Last week I was drumming for a pantomime version of Treasure Island. It went as well as could be expected, but I wasn’t impressed with the choice of songs. It also took up the whole week: tech on Sunday, Act 1 Monday, Act 2 Tuesday, full dress Wednesday, then performances Thursday, Friday & Saturday (x2). [...]

Tomorrow I am going to a “Virtuoso Violin” concert at The Gardening Club, Covent Garden. Unusual venue for a classical gig, I know! Violinists Simon Hewitt Jones and David Worswick and cellist Tommy Hewitt Jones are headlining, and I’m going because it sounds too cool to miss. Also I know Simon and Tommy from my [...]

A mixed post this evening. First of all, I have finally joined a new team at work. I’ll be working on the new Product Information Management (PIM) tool that John Lewis is going to be using to replace some fairly old in-house-written screens and things, and will introduce totally new functionality as well. It’s a [...]

I went to a fantastic concert last night at the Barbican: Steve Reich Three movements Stravinsky The Rite of Spring Steve Reich (arr Alan Pierson) The Desert Music London Symphony Orchestra Synergy Vocals Xian Zhang conductor Once I had got over feeling nervous on behalf of the players (keeping your place in any of the [...]

This time on the other side of the fence. Went to see This Town Needs Guns at a pub in Shoreditch. Dan Adams, the bass player, is a mate of mine from school. (I was slightly surprised to discover that he got married a couple of weeks ago; I knew he was getting married, but [...]

Last night I played at a wedding party. My cousin asked me to play; he’s an amazing bass player, and the guitar and drummer were both really good, so I felt like the amateur there. There were quite a few jazz/swing numbers and some Elvis rock’n’roll, which is really hard work to play, especially on [...]

I’ve been asked to play keys for a wedding gig—swing and rock’n’roll stuff, I think. It’s not until the beginning of September, but should be fun. :-) Also means I’ll have to learn (ok, so I’ll play from lead sheets, but still) some new songs and in a different style which is always good; there’s [...]

Well, tonight was the John Lewis Partnership Music Society’s summer concert, “An Evening with Rodgers and Hammerstein”, in Cadogan Hall. We had glittery cowboy hats and brightly coloured shirts and lots of fun. I was on timpani, with my friend Zoë-Laura on tuned percussion, and it was a lot of fun. The radio-mics seemed to [...]

My site is now hosted by Prime Hosting. I’ve switched away from WebFusion for 3 reasons: I was paying too much. WebFusion only offered me 1 MySQL database; I now get 5, which is plenty. Prime Hosting offers Ruby and Ruby on Rails support. This is a Good Thing™ as Ruby is cool. :-) I [...]

I’m going to be accompanying another of my piano teacher’s pupils for her clarinet diploma in December, with a concert in November as a sort of practice run for the recital. Went to have a play-through of the pieces this evening. The pieces are very nice; I especially enjoyed Joseph Horovitz’s Sonatina, the third movement [...]