The Japan Foundation annually sends a number of films to a number of places around the country.  This year there were 26 films and 34 places.  I don't know how they decide which places get which films but 8 came to Edinburgh and I saw 6 of them, those in the picture above.  I can't say that I thought any of them were particularly memorable though I didn't actively dislike them.

As a break from the diet of Japanese films I went to see Tasters. This is about a group of women forced to taste Hitler's food before he ate in case it would disagree with him, possibly fatally.  That at least appears to be true but the filmmakers erected a story of sorts about the relationships between the women, a romance between one of them and the top man in the German squad guarding them and the uncovering of a Jewess amonst them. It was ok.

Rather more than ok were a couple of SCO concerts.  At one Jess Gillam played a number of saxophone pieces.  I enjoyed them all, particularly Rant, written for her by John Harle.  She played a concerto written for her by Dani Howard that I enjoyed less because the balance between orchestra and soloist seemed to me to be too much in favour of the orchestra.  Perhaps it was just where I was sitting.  My former sax teacher Rocio was at the concert with one of her daughters.  I had a good catch up chat with her.

That concert had opened with Sound and Fury, a beautiful piece by Anna Clyne. 

The SCO produced another sparkling concert featuring the world premiere of a fabulous choral work by Jay Capercauld, libretto by Niall Campbell, called The Language of Eden. The SCO chorus and soloist Roderick Williams were magnificent.  Both Capercauld and Campbell were there and were given enthusiastic applause.  They looked very pleased as well they might.  

The RSNO in their turn presented us with a world premiere - Elena Langer's new work, The Lives of Birds, for Soprano and Orchestra.  Very different but great stuff.

Another RSNO concert presented even more different stuff.  Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue played by young Scottish pianist and composer Ethan Loch.   So far so normal.  The second half saw some of the RSNO's Youth Chorus on stage clothed conventionally in black but all in short sleeves, their bare arms all hanging vertically like flesh coloured saplings.  In front of them were a motley crew in a variety of costumes; a squirrel, a frog, a tree, a flame and so forth centred on a youth in short trousers and a newsboy cap.  This was the cast for Ravel's L'enfant et les sortilèges.   The youth we find is a naughty child, scolded by his mother and being a nuisance to the various characters. But later he redeems himself by tending to the squirrel's injuries and the animals help him find his mum.  A rum piece but pleasant enough.

Very different too was Raw Material's take on Shaw's St Joan at the Traverse. I wasn't as taken with it as the Guardian's critic but my companions liked it and would applaud his allocation of four stars.

The final talk in the National Gallery's series about the conservation and restoration of buildings was no less interesting than the others.  Dr Anne Galastro delivered another fine talk focused this time on the reuse of buildings, starting with the transformation of the old Royal Infirmary into the Edinburgh Futures Institute.  She then covered the Reichstag and the peculiar case of the Humboldt Forum.  This latter started life as a royal palace ceturies ago, was severely knocked about during the second world war. It was knocked down by the DDR who built a steel and glass parliamentary and cultural centre in its place.  After reunification that in its turn was knocked down and after years of dithering the Humboldt Forum took its place.  The building has a facade that is a faithful reproduction of the old royal palace but is all decoration free concrete round the back and art friendly open spaces inside.  Wikipedia has a lot to say about it.  

She finished off by rerminding us that since it suffered its second fire the Macintosh School of Art has languished in limbo.  What's to become of it?

The old Infirmary Street Baths didn't feature in that talk but they were transformed some years ago into the Dovecot Studios and have flourished since.  Currently they have an exhibition about Biba, one of the stars of the fashion revolution that was the swinging sixties.  It's a super exhibition.  Here's a picture to whet your appetite

There are a number of talks associated with the exhibition and I went to one yesterday, one of very few men amongst a lively and interested audience of women not all of whom were of an age to remember Biba. It was an excellent talk by someone fully involved in her subject.  I learnt a lot.  

The Glasgow Film Festival red carpet devoid of stars and unfortunately under surveillance by a security guard otherwise I'd have slipped on to it for a selfie.

One of the strands in the festival celebrated the centenary of Marilyn Monroe's birth with a screening of a number of her films.  I met up with Andrew for one of our irregular lunch dates and we went to see The Prince and the Showgirl. It's famous or perhaps notorious for its pairing of her with Laurence Olivier and for the difficulties that she brought to the production.  I was seeing it for the first time and thought it was a super film, a very amusing comedy with excellent performances from the entire cast.  I wouldn't altogether agree with the lady who introduced the film's judgement that Monroe acted Olivier off the set but she was very very good and I'm sure suited the part better than Vivien Leigh who performed with Olivier in the stage version. 

I was disappointed though with the other festival film that I saw, The Wizard of the Kremlin.  Partly that's because I'd misunderstood the publicity I'd seen.  I thought it was a dramatised documentary about Putin (think Mr Bates and the Post Office) but while backgrounded by real events and people it was in fact a wholly fictional account of a wholly fictional right-hand man to Putin. Also it was not very good as looking at the Reception section of the Wikipedia article I've linked will show you.

An amusing sidebar to the festival was that included with the usual request about mobile phone use screened before the film was the information that in the fight against movie piracy cinema staff might observe us through night vision goggles.

Observation is the name of the game for documentary filmmakers.  Some fine examples of the genre were on show at The Outhouse last week thanks to DOCo.  There was a period some ten or fifteen years ago when I performed in a number of student films and occasionally I come across the work of some of the then students who are now fully fledged filmmakers.  One of them is Duncan Cowles and I went to The Outhouse to see his recent short film Neil Armstrong and the Langholmites.  Langholm is the centre of the border area which is the ancestral home of the Armstrongs and Neil visited it a few years after his moon landing in 1969 and was made a feeman of the town.  The film includes some archive footage of his visit but the bulk of this quietly humorous essay consists of interviews with townspeople who were there 50 odd years ago and the town's commemoration of the event.  The film gives us a lovely warm slice of humanity.

There were a number of other fine short documentaries screened that evening and one of the organisers of the event, Lucas Kao, was another man from my student film past.

It's a book;  It's a film;  It's a TV series: as we say when playing charades.  One Day has been all of these and I haven't seen/read any of them but now it's also a musical play which I have seen and which is TERRIFIC as Trump would surely post were he to drop into the Lyceum over the next two or three weeks.

Brilliant staging, super performances, a profoundly moving show.  You couldn't ask for more.  I was at a preview.  It's official opening is tonight.  It can only be better.

I rarely express an opinion on how a piece of music is played because I don't have either the ears or the knowledge but I did hear a performance of Beethoven's Violin Concerto at the Usher Hall recently that I found rather bland in comparison to more muscular and vigorous performances I've heard, notably from Nicola Benedetti.  At the Usher Hall also I heard Strauss's Horn Concerto which I haven't heard often enough to have any sort of opinion on.  The wonder of the performance was that the player played the horn with his foot.

I'm on safer ground saying whether I enjoyed a piece or not and the SCO gave me a great deal of pleasure with their performanc of Schnittke's Gogol Suite.  Lot's of lovely smash, bang, wallop in that one.  It's on Spotify though not their performance.

Most of us have come across the Japanese print The Great Wave off Kanagawa at some time.  Scottish Opera with Japanese partners have now created The Great Wave, an opera that deals with the life and work of the artist Hokusai and his daughter.  It was performed at the Festival Theatre and I went with Claire and Phil who are not that long back from Japan and of course I have an interest in the country.  None of us are particularly opera fans but we enjoyed the show and agree with the critics that it was visually striking, ambitious and beautifully produced but a bit short on drama.

The National Gallery of Scotland is running a short series of talks on the renovation and conservation of historice buildings.  The first one dealt with the recovery of Notre Dame cathedral after the tremendous fire a few years ago.  It was very interesting and explored the history of the building and its various additions and changes over the centuries.  The question in such circumstances always arises as to what should be restored or conserved. The interior of the cathedral looks sparkling new but should the grime of ages have been left as it was?  Towards the end of the talk there was a comparison with the approach to Coventry cathedral's restoration and to the restoration of the Frauenkirche in Dresden.  The former retained part of the ruins and added on a brand new modern design while the latter rebuilt the whole church incorporating much of the original fabric.

I spent this past weekend at Stirling university on a saxophone weekend.  Given the state of my lungs, the fact that I haven't done any regular playing for eight months and my recent stay in hospital I was very pleased at how well I coped.  I'm encouraged to do a bit more playing again but not going out on wet and cold nights to play in draughty unheated churches.