I enjoyed three very different but excellent musical events this week.

I heard Branford Marsalis play a modern classical piece at the sax congress in St Andrews last year but at the Queen's Hall he was back to his jazz roots with the SNJO for a celebration of Wayne Shorter's music.  The highlight for me was the encore in which Tommy Smith and Marsalis soloed together, first one then the other in a call and response manner. They kept it up for ages getting more and more inventive and more and more hectic till the final shared climactic chords.

In principle the four bar exchanges I do from time to time with my teacher should build up to that but the world will end before I get that far.

Fiddler on the Roof was a show in which many cast members acted, danced and played an instrument all at the same time.  One poor girl even had to play the clarinet while lying on her back.  That made fiddling on a roof look straightforward.  It's terrific entertainment although you could sneer a little at its sentimentality if you were feeling out of sorts, for even though the harsh context of Tsarist rule and anti-Semitism adds a little salt it is a sugary confection.  Perhaps the stories on which the musical is based are more acidic.

The RSNO opened their season with a little bit of Britten, the first of several to come, in honour of the centenary of his birth and for the main dish The Planets. I like The Planets and most of all in the suite I like Mars.  I first heard that when on holiday at my aunt's house in Liverpool in the 50s, not as a concert piece but as theme music to Quatermass.  It was great then and even without alien invaders still great at the Usher Hall on Friday.

The UK premier of James Macmillan's Third Piano Concerto was the jam in that sandwich and rich and tasty jam it was.  I loved it and was delighted to hear it a second time thanks to the following night's Glasgow concert being broadcast.  The Herald says it is a masterpiece and who am I to disagree. It can be heard here for the next few days. I'm listening now.