Music is Torture was an entertaining idea that rather lost its way.  The story is of a guy who runs a little recording studio where he's been trying unenthusiastically to produce an album with the same band for years and is just scraping a living.  In the past he'd had pretentions as a musician himself and produced a record but didn't make the big time, or even the not too small time.  Now he works and sleeps in his studio and is on the verge of being evicted.

A letter comes from a lawyer who tells him that his long ago recorded number is being used by the CIA in their enhanced interrogation sessions and offering him the chance to sign a contract to recover royalties.  His scruples don't take too long to be overcome given his dire need for a new pair of sneakers.

So far so amusing but subsequently we have a narrative that dribbles along fairly aimlessly.  The band behind the glass appear in orange jumpsuits as eventually does our hero but this denouement if that's what it was didn't make much sense to me.  But the show on the whole was fun.

The RSNO's penultimate concert of the season was not torture.  Indeed it was very good and I especially enjoyed Jennifer Johnston singing Mahler's Rückert-Lieder.  That was a pleasant surprise because I wouldn't say it's my thing.  Thomas Søndergård, who conducted, was announced as the successor to Peter Oundjian as music director.  He'll take over at the end of next season and judging by the applause from both audience and orchestra is a popular choice.

Scotland's most written about monarch is surely Mary Queen of Scots.  Just have a glance at this Wikipedia article to see how much there is.  It's a torrent that shows no sign of abating; one of the latest is Linda McLean's play, Glory on Earth, which deals with her relationship with John Knox.

Encounters between the vivacious young catholic queen and the priggish protestant reformer would seem fertile soil for cutting dialogue and lively drama but for me this production fell flat.  It looked lovely though and having Mary's four Marys (of whom there were actually six) playing various Scottish lords was an interesting idea.  Having said that a friend suggested the female voices didn't help provide the contrasts that the show sorely lacked. 

Edinburgh enjoyed more than its average June rainfall all in one 36 hour period last week.  Here's Princes St Gardens the morning after.

The rain stopped handily in time for QMU's open air As You Like It.  The play was presented in a delightful garden in Dunbar's Close off the Canongate.  They gave us a suitably nasty usurper, a cheerful usurpee, an engaging fool, a kind and honest hero and a jolly smart Rosalind who is of course the real hero of the piece.

It was very well done but the tiny plastic stools that we were given to sit on were very uncomfortable and come the interval I couldn't bear the thought of  further posterior punishment so I left.

That made it the first of  three shows that I have failed to see through to the end this month.  That's three more than in the last decade or so.  I was tired when I went to La Bohème and didn't much like it or the glass of  plonk I couldn't finish, so I left.  Milonga on the other hand was good but I felt that the second hour of a tango show was not going to be radically different from the first and that perhaps my fill had been had.  After all it's only five years since I spent a tango watching evening in Buenos Aires.

Far from the Pampas is this lovely farmhouse where I spent a weekend with several chums and various teens belonging to them.

Here's the view of the Cumbrian countryside from the garden.  The little castellated tower is, or rather was in the day, an outside toilet.

It was an eating and drinking weekend but we managed a walk or two and an excursion on a local heritage railway.  I was back in a different part of Cumbria the following weekend for a saxophone course that also involved eating and drinking but no walking.

The closing words of Jo Clifford's play War in America were "Be kind!"  Now one knows that one has to be cruel to be kind but perhaps not to the extent of the nastiness, cruelty and sado-masochism culminating in death and invasion by terrorist gunmen that had gone before.

We'd gone to see the show to support the excellent scheme for young actors that is The Attic Collective and to get a peek into the Old Royal High School which is threatened with conversion into an unlovely hotel, though it may be be saved from the forces of mammon to become the new home of St Mary's Music School.

Let me share that peek with you.  First the space in which the performance took place.

Then two views of the same room as it was at two earlier points in time. 

And finally how it might look if the hotel development goes ahead

Now back to the show.  It was in many ways an excellent production.  The debating chamber was absolutely ideal for a play about political machinations and the company used it brilliantly and imaginatively.  The cast attacked their roles with vigour but there was a missing element.

The actors delivered the words well and there could be no complaint about their committment but I never had the impression that this was a possible world populated by real people.  There was a distinct lack of tension in scenes where we should have been gripped and, for me, a distinct lack of being engaged by the argument.  Did it seem just too far-fetched or did the writing fail to flesh out the characters sufficiently?  Or, as some of our party felt, did it really need age appropriate actors with a deal more life experience than these young people?

It was nonetheless worthwhile seeing a neglected play (reckoned too offensive by The Lyceum who commissioned it twenty years ago) and I look forward to the Collective's third outing which is The Threepenny Opera in September.

The Dissection Room at Summerhall is not as classy a space as the Sculpture Court but the costumes that swept through it last night proved that QMU has students as inventive and skilful as any in the city.  One of the most interesting aspects of the show was seeing how different students had visualised the same character.  They showed a couple of Mrs Peachums and at least three Lucy Lockits from The Beggars Opera.  One of those (alas no picture) was a decadent looking Lucius Lockit.

No picture of Lucius because as at the Art College snapping was a bit of a distraction from simply enjoying the show.  But I did take some and here are one or two that I particularly liked.

Lavinia from Titus Andronicus.  A trio of lads in Regency costumes rushed out after her to wipe up the blood that dripped from her mouth and dress onto the floor.  They performed a similar service for those who cast off some of their garments as they paraded, like the Marquise de Mertueil from Les Liaisons Dangereuses.

Of the forty three students whose work was featured only two were male, an imbalance that maybe needs to be addressed just as efforts are made to encourage girls into STEM subjects. Maybe.

Anyway here's one boy's dance outfit.

Suitable for all forms of dance he reckons.  As long as you don't need to see where you're going.

At the show I picked up a flyer for an open air production of As You Like It by QMU Performing Arts students and staff, including I imagine the costume students.  It's in early June.  For my comfort if not safety from being rained on I've chosen a seat rather than a spot on the grass.

Inspired by Claire's enthusiasm over Rosencrantz and Guilderstern are Dead I cast about to find an encore screening that I could get to.  Too full a diary to get there without foregoing a Friends of the Queen's Hall freebie concert but it was well worth it.  Tom Stoppard's play is a feast of wordsmithery and ingenious invention around the Hamlet story, and the Old Vic's production on an essentially bare stage abounded in fine acting and clever stagecraft.

The Grads had a greater staging challenge in presenting The Ladykillers in Assembly Roxy but rose to it.  Their excellent tumbledown house on stage spilling forwards into the centre and sides of the hall most effectively.  Each member of the criminal band led magnificently by Lawrence Waring was a piece of spot-on characterisation.  We had a slightly bewildered but morally firm and thoroughly believable old lady plus a host of delightful cameos.  Costumes and props (those musical instruments!) deserve a medal of their own.  A very good production slightly spoilt for anyone not in the front row by the lack of raked seating.

The Art College Performance Costume Show teemed with medal deserving outfits.  It opened with a bang as third year students poured into the sculpture court in richly coloured costumes inspired by the Hindu festival of Diwali. Diwali is a festival of lights and when the main lighting was dimmed lights incorporated in the costumes gleamed and shimmered as the students danced.

It was a spectacular start not equalled in the course of the hour but the imagination of design and skill of construction shone brightly from every piece that appeared.  I snatched a few blurry pics with my phone but mostly sat in awe at the talent on display.  Here's one of my better snaps, an example of costumes and puppets for James and the Magic Peach.

Will the Queen Margaret University students do as well?  A visit to Summerhall will be made to resolve that question.

Charlie Sonata at The Lyceum, Breakin' Convention and The Red Shoes at the Festival Theatre are shows I've enjoyed recently.  Fortunately I don't have to wrack my brains to describe them because Claire was of the company on each occasion and has written far more accurately, perspicaciously and entertainingly than I would so follow the links to learn more.

In the concert hall the SCO gave an excellent Missa Solemnis by Beethoven which I almost missed because I went to their usual home, The Queen's Hall, instead of the Usher Hall.  Fortunately I was a bit early and even more fortunately a combination of buses ran in my favour and I entered the auditorium simultaneously with the conductor.  I almost did the same for the next concert, getting on the wrong bus to start with.  That was Beethoven again, a superb and exuberant 7th Symphony.

The Usher Hall is the RSNO's Edinburgh home so I'm not likely to get on the wrong bus for their concerts and I enjoyed a Russian evening of Scriabin, Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky from them a couple of weeks ago.

The SNJO was also in action in the Usher Hall on the eve of International Jazz Day. They played Miles Davis's Sketches of Spain and his version of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess.  On the day itself there was a big shindig in Havana and thanks to Youtube here it is.


The critics have generally been more enthusiastic than me about the films I've seen in recent weeks but I was pleased to see The Telegraph limit itself to two stars for The Handmaiden.  Melodramatic, verging on the ham, codswallop beautifully costumed and filmed that told me far more than I needed to know about lesbian sexual gymnastics. It had a well merited happy ending though.

The Sense of an Ending on the other hand rather petered out but on the way through told a not entirely unintereresting story about a letter unwisely written in his youth catching up on its author in later life.  I did sympathise with the protagonist or perhaps pitied him, even to the extent of not deploring his stalking like behaviour.

Even though he cuts a somewhat ridiculous figure it would be hard not to sympathise with the middle-aged doctor bewitched by a beautiful young tourist on the Greek island where he has washed up after what has clearly been an unsuccessful and unhappy life.  But that's an old man's perspective.  Younger cinemagoers might be revolted.  Suntan was I thought worth the four stars it got from The Guardian.

I couldn't be bothered with The Student though.  Not that there was anything wrong with the film I suppose but my antipathy to the bible beating scripture spouting character at the centre of it made it hard to enjoy.

Definitely the film I've enjoyed most is Lady Macbeth and here the critics are at one with me.  In a dankly oppressive country house somewhere in the north of England comes a young bride, purchased we are told by her father-in-law for a son who we quickly learn is unable or unwilling to consummate the marriage.  Father and son require her to do nothing more than wait indoors day and night to do their bidding.

It's no surprise that she breaks out of this prison in the absence of the two men to take deep breaths of fresh air in the open moorland.  No surprise either that she lusts after a healthy young groom nor that she gives way to that lust.

So we are set up for nasty happenings when first father-in-law then husband return.  And we get them.

The film's genesis is a Russian novella of 1865,  Lady Macbeth of the Mtensk District that gave rise to the better known opera of the same name by Shostakovich.  I'm told the film has a different ending but I've neither read the novella nor seen the opera and I love this ending.

The film, as the Spectator said is "plain terrific".

This is Gartmore House near Aberfoyle where I spent the Easter weekend with a score of sax players.  We did a lot of playing and filled in the rest of the hours of the day with agreeable socialising.

The house has some lovely large rooms each decorated in individual style.  I particularly liked the one with a cornice formed of a pattern of ships in relief, arising no doubt from its period under the ownership of a shipping family.  It's also associated with Robert Cunninghame-Graham who delighted in the name of Don Roberto when he enjoyed the gaucho life in Argentina prior to riding into Scottish political life weaving through Liberal and Labour till ending up as first president of the Scottish National Party.

 

The following weekend I spent in Elie with old schoolfriends.  The sun shone all weekend though it was fairly cold much of the time.  We walked about the beach and admired the views across the Forth to the Lothians.

My chums are into fine dining so we did some of that. The food was delicious but I'd have enjoyed larger portions and smaller bills.  That's my brutish and uncultured side showing through. We also wandered about the various East Neuk villages and enjoyed a show at the Byre in St. Andrews in which Liz Lochead entertained us with her poetry underscored here and there by a chap on a tenor sax.

In Crail, which is possibly the loveliest of the villages, we came across this warning sign and a tankful of the beasties. Undeterred a dead portion was purchased for taking down south for Monday's tea by one of the party.

A bonus from staying in a hotel in the South Tyrol is that you are given a free public transport pass for the duration of your stay.  If you are there for a week's skiing and are on the slopes all day it's of limited use unless you fancy spending your evenings on a bus.  Or if like me you don't mind taking some time off.

I hopped on a couple of buses to visit the nearby town of Brunico/Bruneck one morning.  Like every place in the region it has two names, Italian and German, as does every street in the town.  Those are not the only languages spoken as you can hear from this episode of From Our Own Correspondent that Siobhan alerted me to.  It's the last item and starts about 18 minutes into the programme.

Brunico is a pretty little town in a river valley amidst mountains.  It's on the far side of the mountain I was skiing on and from the hill on which sits its mildly impressive schloss you can see the Kronplatz plateau and a run that would have brought me down to somewhere not very far away but it was a bit black for my taste.

The region's linguistic complexity is due in part to it having been cut out of Austo-Hungary and given to Italy after the First World War.  There was subsequently a degree of forced Italianisation much resented by the local population.  In the thirties Mussolini and his chums got into the act.  A monument was erected in Brunico to commemorate the Italian Alpine Troops who died in the Ethiopian campaign but over the years it has been something of a focus for discontent with the Italian state and having been six metres high originally it's been blown up a number of times and replaced.  Now only a bust remains on the pedestal.

There's an article which doesn't deal specifically about this monument but which has a lot of interesting analysis of the history of South Tyrol under Italian control.  See  Fascist Legacies: The Controversy over Mussolini’s Monuments in South Tyrol

A monument I didn't see and which there probably should be is one to Nanni Moretti, the film maker, who was born in the town.

My skiing holiday got off to a good start when Austrian Airlines dished up lunch an hour or so after take-off from Edinburgh.  It was only 11 o'clock but I'd had breakfast around 6 a.m. so I was ready for it. That coupled with the spacious legroom was such a treat compared to the budget airline experience that has been the norm for my holidays in recent years.

Flying into Innsbruck with jaggy mountains on either side more or less on a level with the plane is a great experience on a nice calm sunny day but I'd hate to be coming down that valley in the dark in pelting rain with a vicious crosswind. I'd find it difficult to hold down that tasty pasta bake.

Then it was on to San Vigilio, the lovely little village where I was staying in the very pleasant and comfortable Hotel Teresa. They were not having a busy week and for a couple of nights I was the only client in the hotel. The waiting and kitchen staff who had been on when I arrived disappeared and people I took to be from the family who ran the place did the business except for one evening when they invited me to eat at a restaurant fifty yards away where the menu focussed on local specialities. The food was lovely, as it was in the hotel.

Davide, the main man in the hotel, was an avid naturalist (whether academically trained or just a keen amateur I don't know) and waxed lyrical about the wildlife in the nearby national park. If I'd been there for longer I'd have enjoyed a trip into the park, perhaps seeing the golden eagles that he said nested there. He'd been to Scotland looking for golden eagles and apparently the best book on the birds was written by someone based in Scotland.  He also reminisced about the Cannie Man's and showed me some of his whisky collection. At 15 euros a glass (twice the price in Milan I'm assured) I didn't try any of them.

They hadn't had much snow over the winter and I was there in very much the dying days of the season but there was more than enough snow for me.

You can see in this picture how the hillside is almost devoid of snow except where they have skillfully kept some pistes in goodish nick.

In the village there was no snow at all but up on the plateau where half a dozen lifts converged it was remarkably well conserved.

You can see also that it wasn't too busy and that it was beautifully sunny.  Perfect conditions to my mind provided you either don't mind trying to fight your way through slush in the afternoons or you're happy to pack it in at lunchtime.  The latter is my preference.

Apart from photos I've got a little video souvenir thanks to BMW.  It's not quite a Ski Sunday Slalom and merits a good strong shout of bend zee knees but a bit more practice and then the FIS World Cup  maybe.

Who needs foreign travel when the sun shines in Edinburgh?  The question I asked myself as I lunched al fresco in George Street on the eve of my departure for the Dolomite ski slopes.

I'd made the humdrum trip into town to buy socks to keep my skiing feet toasty but was seduced by the warm Spring sunshine into taking a table at Browns.  They served me the nicest fishcake I've eaten in years followed by some tasty lamb sausages and quite whetted my appetite for embarking on a summer project to lunch in all the pavement eateries in George Street.  I also spied a place called Veeno in Rose Street that offers a multitude of Italian wines and a few snacks that I've pencilled in for a visit sometime.

On my way along Rose Street I discovered work going on to transform the former Charlotte Baptist Chapel into a theatre.  News to me, and exciting news too but old news to Google.  Planning permission for the project was given to the Danish ballet director Peter Schaufuss a year ago.  But as the Scotsman article pointed out at the time there is a deal of difference between permission and completion.  Luckily it looks as though it's well on its way.  With the new hall to be built for the SCO at the back of St Andrew Sq. and a concert hall in the former Royal High when St Mary's Music School takes it over (assuming the overblown and unwanted hotel project for the building is quashed) there will be oodles of places for culture vultures to wallow in.

The high spot of my recent cultural wallowing was undoubtedly Northern Ballet's Casanova.   It was a tremendous show.  Staging, costumes, lighting, music, choreography were all superb and the athleticism of the dancers quite staggering.  You can see bits of it on Northen Ballet's site and read a review here.  It's on tour till May and is a must see for dance fans, but make sure you read the story line before you go to fully enjoy the work.

The story line of Le Malade Imaginaire is well known and Les Escogriffes, who it turns out are alive and kicking after all, impart it well enough but their production was less than riveting in comparison with how the Italian students had presented their Goldoni piece.  They were also a little unwise in not binning the interlude ballet bits that no doubt thrilled the 17th century theatre goer but do nothing for modern tastes.  So I could have been better entertained but it was quite a fun evening all the same and I couldn't fault the company for effort.

It was going to see Arkle's production of Da that alerted me to Le Malade Imaginaire because it was taking place in the  same building and still had a night to run. Da has been described as a bitter-sweet father and son drama.  The curtain rises on a expatriate Irish writer who has returned home for his adoptive father's funeral sitting in the old family home and on the brink of leaving. The play follows his reflections on his relationship with his parents and the events of his youth.  The twist is that his father, mother, younger self and other characters from the past all take part in the action.  It's a clever device and is neatly employed but there is not a lot in the piece that is not present in other works of reminiscence.

It was nicely staged and on the whole I thought the cast worked well.  I have to declare a personal interest in as much as I should have auditioned for the part of the father had I known about it in time.  I thought Charlie made quite a good fist of the part but... Being critical I think the production let itself down when sound effects that should have come from the back of the audience came from the back of the stage.

Family relationships of quite a different stripe are the subject matter of Noel Coward's comedy Hay Fever.  Mark Fisher's review in The Guardian is the most interesting I've seen and having read it I can certainly see the connections with Shakespeare and Albee but didn't join the dots when I was at the show.

Everybody knows that your latin lads and lassies are born dancers so it was no surprise to find the Festival Theatre packed for the visit of this Cuban company.  They were indeed wonderful and energetic dancers who were able to put their bodies through a couple of hours of routines that combined the suppleness of elastic bands and the strength of steel.

It is often the case with modern dance (especially if you don't have a programme) that while admiring the beauty and skill of the presentation your little mind has to work hard to make sense of what's going on. 

This show didn't seem so tricky to interpret.  The first piece screamed lust to me.  The second was life with an ipod (boring) and the third clearly military.  No doubt their revolution which still features highly in the national consciousness I opined to myself.

I am grateful to Claire, who enjoyed the show with me, for pointing me to this review which expresses far more succinctly, knowledgeably and elegantly than I could just what I thought. 

The university language students habitually put on plays round about this time of year and I saw the Italian one the other night.  It was a first class production of a Goldoni comedy about two families and their friends organising themselves for a summer holiday.  The acting was suitably over the top and the fun was fast and furious.  It was exceptionally well directed with lots of clever little ideas.

I enjoyed it so much I thought I'd seek out what the others were doing.  I couldn't find any trace of the French but the Spanish and Germans both had shows on offer.  Whether by accident or design their shows were on exactly the same three evenings as the Italians and I couldn't make it to either. Mind you the German one would have been well out of reach linguistically.

Subsequently I've discovered that an exhibition is being held in April to celebrate 50 years of Les Escogriffes, which is what the French lot call themselves, so although they seem to be dead on the internet and on social media maybe they are alive in the real world and still producing.

My clarinet class had an outing to the Usher Hall to hear Mozart's Clarinet Concerto.  Very nice it was too and now Julia has got us playing a tiny extract, just sixteen very straightforward bars but recognisable as the main theme of the slow movement.

Having enjoyed a modern production of La Traviata on stage in Genoa in December I was interested in seeing the Metropolitan Opera's version, also non traditional, when it was broadcast to cinemas at the weekend. I enjoyed it a lot and adored the staging which reminded me of a wall of death arena from the Links Market of my youth, though it was rather more tastefully clad. The vast chorus all wearing identical masks peering over the edge was just one of the beautiful and powerful pictures that abounded.  The large clock half covered with a floral cloth temporarily halting Violetta's decline to death as her and Alfredo's love was at its height was another. The Observer tells you all that I can't.

There is another production, this time from The Royal Opera House, coming to cinemas soon but I've maybe had enough tubercular tragedy for the time being.

Man made tragedy featured in Viceroy's House, the film by Gurinder Chadha of Bend It Like Beckham fame about the partition of India in 1947.  It's a large, lush and beautifully shot film in the British costume drama tradition with an inter confessional love story woven into the blood and slaughter of the movement of Hindu to India and Muslim to Pakistan.

Film critic Mark Kermode in The Guardian has warm words about the film which I echo but its political analysis blaming Churchill and exonerating Mountbatten is hotly contested in The Mail by historian Andrew Roberts.  He argues his case powerfully and I know nothing either way.

People arriving at the Assembly Rooms for the Caledonian Hunt Ball in the late 18th century as imagined in Edinburgh's Georgian Shadows event celebrating the 250th anniversary of Craig's plan for the New Town.  It makes for an interesting stroll in the early evening from Register House to Charlotte Square by way of St Andrew Square and George Street.

The Queen's Hall is another fine Georgian building though fifty years or so younger than the Assembly Rooms.  One thing I particularly like about it is its intimacy, the closeness to the action.  The SCO had a choir on stage for Mozart's Coronation Mass which brought the band another twenty feet or so further into the body of the kirk so that I was practically sitting amongst them.  Although I was very happy to hear that in a year or two they will have a new home in the hall to be built on the site of the Royal Bank offices I once worked in behind St Andrew Sq.  I fear some of that family feeling will be lost.

Family feeling of a different sort was on view at The Lyceum where The Winter's Tale has just finished its run. On fairly slim evidence King Leontes decides his wife has been having it off with his best chum (the king of Bohemia), orders the chum's murder (though he forewarned escapes), banishes his new-born daughter to be exposed to the wilderness where wild beasts roam in the firm belief that she's not his, arraigns his wife and casting aside the report of the Oracle on her chasteness as false news declares the trial must continue with a death sentence as the probable outcome when enters a messenger.

The king's son brooding on the queen his mother's fate has died.  Understandably she swoons but less understandably Leontes suddenly realises that's he's a tosser and all his jealousy has been misplaced.  The queen is taken off for medical attention but her woman is back in a jiffy to report that it's too late, she's dead.

Now this is classed as one of Shakespeare's comedies but up to this point the laughs have been few.  Luckily the atmosphere brightens.  The scene switches to Bohemia, the wee baby is rescued by a comic shepherd and his son, sixteen years pass, it's the sheep shearing festival, the baby is now a comely maid and is beloved by the Bohemian prince. We enjoy the rib-tickling comic turns that the bard provided for his groundlings, made actually comprehensible and funny in this production.  There is music and dancing and much jollity but alack and alas it doesn't last.

Polixenes (king of Bohemia and unmurdered chum of Leontes) turns up and berates his son for dallying with a shepherdess, unaware that's she's really a princess.  Everybody including herself is unaware though the old shepherd must at least suspect she's from a different social class than him given the money she had about her person in the wild woods all those years ago.

Florizel and Perdita (our young lovers) are advised to go off and introduce themselves to Leontes who rouses himself from the torpor he's been in for sixteen years and says how he wishes he could make things up to his old chum.  Said old chum is pursuing Florizel angrily but on finding him with Leontes a reconciliation takes place, Perdita is identified as the onetime cast out princess and a statue of the dead queen comes to life.  Could it be she wasn't dead but in hiding all those years?

Whatever, all is now happiness and Leontes and his queen go off arm in arm.  The young lovers have their parents' blessing and all the subsidiary characters are in a good way.  So it's a comedy after all.  But not quite.  Shakespeare has left Leontes' son still dead and the good old retainer who was charged with getting rid of the baby.  Truly a tragi-comedy then.

It all sounds a bit daft but it was an excellent production, thoroughly enjoyable and I says so who saw it twice.

Good fun was had by all at Gean House, Alloa, this weekend where a dozen saxophonists under the expert guidance of Mike and Sue from the Scottish Saxophone Academy made music.  All that energetic blowing was fuelled by excellent scoff.  The building was gifted back in the day to an organisation promoting temperance.  Fortunately times have changed and a well stocked bar helped soothe roughened throats. 

Friday's RSNO concert was intended to be a celebration of Neeme Järvi's 80th birthday but he was ill so from the other end of the age spectrum we had the diminuitive Chinese conductor 

Elim Chan.

.

This picture makes her look about fourteen (maybe she was when it was taken!) but she has actually reached the grand old age of thirty one and seemed to lack neither confidence nor control as she put the orchestra through their paces including Rachmaninov's hour long second symphony.  Great stuff.

There was a Beethoven piano concerto on the programme as well and again because of illness they had to call on a substitute soloist.  He too was a young Chinese though of the Swiss variety, Louis Schwizgebel.  He was as tall as Chan was small (indeed she completely disappeared behind the piano lid) and as nimble with his fingers as she was with her arms.

At a place some distance away from the RSNO on the musical spectrum lies the Dunedin Wind Band and we too were in action this weekend.

Here we are at a break in the action surveying our audience, geeks and others attending the Edinburgh Sci Fi Convention at Meadowbank.  We were perched a little uncomfortably in rows of tip up seats well above one of the large sports halls housing dozens of stalls amidst which milled the punters.  We serenaded them for an hour and a half with more or less suitably sci fi music. It was hard to know what the milling abouters thought of it.  There were sporadic bursts of applause but mostly they ignored us and went about their business.  I expect that's how it was for musicians in the minstrel gallery playing for banqueting barons.

As a reward for our labours we were given free run of the event.  I was amazed, astounded and impressed by the exhilarating variety of it all.  Lots and lots of people had dressed up as characters from the whole genre.  I can recognise Batman and Superman from days of yore and Thunderbirds and Doctor Who from the not so long ago but beyond that I dare not venture a guess.

Amongst the exhibiting organisations and individuals there were prop makers, model makers, games sellers, special effectors.  There was a Tardis, a couple of Daleks, a K9 and all sorts of other stuff that I'd need a lesson in modern popular culture to appreciate.

It was great.  I hope we are invited again next year.

Evita was not quite as wonderful as my long wait to see it had conditioned me to expect.  It covered the tricky task of melding the political and personal stories pretty well and while the staging wasn't wildly imaginative it provided appropriate settings.  The cast and orchesta did a good job but I was never on the edge of my seat, I wasn't much moved and I found the music a bit lacking in variety.

I nearly didn't see A Few Good Men, a sell-out at The Roxy but fortunately I was able to attend the dress rehearsal the night before it opened.  I've dress rehearsed in lots of shows myself and this was an extremely well managed one, more like a preview.

It's not an uninteresting play but the presentation made the show for me.  It's a courtroom drama about the killing of a marine by two fellow soldiers with what you might call sub-plots involving the relationships between the lawyers dealing with the case and between the various officers and men of the unit concerned.  So far so ordinary.  But we don't just sit watching as people shuffle on and off stage.  We are immersed in the action, sitting on swivel chairs with scenes being played all around us.  It's a smashing idea and works very well.  Thom Dibdin gives a perceptive review here.

I managed to get to only one Fife Jazz Festival gig this year but it was a bumper afternoon at the Carnegie Hall which I enjoyed immensely.  There were six groups of musicians performing ten sets spread over three performance spaces.  I got to four and although I didn't see Dave Milligan doing his solo set he played in Colin Steele's quintet so the only group I saw nothing of was Ken Mathieson and his orchestra.

American tenor player Scott Hamilton did a set with Brian Kellock on piano.  He produces a lovely warm, full sound admirably suited to his repertoire of ballads and standards.  I loved his low notes. Listen here.

A complete contrast was provided by Fergus McCreadie, the young pianist who is the talk of the steamie in Scottish jazz circles.  His trio played their own compositions some of which are as yet nameless.  He announced he'd welcome suggestions.  Here they are in Edinburgh last year.

Brass Gumbo gave it laldie as they bashed through a set of New Orleans tunes arranged to suit their lively spirit.  This was get up and dance music but nobody did.

Even in The Darkest Places is the title of a CD about to be released by Colin Steele and his Quintet.  Their set consisted of the tunes on the CD.  All are Colin's compositions and they are super. I can't find a foretaste on the web so I encourage you to pre-order the album and in the meantime listen to a previous piece.

In a little introduction Danny Boyle told us (on film) that he was delighted to welcome us to T2: Trainspotting at the Cameo since that's where its predecessor Trainspotting had its world premiere.  The question immediately arises as to why the new movie was premiered elsewhere in the city.

It was a lost opportunity for The Grads.  Our Home Street premises would have been an ideal spot for the stars to gather and get togged out, possibly choosing a nice frock from our wardrobe, prior to sashying down a red carpet the short distance to the cinema.  The assorted gofors and flunkies that no doubt attend them could have slipped out of the back door, nipped across Lochrin Place and into the Cameo via the bar.

I blame a lack of initiative on the part of the committee.

What about T2 itself?  Superb. For an Edinburgher there is the great joy of recognising so many locations for a start and for those who've seen Trainspotting there are nice little flashback moments and other references.  But leaving that aside the film has humour, excitement, emotion and a tidy plotline based on Renton's return home twenty years after having run off with the loot that should have been shared out among the four musketeers.  The performances of the principals are excellent and carry forward their characters wholly believably over the twenty year gap.

I loved it.

Thoroughly Modern Millie made for a thoroughly memorable matinee.  I seldom go to musicals despite living five minutes walk from the Playhouse which presents a touring production of a different well known show practically every week.  I went to this one as a sort of by product of my interest in seeing Evita which I saw from a casually picked up copy of their brochure is on next week.  A liking for many of the songs from that show combined with a longheld fascination with Argentina should have ensured my seeing it years ago but for one reason or another I haven't.  Next week I will.

Anyway skimming through the Playhouse brochure I thought an empty Wednesday afternoon might be brightened by Millie, and so it was.  This was a slick, colourful and entertaining show.  Millie is a 1920s girl from Hicksville who arrives in New York determined not a be a star, which is the usual premise of such tales, but to marry well.  Being thoroughly modern it is betterment and self interest not love that will guide her choice. Of course we know from the outset that things will turn out differently.  Naturally there are a few bumps on the way to the inevitable happy ending but we get there accompanied by jazzy tunes and snappy dancing.

I bumped into Sarah (who runs our band) and her husband who were there primarily to see the girl who played Millie because of her appearances on Strictly Come Dancing.  Sorry to say that meant nothing to me and I can't even now tell you her name. I can tell you that she sang, danced and acted sickeningly well.  Jealous? Who? Me?

It was all good but there was one scene I admired above all else.  Her boss, who she is determined to marry but who has fallen madly for her chum is drunk because he thinks that aforesaid chum has dumped him.  Millie and the young man who eventually....well I don't want to give the plot away...are tending to him.  The boss is wonderfully, gloriously and athletically legless.  Millie tries to help him sit down.  The effort that must have gone into choreographing and rehearsing that brief scene is hard to quantify but believe me it would have been a lot, but my was the result worth it.  Side-splittingly funny and I'm not one who is easily pleased by slapstick.

There was a degree of slapstick or at least slapstick inspired acting in The Trial, an opera based on Kafka's satire with libretto by Christopher Hampton and music by Philip Glass.  Modern opera is not to everyone's taste and it can be unlistenable to but this was in my estimation brilliant stuff and a full house at the Kings gave it an enthusiastic reception.

It's played as perhaps more of an absurdist black comedy than is warranted by the novel's bleak and surreal fantasy.  More Chaplin and the Marx Brothers than Kafka would have wished?  Who can say.  Glass's music though has a threatening and oppressive edge that maintains an air of foreboding as a counterpoint to the comedy.  Full marks to this co-production by Scottish and Welsh Opera. 

An initiative from the Edinburgh Festival Theatres Trust is going some way to help young professionals get themselves seen.  They have established a company, the Attic Collective, of actors from 18 to 25 who will perform three shows in the course of the year, one classic, one new and one musical.  I imagine that membership of the company will be restricted to one year but it's a good crack of the whip for them.


I went to their first production.  It was a version of Lysistrata and was well done, imaginative and entertaining, if a bit shouty.  Aristophanes' play is generally described as a bawdy anti-war comedy.  This version was certainly bawdy with a profusion of giant inflatable penises adding to the fun and a fair sprinkling of Trump inspired sexual jokes.

Photo Greg Mcvean

I'm looking forward to seeing what they do later in the year with The Threepenny Opera which will be set in today's Edinburgh.

Before going to London in November I had a look to see what was on and one show that caught my eye was No Man's Land.  I've always liked Pinter and McKellen and Stewart are a powerful double act.  But tickets were both scarce and pricey so I didn't see it.  Now thanks to the streaming revolution that brings masterworks to our local cinemas I have seen it and for a very reasonable price.

It was as incomprehensible yet captivating as so many of his plays are.  Indeed the only one I can think of as having a pretty straighforward narrative is Betrayal and even then it's told backwards.  Anyway I thoroughly enjoyed the mysterious meanderings of the characters who inhabit No Man's Land.  Its Wikipedia entry covers what the critics have said about the show over the years (it premiered in 1975) and it's comforting to learn that none of them understood it either but like me had a jolly good time watching it.

In theatre in the flesh I saw Picnic at Hanging Rock performed by an Australian company at The Lyceum.  It was a very interesting production with an unusual stylistic unity and provided, as Mark Fisher said in The Guardian, a masterclass in stage management.  Like the critics my chums loved it but my admiration is less whole-hearted.  I  have a nagging feeling that I must have snatched forty winks shortly after the girls disappeared because I was somewhat lost storywise as the show progressed.  I blame that glass of Picpoul before curtain up.

I had more than one glass of a number of alcoholic beverages at Phil's house at the weekend where nearly a score of souls were gathered to celebrate Burns.  It was a great evening with great grub and great craic.  I paid for my supper by addressing the haggis and by contributing the fruits of my attendance that day on a bread making course.

There are five 2017 calendars on my walls of which this is the most recently acquired.  The title page of this lovely calendar is a view of Burano taken by my friends whose passion is the adventures of Donna Leon's Venetian detective Commissario Brunetti.

More particularly it is the tracing of all the places in Venice associated with those adventures.  They have produced a beautiful map showing many of the locations and have published several guidebooks to Brunetti's Venice with a new one coming out next year.  They are all aimed at the German market because although Donna Leon's books have a following in many countries the Germans are top fans thanks to highly popular TV adaptations.  (Sub-titled DVDs are available in the US.)

Each of the twelve months has a picture of a Brunetti related place and a brief legend which with the help of a dictionary to augment my limited German I hope to translate month by month.  I made sense of January once I realised that I had looked up verschleißen (worn out) instead of verschließen (locked).   How you arrange your "i"s and your "e"s is at least as important in German as it is in English. 

I spent the weekend with another foreign detective, one that I had heard of but never seen.  I was given a boxset of The Killing for Christmas.  That's five DVDs with four episodes of compulsive viewing on each.  So I found myself at midnight and later with Sarah Lund swearing I would just watch one more episode and then go to bed.

I've seen three operas in as many months and have two more lined up before the end of March.  For someone who declares himself only mildly appreciative of the art form that seems a bit much but I have an excuse for each of them.

Leaving aside The Marriage of Figaro which I commented on at the time, the next was La Traviata which I saw in Genoa.  Well I was there on holiday and you have to find things to do when you're on holiday and it was a lot more fun than sitting through Oedipus Rex and Oedipus at Colonus, the only theatrical offerings I found.

I enjoyed the show and the staging was lovely.  There are a number of pictures of the production on this site.  Here's one in which Violetta and Alfredo are enjoying their bucolic idyll before life caves in and we work up to that long drawn out heroine's death scene beloved of operatic writers and fans.

A free ticket as a reviewer's chum persuaded me to the cinemacast (what is the official word for these? ) of the Metropolitan Opera's Nabucco.  It's a big production with a very large chorus and a couple of massive sets mounted on their revolve.  The story concerns war between the Babylonians and the Israelites and the opera is well known in particular for one of Verdi's great numbers, the Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves.  In real life it was sung by the crowds following Verdi's coffin to his funeral.  Here are the slaves getting ready to sing it on the Metropolitan Opera's stage.

It's a beautiful and moving song and well merits its fame but for me the musical highlight of this production was one of the soprano's arias.  Alas I can't put a name to it.

Next up is a production by Scottish Opera of The Trial.  Christopher Hampton, who's a playwright I admire and Philip Glass, a composer whose music I like a lot have turned Kafka's wonderful satire into an opera.  No excuse needed for going to that.

The last of this set of shows takes me back to the cinema and The Met.  This time I'm paying for a ticket.  It's expensive enough at £25 but Nabucco tickets in the real opera house were on sale from $475 when I went onto their site to read the programme so it's a steal really.  This time it's La Traviata.   I thought it would be instructive to see two versions so close together especially since both are modern stagings.

Glasgow likes to call itself "the dear green place" and according to The Guardian's listing of the greenest cities in the UK merits the nickname since 32% of its surface area is green space.  That makes it the second greenest city in the country.  But in first place with a whopping 49% is the city pictured above, Edinburgh.

I've been back in the said green spot for ten days or so but must confess I haven't strayed far from its paved or tarmacked spaces.  More than that, apart from attendance at a convivial Hogmanay dinner and an audition for the Grads' next show I've taken my pleasures at home.

My diary is filling up with outings though so this restful period will not last much longer.  It certainly won't last long enough for me to get through my Christmas books and DVDs.  I'm only on the first one which is a ream sized volume of Vivienne Westwood's diaries from 2010 to 2016.  Unlike most published diaries it's extensively illustrated.  There are fashion pictures of course but also some more personal illustrations and a deal of stuff related to her environmental/political preoccupations.

I hadn't realised that she was such a fervent environmentalist but to say she has a bee in her bonnet about climate change goes no way towards describing her fervour.  It's a most interesting book and something of a riveting read.   

The hot sunny weather did come back and I headed off to Le Cinque Terre for the day.  This is a group of five little fishing villages that were once accessible only by boat or by mountain goat.  Nowadays the train between Genoa and La Spezia stops at all of them and they are very touristy.

At this time of year there are not too many tourists.  That's pleasant but it also means not too many eateries are open.  The best I could do for lunch was squeeze myself into a tiny bar and sit on a tiny stool at a tiny table in one of the tiniest of the five towns and have a sandwich and a glass of plonk.  Both were delicious.

Then I set off on the energetic bit of the excursion.  There are tracks between each of the villages that are popular with walkers.  Some stretches are closed at the moment because of landslides.  That gives you an idea of the terrain.  I did only one section.  It took me a couple of hours and my knees were happy when it was over and I relaxed with a freshly squeezed orange juice.

Here's a shot of the scenery.  The village in the background is where I started the walk.

Still waiting for that eating out weather to come back.

It's been a cold and miserable day in Genoa.  Not like Saturday when I lunched al fresco in Santa Margarita Ligure.

Nor like yesterday when I took this skinny selfie after a very civilized Sunday morning sing song by the Simone Molinari choir.  It was roughly equivalent to our Play, Pie and a Pint, being Music, Prosecco and Focaccia.

The concert was appropriately Christmas music from mediaeval motets to modern compositions via The Boar's Head Carol, something I'd never heard of but is apparently a traditional Oxford dining ditty.

When after tumultuous applause they dashed back on stage and launched into an encore I heard "cinque, cinque, cinque" but realised when the tune got going that it had been "jingle, jingle, jingle".

Another week another concert or two and en route a pleasant dinner with friends in Morningside marred only by too generous a hand on the whisky bottle from the host and too willing a mouth from the guest.

That led to skipping an engagement the following evening but every cloud and so on because it meant I was on hand to help sort out a ticketing problem that's too complicated to explain here.  But all is well that ended well.

And the week ended well lunching in Queen Charlotte Street with Claire newly returned from Australia. No whisky, nor even wine but super soup and capital coffee.

And the weekend started well with blue skies, sunshine and mild verging on warm air on my arrival in Milan.

In wandering around near my hotel I went into a park where there was a wee bit of a Christmas fair.  I snapped this seasonal variation on what in my youth we called the scenic railway.

A couple of days later I am lunching in the sunshine in the port of Genoa.  Who said retirement would be easy?

Peter Maxwell Davies had a long association with the SCO and they were to present the world premiere of his accordion concerto last week.  But he died earlier this year, presumably not having completed the work because they changed the programme.

That was a shame because there can't be many accordion concertos around and because the replacement work, one of his Strathclyde Concertos, was a bit of a heavy listen.  Of course the accordion piece might not have been to my taste either.

There was some lovely Sibelius and some Bartok and then the pièce de resistance by Maxwell Davies to finish the evening, An Orkney Wedding with Sunrise.  That's an entertaining quarter of an hour. Here are the SCO playing it at the 2014 Proms with an introduction by the man himself.

Verdi's Requiem which I heard the following evening is miles away in spirit from An Orkney Wedding but is very much to my taste.  It's probably because I can't sing a note that I enjoy those large choral works so much.  This one is definitely aweinspiring to boot. The final pianissimo "libera me" hits deep down in the guts.

The castle lit up in blue for St Andrew's day last night.

Their lights were working.  Not so for The Street of Light which is what I had gone up town to have a look at.  As part of Edinburgh's Christmas festivities a section of George Street has been given over to a series of arches through which you can wander gazing in awe at the pretty lights while your ears are bathed in music from the likes of the RSNO or Blazing Fiddles.

Last year it was in the High Street but I only ever caught a glimpse while going up the Bridges.  I decided to have a closer look this time.  It's a free event but the publicity advised that it was necessary to obtain a ticket on-line.  Since when you get there you can wander along the pavement beside the construction and there are no barriers to prevent you popping into the body of the kirk I can only surmise that this is an elaborate ploy to harvest email addresses and phone numbers.  I hope to have given them the slip by unticking the boxes that would have given Underbelly and its "carefully chosen partners" permission to junk bomb me.

This is what it looked like when I got there.  A brave little saltire above a part illuminated castle like trellis.  Bear with us a loudspeaker said.  We've got a wee problem and hope to get underway pretty soon.  This mantra was repeated at intervals until finally they said the show was cancelled but they'd play the music.  So I wandered along while a choir sang and lights flashed on and off in sporadic spasms.  

 

Spasms are challenging for a digital camera to cope with.  Click when the lights are on and by the time the electronics have reacted it's dark again. This is about the best camera and photographer managed to achieve.

After a while a pre-recorded message announced that things were over, enjoined us to leave carefully since exits might be crowded etc. but added that we were welcome to stick around to enjoy the lights (whose then state is shown in the photo above) since they would stay on till half past seven.  Could have done with a mind at work there.

I went on from the lights to the Grads production of Beachy Head.  There is some very fine acting in the show and its multimedia challenges are well handled but its structure cries out for it to have been a film not a stage play and it scratches at several surfaces without penetrating them deeply enough to reveal much of what lies beneath.

Ballet Rambert are celebrating their 90th year and touring amongst other pieces a revival of Ghost Dances by Christopher Bruce.  It's wonderful.

When the curtain rises we see three macabre figures standing stock still, looking into the distance, dimly lit and silhoutted against a backdrop that suggests we are in a cave looking out onto a plain interrupted by rocky peaks.  They begin to dance in a silence broken only by the susurration of an increasingly bitter wind.  Their dance is sinister, wild and fearsome.

When music does come it is the plaintive lilt of Andean pipes, the clear notes of the guitar and Spanish song accompanying the entry of a group of men and women who are perhaps come to celebrate the day of the dead.  They dance in various combinations.  The three spirits watch and from time to time join their dances. 

Ultimately they leave the stage and the three ghost dancers return to the silent contemplation with which the piece began. Lighting, costumes, music, choreography and superb physical skills had given us thirty unforgettable minutes.

Not so the other two pieces on the programme. Tomorrow starts with a single dancer in a beige coloured shift oozing herself out from a slot in the back wall and dancing jerkily downstage.  She's joined by quite a few others, dressed similarly and dancing in much the same fashion.  I had them down as mechanical toys.  Perhaps this was a new take on the Nutcracker or Coppelia.

They kept themselves to one side of the stage while on the other people dressed in black tops and trousers strode about, left the stage, returned, pointed up, pointed across, gathered in groups, raised imaginary glasses, slit throats and so on.  They were obviously telling a story but I couldn't make it out.  At one point a chap came on and removed some imaginary headgear and I thought maybe he's a king or maybe a motorcyle courier.  But frankly it was a distraction from the perfectly pleasant though unclear as to its meaning dancing going on stage left.

It wasn't till I got home and glanced at the flyer that I learnt that I'd been watching Macbeth.  Witches cavorting on one side while the play was being performed backwards on the other.

If I'd read and watched all the stuff here before seeing it I would probably have a less uncharitable opinion of the work than I do. But uncharitable I am and will remain.

No mugging up in advance was needed to understand Frames but I didn't much enjoy that either.  Dancers came on with variously sized lengths of aluminium rail and ponced about with them, as single lengths or snapped together in different combinations to make frames in and around which the dancers moved.  So?  A bit like virtuosic piano playing without any emotional content.

The lady sitting next to me had come from Glasgow to see the show and when we exchanged enthusiastic comments about Ghost Dances she said she'd probably go to see Rambert again when they hit Glasgow in February.  I think that would be a good thing to do but I'd spend the first hour and forty minutes in the bar with a good book.

The Good Book was the source of almost all of the libretto of Handel's Israel in Egypt that I saw and heard courtesy of the SCO on Thursday.  I enjoyed it thoroughly.  It reminded me a little of the saying that history is written by the victors.  Words and music throughout enthusiastically revelled in the triumph of the Israelites.  God was clearly on their side.  He smote, he plagued, he drowned those poor Egyptians giving not a toss for their first-borns.  But no frogs were harmed in the making of this epic.

I met a singer friend in the interval who was there to suss it out because his choir are doing it next year sometime.  He loved it but declared that it was quite a sing and thought he might not have the stamina for it.  At 91 and still performing I can forgive him that thought and only hope to match the stamina he's already shown.

A weekend in London provided many pleasures, not least blowing up imaginary balloons for the amusement of my grand nieces.  Or should that be great? The answer may be here.

Another grand pleasure was a visit to the great Cutty Sark at Greenwich.

The intention had been to go to an exhibition about Emma Hamilton in the Maritime Museum checking out the Cutty Sark en route but time spent on board meant it wasn't really worth going to the museum so we pottered about Greenwich before heading to our next port of call, the Merchant Navy Memorial on Tower Hill.  But the part of that we wanted to see was behind locked gates.

We had lingered too long at 0° 0′ 0″ East and West.

So time for a bus to Dalston for Turkish nosh and a bottle of Kavaklidere Yakut before an hour or two of music from Idris Ackamoor and The Pyramids.  Described as west coast jazz mavericks they were very entertaining and on the whole I enjoyed their music though I'd have enjoyed it a lot more had there been any place to sit down in Cafe Oto.

The trip to London was originally decided upon so that I could attend the Zambia Society Trust AGM and meet my chum David Powell who I hadn't seen for a few years.  In addition to the standard review of activities and finance at the meeting there was a very interesting talk by a professor of African history who tried to pin down the reasons why Zambia has been, relatively speaking, a haven of peace and tranquility amidst a sea of warring countries both pre and post independence.

Unsurprisingly he didn't find one single reason but an amalgam of several that he felt had predisposed Zambians at all levels of society to value peaceful development over conflict.  Long may it continue and hopefully spread well beyond their borders.

As well as David another old friend was there and his arrival put me in a tricky position.  He was accompanied and greeted me with the question "Do you recognise this young lady?"  I ask you.  It took a moment or two but then the name popped into my head which I thought wasn't bad considering I had last seen her 31 years ago and hadn't heard much about her since.  Mind you it would have been a poor show to have forgotten the leading lady of my final directorial outing in Kitwe.

After the meeting David, Graham, Lynn and myself repaired to a handy tavern and had a good chat about times both old and new until I had to drag myself away for my next engagement.

This was a serendipitously arrived at opportunity to meet another friend I hadn't seen for a few years, a much younger one this time.  Ben did a show with the Grads about ten years ago although he's a professional these days.  Our paths have crossed from time to time and I was delighted to find that he was playing not a hundred miles from my brother's flat while I was visiting.

So on Saturday night we went to see The Worst Was This. It was a great little show played with gusto and skill.  The company hope to tour it next year so we may see it in Edinburgh.  It would be perfect Fringe fare.

A previous winter trip to London was bedevilled by severe train problems that resulted in a bonanzo of ticket vouchers.  This time I was only 75 minutes late going down and 45 coming back so my compensation package is likely to be more modest but handy for the next foray south.

I don't know about you but I was somewhat underwhelmed by the so-called super moon.