This was one of the Jazz Festival gigs that I most enjoyed.  Martin Kershaw had been commissioned to write some music to accompany the John Lavery exhibition at the National Gallery of Scotland last year.  He wrote eight pieces in response to eight of Lavery's paintings done in the open air and reprised these with a trio of other musicians, guitar, double bass, and piano, for the festival.  

I went to see the Napier summer school concert and recognised about three players from one or other of the years in which I'd taken part. They played in St Brides this year which was fine but I feel lacked the atmosphere that the same gig generated in previous years in the Jazz Bar.

This year in the Jazz Bar I enjoyed a group led by Sue Mackenzie that played a fusion of jazz and folk.  They featured bagpipes on one number and in the confines of the Jazz Bar wonderful though it was, that was probably enough exposure to the pipes.

The other gigs I went to were fine but not paricularly memorable.  There is such a lot on that it's hard to choose.

I've only been back to the Filmhouse once since the re-opening.  Although what's on is easily ascertained on their website I miss the monthly arrival of a printed programme to leaf through and choose from.  What I went to see was the 40th anniversary restoration of Kurosawa's historical epic Ran. I'd never seen it but I'm glad I made the effort after 40 years.  It was absolutely brilliant.  The colour, the scale, the battle scenes, the drama;  all fantastic.  The acting style I suppose we might call heightened but the story deserves it and I don't think it quite tips over into ham.   

Filmhouse were having a wee bit of a Kurosawa fest that week so on the same day I also saw The Bad Sleep Well, an even older film.  It came out in 1960 in black and white.  A good revenge drama with most characters dead by the end.

Claire had a barbecue at the weekend.  The weather was reasonable though light rain drove us indoors eventually.  We were however annoyed by wasps.  They've apparently had a good year and are consequently more plentiful.  I know they play some vital role in keeping the planet spinning but couldn't they do it less publicly.  Someone put out a dish with honey in it to divert them from our plates but it turned out they preferred chicken, or more probably whatever the chicken had been marinaded in.  So we dumped chicken remnants into the honey dish and that helped.    

Filmhouse has been brought back from the depths of bankruptcy in what seems the doublequick time of less than three years by a hard-working team with the help of funding from public bodies and donations from film fans.  I went along on the night it opened to the public and saw Godland, the sort of arthouse movie we've all missed these last three years. I thought it well deserved the five stars it got from The Guardian. 

I've taken a rest from blogging since I got back from Japan in mid May.  I've been too busy doing not very much.  Watching the French Open Tennis Championships and now Wimbledon has ungainfully occupied many hours.  Now that Cameron Norrie has been knocked out I'm rooting for Novak in the hope that he'll get that 25th Grand Slam.

I had a pleasant weekend in Northumberland getting a lift there and back with Siobhan and Kevin through our beautiful border country and I had a day out in Glasgow with Andrew.  That was notable for the exhausting hike uphill to see a photographic exhibition near Blythwood Square only to find the building it was supposed to be in unoccupied and shuttered.  So much for Refuweegee.

I had another exhausting hike up the stairs to my flat for three weeks while our lift was undergoing refurbishment to keep it in good nick and working order for another twenty years or so.  It now arrives at my floor without the little jolt it had developed over the last few years and it talks.

For the third year in a row I spent a couple of days doing patient simulation for physiotherapy students at Napier and have already been enlisted for next year.  I think that may well be the only acting engagement I undertake in future.  I'm not really feeling the call of the stage these days.  I may also have played in my last Dunedin Wind Band concert.  I've been in the band for soemething like fifteen years and could do with a change of scene on a Monday night.

Culturally I've seen a couple of plays, been to two concerts and to a modern dance performance.  The latter was Kismet from Ballet Rambert.  It consisted of two pieces, both of which I enjoyed but I particularly liked the one in which the dancers dashed around in an airport.  That doesn't sound much but the ideas and the movements were terrific.  This five star review says it was " a perfectly constructed, emotionally charged, and frequently hilarious portrayal of airport life in all its chaotic glory".  Spot on.

Ross directed Suddenly Last Summer for the Grads.  It's a slightly weird piece but it was excellently presented and performed though I do sympathise with this reviewer's comments about the action on the stairs.

In contrast I was disappointed by the The Mountaintop at The Lyceum.  Set in a Memphis motel room the night before Martin Luther King was assasinated it morphs from a naturalistic encounter between King and  a motel chambermaid into a fantastical meeting of King and an angel.  I'm not too sure whether that was meant to be before or after his death.  I had trouble following the chambermaid/angel's dialogue which no doubt coloured my reaction to the play.  Critics by and large praised the play and the production: "this play is a sensation" said The Herald but I just didn't like it.

The RSNO finished their season with a Shostakovich evening consisting of his Festive Overture, Second Cello Concerto and Symphony 11.  I very much like Shostakovich and the symphony which depicts the events of the revolution of 1905 was satisfactorily noisy in the right places.

The previous week I'd heard them play another quite noisy symphony by Lera Auerbach who I'd never heard of.  I loved the piece which reminded me here and there of The Quatermass Experiment.