I took a walk through the Dean village to Stockbridge after a photography class session at St Mary's in Palmerston Place.  There's some modern development going on on the road down from the Belford Bridge but since the place is a bit of a hodge-podge of styles already I expect it will merge in happily.

Merging in happily would be one way of describing some of Bernat Klein's choices of colour combinations in his textiles.  The musuem has been holding a small exhibition of his work celebrating the 100th anniversary of his birth.  All his work to my mind is beautiful and the exhibition does it justice.  The museum itself is beautiful (nice coffee too).  I should go more often.

I should also get into the habit of going to the National Galleries more often now that Modern Two has reopened and their new galleries displaying Scottish art are promised for this summer.  Coupled with the trams running on Leith Walk this will be a summer to remember.  

Scottish art was the subject of a talk I went to at the NGS the other week.  Lachlan Goudie, no mean artist himself, ran through centuries of our art in his lively and engaging style.  I didn't buy his book though, despite the event's 15% discount.

In the dramatic arts I've enjoyed Frisson online, Happy Valley on TV and Macbeth (an undoing) on stage.  Frisson is Claire's most recent venture into play-writing.  It's in two parts, the first online which I've seen and enjoyed and the second in real life in a bar which I've yet to see.  All Edinburgh Theatre gave it a sympathetic review.  I understand others were not so enamoured but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I had heard ecstatic noise about Happy Valley but had seen none of it so determined to remedy that via iPlayer.  I think it was one of the best police dramas I've seen.  It kept me up late on a couple of occasions when I couldn't bear to go to bed without knowing what came next.  The fact that it was set in an area that I have some acquaintance with added interest.

Macbeth is undone in Shakespeare's play and he comes out dead in this version as well but the undoing in the title refers more to how Zinnie Harris has picked the play apart and put it together again with, among many other changes, Lady Macbeth taking over.  To the extent that courtiers begin to address her as "king".  I wasn't altogether convinced that much of the reworking added to the play but I thought the production was super if a bit long.  Most reviews that I've read liked it but The Guardian/Observer managed to give it four stars from Mark Fisher but only two from Clare Brennan. Other voices worth hearing speak here and here.  There are lots more if you can be bothered to look for them.

Georgia Cecile appeared with the SNJO and showed us what a powerful and expressive singer she is.  Loved the voice but didn't care for the dress said one friend. I agreed.  Another would have liked to hear how she handled some standards rather than just her own songs.  I agreed.  The band were great as usual and although the focus was obviously on Georgia there were some great solos.  I especially enjoyed the pairing of Tommy Smith and Helena Kay. 

Both of them are great jazz saxophonists and it was a treat to have a great classical saxophonist at the Usher Hall with the RSNO.  Jess Gillam played the Glazunov Saxophone Concerto and Milhaud's Scaramouche.  The other orchestral works on the programme made use of saxophones.  They were An American in Paris by Gershwin and Pictures at an Exhibition in Ravel's orchestration of Mussorgsky.

Gershwin's piece features street noises including motor car's hooting but the concert began with three percussionists playing actual car horns, one for each hand and one for each foot.  The two minute piece is a prelude to an opera by Ligeti and was absolutely brilliant fun. I imagine the whole opera is.

Great fun also was the addition of real pictures to Pictures at an Exhibition.  The painter James Mayhew was on stage with an easel and paints. He worked while the orchestra played and his activity was projected onto a large screen above the organ console.  His paintings illustrated the sections of the work echoing the paintings by Hartmann that inspired the music in the first place.  You can argue about whether this added to the pleasure gained from listening to the music or was just a distracting gimmick.  The jury's probably out on that one.

Peaky Blinders is another TV show I've been aware of and aware of its popularity but ignorant of its content so when Ballet Rambert turned it into a dance show I thought I'd check it out.  Claire is my usual dance show companion so we met for something to eat and then trundled into the Festival Theatre burdened by a couple of bicycle paniers (she was), found that the promise of an open cloakroom was false, fought our way through the crowds of interval drink orderers only to be turned away as service stopped and the first act bell sounded.  Now we'd got round pretty late to deciding to go and the place was well booked out when we did so we were up in the Gods.  We staggered down steep steps and thanks to me went the wrong way along our destination row.  To avoid disturbing the punters we went up and over and down more steps, all the time with those paniers, only to find we were in a cul-de-sac.  We could see our seats a few rows below but I didn't fancy our chances of getting to them before the curtain rose so we plonked ourselves down where we were.

The first half of the show was excellent in terms of music, movement, lighting and so on.  I thought I could follow a storyline from first world war horror through heavy industrial working conditions to fairground roustabouting, then racecourse gambling, confrontations between gangs and finally a romeo and juliet wedding that ended tragically as the juliet was shot dead.

I've still no idea if I followed the story correctly or not but we went off to the bar with our paniers, got some drinks and headed back in to get to our proper seats.  We found them amongst a certain amount of hilarity and they were better positioned but mini disaster struck when my wine was upset.  No tragedy but some of it fell on the jacket of a young woman in the row in front.  She and her mum were not happy, quite miffed in fact.  The proffering of apologies and cash to get it cleaned etc were huffily turned down.  As far as I could tell it was not a garment that would have suffered much from a dollop of white wine.  High steet rather than haute couture but hey.

Now the second half is where I couldn't work out what was happening.  There was a very good sequence where the cast pranced around in their undies.  Why?  I haven't a clue. There was a lot of fighting.  Why?  Vengeance being sought for the bride killing perhaps.  It was brilliant stuff, terribly well choreographed but I couldn't tell who was fighting who and it went on just too long.

Eventually it finished.  It was a great show well up to Rambert's high standards but the Peaky Blinders mystery remains unsolved. 

As I said we were a bit behind schedule getting tickets for this show but I'm well ahead of the game for next year's Olympics.  I've booked three days watching the sailing in Marseille.  It's standing room in the marina at only 24 euros a pop.  Hopefully they'll have a big screen or two otherwise I won't see much of what's happening on the water but I'm looking forward to the buzz.