The Lyceum opened its season with What Shadows, a play from Birmingham Rep about Enoch Powell. Ian McDiarmid's performance as Powell was terrific but the play was somewhat diffuse and went round in circles that were not always very interesting. A tighter focus would have been welcome but I couldn't have been more gripped by the famous rivers of blood speech.
The Attic Collective's third and last show of the year was the eagerly awaited (by me) The Threepenny Opera. So eagerly awaited was it that I sacrificed the first evening of a saxophone weekend to see it. Alas I was a wee bit disappointed. Some of the performances were exceptionally good. McHeath, Polly Peachum and Mr Peachum in particular, and the on-stage band were great and I have to admit that the presentation's use of the full stage, the boxes and bits of the stalls was ingenious. But. Maybe it was just me.
The following morning I rose at dawn and headed for The Burn in Edzell to take part in the rest of the saxophone weekend. I'd guessed that breakfast would be around 8 and arrived in time for that but I was in fact an hour early. No matter, I rested. The weekend went very well. The Burn is lovely and proved much more comfortable in a bright September than it was in my previous visit in a cold and dismal February. After the Sunday afternoon session instead of coming home I headed North of which more later.
I came home a week later in time for a super concert by the SNJO. They were celebrating the music of Django Reinhart so they'd cut down on brass and added guitars, violin and accordion to the line-up. A friend who was there felt that the two musical forces didn't combine well and came over as two separate units but I couldn't disagree more. One feature of particular interest to me was that the accordion was played by Karen Street. She's a lady whose arrangements for saxophone groups I've played quite often, mostly down south.
That concert was packed (helped partly by the SNJO's policy of free seats for school groups) unlike another fascinating concert by the RSNO. This was of modern Chinese music by a chap called Xiaogang Ye who was there in person. Although one piece made extensive use of a dozen or more Chinese percussion instruments his work is very much in tune with Western styles. Indeed comparing his music with Benjamin Britten's Sea Interludes which was the only non Chinese piece on the programme I felt they could have come from the same pen.
It was a very enjoyable concert but the most sparsely attended I've ever seen in the Usher Hall. The stalls could not have been much more than a quarter full and from where I was I could see about one third of the dress circle in which sat one solitary punter. It was a real shame but there were quite a few Chinese in the audience, including the wife of a chap I met at the Napier jazz summer school, so at least the local Chinese community supported it.
My destination when I left The Burn was Banff. I wanted to take an indirect touristy route but had forgotten to bring a map. So I fiddled about with Google maps on my phone to decide on intermediate points and then connected up my GPS gadget. That led me round and round the mulberry bush before I eventually found myself on a recognisable route to Aboyne. It was pretty bleak and hilly and at one point my clutch was emitting burning smells and the engine was revving like fury while I crept up a hill. I didn't relish being stuck for the night out here (no phone signal!) but fortunately after a recovery period at the top of a hill progress was resumed without incident and I rolled into my hotel just in time to eat before the kitchen closed. (They don't dine late in these parts.)
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| Banff Beach |
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| Protecting Banff Town Hall |
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| Duff House |
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| Typical Landscape on Buchan Coast |
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| Despite appearances a working trawler |
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| Fraseburgh Beach |
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