Good fun was had by all at Gean House, Alloa, this weekend where a dozen saxophonists under the expert guidance of Mike and Sue from the Scottish Saxophone Academy made music.  All that energetic blowing was fuelled by excellent scoff.  The building was gifted back in the day to an organisation promoting temperance.  Fortunately times have changed and a well stocked bar helped soothe roughened throats. 

Friday's RSNO concert was intended to be a celebration of Neeme Järvi's 80th birthday but he was ill so from the other end of the age spectrum we had the diminuitive Chinese conductor 

Elim Chan.

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This picture makes her look about fourteen (maybe she was when it was taken!) but she has actually reached the grand old age of thirty one and seemed to lack neither confidence nor control as she put the orchestra through their paces including Rachmaninov's hour long second symphony.  Great stuff.

There was a Beethoven piano concerto on the programme as well and again because of illness they had to call on a substitute soloist.  He too was a young Chinese though of the Swiss variety, Louis Schwizgebel.  He was as tall as Chan was small (indeed she completely disappeared behind the piano lid) and as nimble with his fingers as she was with her arms.

At a place some distance away from the RSNO on the musical spectrum lies the Dunedin Wind Band and we too were in action this weekend.

Here we are at a break in the action surveying our audience, geeks and others attending the Edinburgh Sci Fi Convention at Meadowbank.  We were perched a little uncomfortably in rows of tip up seats well above one of the large sports halls housing dozens of stalls amidst which milled the punters.  We serenaded them for an hour and a half with more or less suitably sci fi music. It was hard to know what the milling abouters thought of it.  There were sporadic bursts of applause but mostly they ignored us and went about their business.  I expect that's how it was for musicians in the minstrel gallery playing for banqueting barons.

As a reward for our labours we were given free run of the event.  I was amazed, astounded and impressed by the exhilarating variety of it all.  Lots and lots of people had dressed up as characters from the whole genre.  I can recognise Batman and Superman from days of yore and Thunderbirds and Doctor Who from the not so long ago but beyond that I dare not venture a guess.

Amongst the exhibiting organisations and individuals there were prop makers, model makers, games sellers, special effectors.  There was a Tardis, a couple of Daleks, a K9 and all sorts of other stuff that I'd need a lesson in modern popular culture to appreciate.

It was great.  I hope we are invited again next year.

Evita was not quite as wonderful as my long wait to see it had conditioned me to expect.  It covered the tricky task of melding the political and personal stories pretty well and while the staging wasn't wildly imaginative it provided appropriate settings.  The cast and orchesta did a good job but I was never on the edge of my seat, I wasn't much moved and I found the music a bit lacking in variety.

I nearly didn't see A Few Good Men, a sell-out at The Roxy but fortunately I was able to attend the dress rehearsal the night before it opened.  I've dress rehearsed in lots of shows myself and this was an extremely well managed one, more like a preview.

It's not an uninteresting play but the presentation made the show for me.  It's a courtroom drama about the killing of a marine by two fellow soldiers with what you might call sub-plots involving the relationships between the lawyers dealing with the case and between the various officers and men of the unit concerned.  So far so ordinary.  But we don't just sit watching as people shuffle on and off stage.  We are immersed in the action, sitting on swivel chairs with scenes being played all around us.  It's a smashing idea and works very well.  Thom Dibdin gives a perceptive review here.

I managed to get to only one Fife Jazz Festival gig this year but it was a bumper afternoon at the Carnegie Hall which I enjoyed immensely.  There were six groups of musicians performing ten sets spread over three performance spaces.  I got to four and although I didn't see Dave Milligan doing his solo set he played in Colin Steele's quintet so the only group I saw nothing of was Ken Mathieson and his orchestra.

American tenor player Scott Hamilton did a set with Brian Kellock on piano.  He produces a lovely warm, full sound admirably suited to his repertoire of ballads and standards.  I loved his low notes. Listen here.

A complete contrast was provided by Fergus McCreadie, the young pianist who is the talk of the steamie in Scottish jazz circles.  His trio played their own compositions some of which are as yet nameless.  He announced he'd welcome suggestions.  Here they are in Edinburgh last year.

Brass Gumbo gave it laldie as they bashed through a set of New Orleans tunes arranged to suit their lively spirit.  This was get up and dance music but nobody did.

Even in The Darkest Places is the title of a CD about to be released by Colin Steele and his Quintet.  Their set consisted of the tunes on the CD.  All are Colin's compositions and they are super. I can't find a foretaste on the web so I encourage you to pre-order the album and in the meantime listen to a previous piece.

In a little introduction Danny Boyle told us (on film) that he was delighted to welcome us to T2: Trainspotting at the Cameo since that's where its predecessor Trainspotting had its world premiere.  The question immediately arises as to why the new movie was premiered elsewhere in the city.

It was a lost opportunity for The Grads.  Our Home Street premises would have been an ideal spot for the stars to gather and get togged out, possibly choosing a nice frock from our wardrobe, prior to sashying down a red carpet the short distance to the cinema.  The assorted gofors and flunkies that no doubt attend them could have slipped out of the back door, nipped across Lochrin Place and into the Cameo via the bar.

I blame a lack of initiative on the part of the committee.

What about T2 itself?  Superb. For an Edinburgher there is the great joy of recognising so many locations for a start and for those who've seen Trainspotting there are nice little flashback moments and other references.  But leaving that aside the film has humour, excitement, emotion and a tidy plotline based on Renton's return home twenty years after having run off with the loot that should have been shared out among the four musketeers.  The performances of the principals are excellent and carry forward their characters wholly believably over the twenty year gap.

I loved it.

Thoroughly Modern Millie made for a thoroughly memorable matinee.  I seldom go to musicals despite living five minutes walk from the Playhouse which presents a touring production of a different well known show practically every week.  I went to this one as a sort of by product of my interest in seeing Evita which I saw from a casually picked up copy of their brochure is on next week.  A liking for many of the songs from that show combined with a longheld fascination with Argentina should have ensured my seeing it years ago but for one reason or another I haven't.  Next week I will.

Anyway skimming through the Playhouse brochure I thought an empty Wednesday afternoon might be brightened by Millie, and so it was.  This was a slick, colourful and entertaining show.  Millie is a 1920s girl from Hicksville who arrives in New York determined not a be a star, which is the usual premise of such tales, but to marry well.  Being thoroughly modern it is betterment and self interest not love that will guide her choice. Of course we know from the outset that things will turn out differently.  Naturally there are a few bumps on the way to the inevitable happy ending but we get there accompanied by jazzy tunes and snappy dancing.

I bumped into Sarah (who runs our band) and her husband who were there primarily to see the girl who played Millie because of her appearances on Strictly Come Dancing.  Sorry to say that meant nothing to me and I can't even now tell you her name. I can tell you that she sang, danced and acted sickeningly well.  Jealous? Who? Me?

It was all good but there was one scene I admired above all else.  Her boss, who she is determined to marry but who has fallen madly for her chum is drunk because he thinks that aforesaid chum has dumped him.  Millie and the young man who eventually....well I don't want to give the plot away...are tending to him.  The boss is wonderfully, gloriously and athletically legless.  Millie tries to help him sit down.  The effort that must have gone into choreographing and rehearsing that brief scene is hard to quantify but believe me it would have been a lot, but my was the result worth it.  Side-splittingly funny and I'm not one who is easily pleased by slapstick.

There was a degree of slapstick or at least slapstick inspired acting in The Trial, an opera based on Kafka's satire with libretto by Christopher Hampton and music by Philip Glass.  Modern opera is not to everyone's taste and it can be unlistenable to but this was in my estimation brilliant stuff and a full house at the Kings gave it an enthusiastic reception.

It's played as perhaps more of an absurdist black comedy than is warranted by the novel's bleak and surreal fantasy.  More Chaplin and the Marx Brothers than Kafka would have wished?  Who can say.  Glass's music though has a threatening and oppressive edge that maintains an air of foreboding as a counterpoint to the comedy.  Full marks to this co-production by Scottish and Welsh Opera.