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.