As delicious tasting as it was beautifully presented this was the pudding of the Christmas menu I chose on a trip to Glasgow yesterday.  The restaurant was Ardnamurchan in Hope Street.  The tables were laid out with Christmas crackers so it seemed only fair to choose from the Christmas menu.  I don't suppose a haggis bonbon starter could be decribed as traditional Christmas fare but the turkey and trimmings and Christmas pud that followed them certainly can.

I was in Glasgow to go to a production of Merrily We Roll Along at the RCS.  Ardnamurchan was handily just around the corner for lunch beforehand.  I accompanied my turkey with a couple of glasses of South African Shiraz.  That proved slightly unwise because I drifted off at one point and missed part of act 1 from what was a really excellent production.  The student cast were marvellous as was the band, set design, stage management, you name it.  If I were forced to pick a fault I'd say the lighting was occasionally misdirected, or maybe the actors didn't find the light.

The Grads production of A Christmas Carol was not up to that standard but it had some good things in it.  I liked the choir, the costumes, most of the acting and much of the movement.  The staging was let down by a too insistent elaboration of settings.  Did we need those fireplaces moving on and off?  The setting of the Cratchit's Christmas dinner seemed odd to me; squeezed into a corner when it should surely have been centre stage.

The last out and about session of my photography course saw us paradoxically indoors at the City Art Centre where there were three distinctly different photographic exhibitions on show.  Glean is a collection of the work of fourteen women photographers/filmmakers active in Scotland in the early 20th century.  It's a fascinating look at the ways of life that have vanished since then, an important historical record.

Ron O'Donnell's set of Edinburgh interiors was also a record of what has vanished.  This time I was familiar with some of the places he had photographed.  It was quite odd to look at the interior of the former Crawford's North Bridge tearoom empty of people (as were all his pictures) then glance through the gallery window to your left and see from the outside a couple of the windows that featured in the photograph.

The third exhibition was at least partly about what has vanished.  It contained pictures taken by Paul Duke on a return to his roots in Muirhouse.  Much of the environment in which he grew up had gone but not all of it.  He talks about the project here .

I was back in the City Art Centre a couple of days later and although I revisited those exhibitions I was focussed on Auld Reekie Retold which is a brilliant display of objects held in the city's various venues and uncovered in an extensive inventory and cataloguing project that has been going on for several years. I'll be back again before the exhibition closes in February and recommend it to those of my readers who can get there.  For those who can't here's a video about it. 

Arkle held their annual "evening" for the first time since Covid struck.  Mulled wine was consumed, chitchat occurred and Michael announced the programme for 2023.  I don't think I'm likely to take part in any of them but we'll see.  The Grads did likewise the following evening but I wasn't free to go.  There's a chance there may be an opportunity for me in one of their Fringe shows. 

I cooked for Ukraine and my holubtsi were eaten.  I hope with pleasure.  I quite enjoyed the bits I ate but I'm generally keen on my own cooking.  A few days ago I made what I consider to be a very tasty soup.  Oddly it was done as part of a Japanese class exercise though none of my classmates got to eat any of it.

I've been to a couple of concerts and next week I'll be playing in this one. 

A visit to St Mary's Cathedral in Palmerston Place gave me a lot of practice in fiddling with the camera settings that I have learnt about but didn't result in my taking any particularly interesting pictures.  At least in this one what I have photographed is not hidden in stygian gloom.

One place that has certainly not been gloomy is St Brides where I've seen a number of gigs since I last posted.  I wrote about an event in the Jazz Festival in July that involved young players from around Europe in an amazing improvised piece.  Scotland's contribution to that came in the form of a handful of players from the Glasgow scene, mostly RCS students.  The impressive sax player amongst them was a girl called Rachel Duns so when she was listed in the Autumn line-up I was keen to hear her again.

The band she led, playing almost exclusively music she had written, were excellent especially to my ears the piano player.  Rachel herself played sax and flute and sang.  I could have done with more of the sax and less of the singing but that's just me.  

Band leaders always introduce the players but it's usually limited to "...and the wonderful Mr X on the....." but Rachel expanded on that telling us somewhat more about the players and her relationship with them.  It was really sweet.

The first half of that bill was made up of Martin Kershaw on saxes, Colin Steele on trumpet and Ross Milligan on guitar.  They played their own compositions (and maybe a standard or two) in a gentle, relaxed style clearly at ease with the music and with one another.

In another two part gig I heard more young Glasgow based players.  The talented pianist Ben Shankland and his trio which included the double bass player Ewan Hastie who only a week later I saw winning the BBC Young Jazz Musician of the Year award on TV.  

I bumped into another award winner at that gig.  A young sax player I know through the Napier Jazz Summer School and other sax related milieux.  He's just graduated from the RCS and won a special cash award in his final year that's giving him a bit of support as he tries to make a living as a gigging musician.

The second half of that evening featured the Brian Molley Quartet.  Brian is one of the sax players I most enjoy listening to.  His music is modern jazz influenced by the music of other cultures but based firmly on a century of tradition justifying the title of his latest album "Modern Traditions" which I went home with.  It's a great listen.  They are taking that music around Europe this week.  In Frankfurt tonight but you can also find them on Youtube.

The last live gig I went to was quite unusual.  Pianist Paul Harrison and his band played film score music in the first half from composers like John Williams, Ennio Morricone and Bernard Herrmann.  So far so normal.  But in the second half they screened a 1915 silent version of Alice in Wonderland for which Paul had composed a musical accompaniment.  It was all quite interesting and no doubt wonderful for silent movie buffs.  But I'm not one of those.  Something that did amuse me was the dearth of credits compared to the several minutes rolling through an army of names that we see nowadays.  One intertitle for the cast and one for the crew.  This latter featured a "picturizer" who I assume did everything that needed to be done camerawise.

A lot of the gigs were available online so I watched some that I didn't see live. I particularly enjoyed a singer called Cara Rose.  

Music of a different stripe was on at the Usher Hall where I heard Grieg's bravura piano concerto, some beautiful music by James Macmillan and some Beethoven.

Music of an even more different stripe at the Festival Theatre where I saw an opera called Ainadamar.  It's about Lorca and his refusal to leave Spain with Margarita Xirgu when Fascism took over.  She had played the part of the 19th century heroine Mariana Pineda who was the subject of Lorca's first play.  This refusal had disastrous consequences for Lorca and Margarita devoted much of her life in exile from Spain performing the role in his memory.  I enjoyed the show reasonably well though I felt it necessary to buy a programme at the end to fill out what I'd gathered from watching it.  I think I enjoyed the music and dance but even at this short distance in time I can't bring any of it back to mind apart from a bit of flamenco at the beginning.  The staging was great.  A sort of column of strands that could be held aside allowing actors to move through or simply parted by their passage.  There was a central platform made up of a number of elements which could be shifted about.  Lovely lighting of course. Quite a visual spectacle.

Leith Theatre did a production of a dramatisation of Vanity Fair that I enjoyed.  I understand the reviewer thought there was too much tell and not enough show but I didn't mind that.  It's a discursive novel afer all and it would have been a challenge to get the battle of Waterloo on stage.  Even the TV adaptations I've seen couldn't manage that.

Our periodic Thursday evening on-line play watch and Zoom after-chat this month featured a Philip Pullman novel or maybe novels combined (I'm not familiar with his oeuvre) called Book of Dust.  It was a terrific production from the Bridge Theatre with a fine cast and whilst a kid's adventure yarn even with added swearing isn't exactly high in my interest list I did enjoy the show.

A couple of meals out were delicious, one at Noto and one at Contini's.

This morning I've watched a funeral online from Northampton.  The deceased was a retired priest who was a friend of a friend and who I'd met a few times.  A lovely man I'd like to have known better.  The service and setting were also lovely so I'll leave you with a screenshot of the affair.

 

My photography class went to the Botanic Gardens this week and this is an arty shot I took there. The picture was taken to see the effect of a slow shutter speed in a close-up of leaves that were being blown about a bit by the wind. I can't say I find it terribly exciting but John who's running the course thought it was quite successful.

Things have been fairly quiet since I got home from Hadrian's Wall.  I've had another Covid jag and a flu jag and my annual health check.  That doesn't consist of much but it reassures the practice that I'm still alive and if not kicking then at least moving my legs.

There's a little Autumn jazz festival on.  I had a ticket for Matt Carmichael for the evening following my Covid and flu jags.  It was a filthy night.  I was full of the cold and had a smidgeon of a light headache so a gave it a miss.  The first gig I got to was at the Traverse.  Ali Affleck singing with a group that included the excellent reeds player John Burgess and featured guitarist Duvud  Dunayevsky who plays in the style of Django Reinhardt.  It was a very enjoyable evening.  I navigated the most recent bus route changes to get to and from St Brides last night for a brilliant gig from a band called Mezcla.  I came home clutching their CD.  Next weekend I'm at St Brides again for more.

Until recently I would have said that I liked Haydn's symphonies but I seem to have gone off them judging by my response to the two I've heard recently, one from the RSNO and one from the SCO.  Fortunately on both occasions there were other pieces on the programme that I did enjoy.  The first classical record I ever owned, maybe even the first record of any sort was Beethoven's 5th Symphony.  I still enjoy it and was very pleased to hear it in the Usher Hall from the RSNO.  

The SCO had a concert this week which included a variety of pieces concluding with a violin concerto by Kurt Weill.  I love Weill's work from The Threepenny Opera and other things like Street Scene but this concerto was new to me. Usually the violin soloist plays with a symphony orchestra but Weill's orchestra is a wind band.  It was great.  I had a good view of the percussionist who had quite a lot to do and was thoroughly enjoying herself both when she was playing and when she wasn't.

I've enjoyed a number of the shows that the BBC have brought out of their archives to celebrate their centenary.  Sunset Song I've mentioned before and some Jean-Paul Sartre but I've also been entertained by Kenneth Branagh in The Billy Plays and now I'm watching with interest and pleasure How Green Was My Valley.  There's also a lot of comedy, too much to list but is there not a PhD to be gained by someone comparing and contrasting those two brilliant political satires Yes Minister and The Thick of It.

I had what I thought was a great success in getting the company who dug a hole in the road opposite my flat to finish the job after months of it lying there filled but not re-surfaced and surrounded by three bits of orange plastic fencing which were continually being blown or knocked over.  But I fear I celebrated too soon.  Not ten days later a team arrived, discussed with much waving of arms and pacing about what looked like a plan to dig up most of the pavement in front of the block opposite.  They got as far as putting up a lot of purple plastic fencing and signs reading "Footpath Closed"  before they spotted the newly re-surfaced hole.  They then opened a manhole, stuck long sticks in, jiggled them about, hovered a box of tricks over the area, got down and pressed their ears to the ground.  Finally they took down all their fencing and drove off leaving four traffic cones on top of the former hole.  Those have subsequently been removed by someone who wanted to park their car there.

I await the dig. 

Here's another arty shot that I do like.

This extraordinarily garish structure has been erected on the site of the northern gatehouse of the Roman fort of Housesteads on Hadrian's Wall to celebrate the 1900th anniversary of the start of the building of the wall.  Luckily the intention is to take it down later this year rather than leave it there for another 1900 years so Hadrian can stop turning in his grave.

I've long intended to visit the wall and have at last made it.  I spent a weekend in Hexham, which I found to be a charming town with some grand old buildings and a lovely park and decent places to eat and drink.  There is a bus service that connects various points of interest aong the wall.  I used it to visit two forts, Housesteads and Vindolanda and thoroughly enjoyed them both.  Vindolanda has a terrific museum where I could have lingered longer than I did but didn't feel up to spending another two hours in it which I'd have had to given the bus timetable. (Greatly reduced over the years according to one of the custodians).  

Should there be a next time I'll walk a section. 

Ewan and I had a day trip up to the Highland Wildlife Park so that he could, inter alia, see the Macaques that he'd gifted me adoptive fatherhood of.  We were extremely lucky in that respect because the monkeys were gathered en masse by the path that runs past their enclosure unlike when I was there before.  We had an excellent day, seeing lots of animals.

It was the day after the first session of the photography course that I'd signed up to so I took lots of pictures trying to use the knowledge that I'd gained the previous day.  Then and on the two subsequent classes I've attended it's been primarily, even entirely, learning how to find and operate a number of the multitudinous features that my little camera has.  Others in the group have much bigger and more serious looking cameras but they'd be wasted on me at the moment.

Perhaps by the time I go to Japan next year I'll feel that I can handle one.  I'm not now going there for the 19th World Saxophone Congress because after two postponements due to Covid, economic downturn, the war in Ukraine etc it's been cancelled.  The International Saxophone Committee have been canvassing opinions about where to go from here. They make interesting reading.  You'll see that it's not only me who is dismayed by the cancellation and anxious that a way should be found to continue the periodic worldwide gatherings.  There's a mildly bright side in that I won't now need to be away in July so could be available to rehearse for the 2023 Fringe.  I'm thinking about visiting at cherry blossom time instead.

The congress cancellation is not the only cultural blow to hit me.  The charity behind Filmhouse, the Edinburgh International Film Festival and the Belmont in Aberdeen has gone bust.  The cinemas closed overnight and next year's film festival is in doubt.  Just a week before Filmhouse closed I saw there Buñuel's "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie".   A beautiful new print and an enjoyable film.  Better people than me say it's a work of genius so maybe it is.

I went to the anatomy exhibition at the museum which didn't engage me quite as much as I had expected whereas I found seeing the Gutenburg Bible at the National Library gave me a little thrill.  But the soup at the museum was excellent.

Nicola Benedetti who has just taken up the role of EIF director was playing with the SCO at the Usher Hall in a super concert that I thoroughly enjoyed unlike an RSNO concert that didn't really appeal to me.  I'm not sure why I went to that one since it featured works on harpsichord and on organ neither of which instruments particularly appeal to me.  

Theatrewise I've had a few wee treats.  Rona Munro's James IV opened in Edinburgh.  I found it mildly disappointing in comparison with the previous plays in the sequences which I remember (rightly or wrongly) as containing much more about the events and the politics of the reigns. I think the keynote line of the play which we heard at the beginning and at the end was "we were real" or something like it.  So the focus was on the imagined personalities and relationships of both the real and the invented characters.  I thought it was quite successful in that respect and I enjoyed the play but I regret the change of focus.  Even the disaster of Flodden got a pretty cursory treatment though I suppose we may find that featuring as a foundation stone of James V when that is unveiled.

I came across a piece by Mark Fisher in which Rona Munro talks about her aims for the play which don't seem to include much about the events of the reign so suck boo to me.

Noises Off is a splendidly amusing farce that I saw on the last night of the Pitlochry Festival Theatre's summer season.  It was a good trip.  I enjoyed the play.  I like what the theatre is doing to upgrade its front of house facilites and I had a very comfy sleep in the Backpackers Hotel - note not Hostal.  Then there was Kenneth Branagh on the telly in the Billy plays that he performed in shortly after leaving drama school and which the BBC ran as part of their centenary celebrations.  They were well worth the rerun.

Lastly The Satyricon from EGTG and Arbery Theatre.  The play wasn't nearly as silly as my memory of it from a read-through suggested and I thought the production was terrific.

Finally here's another shot of Roman remains with a bit of lovely Northumbria in the background.

 

For about a week after the festivals I did nothing much.  I read a bit and watched TV.  I saw a wonderful version of Sunset Song that the BBC made in 1971 when I was abroad so I had never seen it.  I've since discovered that in the early 80s while I was still away they filmed Cloud Howe and Grey Granite, the other two books in the trilogy.  I do hope they broadcast them again.  

Then the queen died and I set off for a lovely weekend with fellow saxophonists at The Burn where The Scottish Saxophone Academy has organised twice yearly get-togethers for a while now.  I thought its grounds were looking particularly well cared for this September.  The food was excellent and its wifi was definitely 100% better than it has ever been over the years I've been going.  David, the manager, told me it will be even better next March which is when I should be there again.

Leaving all that aside I had decided to spend a couple of days in Montrose afterwards instead of coming directly home.  The picture above is from Montrose museum where they've had the brilliant idea of creating facsimiles of a couple of Pictish stones that they have and painting them up.  So instead of peering at distinctly worn carvings and thinking "well if the label says that's Delilah cutting Samson's hair down in the bottom right I suppose it must be"  you can actually see it.   

I thought it was a terrific museum.  I was only there because the House of Dun that I intended to visit wasn't open on the days I was in Montrose.  After the museum I took a bus up the coast to St Cyrus where there's a nature reserve and a breathtaking beautiful beach.  I didn't actually go onto the beach because my approach from the village led to the top of a cliff.  There was a very narrow treacherous looking path down.  I was not well shod for descending especially since my big toes had been shot to pieces on some slopes I'd encountered the previous day.  

Next time I'll get off the bus just after the North Esk bridge and walk along the beach from there. Here's what it looks like.  You can see the mouth of the North Esk top right.

After that I went further up the coast to Stonehaven passing through a number of pleasant looking places including Inverbervie, birthplace of Hercules Linton who designed the Cutty Sark.   Stonehaven has its own place in the history of Scotland, boasting not only the chip shop that invented the deep fried Mars bar but is the birthplace of Robert William Thomson who invented the pneumatic tyre forty three years before another better known Scot, John Boyd Dunlop reinvented it.  

I had a nice drink in the sunshine by the harbour before setting off back to Montrose.

The previous day I had walked out from the town via the fringes of the Montrose Basin and through Ferryden with its views of the modern harbour out to the Skurdie Ness lighthouse.  A very pleasant walk over which I took my time and enjoyed having a seat every now and then to contemplate land and sea.

When I walked back I didn't go into Montrose but headed a mile or so down the road to the south to a visitor centre where there's a great view of the basin, a little exhibition about its wildlife and excellent coffee.  You can sit for a long time peering through the telescopes and binoculars provided at what's going on on the mudflats and in the water.  I did.  I'm not too hot on bird identification and there were lots I couldn't name though I spotted a beautiful curlew and some cormorants.  For a while I watched a bunch of seals doing nothing very much.  Occasionally one would shuffle a few yards off then plomp down again for a rest that seemed out of proportion to the effort it had just expended.

I bussed back to town and set off to find a beach.  I walked a long way and the tide was in so no stroll on the sand.  Then I walked the long way back to the George Hotel where I was staying, had a tasty meal from their "small portions" menu.  Big enough for me but just a snack for the sturdy North Sea workers who form a good proportion of their visitors.  After that it was feet up and TV for the latest in the royal death drama.

An hour or so after I got home from Montrose Ewan arrived from the States.  He more or less immediately headed off to St Andrews with a friend to play golf, coming back in time to enjoy more sport at the weekend (on TV this time) when we watched the Camanachd Cup final and the Davis Cup together. 

Fiona's sister's husband Julian, who was one of the nicest guys you could ever meet, died last year when funerals were sorely restricted.  It was decided to hold a memorial for him this month and Ewan and I went down to Yorkshire, via Keswick, to attend.  The event was held in a Iarge country inn on a hillside with a grand view to the north over the Calder valley.  There were lots of guests the vast majority of whom I didn't know.  A number of his friends and relatives made interesting and entertaining speeches reminiscing over years gone by.  I certainly learnt a few things I hadn't known about him and his daughter said to me that if she'd known her dad was such a tearaway in his youth she'd have kicked over a few more traces in hers.  I contributed with a cut down version of Tam O'Shanter, a poem he loved, and got back to Edinburgh that evening only slightly disrupted by the UK's wobbly train service - refund agreed and awaited.

Before heading south we watched the state funeral on TV.  What a superb spectacle.  Every move faultless and precise.  BBC presentation likewise and praise be they allowed us to watch the procession to the abbey and the service without commentary. 

There was a send-off of a different kind on view at the weekend when Roger Federer played his last professional tennis match in the Laver Cup.  This is a team competition between Europe and the rest of the world which has a unique and attractive format and which was instigated and designed in part by Roger.  His doubles match with Rafael Nadal as partner didn't start till about 10pm so by the time we got through tearful goodbyes, hugs and entertainment I didn't get to bed till about 1.30am.  But I'm glad I saw it.

Our Thursday on-line theatre get togethers held during the pandemic have been revived but given that people are out and about again in the evenings I think attendances will be sporadic.  Only three of us made it to the first one.  It was an odd production from the Bristol Old Vic that was a mix of music gig and story telling with a bit of chat to the audience thrown in.  A story of the friendships and troubles of a group of teenagers growing up in rural Devon it didn't much appeal to me but for those with whom it struck a chord it might well have meant a lot. 

I also saw live theatre at the Brunton with Claire and her mum.  This was a show called 549: Scots of the Spanish Civil War.  The staging, lighting, sound, physical organisation and performance were exceptional in this highly energetic and admirable show about four men from Prestonpans who joined the International Brigade in Spain in 1936.  As usual Mark Fisher reviews it perfectly albeit the review is of an earlier production in Prestonpand town hall where I doubt that they were able to achieve such fine lighting. That merits a fourth star. Here's what he has to say.

My central heating came on this morning.  Should I reduce my thermostat to save gas?

Although I didn't much care for Dance Nights, I do like the venue it took place in and was reminded of enjoying shows there in previous years so I had a squint at what else they had on. 

One show that I particularly enjoyed a year or two ago was Are We Not Drawn Onward to New ErA and I found that Belgian theatre company Ontroerend Goed who did that show were here again with two shows.  So I booked a seat for one of them, Every Word Was Once An Animal.  It was odd but as often is the case Mark Fisher put his finger on it and has reviewed it in the same style as it was played.  I'd give four stars to his review but perhaps not to the show, or at least to my enjoyment of it.

One neat trick was that at one point the audience were asked to look below their seats for a letter.  I did and lo and behold there was an envelope lying on top of the jacket and bag I'd put there.  The envelope contained a card with a picture of a cut onion on one side (the picture above) and a letter on the other side (the picture below).  It relates to a scene in the show in which a letter is received from "Emma" who asks amongst other things what the show is about.  Answers on a postcard please.  Well here's the postcard.

After the puzzlement of that show came the puzzlement as to why Mary Queen of Scots insisted on seeking safety in England against the advice of all and sundry.  That act together with marrying Bothwell was the answer given by one of three writers to the question "What do you wish Mary hadn't done?"   Rosemary Goring's Homecoming is a biography that focusses on Mary's period of rule and places associated with her from Holyrood to Loch Leven.  Sue Lawrence's novel The Green Lady is about the women around the queen particularly Mary Seaton.  Andrew Greig's novel Rose Nicolson which I have read is a historical romance set in the turbulent years following Mary's departure to England.  As well as being a cracking story it is beautifully written as Greig's reading of an extract reminded me.  They had a lively and interesting discussion.

Hard on the heels of that event came Philippe Sands talking about his book The Last Colony.  This is about Britain's expulsion of the inhabitants of the Chagos Archipelago to give the USA a strategic base in the Indian Ocean on Diego Garcia and the numerous lawsuits and appeals to the UN that have ensued.  Britain has in essence been ordered by the international community to expedite the return of the Chagossians to their homeland but has consistently failed to do so.  Sands is an articulate and persuasive speaker as befits a prominent QC and is a powerful advocate of the islanders' cause which he has championed both inside and outside courts of law.  In response to a question from the audience about comparisons with the Falklands he suggested that had the Chagossians been white the story would have been very different.

My final Festival event was once again a booky one.  Brian Cox being interviewed by Nicola Sturgeon about his autobiography Putting the Rabbit in the Hat and about his current successes. The session was lively, entertaining and peppered generously with anecdotes.  Nicola's good humoured chiding of his previous allegiance as a "New Labour Luvvie" became something of an SNP lovefest as he professed his support for the cause of Scottish independence. The ovation at the end was undoubtedly a genuine expression of admiration for the man and his work and formed a triumphant fall of the curtain on what has been a wonderful three weeks.  Roll on the 2023 festavals. 

Halfway through the bin strike this is how the city looks.  The refuse workers are amongst the most valuable and least valued of the city's employees and in my opinion should be given what they asked for if not more.  The well-heeled burghers of Edinburgh can afford it.  But am I wrong in believing that the Council said they had a contingency plan that would keep the streets clean?  No matter.  The mess is not self-generated nor the fault of the council nor of aliens from outer space.  It's made by the city's residents and visitors.  Don't the residents have the wit to take litter home with them and keep it there till the strike is over?  Don't they care what the place looks like?  Obviously not.  Harder for visitors but even they could take litter back to their hotels, B&Bs or rented flats.

I don't know how they are doing it but the Book Festival are keeping the Art College grounds litter free.  There's a lesson there.  Swayed by the enthusiastic advocacy of Katherine Rundell I bought her biography of the poet John Donne and have swiftly read it. Not quite so carried away by the book itself though if I ever look at his poetry again I may find it has cast some light.

Thomas Harding and Kojo Koram did a double act discussing their books White Debt and Uncommon Wealth.  Both could be called exposés of British colonial history.  Even though we have increasing knowledge of our past there is still a lot to learn especially of its relationship to the present which is what Koram's book in particular aims to do.

Away from the festivals I went to see the streamed to cinemas play Prima Facie.  In it Jodie Comer gives a brilliant performance as an ace defence barrister specialising in sexual assault cases for whom the tables are turned.

I also went to the dentist for my twice yearly check-up.  My teeth are ok but it's costing more to learn that.

Back at the Book Festival I found myself in a position that I had occupied four years ago when I went to an event featuring an author I'd never heard of talking about books I'd never read and realised that everyone else was an adoring fan with an intimate knowledge of the oeuvre.  Then it was Lindsey Davis and her detective stories set in ancient Rome.  Now it was Abir Mukherjee and his detective stories set in the later years of the British Raj in India.  Then I bought the first book in the series, enjoyed it well enough but didn't proceed to the second.  Now I've bought the first book in the series, A Rising Man, and we'll see how it goes.  The event was fun though.  Mukherjee, a west coast Scot, and Denise Mina, one of our queens of crime fiction and another west coaster, kept us entertained with wit and humour.

Not so entertaining was as british as a watermelon.  I struggled to think of what to say about it, then I read Mark Fisher's review and he says it all.

The programme for When You Walk Over My Grave tells you that the text was written in blood.  This turns out to be an untruth as is much of Sergio Blanco's play.  It is said to be a work of autofiction in which I think the fiction much outweighs the autobiograpy.  I certainly hope so.  It was funny, more chuckle than belly laugh, and intriguing in the way it dipped in and out of the action of the story and a discussion of the writing of the story.  The story itself is that Sergio has decided to commit suicide in one of those discreet Swiss clinics and have his body sent to London to give pleasure to a young necrophiliac.  Wikipedia doesn't seem to have caught up with him but you can learn a little bit about the man and his works here.     

After that show I went off to meet Claire for Night Dances.  The Irish Times declared on some occasion, perhaps after a pint or two of Guiness, ‘Raucous, loud, sweaty… a thrilling hour of relentless dancing and music’  It was certainly loud, so loud that we were given earplugs as we went in. Could they not just have turned the volume down?  It was relentless and I'm sure the dancers were sweaty but I didn't find it thrilling. It lacked anything in the way of narrative or development of ideas and had no emotional content that I could discern.  The dancing had very little grace or precision.  Turning to the Guardian review I see that I have missed the point.

In talking about his book Born in Blackness, Howard W French makes a very powerful case for the Atlantic slave trade having been the fount and source of our modern world.  The wealth generated in countries (the white ones that is) that carried on the trade he argues facilitated the development of industry and the pursuit of knowledge that led us to where we are today.  I look forward to reading the book once it comes out in paperback when it won't be quite so pricey.

French contributed with Dipo Faloyin and Tsitsi Dangarembga to a Book Festival session called "Africa's Rich Diversity" that went well beyond discussion of slavery.  The starting point of their conversation was the need to get beyond the stereotypical views of Africa that tend to be prevalent in European and American minds. It's not all poverty or safaris.  They reminded us that the national boundaries within Africa are a colonial invention that paid no heed to the coherence of the pre-existing communities.  They rejected the "white saviour" attitude that colours some peope's idea and the view that westerners know what's best for the inhabitants of "the dark continent".  Perhaps most interestingly they pointed out that China has crept in where westerners couldn't be bothered to tread.  We're bothered about that situation now though. Dipo's book Africa is not a Country will be out in paperback next year if like me you don't want to stump up for a hardback.  No room on the bookcase anyway.  Tsitsi's book of essays Black and Female is a hardback that won't take up too much room and is correspondingly inexpensive.

You Know We Belong Together is a warm, poignant and touching play that celebrates the everyday lives of people with Down's syndrome.  The writer and main actor, Julia Hales, has Down's syndrome and has long held an ambition to perform in the Australian soap Home and Away. The play is performed in a mock-up of the soap's Summer Bay diner and Julia performs with people on stage though a number of the cast had to cry off because of Covid.  She introduces filmed interviews with friends who also have Down's and who delight us with their humour and determination to be themselves and be independent and to live and most especially love.

My one and only black tied orchestral concert was given by the Helsinki Philharmonic.   They started with Vista by a living Finn, Kajia Saariaho.  It was loud, fast, shrill, cold and slightly terrifying.  Looking her up on Wikipedia I'm not surprised to see her connection to IRCAM.   The second piece was Tapiola by Sibelius. This wasn't terrifying but it's a pretty dark piece and not likely to be one of my desert island discs.  Finally we heard the Piano Concerto 'Gran Toccata' by the Swiss composer Dieter Ammann.  This is very lively. Wild might be a better adjective.  I enjoyed it.  It's on Youtube if you've half an hour to give it a shot.  Or you can listen here to the same soloist and forces as played it in the Usher Hall and if you like buy a recording.

Having disposed of the Film Festival in my last post I'll get back to a more chronological review of my festival going including the Book Festival which for the second year running is, as you can see in the photo above, at the Art College.

After the Grads' shows my next theatrical experience was Room in the EIF.  This show really does defy description.  The stage crew come on at the end to take a bow with the cast and thoroughly deserve it for their slick management of the complex manipulation of the set demanded of them throughout.  This interview with James Thierrée, the creative genius behind it, gives you an idea of the show.  My comment - fun, incomprehensible, on the long side.

The following morning, a Sunday, I rose early enough to get to the Art College by 10.30 to hear Henry Marsh the brain surgeon in the Book Festival.  Unfortunately thanks to an incorrect placement of the event in my diary I was 24 hours too late.  The silver lining to this cloud was that I was able to pop over to the Filmhouse and see one of the Kinuyo Tanaka films.

That evening I went to Leith Theatre to hear the Sons of Kemet.  A sort of jazz band with the unusual combination of saxophone, tuba and two drum kits.  The saxophonist also plays beautifully on a flute like instrument.  The tuba player is unbelievably skilled, bending his instrument to produce sounds soft and sweet and harsh and loud by turn.  They can play quietly but generally they didn't.  Such amplification seems unnecessary to me but luckily I had earphones in my pocket which kept the volume tolerable otherwise I'd have had to leave and miss 90 minutes of wonderful music making.

Muster Station by the site specific masters Grid Iron was brilliant.  We waited initially in what seemed like a tropical greenhouse but was in fact just the entrance corridor in Leith Academy. When the show got underway we were marshalled harshly through passport control like booths in the school sports hall that split the audience into four groups that were subsequently herded separately around the school and exposed to various scenarios.  The premise revealed itself to be that the UK was about to be submerged by a giant wave and we were seeking refuge.  The final destination was back in the sports hall which had been transformed into the sort of temporary refuge that you see on news report with blankets strewn on the floor for people to huddle together on.  I have to say it was rather more beautiful and tasteful than anything you'd see on the news.  Thanks to my correct answers to questions about Finland at an earlier stage (where refuge was being sought) I and some others had earned a special status.  We were given life jackets and moved to a special enclosure in a corner of the hall.  Unfortunately I then lost most of the ongoing development of the show because of the acoustics of the hall.  But it was a great experience.

Olga Wojtas is an Edinburgh writer of whom I had never heard who has written a number of comic crime novels featuring a time travelling incompetent detective, a graduate of the Marcia Blaine School for Girls. (That may spark a memory for some).  Miss Blaine makes an appearance in the novels too I learnt at Olga's talk at the Book Festival.  I bought her latest to check whether I find it as funny as her fans do.  Apparently her books were not accepted by a German publisher who declared them too zany for the Germans.

Coppélia from Scottish Ballet was superb.  It's a complete reworking of the original that preserves the essence of the plot.   I expected the setting and choreography to be different, and by jove they were, but I thought to myself very early on that surely the music had never been so powerful.  It hadn't. A new score that incorporates some of Delibes as well as all the tricks of the synthesiser age. The Guardian called it "...a successful stride into ballet's future".  Keep your fingers crossed that it is and read their review.

Anything connected to Cuba generally attracts my attention so no surprise that I went to hear Karla Suarez talk about her novel Havana Year Zero.  It's set in 1993, a year of economic crisis in Cuba, and is about the search by a disparate cast of characters for a document that will prove that the telephone was invented in Cuba.  There is apparently a strong argument that it was but that's not the point of the novel which amongst other things the blurb tells us is about "how people cling onto meaning in a country at its lowest ebb".  Coincidentally I recently bought a book (not yet read) which is the real story of how seven ordinary Cubans born in the 70s and 80s have coped with life there.  It's called How Things Fall Apart which chimes well with Suarez's novel.  As for that, it was a pleasure to listen to the vivacious Karla's Spanish quite apart from learning about her book.

That evening I was at the Usher Hall to hear Jordi Saval and his group of musicians give a programme of the type of music that Ibn Battuta, the medieval Moroccan traveller, might have heard on his extensive travels through Asia and Europe.  It was a good listen.  I had a ticket to hear Saval present Turkish music of the same sort of period at the Queen's Hall the following morning but couldn't go though I've subsequently heard the concert thanks to BBC Sounds.  It was lovely.

I went to Arkle's two shows.  Silent Night was the story of a family spending Christmas Eve in an Anderson shelter during the London Blitz.  It was reasonably well performed and staged but was the sort of play you might pick out from a list of available plays suitable for amateurs who need to deploy 3m, 2f.   Their other show, Tay Bridge by Peter Arnott was better material, the back stories of seven individuals on board the ill-fated train.  It was very well performed and staged with superb tableau moments as the cast were buffeted by periodic jolting of the train and then cast into the sea.  The accompanying light and sound effects were excellent.  Standout performances from Esther Gilvray and Therese Gallagher.

International Theater Amsterdam were due to bring three plays to the EIF which they would perform in Dutch.  All three were based on books so I determined to read the books in advance to get a Fosbury flop over the language barrier.  I got some way through The Magic Mountain yawning the while.  Then the show was cancelled so I didn't need to finish the book.  A Little Life turned out to be a convenient and appropriate birthday present so I didn't even start that one.  I did read The End of Eddy and I suppose it helped me to understand what was going on in the production.  However I much preferred the book and I am sure that was because as Hugh Simpson wisely says in this review -  "It is all done with the maximum of enthusiasm, but the lack of light and shade does mean that a certain profundity is lacking."

As for A Little Life language was not a problem except to the extent that I found it difficult to differentiate between the voices and found myself quite often checking the actor's mouths to see who was speaking.  Was that because they were speaking a foreign language?

The play was great, all three hours and fifty minutes playing time.  Even the twenty minute interval was enjoyable because most of the cast stayed on stage and pottered about doing things in character.

The play centres around the lifelong trauma suffered by Jude, one of the four friends whose relationship is the lifeblood of the story.  Blood there is in abundance as Jude self harms, the result of the horrific abuses he suffered as a child and young man.  These are shown in all their graphic detail in flashbacks.  Ramsey Nasr who plays Jude meets and transcends the extraordinary physical and emotional demands of the part triumphantly.  It's no wonder that he was given Holland's highest acting award in 2015 when he first played the part.

Over the weekend at the Book Festival I heard Marc David Baer talk about his book The Ottomans (which the library have obtained for me more quickly that I either expected or wanted), Abdulrazak Gurnah talk wisely and well about his life and work, Gulbahar Haitiwaji (with help from her daughter) talk about her internment by the Chinese in one of their so called re-education camps and Alan Cumming give an entertaining and humorous insight into his activities and attitudes.

After a couple of hours chatting with old friends in a pub on Sunday afternoon Fiona (here for a chum's golden wedding do) and I went to the Hub to see Liz Lochead's Medea.  It was an interestingly staged production with the bulk of the audience standing around a narrow thrust stage. The principals provided fine declamatory performances and the chorus, who at some stages mingled with the audience, gave the insightful commentary on the action that is their responsibility in Greek theatre (ancient that is).  I enjoyed it but as I admitted to Fiona I felt nothing.  My withers were not wrung.  So we can't give it more than three stars however generous we feel.

Festival crowds filling up the High Street once again, here to sample the 3000 odd shows on offer.  I've sampled a few more since I last posted.  Life being short I shall make only the briefest of notes on them.

I started the first full week of the Festivals having lunch with some friends up from the south.  It was a lovely day and after lunch they went of to board the Royal Yacht and I had a wee wander in the sunshine.

To the Playhouse in the evening to see Pulse which as I said before was the main constituent of the EIF free opening event.  I had a much better view in the theatre but the show was 99% the same.  The other 1% was the buiding of a tower of 4 people standing on one another's shoulders.  Astonishing.

Counting and Cracking the following evening began in 2004 when we met a 20 something first generation Australian of Sri Lankan origin and his Aboriginal girlfriend.  The play then takes us back to Sri Lanka in the 50s and follows the fortunes of his family through the tensions, upheavals and bloodshed that culminated in the arrest of his father and the flight of his mother from the island.  It was a good production.  I enjoyed it thoroughly, even the somewhat contrived revelation that the young man's girl friend's DNA analysis suggested that her forebears came from South Asia.  Sri Lanka perhaps?

Taraf de Caliu billed as legends of Romanian folk music played in the lovely but sadly underused Leith Theatre which could also do with a lick of paint.  They turned out to be a highly amplified electric lot who played at the extremes of dynamic and tempo.  Mercifully they stopped for breath after 40 minutes or so and I left.

The Grads presented The Merchant of Venice and Bloody Wimmin.  Shakespeare's play needs no introduction but Bloody Wimmin is less well known.  Its action starts with the peace camp at Greenham Common set up by women protesting against the coming of American Cruise missiles to the base there.  Protests that went on for nearly 20 years.  The play goes on to explore other protest movements, the role that women played in them and the significant impact on male female relationships that ensued.  Both productions were very good.  The Merchant's silent opening scene in which Shylock is taunted and demeaned by the Venetians was chilling.  A brilliant idea whosever it was.

The Film Festival has returned to August which adds to the delights of the season but also to the difficulties of choice.  I have rather neglected the Fringe to take in several films.  The opening gala film (which I saw at a cheaper re-screening) was Aftersun, the excellent debut feature of young Sottish director Charlotte Wells.  I'll quote the IMDB summary of the "plot" which sums up the bones of the film very well - "Sophie reflects on the shared joy and private melancholy of a holiday she took with her father twenty years earlier. Memories real and imagined fill the gaps between as she tries to reconcile the father she knew with the man she didn't." and direct you to Peter Bradshaw's five star review.

Kinuyo Tanaka was a very successful Japanese film actress who for about a decade beginning in the early fifties turned her hand to direction. The Film Festival are showing all six of the films she directed in newly restored and digitised prints.  I managed to see five and hope to see the sixth when the films are shown in Glasgow next month.  They are all different, ranging from sweet comedy through social realism to historical epic and all place women at the centre of the film.  I thought they were all brilliant.  Mind you, to the modern viewer much of the acting is somewhat "heightened".  I list them here without commentary as an aide-memoire to myself and in honour of my ongoing attempt to learn it, their Japanese titles. 恋文 ( Love Letter), 月は上りぬ (The Moon has Risen), 乳房よ永遠なれ（Forever a Woman),　流転の王妃 (The Wandering Princess) and 女ばかりの夜（Girls of the Night).

Official Competition is a Spanish comedy about the making of a film or at least the acting rehearsals for it.  We never see the cameras rolling.  It will be released in cinemas shortly and should entertain especially the amateur theatre practitioners amongst us.

I've always enjoyed short films so I put a couple of screenings into my schedule.  New shorts from Scotland were:

The Barber,   a refugee in Glasgow discovers something troubling about the man who cuts her son's hair.

Infectious Nihilism and Small Metallic Pieces of Hope,  is a gang the answer to a young man need to belong somewhere?

Kafia, love for the filmmaker's grandmother as she approaches death.  With Wrinkled Years she made an earlier tribute to her grandmother who recounts her son's death.  

Maureen, is a comedic tussle between aunt and niece over the ashes of the former's sister, aka the latter's mother.  It could also be looked on as a tribute to Tupperware.  The link takes you to its crowdfunder page though obviously they got the money.  However it's an interesting read.

Too Rough, is a tense drama but has moments of humour as Nick tries to conceal the boyfriend he has been foolhardy enough to take home for the night from his alcoholic and dysfunctional family.

Who I Am Now, tells the story of two trans refugees who having had to leave their birth families form new families from their friends.  Adam Kashmiry whose story was brilliantly brought to the stage by the NTS a few years ago is one of the principal protagonists.

The festival also featured short animation films.  I enjoyed the selection I saw at the time but for fear that I forget them and that the records of the 2022 film festival disappear I'm copying the programme blurbs.

Bird in the Peninsula, 
Children are dancing to music under the supervision of their teacher. A young lady witnesses the scene and disrupts their rituals. 

 

Holy Holocaust, explores an unusual relationship between Noa, a white Israeli woman and Jennifer, a black German, who for 22 years believed that their friendship could easily rise above historical and political obstacles, until horrifying family secrets are revealed and explode right in their faces. Jennifer discovers that she is the biological granddaughter of a notorious Nazi commander, while Noa is exposed to the untold Holocaust tragedy of her grandmother’s family. So now what? Can they overcome the horrors of the past and go on as usual?

Inglorious Liasons,
Tonight is the big night for Lucie, Maya and their friends. Even Jimmy came: he is here for Maya, and everybody knows it. But at the moment when everything is supposed to happen, Maya and Lucie discover they have hidden feelings for each other, tender and confused, and they struggle to find their footing in this evening punctuated by alcohol that flows freely, music that rocks and hormones that boil.

Meneath: The Hidden Island of Ethics dives deeply into the innate contrast between the Seven Deadly Sins (Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Pride and Envy) and the Seven Sacred Teachings (Love, Respect, Wisdom, Courage, Truth, Honesty and Humility), as embodied in the life of a precocious Métis baby. Brought to life by Terril Calder’s darkly beautiful stop-motion animation, Baby Girl’s inner turmoil is laid bare with unflinching honesty. Convinced she’s soiled and destined for Hell, Baby Girl receives Anishinaabe Teachings from Nokomis that fill her with strength and pride and affirm a path towards healing. Calder’s tour-de-force unearths a hauntingly familiar yet hopeful world that illuminates the bias of colonial systems.

 

 Well Wishes My Love, Your Love , A boy lends his friend a prosthetic arm for the day.

Yugo Testimonies from relatives trace the course of a woman and a man forced to leave their native countryside for the outskirts of Bogotá to work on the industrial manufacture of decorative pieces for trucks. On a lifetime scale, Yugo questions the capitalist and liberal economic development of Latin America and its consequences to humans beings, through the environmental and societal changes it generates.

I spent a little while at the Foodies festival today.  Laura MacDonald, the saxophonist, gave some tickets away at her gig in the Jazz festival.  In her other life she's been a Masterchef finalist and was booked to do some demos at the Foodies.  Unfortunately she wasn't there today.

I wandered round, watched the kids being face painted and doing cooking, munched on free samples, listened to music, imbibed free samples and generally relaxed in the sun.  Found the food outlet with the smallest queue (Slumdog from just up the road) where I bought a tasty plateful for lunch.

I didn't count them but there were probably two booze stalls to every food one.  I sampled a rather tasty whisky liqueur at one but at over thirty quid a bottle refrained from making a purchase.

At twice as much as I paid in Italy just a few weeks ago I likewise refrained from making a purchase at this aperitivo bar where spritzes of all sorts were on offer.

In Glasgow this week I had quite a decent lunch with Andrew at a place called Gloriosa.  We went on to see the John Byrne exhibition at Kelvingrove.  It made a very distinct contrast to the Vettriano in Kirkcaldy.  The art works were much more varied, though it has to be said Byrne does rather favour the self-portrait, but of course his work as playwright and stage designer and involvement in screen adaptations of his writing puts him into a different catagory.  The exhibition runs till mid September and is worth a visit.

The EIF's free opening event, MACRO, took place under this large canopy at Murrayfield stadium.  It consisted mostly of the extraordinary acrobatic building and disintegration of structures made from human beings by the Australian physical theatre company Gravity & Other Myths.  Under each of the spotlights in this picture is a tower of three people.  I shall have a second chance to enjoy their work at the Playhouse this week.

So far I've seen three Fringe productions:

Exodus - an amusing, indeed farcical tale of a Home Secretary aspiring to be PM, her SPAD, an asylum seeker who takes on the task of pretending to be her mother and a journalist who wants to interview her.  Dealing with the plucking of an infant from the sea at Dover by a politician who wants to put an anti-migrant thermonuclear barrier round the UK provides the situation from which the humour flows.

The Last Return - a comedy built from the behaviour of people queueing for a sold-out theatre performance in the hope of a ticket being returned.  It's very funny, very well performed and staged and very daft.  I loved it.

Bloke and his American Bantu -  a show constructed from the correspondence between the Afro-American writer and activist Langston Hughes and the South African journalist, writer and actor Bloke Modisane.  Hughes, albeit remotely from his home in Harlem, seems to have been a big support both materially and emotionally to Modisane who had left South Africa and was scratching a living in London.  I had the impression perhaps wrongly that when Modisane had some success he didn't fully repay that support.

I wasn't terribly excited by it, certainly not as much as the South African reviewer who saw the show before it left for Edinburgh.  But I was interested enough to order a copy of Modisane's book recounting how life was for a black man in the South Africa of the 50s.  The book was of course banned in his home country.     

Buses (and other traffic) now running in both directions on Leith Walk.  Hoorah!

Admittedly not the whole length of it and not all buses but it's a step further along the road to the completion of the tram extension.  The Shrubhill bus-stop on my side re-opened a few weeks ago and now its fellow on the other side has done so.  For the first time in some years I can get a bus from town to my door.

So far only the number 11, but that came in very handy when I returned from the Vettriano exhibition in Kirkcaldy the other day.  The train I was on stopped at South Gyle and it was announced that we were being held there while an "incident" at Waverley was sorted out.  We only stayed a few minutes but when we got going we were told that because of said "incident" the train would terminate at Haymarket.  I love that expression.

This was my chance to enjoy the bus-stop.  I caught the tram from Haymarket to St Andrew Square, nipped over to George St. and immediately onto an 11 that deposited me at Shrubhill.  

When the Macdonald Rd. tramstop opens next year Haymarket will become my arrival station of choice coming from the west.

The Vettriano exhibition was most interesting in its inclusion of paintings he produced under his birth name of Jack Hoggan.  These were almost all either copies or closely modelled on existing works by other artists.  That's all part of the learning process especially for a self-taught painter. They struck me as very well done, in particular a fine self-portrait of Rembrant and a work called Beach Concert whose original has not been traced.

The 1988 success of this painting, The White Slip, this photo of which I've obtained from www.artnet.com and which was not a copy of anything seems to be what convinced him to go all out for art and develop a style of his own.  There are hints of it here.  It's interesting to compare it with the picture below (taken from an exhibition site) also called The White Slip.  I haven't yet found when that was painted but it's clearly well after his personal style and preferred subject matter had bedded in.

The following year his application for a place on a Fine Art MSc was rejected but that has not held him back, certainly if commercial success is your measure.  Critics and the art establishment have been harsh on him but in 2011 a self-portrait went on display in the Portrait Gallery.

Having two prints and five fridge magnets of his work you might think I'm a devotee but the pleasure I take in his work tends to tail off when I see too much of that brooding darkness.

Go to Kirkcaldy though. The exhibition is on till October and if you don't like it too much then take in the roomfull of McTaggarts and Peploes from the gallery's permanent collection.

If you want a opinion other than mine try The Times.

Thanks to Claire my participation in this year's Jazz festival has been immortalised.  The gig is the culmination of the Napier University Jazz Summer School which I've done a few times.  All have been fun to do but I don't know that my jazz playing is very much better than the first time I did it.  However, my motivation to put some effort into jazz has been given a boost, especially since I'm no longer taking regular sax lessons.

One of the perks of the summer school is that you get free tickets for evening gigs during the week.  Adding on the gigs that I bought tickets for at the two weekends that comes to 10 in total that I attended.  I'm going to put brief notes here as a reminder to myself of what I thought of them.

Richard Glassby Quartet -  I enjoyed the music but confess to having gone home after the first set because sitting twiddling my thumbs for 20 minutes between sets didn't appeal at 10 o'clock at night.

Xhosa Cole Quartet - Super gig headed by a former BBC Young Jazz Musician of the year on saxophone.

Noushy 4Tet -  I was a little bit disappointed.  I've heard Anoushka Nanguy play with the SNJO and was looking forward to hearing her trombone in a more prominent setting.  In this gig she sang quite a few numbers rather than played and also gave a lot of space to her fellow players.  Nothing wrong with either of those but it wasn't quite what I had hoped for.  

Brian Molley Quintet Play Getz and Byrd's "Jazz Samba" - This gig celebrated the 60th anniversary of the release of that album.  I very much enjoy latin music and I admire Brian Molley as a saxophonist so this gig was right up my street.  Loved it. 

John Scofield: Yankee Go Home - This was one of my free gigs so I shouldn't complain and indeed I'm not.  I'm just saying that it didn't float my boat.  Scofield is a guitar legend and people who enjoy the electric guitar more than I do will have adored this gig.  I enjoyed some of it.

European Jazz Workshop Big Band -  This was certainly the most original and impressive gig that I went to and possibly the one that I enjoyed most.  It started innocently enough with four original tunes from a young Glasgow quartet that included Rachel Duns, a saxophonist to keep your ear on.  Then the stage filled up with players from another four European cities, around 20 players in all.  They played for 75 minutes a piece that they had developed improvisationaly over a week long workshop.  Hard to describe, for me at least, there's an informed minute by minute review of the work here. 

Laura MacDonald's Cooking With Jazz - A well known and accomplished presence on the Scottish jazz scene for 30 years Laura hit the big time with the public when she made it to the finals of the  BBC's Masterchef show in 2021.  There's a fascinating write-up about it here.  At this gig in which the tunes were all food related she laid aside her alto sax to demonstrate making honeycomb (puff candy to me) and to serve a tangerine cake topped with chunks of the stuff.  Accompanying her on tenor but not in cooking was another brilliant Scottish player, Helena Kay.

Haftor Medboe and friends -  Haftor ran the Napier jazz summer school for over 20 years and handed over responsibility for it only this year to Sue McKenzie who joined him on saxophones for this gig.  Accompanied by Tom Lyne on double bass and Signy Jakobsdottir on drums and featuring a couple of songs from Jessie Bates he explored music from his Scandanavian homeland, all of it gentle, thoughtfull and moving. So good.

Federico Calcagno and the Dolphians - Their mission is to celebrate and extend the music of Eric Dolphy and in this gig specifically his 1964 album "Out to Lunch".  Classed as avant-garde at the time it's still a bit of an effort to listen to for those who like the Great American Songbook but I enjoyed the gig.

Archipelagos - Led by drummer Francesca Remigi this band's music is definitely avant-avant-garde but if you stick with it, which I did for the first set, it's rewarding.  Just as at my first fetival gig I didn't want to twiddle my thumbs for 20 minutes at this the last one so I left at the interval.  Had I been more in touch with the music, (or should that be vice versa?),  I might have stayed.