The concert, editing and a dog with a phantom pregnancy

• February 26, 2012

I’ve been in Cumbria for 3 weeks now and I still don’t feel I have got started with the editing. There have been meetings at the Hatton Gallery and phone calls and my Mum’s 80th birthday.  It was freezing at first and lots of snow. Then I thought the dog was pregnant (turned out to be a phantom one - poor girl), and lots needed sorting out in the house. Then I got a cold which made the M.E. worse and I don’t edit when I feel bad as I make mistakes - like deleting files by accident.  And which bright spark at Youtube decided the whole site needed to be redesigned?  I’ve just spent all afternoon sorting out my Youtube site just as an article about it is about to come out.  Its was fine as it was boys!  (…I am sure they are boys).  

So now - hopefully - I can get the editing done. But after lots of logging - I do know how I am going to edit it, so I am not so worried. We have finally sorted out the concert and the line-up, the billing, the accommodation etc. Its been a job in itself. Thank God Paul Bream at Jazz North East is helping on that. But we are now having the Bohman Brothers and my friend pianist Steve Beresford doing a funny piece with a prepared grand piano, text and amplified found objects about Stefan Wolpe’s piano music for Schwitter’s poem An Anna Blume. Its really, really hard to play apparently. So they are going to do a piece about that. They are brilliant, funny, creative musicians and performance artists who between them have performed at the Barbican, The Royal Festival Hall, Tate Modern, The Louvre, and our gig Mopomoso at the Vortex. Then Phil Minton will do a more musical version of the Ursonate with German vocal artist and sound poet Ute Wassermann who is coming from Berlin. She has a major commission for the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival this year. Sylvia Hallett will do a solo on bicycle wheel and hardanger fiddle. The wheel sounds just like empty Norwegian fjords. Phil Minton (who has just performed at Aldeburgh in an opera about Dracula) and Roger Turner will also do a voice and found objects improvisation and anything else that we think of on the night… Its the 30th June in Hall 2 at the Sage Gateshead. I also had a visit from Lorna at the Cultural Olympiad last week and Ann my Arts Council officer. I think they are happy with everything. It must be hard for them to know. I was hoping to make it to the Sage next week for the John Cage evening, part of the AV Festival in Tyneside. But I think I have too much work to do.