, and I’m renowned for running chaotic ones!

So, I need to do some serious thinking. Do we put the project on hold? Do we (yet again) only record five out of six movements? We certainly need a contingency plan because I can’t assume that all the singers will come into the studio as well prepared as they’ll need to be in order to go at the pace we need to travel at.

It’s a horrible situation and I’m too tired to think about it right now. I actually need a day off... Cue tomorrow. I’m going to Lewes. I’m sure everything will seem very different when I’ve had a bit of time with the godchildren.

Speedy Gonzales

This needs to be the speediest of speedy blogs. It's 2am and I've just driven all the way back from Bristol in pretty heavy rain which turned the car into a little box of condensation.

We had our final gig with Roy at the Colston Hall, a curious, rather dilapidated 1950s sort of venue with a really eerie basement. In the interval I took all the string players down there on a ghost tour. Great fun.

The gig itself went very well. We had an awful blip in Heaven Is Here, but otherwise I thought everything was excellent. Roy was on great form. The audience was very vocal - particularly towards the end. I got the impression that a number of people there had seen the show all three times.

I felt quote emotional at the end. When Roy plays When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease, I don't think there's a single person who doesn't think about death in some way. I guess Roy himself must sometimes wonder how many more times he himself will play it. It's a hugely mournful song.

Well, they say the hurricane has touched down in the south west. Fortunately Gillon and I were ahead of it as we drove along the M4, but the winds have picked up even since I got home. The windows are rattling. I have a full day in the studio tomorrow (bad planning)... I must go to bed.

Corona

I met Ellen at the train station in Manchester this morning (which seems like forever ago) and we had a fifty-minute, rapid-fire catch-up chat. It was so lovely to see her. She's up for an award for her writing work on Corrie, which is undoubtedly much deserved.

I got on the train to London, and became rather concerned when the train started stopping at fairly random places in Cheshire like Wilmslow. A quick look at google maps on my phone gave me the impression that we were actually lheading due north until I realised I had activated some kind of insane setting on my phone which showed me an upside down map! What's all that about? Why would there ever be a need to show due north at the lower end of a map?

The news is full of the hurricane which we're told is heading our way with gusts of wind up to 100 miles per hour. It's due to hit the West of the country, some time tomorrow, most likely whilst we're performing in Bristol... Which I reckon is fairly comprehensively west!

Unfortunately, necessity dictates that I have to drive through the storm when returning to London although Nathan seems to think I'll be fine on the M4.

We discovered that my train seat had been double-booked, when, at Crewe, a family arrived and flashed their tickets at me. Under any other circumstance I would have moved, but I was writing at my computer and had a table seat (which I'd requested) and didn't fancy wandering off down the train like Moses in search of Israel. I instantly regretted my decision, however, as three of the family piled in next to me, one of whom, a 5 year-old lad, insisted on climbing underneath the table where he started tapping me on my foot. Daddy was wearing a hearing aid and seemed rather ensconced in his own work, so no one said anything, and I merely sat there, trying to hope the tapping sensation would go away!!

I think it was when the lad decided to climb back onto the chair and use me as a pillow that I began to wish I were invisible. I mean... What do you do when Daddy doesn't notice? It's surely rude to tell the lad to sit up straight, is it?

I returned to London, had some spaghetti on toast and then jumped in the car to drive to Bristol, chasing a remarkable sunset for most of the journey, which at one point seemed only to be lighting the very tops of the trees. At one stage, just as I drove past Windsor Castle and Abba's Arrival came on my iPod, one of the cloud edges developed a crazy rainbow corona, which was rather pleasing, especially when a flock of tarty birds decided they'd do a fly by in silhouette!

I've been in my hotel room all night, watching telly, writing Brass and eating soup. Wind's up, and I've decided I don't like Bristol, based almost entirely on my getting horrifically lost on my way here, and the ghastly mess of a shopping centre where we seem to be staying.

Here's a confession: I've never been to Liverpool.

Virtuoso

I had a rather dreadful start to the day. I barely slept last night and woke up full of cold and realising there were loads of things to do before I went to Manchester. I now have no time for myself between now and the first two sessions on Pepys, and yet in the midst of all this I appear to have agreed to help someone organise an evening of cabaret, loosely affiliated to the Kaleidoscope Trust.

Crumbs.

Matt wrote to me yesterday and said something rather telling at the end of the email; "don't end up doing so much charity work that you become a charity case yourself." The advice hit me like a bullet. I realise now that it's very possible to get sucked into a cycle of doing charity work often at a cost to your own career and or relationships. And what for?

Anyway, I've been in Manchester all day, rehearsing and then performing with Roy Harper at the extraordinary Bridgewater Hall. What a sensational venue. So beautiful and intimate... Although properly echoey, particularly without an audience to deaden the sound.

The concert itself was packed, and as usual, Roy made every single audience member feel like he was sitting in their front room having a little chat between numbers.

The first half was a blinder. Everything came together. Roy, me, the band, it just felt like we were breathing as one.

The second half was a little more complicated and we sailed off into a few musical cul-de-sacs which was fairly frustrating as the whole thing could have been just magnificent.

Roy continues to astonish me, however. He's in his 70s and yet his voice is as vibrant and youthful as it ever was. I was able to enjoy the concert much more, and really listen to what he was doing. Some of his vocal theatrics are both moving and virtuoso.

As has become customary on this tour, I conducted in bare feet. Roy rather encourages heckling from the audience and at one point a Glaswegian voice shouted "hey Roy! Why don't you buy your conductor a pair of shoes!?"

Afterwards a woman came up to me, her face all flushed, saying she'd spent the entire performance taking pictures of my feet and hands; "I'd never sat so close to a real conductor before." I am, of course, not a real conductor, but I was genuinely touched that she came to say hello.

A rather curious thing happened in the green room back stage during the interval. Salisbury Hill by Peter Gabriel was playing on the tannoy and as we stood talking, it got louder and louder and then so loud that we we had to block our ears and vacate the room. It was like someone was fading out our Oscar speech! I realise now, as I write it down, that this is a non story - a nory - a borey - but I leave it in to remind myself of what was a rather amusing little occurrence.