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Yesterday’s JEBO gig was a tricky experience. One of the onstage monitors was misbehaving badly, cutting out Rob’s guitar at times and popping and crackling all the way through Threw It Away. It meant sonic isolation on my side of the stage, which is bad enough at the best of times, but given that Rob was playing acoustic guitar rather than electric the problem was exacerbated as I could hardly hear anything coming back from front of house either. Usually our onstage sound is pretty good, and on some occasions if has been as close to perfect as you are likely to get, but these difficult gigs where you cannot connect what your fingers are doing to anything else that is happening make for a disconcerting time. Much as I enjoy the playing, I was quite keen yesterday for the whole experience to end and to get off stage.

I spent a decent amount of time on the Korean arrangements on Wednesday and intend to do the same today in en effort to have the entire project out of the way by the beginning of next week, a target which should be easily attainable. I have other things to get on with and do not want this to drag on. There will also be performances of With Thy Might over the weekend, pretty much all around Kent, so you have been warned.

It seems as though I have been doing nothing but arranging since the beginning of March – Ar Hyd Y Nos, parts for the Malcolm Sargent Festival Choir concert at St John’s, Smith Square, and now the two batches for Korea. There is more to come, but I am itching to get some of my own notes down on paper once again, rather than pushing somebody else’s around. The mini-queue of commissions is promising to build up into something quite satisfying by the end of the year, but it will be a couple of months before these begin to come through properly.

By this evening I would hope to have reduced the pile of A3 on my composition desk by at least half. I then intend to treat myself to an evening off and crack open a board game, something I have done too little recently. Top of the list tonight is 7 Wonders, and it will be good to lose myself for a while in building my own little Giza. With some luck I should be able to hear what is going on on the other side of the gaming table as well…

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