Throughout 2014 I was sure that I was going to fit in a visit to Belgium to enjoy some of the celebrations of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Adolphe Sax, whose invention I've been learning to play for the last several years.  Dinant where he was born looks worth a visit even when it's not bedecked with saxes but I didn't make it there nor to Brussels where he was brought up, studied music and became an instrument maker in his father's business and which has been hosting a large Sax exhibition.

The French have a great claim on Adolphe since it was to Paris, a much more important musical centre than Brussels, that he moved in 1842; where he set up a workshop and over the following years developed the saxophone to a form recognisable to us today.

So it's not surprising that as part of the inaugural activities at their new concert hall, which opened on Wednesday, they are devoting Saturday afternoon to the saxophone.  I was tempted and if Easyjet had had a Saturday morning flight I might have succumbed to temptation, but I'm going to the Met instead, not actually to New York but to it's satcast manifestation in the Cameo where I'm standing in for a sick friend and accompanying his wife to The Merry Widow.

Although the sax was initially taken up by military bands and used by a number of classical composers, it has flourished in the world of jazz and nowhere more so than in the USA.  Now thanks to my favourite jazz programme I know that the Met (museum not opera) is running a sax exhibition till the end of April.  I've never been to New York and would quite like to visit so maybe......