good morning

Eughhh.. just finished an all-nighter preparing music for a recording session tomorrow. Oh I mean today. My brain is starting to malfronction... And it's still going to be pretty intense over the next couple of days I think, so I've got the fridge well stocked up with Red Bull. I must say, though, this project has been really fun!! I'll blog more about it when I get the nod from the Important People..

This Monday: Eileen at the 606

Just a quick plug for my chum Eileen Hunter, who is once again playing at the 606 Club in Chelsea on Monday! Hopefully I'll be sitting in for a couple of tunes too.

X-Factor: Battle of the Stars

What better counterpoint to the tragic beauty of Puccini's Butterfly than being in the studio audience at ITV's X-Factor? Yea, broad indeed is the cultural firmament, and festooned with a myriad shimmering stars.

Anyhoo, my mate worked on the show and got us a couple of tickets for it on Saturday. As I'm a big Corrie fan, I was rather disappointed that the ex-Corrie actress, Nikki Sanderson had been voted off the night before. But as it happened, she was sitting one row behind us and just about two seats away (result!) However, I was much too shy to ask for her autograph.

I'm sure it won't surprise anyone who has seen the show to learn that we are told when to clap and cheer etc. - and that is basically for the entire 90 minutes, apart from when the judges are speaking. It was really quite exhausting. But despite this, I did enter into the spirit of it. Well mostly - not so much when those Chefs were.. er.. singing. My god they were crap. And somehow kind of scary. I really hate that attitude of 'ha ha, yes we know we're bad, but we're fun!' As Louis put it: 'You're like four drunks at a wedding.'

I haven't been following it through the week, but if these Chefs made it through to the final four, I dread to think how bad some of the previously eliminated acts must have been. The good news was that they were finally voted off this time. The bad news, however, was that this entitled them to one last farewell performance, so we had to endure once more.

Well, I'm moaning, but the show is actually a lot of fun, I must say. I just could have done without those four guys leaping about and yelling at us.

It seems I made it on to air - apparently they skimmed past me at the beginning of the show. Hope they got my best side.

Incidentally, does anyone else find it odd that there are entries in wikipedia for people like Ms Sanderson and Mr Walsh?

Madam Butterfly at the E.N.O.

A few years ago, I was sitting in a music history class in college, and the teacher was talking about Puccini, and in particular, Madam Butterfly. He briefly told us the story, and then showed us a clip from a film of the opera: when it's three years since Pinkerton left, and Cho Cho San is chastising her maid for not having faith that he will return. And so, she sings Un bel di vedremo - 'One fine day we shall see'. It was so moving: even just seeing that moment from the middle of the film - it really affected me. And since then, whenever I even just think of the story, I get all choked up!

So at last I went to see it last week. It must sound strange, but I was almost dreading it - I don't know how I imagined I might react, but I thought that it might be somehow unbearably moving to see it in the flesh. In fact, I think it could have been, but as the tragic ending approached, I'm afraid I couldn't help detaching myself from it a little; it just would have been too much.

This E.N.O. production is really beautiful. The opening is particularly striking: there is compete silence as Cho Cho San emerges at the back of the sloping stage and floats gracefully towards us. Cho Cho San's child is realised using bunraku, which is a style of Japanese puppet theatre. Although the puppeteers are completely visible, they achieve such a level of expression that it's very easy to forget them and just to regard the puppet as a character in the same world as the characters played by the human performers.

That's only the second opera I've ever been to - the first one was so long ago that I'm ashamed to admit that I can't even remember what it was! I think that what put me off for a long time was that it seemed like you had to know the story very well before you went, because it's quite hard to pick up every word sung - even when it's sung in English. But these days there are surtitles (at least, at the E.N.O. there were) so this really shouldn't put anyone off anymore.

Only Child

I recently finished doing the music for another short animated film by Jason Ruddy. Only Child is a poem about a lonely little girl, Petunia, who longs for a little brother, and Jason has animated the story. Jason has Paul Kaye reading the poem. (Mr Kaye also appeared in the Miss Marple episode I worked on recently - small world and all that.)

As this was a poetry reading, I decided to use solo piano. The story is set in a family home, so again I thought piano was appropriate. I used a great piano patch from Post Musical Instruments which they call 'The Old Lady' - it's a 1923 Steinway, and has a great deal of character. Using Kontakt 2's scripting facilities, it implements sympathetic resonance, so that non-struck keys sound if their string is currently undamped and they are harmonically related to a struck key. Or something.. anyhoo, it sounds good.

I understand that Jason is still polishing the film - watch this space for further developments..

Scenes of a Sexual Nature in Cannes

This film, which I orchestrated for and played trumpet on, was shown in Cannes the other day. I don't know at present when it will be on general release - watch this space! (Or better yet, watch this space!)

Piano found on Ben Nevis

How odd. Judging by this picture, I'm not sure how they could tell that this object had indeed once been a piano. The full story is well worth a read.

My sister recently bought a piano and is having terrible difficulty finding someone to take it up the stairs. Pity the people who delivered this one didn't leave their card. (Mind you, her stairs are a bit narrower than Ben Nevis.)

update 18/05/2006: Success! Kate's piano is now safely installed in it's new home upstairs.