The City Art Centre is running an interesting exhibition called An Edinburgh Alphabet that brings together items from all of the city's museums.  There's a programme of talks and so forth associated with it and I've been to a couple.

This week I gathered with others around a display case of glassware and learnt something of the history of glassmaking in Edinburgh. It's pretty much all gone leaving a few traces such as the relief panels on a Holyrood hotel rescued from the glassworks that stood on that site and showing glass makers at work.  There is also the intriguing thought that the converted church that is the Glasshouse Hotel is named for the association of Greenside with the industry, not that I can find any proof.

Hotfoot from history I went to what may be the future.  Whist is a virtual reality show.  Three punters pitched up for the 1pm show in one of the Festival Theatre's bars in which a number of oddly shaped objects stood.  We were invited to familiarise ourselves with the space then equipped with big chunky VR headsets and headphones and let loose to wander focussing on what were called trigger points on the objects.

When you hit a trigger point a scene then appeared in front of you, or all around you actually.  That's rather the point.  It was pretty realistic.  I did feel I was in the space in which the action was taking place although since the action in each case was on the surreal side you could hardly call it reality.

It reminded me a bit of putting on red and green plastic glasses at 3D films years ago where the action of the film was subordinate to the technology.  3D films have never really caught on and 3D TV died a death.  I think the same could be true of VR unless the material presented is a good deal more worth watching than Whist was.

There's been a series on Radio 4 recently exploring the meaning of some of the terms you see in the list of credits at the end of a film. Terms such as Best Boy and Key Grip.  Whist's credits had Amazing Development Guy in their list.  Quite an accolade.

Before moving from VR to plain old R let me tell you that at the end of the experience, before the credits roll a number is displayed which is said to have been calculated in response to what bits of the various scenes your eyes were drawn to which when looked up on their website will reveal your personality.

Now just as fortune telling weighing machines deliver a wee card that tells you what a splendid chap or chapess you are I didn't expect to be classed as in any way nasty however much my eyes may have concentrated on the more dubious aspects of the VR vignettes.

But it turns out that I am altogether splendid.  So for the enlightenment of my readers and perhaps the puzzlement of those who know me I quote the assessment in full: -


The elements that captured your attention during your VR journey may point to your sensitivity, curiosity and openness to the world around you, which can captivate you without demanding answers. You can be capable of appreciating beauty and contemplating unknowingness and staying open to experience without the need for an immediate closure.

The elements that captured your attention during your VR may suggest that you are sensitive to the suffering of others. Your empathy and compassion make you notice things which often pass unnoticed – in yourself and others. Under certain circumstances, other people’s suffering may matter more to you than your own joy.

    

After the euphoria of the summer school gig I got back to being a spectator.

First stop was The Jazz Romantics at The Village off Ferry Road.  A pitifully small audience for an excellent evening of great American songbook classics.  They were competing with half a dozen Jazz Festival events though.  Why were they themselves not part of the festival?

Then the Edinburgh Schools Jazz Orchestra in the pouring rain.  Not exactly in it but the rain beat on the spiegel tent roof throughout.  This was a set of big band classics interspersed with a few solo or duo pieces demonstrating the enormous talent of our teenagers.  One lad in the band has been at a couple of the Napier summer schools so I knew he was a terrific sax player.  He turns out to be no slouch on the piano either.  Destined for greatness.

Since my next concert was only an hour and a few hundred yards away I slipped into The Angel's Share for some lunch.  I ignored their vast (and pricey) range of whiskies and washed down my very tasty steak sandwich and yummy chips with a velvety smooth Merlot.

The restaurant used to be a post office and my next port of call used to be a chapel.  It's now The Rose Theatre in whose basement we had our gig.  This one was upstairs in the main space.  The Baptists moved out because there wasn't enough room for their growing congregation but three hundred seats was plenty for those who assembled to hear Ryan Quigley and Soweto Kinch being Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker.  Ably supported by a rhythm section of first class players they gave us an hour and a half of high octane grooves.
 

I snapped a piccie but only Soweto came out tolerably well.

I was released early enough from the Outside Mullingar rehearsal in the evening to have gone to Soweto's other gig and I was keen but.....

Maybe I'd had a surfeit or old age is creeping up on me so I went home and enjoyed Radio Scotland instead. 

Pure dead brilliant is the only possible description of yesterday's Napier Jazz Summer School concert in the Rose Theatre basement.  It's the cheapest of the Jazz Festival gigs and you get a lot for your money.  The 120 seat venue was full, helped admittedly by the presence of the 45 summer school participants.

Ten of those participants were singers.  This is the first time the summer school has catered for singers and they gave a major boost to the concert.  We had five bands playing.  Singers performed in various combinations between the band sets and rounded off the gig singing a vocal version of Take Five as a choir.

The origins of jazz are a bit on the hazy side but it's generally accepted that the first jazz recording dates from 1917.  So to highlight that centenary the repertoire for the week was made up of ten pieces, one from each decade since.  The bands chose a couple each and miraculously there was only one repetition.  The two bands concerned provided interestingly different versions.   

The week itself was good fun, incorporating various group activities as well as the work directed towards preparing the concert pieces.  We had a couple of theory sessions most of which was either just above or far above my head though my eyes were opened to one or two aspects of the fundamental building blocks of the music.

That was doing but I've managed a fair bit of appreciating as well.  Two gigs in particular stand out for me.  One was music by Ellington and the other was music associated with Cannonball Adderley and his band, his greatest hits as it were.

I had to sacrifice a couple of evenings of concert going to meet my Fringe rehearsal commitments but that's life in the culture vulture's cage for you.

The City Art Centre has been running a series of Saturday lunchtime singsongs by local choirs and I went along to one to hear a friend sing.  I got there early and took in the exhibition of the short-listed designs for the replacement of the Ross Pavilion in West Princes Street Gardens.  Like many residents I've always called it the Ross Bandstand but that was demolished and the present structure erected in 1934.

The seven designs vary enormously from a couple that put the emphasis on minimising the built aspects in favour of the garden to those that confidently impose pedestrian flyovers and chunky structures.  All of them have something exciting to offer and I'd hate to be responsible for the final choice.

The Dunedin Wind Band celebrated its 10th anniversary with a concert of pieces chosen by band members past and present from the large number that have been played over that decade.  Several past members joined the ranks for the evening, some travelling up from the deep south to do so.  We were 56 strong on stage which was quite a squeeze.  A jolly good time was had by all even though some of us didn't manage to play all the notes at the right time and in the right order.

Brief notes on what I saw on the final weekend of the Film Festival:

I Dream in Another Language - a Mexican film in which a young linguist engages with the last two speakers of an indigenous language who have not spoken to one another in any language for fifty years or so thanks to a falling out.  It was a nice little story that ended happily enough with the two old boys joining the spirit world in the cave where all the dead speakers of that particular tongue end up.  A touch of magic realism there.

The Last Men in  Aleppo - a documentary about the so called White Helmets who pull bodies from the rubble of that pounded to death city.  There was no commentary or analysis, just observation and eavesdropping.  Disgracefully I missed large chunks by nodding off periodically.  Not that it was boring, I was just tired.

Demonio tus Ojos -  I've forgotten the English title of this tale of a man who takes an unhealthy interest in his half-sister.  I expect all sorts of intellectual bullshit can be advanced in support of the mix of voyeurism, incest and violence against women displayed in the film and there may well be some merit in the loss of innocence theme but on the whole it gets the thumbs down from me.

Time bandits - pure delight and fun from the Monty Python stable of writers, film makers and performers.  A young boy and half a dozen dwarves, former employees of the supreme being, romp through time in pursuit of treasure to steal. They encounter Napoleon, Agamemnon and Robin Hood, go down with the Titanic and enjoy sundry other fantastic adventures.

The Quiet Earth - science fiction from New Zealand.  A scientist who has played some part in an experiment that I didn't entirely understand, or rather entirely didn't understand, wakes up to find himself alone in the world.  Well, not quite alone.  He encounters a young woman and then a young Maori.  They potter about this empty landscape.  The scientist works out that the sun is about to explode.  They decide to save the world by blowing up the installation where the experiment was taking place.  Scientist sacrifices himself in doing so so that the young couple can be together.  Or maybe not since the closing shot is said scientist apparently reviving on a beach as the saved sun rises. Not my cup of tea really but harmless.   

Somewhat oddly the first event of the Film Festival that I went to was actually a jazz gig with Tam Dean Burn reading various poems and other writings by Tom McGrath while the SNJO played Ellington and Miles Davis and others.

I knew of McGrath as a playwright and as something of a dramaturg at the Traverse and the Lyceum in the 80s or 90s but didn't know of his jazz interests.  Nor of any involvement in film.  Indeed I don't think he had a lot to do with film.  This evening was a celebration of him as a much admired Scottish cultural icon.
 

In terms of films I've since seen an excellent one directed by and starring Danny Huston, (son of John). The Last Photograph, a very poignant story of loss. Huston did a Q&A afterwards and came over as a really nice guy.

Hostages is a Georgian movie about failed young hijackers hoping to flee to the West. The episode was true but the film was drama rather than documentary.  Only one of them escaped execution. The sad coda was that if they had waited only eight years they would have been able to lawfully leave the USSR. 

Newton was a delightful little comedy about a young Indian civil servant zealously trying to set up and run a polling place for a tiny community in the middle of a jungle plagued by Maoist insurgents. 

Another film with an Indian as star, set this time in Sligo, was Halal Daddy.  It's a lovely romantic comedy with multicultural humour and inter-generational conflict.  Naturally there's a happy ending.  See it if you can.  It's fun.

I can't say the same for The Pugilist.  It's not at all a bad film but I thought it rather a run of the mill story of gangland violence and a good man's struggle against it.  The sort of thing I might watch on TV when I was too lazy to do anything else.

I couldn't resist this beautiful bow tie at less than half its original price in the Scottish National Gallery shop a couple of months ago.  As is often the case I had gone in looking for a present for someone else and came out full of self indulgent guilt.

Guilt turned to frustration as its delicate soft silkiness defied my efforts to tie it.  Proud as I am of my tie tying prowess, demonstrated to the world in 1992 when unaided by mirrors I tied a bow tie on stage in the course of a performance this little beauty refused to be tamed.

But last week I managed it in response to an invitation to a party where dressing up was encouraged.  Disappointingly, apart from the hosts the only people making a sartorial effort were the theatrically connected.  The rest of you - pathetic.

Now pathetic is an adjective you might well apply to Willie Loman, hero of Miller's Death of a Salesman but that would be cruel.  The American dream hasn't worked out for Willie or for his sons and the story is gut wrenchingly told in a very fine production from the Royal and Derngate theatre currently touring the country.  I'd forgotten just how harrowing it is and reflecting on Arthur Miller's other plays, or at least those I know, I marvel at his capacity to enable us to experience catharsis through the tragedy of his protagonists.

Music is Torture was an entertaining idea that rather lost its way.  The story is of a guy who runs a little recording studio where he's been trying unenthusiastically to produce an album with the same band for years and is just scraping a living.  In the past he'd had pretentions as a musician himself and produced a record but didn't make the big time, or even the not too small time.  Now he works and sleeps in his studio and is on the verge of being evicted.

A letter comes from a lawyer who tells him that his long ago recorded number is being used by the CIA in their enhanced interrogation sessions and offering him the chance to sign a contract to recover royalties.  His scruples don't take too long to be overcome given his dire need for a new pair of sneakers.

So far so amusing but subsequently we have a narrative that dribbles along fairly aimlessly.  The band behind the glass appear in orange jumpsuits as eventually does our hero but this denouement if that's what it was didn't make much sense to me.  But the show on the whole was fun.

The RSNO's penultimate concert of the season was not torture.  Indeed it was very good and I especially enjoyed Jennifer Johnston singing Mahler's Rückert-Lieder.  That was a pleasant surprise because I wouldn't say it's my thing.  Thomas Søndergård, who conducted, was announced as the successor to Peter Oundjian as music director.  He'll take over at the end of next season and judging by the applause from both audience and orchestra is a popular choice.

Scotland's most written about monarch is surely Mary Queen of Scots.  Just have a glance at this Wikipedia article to see how much there is.  It's a torrent that shows no sign of abating; one of the latest is Linda McLean's play, Glory on Earth, which deals with her relationship with John Knox.

Encounters between the vivacious young catholic queen and the priggish protestant reformer would seem fertile soil for cutting dialogue and lively drama but for me this production fell flat.  It looked lovely though and having Mary's four Marys (of whom there were actually six) playing various Scottish lords was an interesting idea.  Having said that a friend suggested the female voices didn't help provide the contrasts that the show sorely lacked. 

Edinburgh enjoyed more than its average June rainfall all in one 36 hour period last week.  Here's Princes St Gardens the morning after.

The rain stopped handily in time for QMU's open air As You Like It.  The play was presented in a delightful garden in Dunbar's Close off the Canongate.  They gave us a suitably nasty usurper, a cheerful usurpee, an engaging fool, a kind and honest hero and a jolly smart Rosalind who is of course the real hero of the piece.

It was very well done but the tiny plastic stools that we were given to sit on were very uncomfortable and come the interval I couldn't bear the thought of  further posterior punishment so I left.

That made it the first of  three shows that I have failed to see through to the end this month.  That's three more than in the last decade or so.  I was tired when I went to La Bohème and didn't much like it or the glass of  plonk I couldn't finish, so I left.  Milonga on the other hand was good but I felt that the second hour of a tango show was not going to be radically different from the first and that perhaps my fill had been had.  After all it's only five years since I spent a tango watching evening in Buenos Aires.

Far from the Pampas is this lovely farmhouse where I spent a weekend with several chums and various teens belonging to them.

Here's the view of the Cumbrian countryside from the garden.  The little castellated tower is, or rather was in the day, an outside toilet.

It was an eating and drinking weekend but we managed a walk or two and an excursion on a local heritage railway.  I was back in a different part of Cumbria the following weekend for a saxophone course that also involved eating and drinking but no walking.

The closing words of Jo Clifford's play War in America were "Be kind!"  Now one knows that one has to be cruel to be kind but perhaps not to the extent of the nastiness, cruelty and sado-masochism culminating in death and invasion by terrorist gunmen that had gone before.

We'd gone to see the show to support the excellent scheme for young actors that is The Attic Collective and to get a peek into the Old Royal High School which is threatened with conversion into an unlovely hotel, though it may be be saved from the forces of mammon to become the new home of St Mary's Music School.

Let me share that peek with you.  First the space in which the performance took place.

Then two views of the same room as it was at two earlier points in time. 

And finally how it might look if the hotel development goes ahead

Now back to the show.  It was in many ways an excellent production.  The debating chamber was absolutely ideal for a play about political machinations and the company used it brilliantly and imaginatively.  The cast attacked their roles with vigour but there was a missing element.

The actors delivered the words well and there could be no complaint about their committment but I never had the impression that this was a possible world populated by real people.  There was a distinct lack of tension in scenes where we should have been gripped and, for me, a distinct lack of being engaged by the argument.  Did it seem just too far-fetched or did the writing fail to flesh out the characters sufficiently?  Or, as some of our party felt, did it really need age appropriate actors with a deal more life experience than these young people?

It was nonetheless worthwhile seeing a neglected play (reckoned too offensive by The Lyceum who commissioned it twenty years ago) and I look forward to the Collective's third outing which is The Threepenny Opera in September.

The Dissection Room at Summerhall is not as classy a space as the Sculpture Court but the costumes that swept through it last night proved that QMU has students as inventive and skilful as any in the city.  One of the most interesting aspects of the show was seeing how different students had visualised the same character.  They showed a couple of Mrs Peachums and at least three Lucy Lockits from The Beggars Opera.  One of those (alas no picture) was a decadent looking Lucius Lockit.

No picture of Lucius because as at the Art College snapping was a bit of a distraction from simply enjoying the show.  But I did take some and here are one or two that I particularly liked.

Lavinia from Titus Andronicus.  A trio of lads in Regency costumes rushed out after her to wipe up the blood that dripped from her mouth and dress onto the floor.  They performed a similar service for those who cast off some of their garments as they paraded, like the Marquise de Mertueil from Les Liaisons Dangereuses.

Of the forty three students whose work was featured only two were male, an imbalance that maybe needs to be addressed just as efforts are made to encourage girls into STEM subjects. Maybe.

Anyway here's one boy's dance outfit.

Suitable for all forms of dance he reckons.  As long as you don't need to see where you're going.

At the show I picked up a flyer for an open air production of As You Like It by QMU Performing Arts students and staff, including I imagine the costume students.  It's in early June.  For my comfort if not safety from being rained on I've chosen a seat rather than a spot on the grass.

Inspired by Claire's enthusiasm over Rosencrantz and Guilderstern are Dead I cast about to find an encore screening that I could get to.  Too full a diary to get there without foregoing a Friends of the Queen's Hall freebie concert but it was well worth it.  Tom Stoppard's play is a feast of wordsmithery and ingenious invention around the Hamlet story, and the Old Vic's production on an essentially bare stage abounded in fine acting and clever stagecraft.

The Grads had a greater staging challenge in presenting The Ladykillers in Assembly Roxy but rose to it.  Their excellent tumbledown house on stage spilling forwards into the centre and sides of the hall most effectively.  Each member of the criminal band led magnificently by Lawrence Waring was a piece of spot-on characterisation.  We had a slightly bewildered but morally firm and thoroughly believable old lady plus a host of delightful cameos.  Costumes and props (those musical instruments!) deserve a medal of their own.  A very good production slightly spoilt for anyone not in the front row by the lack of raked seating.

The Art College Performance Costume Show teemed with medal deserving outfits.  It opened with a bang as third year students poured into the sculpture court in richly coloured costumes inspired by the Hindu festival of Diwali. Diwali is a festival of lights and when the main lighting was dimmed lights incorporated in the costumes gleamed and shimmered as the students danced.

It was a spectacular start not equalled in the course of the hour but the imagination of design and skill of construction shone brightly from every piece that appeared.  I snatched a few blurry pics with my phone but mostly sat in awe at the talent on display.  Here's one of my better snaps, an example of costumes and puppets for James and the Magic Peach.

Will the Queen Margaret University students do as well?  A visit to Summerhall will be made to resolve that question.

Charlie Sonata at The Lyceum, Breakin' Convention and The Red Shoes at the Festival Theatre are shows I've enjoyed recently.  Fortunately I don't have to wrack my brains to describe them because Claire was of the company on each occasion and has written far more accurately, perspicaciously and entertainingly than I would so follow the links to learn more.

In the concert hall the SCO gave an excellent Missa Solemnis by Beethoven which I almost missed because I went to their usual home, The Queen's Hall, instead of the Usher Hall.  Fortunately I was a bit early and even more fortunately a combination of buses ran in my favour and I entered the auditorium simultaneously with the conductor.  I almost did the same for the next concert, getting on the wrong bus to start with.  That was Beethoven again, a superb and exuberant 7th Symphony.

The Usher Hall is the RSNO's Edinburgh home so I'm not likely to get on the wrong bus for their concerts and I enjoyed a Russian evening of Scriabin, Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky from them a couple of weeks ago.

The SNJO was also in action in the Usher Hall on the eve of International Jazz Day. They played Miles Davis's Sketches of Spain and his version of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess.  On the day itself there was a big shindig in Havana and thanks to Youtube here it is.


The critics have generally been more enthusiastic than me about the films I've seen in recent weeks but I was pleased to see The Telegraph limit itself to two stars for The Handmaiden.  Melodramatic, verging on the ham, codswallop beautifully costumed and filmed that told me far more than I needed to know about lesbian sexual gymnastics. It had a well merited happy ending though.

The Sense of an Ending on the other hand rather petered out but on the way through told a not entirely unintereresting story about a letter unwisely written in his youth catching up on its author in later life.  I did sympathise with the protagonist or perhaps pitied him, even to the extent of not deploring his stalking like behaviour.

Even though he cuts a somewhat ridiculous figure it would be hard not to sympathise with the middle-aged doctor bewitched by a beautiful young tourist on the Greek island where he has washed up after what has clearly been an unsuccessful and unhappy life.  But that's an old man's perspective.  Younger cinemagoers might be revolted.  Suntan was I thought worth the four stars it got from The Guardian.

I couldn't be bothered with The Student though.  Not that there was anything wrong with the film I suppose but my antipathy to the bible beating scripture spouting character at the centre of it made it hard to enjoy.

Definitely the film I've enjoyed most is Lady Macbeth and here the critics are at one with me.  In a dankly oppressive country house somewhere in the north of England comes a young bride, purchased we are told by her father-in-law for a son who we quickly learn is unable or unwilling to consummate the marriage.  Father and son require her to do nothing more than wait indoors day and night to do their bidding.

It's no surprise that she breaks out of this prison in the absence of the two men to take deep breaths of fresh air in the open moorland.  No surprise either that she lusts after a healthy young groom nor that she gives way to that lust.

So we are set up for nasty happenings when first father-in-law then husband return.  And we get them.

The film's genesis is a Russian novella of 1865,  Lady Macbeth of the Mtensk District that gave rise to the better known opera of the same name by Shostakovich.  I'm told the film has a different ending but I've neither read the novella nor seen the opera and I love this ending.

The film, as the Spectator said is "plain terrific".

This is Gartmore House near Aberfoyle where I spent the Easter weekend with a score of sax players.  We did a lot of playing and filled in the rest of the hours of the day with agreeable socialising.

The house has some lovely large rooms each decorated in individual style.  I particularly liked the one with a cornice formed of a pattern of ships in relief, arising no doubt from its period under the ownership of a shipping family.  It's also associated with Robert Cunninghame-Graham who delighted in the name of Don Roberto when he enjoyed the gaucho life in Argentina prior to riding into Scottish political life weaving through Liberal and Labour till ending up as first president of the Scottish National Party.

 

The following weekend I spent in Elie with old schoolfriends.  The sun shone all weekend though it was fairly cold much of the time.  We walked about the beach and admired the views across the Forth to the Lothians.

My chums are into fine dining so we did some of that. The food was delicious but I'd have enjoyed larger portions and smaller bills.  That's my brutish and uncultured side showing through. We also wandered about the various East Neuk villages and enjoyed a show at the Byre in St. Andrews in which Liz Lochead entertained us with her poetry underscored here and there by a chap on a tenor sax.

In Crail, which is possibly the loveliest of the villages, we came across this warning sign and a tankful of the beasties. Undeterred a dead portion was purchased for taking down south for Monday's tea by one of the party.

A bonus from staying in a hotel in the South Tyrol is that you are given a free public transport pass for the duration of your stay.  If you are there for a week's skiing and are on the slopes all day it's of limited use unless you fancy spending your evenings on a bus.  Or if like me you don't mind taking some time off.

I hopped on a couple of buses to visit the nearby town of Brunico/Bruneck one morning.  Like every place in the region it has two names, Italian and German, as does every street in the town.  Those are not the only languages spoken as you can hear from this episode of From Our Own Correspondent that Siobhan alerted me to.  It's the last item and starts about 18 minutes into the programme.

Brunico is a pretty little town in a river valley amidst mountains.  It's on the far side of the mountain I was skiing on and from the hill on which sits its mildly impressive schloss you can see the Kronplatz plateau and a run that would have brought me down to somewhere not very far away but it was a bit black for my taste.

The region's linguistic complexity is due in part to it having been cut out of Austo-Hungary and given to Italy after the First World War.  There was subsequently a degree of forced Italianisation much resented by the local population.  In the thirties Mussolini and his chums got into the act.  A monument was erected in Brunico to commemorate the Italian Alpine Troops who died in the Ethiopian campaign but over the years it has been something of a focus for discontent with the Italian state and having been six metres high originally it's been blown up a number of times and replaced.  Now only a bust remains on the pedestal.

There's an article which doesn't deal specifically about this monument but which has a lot of interesting analysis of the history of South Tyrol under Italian control.  See  Fascist Legacies: The Controversy over Mussolini’s Monuments in South Tyrol

A monument I didn't see and which there probably should be is one to Nanni Moretti, the film maker, who was born in the town.

My skiing holiday got off to a good start when Austrian Airlines dished up lunch an hour or so after take-off from Edinburgh.  It was only 11 o'clock but I'd had breakfast around 6 a.m. so I was ready for it. That coupled with the spacious legroom was such a treat compared to the budget airline experience that has been the norm for my holidays in recent years.

Flying into Innsbruck with jaggy mountains on either side more or less on a level with the plane is a great experience on a nice calm sunny day but I'd hate to be coming down that valley in the dark in pelting rain with a vicious crosswind. I'd find it difficult to hold down that tasty pasta bake.

Then it was on to San Vigilio, the lovely little village where I was staying in the very pleasant and comfortable Hotel Teresa. They were not having a busy week and for a couple of nights I was the only client in the hotel. The waiting and kitchen staff who had been on when I arrived disappeared and people I took to be from the family who ran the place did the business except for one evening when they invited me to eat at a restaurant fifty yards away where the menu focussed on local specialities. The food was lovely, as it was in the hotel.

Davide, the main man in the hotel, was an avid naturalist (whether academically trained or just a keen amateur I don't know) and waxed lyrical about the wildlife in the nearby national park. If I'd been there for longer I'd have enjoyed a trip into the park, perhaps seeing the golden eagles that he said nested there. He'd been to Scotland looking for golden eagles and apparently the best book on the birds was written by someone based in Scotland.  He also reminisced about the Cannie Man's and showed me some of his whisky collection. At 15 euros a glass (twice the price in Milan I'm assured) I didn't try any of them.

They hadn't had much snow over the winter and I was there in very much the dying days of the season but there was more than enough snow for me.

You can see in this picture how the hillside is almost devoid of snow except where they have skillfully kept some pistes in goodish nick.

In the village there was no snow at all but up on the plateau where half a dozen lifts converged it was remarkably well conserved.

You can see also that it wasn't too busy and that it was beautifully sunny.  Perfect conditions to my mind provided you either don't mind trying to fight your way through slush in the afternoons or you're happy to pack it in at lunchtime.  The latter is my preference.

Apart from photos I've got a little video souvenir thanks to BMW.  It's not quite a Ski Sunday Slalom and merits a good strong shout of bend zee knees but a bit more practice and then the FIS World Cup  maybe.

Who needs foreign travel when the sun shines in Edinburgh?  The question I asked myself as I lunched al fresco in George Street on the eve of my departure for the Dolomite ski slopes.

I'd made the humdrum trip into town to buy socks to keep my skiing feet toasty but was seduced by the warm Spring sunshine into taking a table at Browns.  They served me the nicest fishcake I've eaten in years followed by some tasty lamb sausages and quite whetted my appetite for embarking on a summer project to lunch in all the pavement eateries in George Street.  I also spied a place called Veeno in Rose Street that offers a multitude of Italian wines and a few snacks that I've pencilled in for a visit sometime.

On my way along Rose Street I discovered work going on to transform the former Charlotte Baptist Chapel into a theatre.  News to me, and exciting news too but old news to Google.  Planning permission for the project was given to the Danish ballet director Peter Schaufuss a year ago.  But as the Scotsman article pointed out at the time there is a deal of difference between permission and completion.  Luckily it looks as though it's well on its way.  With the new hall to be built for the SCO at the back of St Andrew Sq. and a concert hall in the former Royal High when St Mary's Music School takes it over (assuming the overblown and unwanted hotel project for the building is quashed) there will be oodles of places for culture vultures to wallow in.

The high spot of my recent cultural wallowing was undoubtedly Northern Ballet's Casanova.   It was a tremendous show.  Staging, costumes, lighting, music, choreography were all superb and the athleticism of the dancers quite staggering.  You can see bits of it on Northen Ballet's site and read a review here.  It's on tour till May and is a must see for dance fans, but make sure you read the story line before you go to fully enjoy the work.

The story line of Le Malade Imaginaire is well known and Les Escogriffes, who it turns out are alive and kicking after all, impart it well enough but their production was less than riveting in comparison with how the Italian students had presented their Goldoni piece.  They were also a little unwise in not binning the interlude ballet bits that no doubt thrilled the 17th century theatre goer but do nothing for modern tastes.  So I could have been better entertained but it was quite a fun evening all the same and I couldn't fault the company for effort.

It was going to see Arkle's production of Da that alerted me to Le Malade Imaginaire because it was taking place in the  same building and still had a night to run. Da has been described as a bitter-sweet father and son drama.  The curtain rises on a expatriate Irish writer who has returned home for his adoptive father's funeral sitting in the old family home and on the brink of leaving. The play follows his reflections on his relationship with his parents and the events of his youth.  The twist is that his father, mother, younger self and other characters from the past all take part in the action.  It's a clever device and is neatly employed but there is not a lot in the piece that is not present in other works of reminiscence.

It was nicely staged and on the whole I thought the cast worked well.  I have to declare a personal interest in as much as I should have auditioned for the part of the father had I known about it in time.  I thought Charlie made quite a good fist of the part but... Being critical I think the production let itself down when sound effects that should have come from the back of the audience came from the back of the stage.

Family relationships of quite a different stripe are the subject matter of Noel Coward's comedy Hay Fever.  Mark Fisher's review in The Guardian is the most interesting I've seen and having read it I can certainly see the connections with Shakespeare and Albee but didn't join the dots when I was at the show.

Everybody knows that your latin lads and lassies are born dancers so it was no surprise to find the Festival Theatre packed for the visit of this Cuban company.  They were indeed wonderful and energetic dancers who were able to put their bodies through a couple of hours of routines that combined the suppleness of elastic bands and the strength of steel.

It is often the case with modern dance (especially if you don't have a programme) that while admiring the beauty and skill of the presentation your little mind has to work hard to make sense of what's going on. 

This show didn't seem so tricky to interpret.  The first piece screamed lust to me.  The second was life with an ipod (boring) and the third clearly military.  No doubt their revolution which still features highly in the national consciousness I opined to myself.

I am grateful to Claire, who enjoyed the show with me, for pointing me to this review which expresses far more succinctly, knowledgeably and elegantly than I could just what I thought. 

The university language students habitually put on plays round about this time of year and I saw the Italian one the other night.  It was a first class production of a Goldoni comedy about two families and their friends organising themselves for a summer holiday.  The acting was suitably over the top and the fun was fast and furious.  It was exceptionally well directed with lots of clever little ideas.

I enjoyed it so much I thought I'd seek out what the others were doing.  I couldn't find any trace of the French but the Spanish and Germans both had shows on offer.  Whether by accident or design their shows were on exactly the same three evenings as the Italians and I couldn't make it to either. Mind you the German one would have been well out of reach linguistically.

Subsequently I've discovered that an exhibition is being held in April to celebrate 50 years of Les Escogriffes, which is what the French lot call themselves, so although they seem to be dead on the internet and on social media maybe they are alive in the real world and still producing.

My clarinet class had an outing to the Usher Hall to hear Mozart's Clarinet Concerto.  Very nice it was too and now Julia has got us playing a tiny extract, just sixteen very straightforward bars but recognisable as the main theme of the slow movement.

Having enjoyed a modern production of La Traviata on stage in Genoa in December I was interested in seeing the Metropolitan Opera's version, also non traditional, when it was broadcast to cinemas at the weekend. I enjoyed it a lot and adored the staging which reminded me of a wall of death arena from the Links Market of my youth, though it was rather more tastefully clad. The vast chorus all wearing identical masks peering over the edge was just one of the beautiful and powerful pictures that abounded.  The large clock half covered with a floral cloth temporarily halting Violetta's decline to death as her and Alfredo's love was at its height was another. The Observer tells you all that I can't.

There is another production, this time from The Royal Opera House, coming to cinemas soon but I've maybe had enough tubercular tragedy for the time being.

Man made tragedy featured in Viceroy's House, the film by Gurinder Chadha of Bend It Like Beckham fame about the partition of India in 1947.  It's a large, lush and beautifully shot film in the British costume drama tradition with an inter confessional love story woven into the blood and slaughter of the movement of Hindu to India and Muslim to Pakistan.

Film critic Mark Kermode in The Guardian has warm words about the film which I echo but its political analysis blaming Churchill and exonerating Mountbatten is hotly contested in The Mail by historian Andrew Roberts.  He argues his case powerfully and I know nothing either way.

People arriving at the Assembly Rooms for the Caledonian Hunt Ball in the late 18th century as imagined in Edinburgh's Georgian Shadows event celebrating the 250th anniversary of Craig's plan for the New Town.  It makes for an interesting stroll in the early evening from Register House to Charlotte Square by way of St Andrew Square and George Street.

The Queen's Hall is another fine Georgian building though fifty years or so younger than the Assembly Rooms.  One thing I particularly like about it is its intimacy, the closeness to the action.  The SCO had a choir on stage for Mozart's Coronation Mass which brought the band another twenty feet or so further into the body of the kirk so that I was practically sitting amongst them.  Although I was very happy to hear that in a year or two they will have a new home in the hall to be built on the site of the Royal Bank offices I once worked in behind St Andrew Sq.  I fear some of that family feeling will be lost.

Family feeling of a different sort was on view at The Lyceum where The Winter's Tale has just finished its run. On fairly slim evidence King Leontes decides his wife has been having it off with his best chum (the king of Bohemia), orders the chum's murder (though he forewarned escapes), banishes his new-born daughter to be exposed to the wilderness where wild beasts roam in the firm belief that she's not his, arraigns his wife and casting aside the report of the Oracle on her chasteness as false news declares the trial must continue with a death sentence as the probable outcome when enters a messenger.

The king's son brooding on the queen his mother's fate has died.  Understandably she swoons but less understandably Leontes suddenly realises that's he's a tosser and all his jealousy has been misplaced.  The queen is taken off for medical attention but her woman is back in a jiffy to report that it's too late, she's dead.

Now this is classed as one of Shakespeare's comedies but up to this point the laughs have been few.  Luckily the atmosphere brightens.  The scene switches to Bohemia, the wee baby is rescued by a comic shepherd and his son, sixteen years pass, it's the sheep shearing festival, the baby is now a comely maid and is beloved by the Bohemian prince. We enjoy the rib-tickling comic turns that the bard provided for his groundlings, made actually comprehensible and funny in this production.  There is music and dancing and much jollity but alack and alas it doesn't last.

Polixenes (king of Bohemia and unmurdered chum of Leontes) turns up and berates his son for dallying with a shepherdess, unaware that's she's really a princess.  Everybody including herself is unaware though the old shepherd must at least suspect she's from a different social class than him given the money she had about her person in the wild woods all those years ago.

Florizel and Perdita (our young lovers) are advised to go off and introduce themselves to Leontes who rouses himself from the torpor he's been in for sixteen years and says how he wishes he could make things up to his old chum.  Said old chum is pursuing Florizel angrily but on finding him with Leontes a reconciliation takes place, Perdita is identified as the onetime cast out princess and a statue of the dead queen comes to life.  Could it be she wasn't dead but in hiding all those years?

Whatever, all is now happiness and Leontes and his queen go off arm in arm.  The young lovers have their parents' blessing and all the subsidiary characters are in a good way.  So it's a comedy after all.  But not quite.  Shakespeare has left Leontes' son still dead and the good old retainer who was charged with getting rid of the baby.  Truly a tragi-comedy then.

It all sounds a bit daft but it was an excellent production, thoroughly enjoyable and I says so who saw it twice.

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.

.

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. 

An initiative from the Edinburgh Festival Theatres Trust is going some way to help young professionals get themselves seen.  They have established a company, the Attic Collective, of actors from 18 to 25 who will perform three shows in the course of the year, one classic, one new and one musical.  I imagine that membership of the company will be restricted to one year but it's a good crack of the whip for them.


I went to their first production.  It was a version of Lysistrata and was well done, imaginative and entertaining, if a bit shouty.  Aristophanes' play is generally described as a bawdy anti-war comedy.  This version was certainly bawdy with a profusion of giant inflatable penises adding to the fun and a fair sprinkling of Trump inspired sexual jokes.

Photo Greg Mcvean

I'm looking forward to seeing what they do later in the year with The Threepenny Opera which will be set in today's Edinburgh.

Before going to London in November I had a look to see what was on and one show that caught my eye was No Man's Land.  I've always liked Pinter and McKellen and Stewart are a powerful double act.  But tickets were both scarce and pricey so I didn't see it.  Now thanks to the streaming revolution that brings masterworks to our local cinemas I have seen it and for a very reasonable price.

It was as incomprehensible yet captivating as so many of his plays are.  Indeed the only one I can think of as having a pretty straighforward narrative is Betrayal and even then it's told backwards.  Anyway I thoroughly enjoyed the mysterious meanderings of the characters who inhabit No Man's Land.  Its Wikipedia entry covers what the critics have said about the show over the years (it premiered in 1975) and it's comforting to learn that none of them understood it either but like me had a jolly good time watching it.

In theatre in the flesh I saw Picnic at Hanging Rock performed by an Australian company at The Lyceum.  It was a very interesting production with an unusual stylistic unity and provided, as Mark Fisher said in The Guardian, a masterclass in stage management.  Like the critics my chums loved it but my admiration is less whole-hearted.  I  have a nagging feeling that I must have snatched forty winks shortly after the girls disappeared because I was somewhat lost storywise as the show progressed.  I blame that glass of Picpoul before curtain up.

I had more than one glass of a number of alcoholic beverages at Phil's house at the weekend where nearly a score of souls were gathered to celebrate Burns.  It was a great evening with great grub and great craic.  I paid for my supper by addressing the haggis and by contributing the fruits of my attendance that day on a bread making course.

There are five 2017 calendars on my walls of which this is the most recently acquired.  The title page of this lovely calendar is a view of Burano taken by my friends whose passion is the adventures of Donna Leon's Venetian detective Commissario Brunetti.

More particularly it is the tracing of all the places in Venice associated with those adventures.  They have produced a beautiful map showing many of the locations and have published several guidebooks to Brunetti's Venice with a new one coming out next year.  They are all aimed at the German market because although Donna Leon's books have a following in many countries the Germans are top fans thanks to highly popular TV adaptations.  (Sub-titled DVDs are available in the US.)

Each of the twelve months has a picture of a Brunetti related place and a brief legend which with the help of a dictionary to augment my limited German I hope to translate month by month.  I made sense of January once I realised that I had looked up verschleißen (worn out) instead of verschließen (locked).   How you arrange your "i"s and your "e"s is at least as important in German as it is in English. 

I spent the weekend with another foreign detective, one that I had heard of but never seen.  I was given a boxset of The Killing for Christmas.  That's five DVDs with four episodes of compulsive viewing on each.  So I found myself at midnight and later with Sarah Lund swearing I would just watch one more episode and then go to bed.

I've seen three operas in as many months and have two more lined up before the end of March.  For someone who declares himself only mildly appreciative of the art form that seems a bit much but I have an excuse for each of them.

Leaving aside The Marriage of Figaro which I commented on at the time, the next was La Traviata which I saw in Genoa.  Well I was there on holiday and you have to find things to do when you're on holiday and it was a lot more fun than sitting through Oedipus Rex and Oedipus at Colonus, the only theatrical offerings I found.

I enjoyed the show and the staging was lovely.  There are a number of pictures of the production on this site.  Here's one in which Violetta and Alfredo are enjoying their bucolic idyll before life caves in and we work up to that long drawn out heroine's death scene beloved of operatic writers and fans.

A free ticket as a reviewer's chum persuaded me to the cinemacast (what is the official word for these? ) of the Metropolitan Opera's Nabucco.  It's a big production with a very large chorus and a couple of massive sets mounted on their revolve.  The story concerns war between the Babylonians and the Israelites and the opera is well known in particular for one of Verdi's great numbers, the Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves.  In real life it was sung by the crowds following Verdi's coffin to his funeral.  Here are the slaves getting ready to sing it on the Metropolitan Opera's stage.

It's a beautiful and moving song and well merits its fame but for me the musical highlight of this production was one of the soprano's arias.  Alas I can't put a name to it.

Next up is a production by Scottish Opera of The Trial.  Christopher Hampton, who's a playwright I admire and Philip Glass, a composer whose music I like a lot have turned Kafka's wonderful satire into an opera.  No excuse needed for going to that.

The last of this set of shows takes me back to the cinema and The Met.  This time I'm paying for a ticket.  It's expensive enough at £25 but Nabucco tickets in the real opera house were on sale from $475 when I went onto their site to read the programme so it's a steal really.  This time it's La Traviata.   I thought it would be instructive to see two versions so close together especially since both are modern stagings.

Glasgow likes to call itself "the dear green place" and according to The Guardian's listing of the greenest cities in the UK merits the nickname since 32% of its surface area is green space.  That makes it the second greenest city in the country.  But in first place with a whopping 49% is the city pictured above, Edinburgh.

I've been back in the said green spot for ten days or so but must confess I haven't strayed far from its paved or tarmacked spaces.  More than that, apart from attendance at a convivial Hogmanay dinner and an audition for the Grads' next show I've taken my pleasures at home.

My diary is filling up with outings though so this restful period will not last much longer.  It certainly won't last long enough for me to get through my Christmas books and DVDs.  I'm only on the first one which is a ream sized volume of Vivienne Westwood's diaries from 2010 to 2016.  Unlike most published diaries it's extensively illustrated.  There are fashion pictures of course but also some more personal illustrations and a deal of stuff related to her environmental/political preoccupations.

I hadn't realised that she was such a fervent environmentalist but to say she has a bee in her bonnet about climate change goes no way towards describing her fervour.  It's a most interesting book and something of a riveting read.