Cello? Is there anybody in there?

Well I've finally left the Isles of Scilly to spend my summer on the mainland travelling around 9 different festivals. It could be a long summer! The first few days away have been reasonably eventful, involving moving house via public transport, and attending a Cello and Piano Recital, not quite up there with Glastonbury, but more on that in a bit!







Having been a part of Radio Scilly since August last year I'm quite sad to say goodbye, I've had some great times, some stressful times, and plenty of early mornings! The experience itself has been great, and the response that I've had from people around the Islands about my work for the station has certainly helped plump my ego to a degree. Although most people who know would probably say that I'm quite outgoing, in reality I'm actually quite quiet when I'm around groups of people. However, I'm always listening and absorbing interesting stories! I think I've been able to develop my journalistic skills quite a bit over the last 9 months, and I look back to when I started and I think how clueless I was back then about interviewing people. Now I feel quite confident about it, especially that I can get all the right information out of people. Sometimes without them realising!

Being given the responsibilities of looking after the station and presenting the morning show ahs been something that was a good challenge, and probably gave me some of the best memories from the job. It was always great when people came up to me in the street and said how much they enjoyed the show - it made the early mornings worth it!

So now to Bristol, and a summer of festivals that includes the following, possibly in order: Glastonbury, Cornbury, 2000trees, Glade, WOMAD, Big Chill, Bloom, Beautiful Days, Shambala. Something like that anyway! Of course I'll be updating my blog after each festival letting you all know what the mud/bands/work was like. IF you want to skp ahead to my thoughts on this then go right ahead and ignore my review of the Cello and Piano Recital that I went to!

The first stop before Glastonbury though was to attend a Cello and Piano Recital with Amy and her family. Amy's Dad owns a cello made by the John Betts school c.1820 and has loaned it to the Guildhall School of Music. So with five of us in the car we zoomed down to Shepton Mallet for the performance.

We went to a pub when we arrived called the Bell, it reminded me of the pub from Withnail and I - "We want the finest wines available to humanity, and we want them here, and we want them now" Lovely old barmaid who looked like you squeeze cider out from her face, she didn't appreciate us ordering coffees! There was a beauty old boy sat by the bar who said hello to everyone who went to the bar, I asked him how he was doing, but got no reply, I think he was already saying hello to the next person. So tearing ourselves away from the pub we headed to church to listen to Alice Dixon on the cello, and Bojana Dimkovic on the piano.

The cello is certainly an attractive instrument, and having never seen one played first hand I was looking forward to the performance and I can honestly say that I was not disappointed one bit. .

The first piece by Ernest Bloch entitled 'Prayer' from 'Jewish Life', was dark, brooding and emotional. The interchange between piano and cello was very good, and I felt that this piece was instantly arresting, even though perhaps a little too melancholic for an opening piece.

This was followed by 12 variations on a theme from Handel's 'Judas Maccabeus' composed by Beethoven. A lengthy piece, again with masterful exchange between piano and cello, and the melody of this piece really came through in the performance from the cello giving it vibrancy and an energetic quality.

The final selction before the interval was solo piano piece composed by John Ireland called 'Moon Glade' and 'Scarlet Ceremonies'. This was a great individual performance from the pianist Bojana Dimkovic whose showmanship behind the keys stood out as much as her playing, which was exceptional. She finished with a flourish that typified her performance, then stood and smiled to the audience before retiring behind a large oak door at the back of the church.

After the break we were treated to the final two pieces of the evening, the first being a technically difficult piece by Henri Dutilleux which on performance looked incredibly hard to play. This piece seemed chosen to demonstrate the technical ability required to play such a composition. There were times the cello was being played with back of the bow, strings were being plucked, and at times the strings were being played in way that many rock guitarist would have admired. Melodically it was at polar opposites to the Beethoven piece, but nonetheless it was enjoyable and was a spectacle of intricacy.

The final piece of the night brought piano and cello together again for Bohuslav Martinu's variations on a theme of Rossini. Taken from Rossini's opera 'Moses in Europe' this compostion involved some interesting interjections between the cellist and pianist. The pace and rhythm of this piece was interesting to follow and I enjoyed the interplay between the two instruments as the pace varied before finishing empahtically.

And just like that it was all over and we drove home, with the car smelling of sweat peas that were given to us by Amy's Gran and Grandad.

As I write this now it's just after half four on Monday afternoon, and in 24 hours I'll be at Pilton Farm enjoyed the start of Glastonbury 2008. It'll be interesting to experience it from the perspective of working, which is something that I've never had to do before, however it should be good fun working up at the sacred space chatting to random mash heads making sure they're all ok. Mind you it could be me that needs reassuring! I'm most looking forward to (hopefully) seeing Massive Attack and also Shlomo's Music Through Unconventional Means. Apart from these two I guess I'll just wait and see what happens, always the best way I think!

So drop by again this time next week to find out how it all went!

It's been a while

Watched the new series of Jools Holland last, mainly because Radiohead were due to appear on it, and after hearing their new album, and watching their freee new years eve footage of live performances, I was interested to see how they'd come across. Also on the show was Cat Power, aka Chan Marshall, an artist who has a great voice and is a great talent.




The show itself was reasonably good, I was actually struck at how easy and undemanding the questions are that Jools Holland asks the guest that he interviews. He never really got much from his guests last night, and I thought the questions were pretty basic really. Maybe it's the news journalist in me that's started to come out recently!

Radiohead opened the show with Bodysnatchers, a great tune, though a friend of mine who isn't much of Radiohead fan wasn't impressed with Thom Yorke's 'singing', as he put it. What I like about watching Radiohead live is how they translate from the album onto the stage in terms of their music.

The other performances on the show were pretty good. I thought Feist was surprisingly good. I wasn't expecting much, and after hearing her album stuff I wasn't overally bothered by her, but live she was excellent. Cat Power, however, was the the complete opposite. I think I read a live review of one of her recent shows in the Guardian that didn't give an overly gracious review of her show, despite the jounro being a big fan. I have to say that from watching last night's show I would agree that journalist. Chan Marshall has always been something of a reclusive performer, sometimes walking off stage half way through songs unable to carry on. Not any more though, as she was completely over the top with her performance. It was an extremely extroverted performance that belied what I know about her past. The band behind her didn't help either, they drowned her voice and the songs sounded weak and unsure of where they were going. I listened to her new album, Jukebox, on the way to work this morning and I have to concede that the album versions are far better than the live versions. Everything is toned down slightly, and Chan's voice, which is fantastic becomes the really star. This all opposed to her Jools Holland performace which just seemed to be trying too hard. I'd give Cat Power a D.

Radiohead played a couple more songs, Wierd Fishes, and 15 Steps, which were both excellent, and it just made hope more that they'll be playing at Glastonbury this year. It seems a Glasto cliche to have Radiohead in the mixer, but it would be incredible for me at least!

I've given my voice a rest now, time to get back on the Radio!

Smallest League in the World

If you know the faces it makes it so much more enjoyable! Especially some of the commentary "It's just not Mavers' day!"

And Hickie trying not to laugh as cycles past on his bike. Nicely shot though.

Altjiranga mitjina

I have always been able to remember dreams. When I was at school I was always the only person in our class who ever seemed to talk about what I had dreamt about, noone else seemed to remember them, or they were not interested in their dreams at all. I'm not especially interested in dream interpretation, I've had books bought for me before, and I've read Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams. It's not the meaning that I am really interested in, but the experience itself, the feeling of being in another world.



From a while back I can remember the fragment of dream which inspired me to write this post. I dreamt that I was a medium, but instead of receiving messages from beyond the grave at a seance, or something similar, I was receiving them through my dreams. In my dream I was going to sleep, and when I was dreaming within my dream ghosts would come to me and tell me things that I needed to pass on to the living. That's pretty much all I can remember from that one, but it intrigued me because of the fact that I was dreaming within my dream. Almost as two separate realities were being created. Maybe in my "dream's dream" I could have had a normal dream, instead of ghost visiting me. All sorts of mind boggling alternatives exist.

More recently my dreams have felt more related to my life. I've had countless dreams about Glastonbury Festival recently, and I've even had a couple of dreams about computer games that I like. In fact just a couple of nights ago I had one of those rare moments when you wake up and you're able to re-enter your dream from where you woke up from. I managed to do this 6 or 7 times that night. It was pretty weird, but it was a very cool dream!

I find nighttime quite an inspirational place in general, or maybe it's just being in bed that does it. I come up with lots of ideas for stories whilst I'm lying in bed, most come to me in the morning, but occasionally I'll have a dream that will inspire enough to write it down in case I forget it. All too often I've been in the familiar situation where you're convinced you'll remember what you've just dreamt, only to forget it by the morning.

The last thing I'm going to mention is deja vu, which is something which happens to all of us, well I imagine it does. Quite often I'll have recurring deja vu, where I might have had deja vu six months ago over something, then I'll have the same feeling again over a similar situation. However, the feeling doesn't relate to what happened 6 months ago, but to feeling of deja vu I had back then. Confusing? It also often feels like I may have dreamt the situation that I'm having deja vu about. I quite like deja vu as it makes me think lots about crazy possibilities within existence, which is always good to spin your mind out a bit on a Monday morning!

All this writing's made me feel tired now. Time for lunch!