Saturday 19 June 2010

The Week, er, Behind

On Monday I posted about all I have to do this week.

Things are some things that didn't get done. I still haven't rescheduled my dental appointment, and there are a few other phonecalls that have piled up, which isn't so good. I fought with the piece for the St Paul's competition but still I don't have a rough draft I'm happy with, so I'm having to consider whether I'll submit anything at all. I didn't get around to finding recordings for the choir at St Andrew's to listen to, and I didn't get to the recitals at Trinity that I wanted to attend.

There were some good things, though. The choir rehearsal at St Andrew's yesterday evening went well despite my rather shallow preparation and only having two people there. It's quite hard work to sing with so few people present and those who did turn up worked hard and did well.

Also yesterday I met with Rev Kathryn Robinson, the newly-appointed Performing Arts Adviser for the Barking Episcopal area. It was good to meet her and to talk about some of what I do, what's going on at St Andrew's, and some of the collaborations that might be possible.

The Brigantia Consort rehearsal on Thursday night felt efficient and useful, despite all of us being rather exhausted. We've managed to share out the writing of programme notes in a way that I think makes sense, we made some decisions about clothing (always difficult if you decide you don't want to just wear black), we narrowed down some of the repertoire for the concert on 11th July and oh, yeah, we rehearsed some music. I don't want to speak too soon -- it definitely needs more work -- but tuning between serpent and violin does seem to be improving.

At Quire on Wednesday night I did not completely disgrace myself at playing a rather tricky bassline on an instrument with a turning circle the size of an elephant, and as usual I enjoyed the rehearsal immensely.

Teaching on Monday and Tuesday went well. It was the first week of trying out some new timing for Tuesdays, which looks like it's going to work a lot better for my students as well as meaning I get home a good 45 minutes earlier. Hooray! The long-term viability of making the journey from Leytonstone to North London two days a week has been weighing on me recently; the later nights on Tuesday definitely weren't helping. I was still too tired to do as much psalmody-related reading as I would have liked, though.

Today has been a Day Off, except that writing this post probably counts as work, oops. Tomorrow will be mostly church and another attempt at some composing, and then a look at what lies ahead next week.

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