48 Hours at Edinburgh Festivals 2015

Edinburgh Festival Reviews 2015

Like most Glaswegians I am vaguely aware of Edinburgh as a thing, and spend most of the year oblivious to what it is up to. However, in August each year this becomes impossible as the Edinburgh Festivals draw the London media, the combined population of every Oxbridge Drama Soc and 1000s of visitors to the city on a daily basis. This year I had the chance to spend a day off work in Auld Reekie, and take in some of the festival attractions. On Friday I managed to see two concerts from the Edinburgh International Festival, two plays from the Fringe and several exhibitions from the Edinburgh Art Festival. To help me remember what I actually did, I'll knock up a quick review of what I saw. Not only was this a good chance for me to overdose on some culture and entertainment, but as I was using some friends' unused complimentary tickets and gallery passes, I saved myself over £100. Much as that was pleasing for me, it does flag up one of the problems here at the festival, that not everyone gets to join in.

One highlight of this year's Edinburgh International Festival is the new stage adaptation of Alasdair Gray's classic book, Lanark. I caught one of the preview performances in Glasgow (review here) before it transferred to Edinburgh's Royal Lyceum Theatre. After its run in Edinburgh it will return to Glasgow's Citizens Theatre in September, where the tickets are about half the price of the Edinburgh ones. There will also be discounts for those living in the Gorbals and concessions for the unemployed reducing the price of the best seats in the house to £2. I mention this only to highlight the point that ticket prices do not need to be as prohibitively expensive as many appear to be in Edinburgh, where even a student doing an hour's monologue about cheese can expect to charge £12 a go.

Exhibitions

A frequently used device in some of Alasdair Gray's art is the drawing hand of the artist appearing in the work. I was thinking of this whilst seeing the same idea used to such great effect at the wonderful MC Escher exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, "The Amazing World of MC Escher". They have pulled together a fantastic quantity of his works, from the very familiar, to his early etchings and sketches of Islamic tiles, flat Dutch fields and the Alhambra Palace that you can recognise in his later material. Seeing them in the flesh, instead of in reproduction, you can appreciate the effort and attention to detail that went into producing his work. Also his skill as a craftsman shines through. 

A cancelled etching plate created by MC Escher

I also had the chance to swing past Jupiter Artland, a slowly growing sculpture park of modern art on the outskirts of Edinburgh where I was mesmerised by Tara Donovan's exhibition. Her large sculptures made from Slinkies, plastic cups and the material used to make helium balloons (Mylar) are beautiful. 

Untitled (Mylar) by Tara Donovan

St Mary's Cathedral, Edinburgh

On a more personal level I found the exhibition about the men who served on the boats of the Arctic Convoys during the second world war interesting. The men shown here received the Ushkanov Medal in 2014 for their efforts to try to supply the Russian people. The exhibition itself, in the beautiful St Mary's Cathedral, of photographs and small tapestries inspired by their stories is a bit sparse, but fascinating information about their lives is explored in more detail in the accompanying booklet.

My own interest in hearing about this was because my gran's brother died at sea during the war, off of the coast of Norway (I've written about him here). I now have the Arctic Star which my great uncle was awarded after his death, and I could recognise this medal, amongst others, on the chests of the men in the photographs here.

Arctic Star medal of Donald Bailey

The works from the official Edinburgh Art Festival are scattered throughout Edinburgh and most can be reached by a quick walk around the city centre. Charles Avery's work Tree no. 5 (from the Jadindagadendar) greets you in Waverley Station as you get off of the train from Glasgow. A wee bit harder to find, but worth seeking out is Holoturian by Ariel Guzik. This is in Trinity Apse, a disused church off of the Royal Mile which I can remember coming to when we came through to the Edinburgh Miners' Gala, in the days when it was the brass rubbing centre. Now the space is filled with Ariel Guzik's nautical drawings, collected material, whale sounds and his submersible. The mirror below it reflects the depth of the church tower. 

Ariel Guzak's Holoturian

At Gladstone's Land on the Royal Mile Hanna Tuulikki performs a vocal duet, SING SIGN:a close duet with Daniel Padden on film, and at other times live further down the hill. I am a fan of her work and loved the recent piece she created, "Away With The Birds" (a version of which is now online as an interactive website). The commissions from the Art Festival have taken Italo Calvino's book "Invisible Cities" as inspiration under the theme The Improbable City. This is captured nicely here by the performers, on a two-screen film installation singing a composition based on the strange topography of the medieval closes leading off of the Royal Mile. I was never sure if the seagulls and car engines I could hear in the background were outside this ancient room, in the street, or were part of the film, which all added to a sense of place.

Other exhibitions under the umbrella of the Art Festival include Phyllida Barlow's set at the Fruitmarket Gallery, a work on a disorientating scale. I was a bit disappointed by Here Comes Everybody, an exhibition by kennardphillips at the Stills Gallery which is less finely honed than some of their other work (google kennardphillips, if you don't know the name, you'll recognise their work).

More biting photographic work was on show in the foyer of the Scottish Parliament with the World Press Photo exhibition. This could really have come with some warnings about the graphic nature of some of the content, particularly photos from the Ukrainian conflict and the downed MH17 Malaysian aircraft. A sharp reminder of the powerful storytelling ability of good photojournalism.

A small part of Phyllida Barlow's set

Within the Scottish National Gallery I found the works of 18th century Swiss artist Jean-Etienne Liotard a bit underwhelming. He is not an artist I had ever heard of but his hyper-realism style drew my attention from his wacky self-portrait used on the publicity for the exhibition. The exhibition, largely of court portraiture, doesn't seem to merit the £9 you are charged to view it.

More photography is on show at the Scottish National Gallery, £11 for "Bailey's Stardust" seemed a bit steep and if we had come as a family to these two exhibitions instead of me coming alone using someone else's free pass, this would have been a ludicrously expensive visit. This is a David Bailey retrospective with over 250 photos from over 50 years of work. His early work from 1960's East End London is the most engaging material, where the characters pictured do seem to sparkle. His later court portraiture of the great, the good and the fashionable of the swinging sixties I felt no connection to. Maybe you had to be there.

Royal Mile during the Edinburgh Festival

Music

Musically my day started with Scottish percussionist Colin Currie and friends at the Queen's Hall.

I have seen Colin Currie play several times before, usually his interpretations of Steve Reich's work, and Reich's "Quartet for Two Vibraphones and Two Pianos" was one of the pieces performed here. Before that we had John Adams's Hallelujah Junction, played on two pianos and nicely echoing Reich's style it reveals the piano as the percussion instrument it is in this crisp performance. Both pieces fizzed with jazz-tinged energy. The second half opened with a warm, solo piece for marimba by Norwegian composer Rolf Wallin and ended with Bartok's Sonata for Two Percussion and Piano feeling strangely muted in comparison. It was a great way to spend two hours, even if the highlight of my day was accosting Nobel prize-winning physicist Professor Peter Higgs at the interval. If anybody knows what "star struck" literally means, it is this unassuming man whose achievements I would rather see proclaimed in exhibitions on Princes Street than the images currently there. After texting my science-mad son that I had spotted him, he was dead keen that I get an autograph of one of his heroes. I am grateful to Professor Higgs for tolerating my interruption to his day in the charming manner he did. As my son continues to harbour ambitions to study physics himself this wee memento will mean a lot to him. 

My day finished off with a concert by celebrated Chinese pianist Lang Lang at the Usher Hall. Like many of his performances at the festival this year this concert was sold out. His traditionalist piano repertoire, playing Bach, Tchaikovsky and Chopin this evening, isn't the type of thing I'd normally come to see (as I said above, some of these tickets ended up with me when others weren't able to attend) however it was an entertaining evening, if not exactly the most dramatic performance I have ever seen. For two hours alone at the piano he had the audience eating out of his hand. He began with Tchaikovsky's The Seasons, twelve short pieces Tchaikovsky wrote for the amateur pianist evoking each of the twelve months. I got a bit lost through the year and struggled to get a feel of which seasons were passing. Bach's lively Italian Concertos received "whoops" and applause from the audience for an energetic performance. A Chinese journalist was asking me at the interval if I thought he brought an "Eastern" rather than "Western" interpretation to the music, but I could only offer that he brought a "Lang Lang" interpretation to it, not wanting to say that it was Harpo Marx I was thinking of at times as he pointed, gurned and emoted. The second half, consisting of Chopin Scherzos, was performed with skill and bravura, but didn't give me the warmth and enjoyment I'd felt from the performances earlier in the day. Also particular audience members whom I was sat near were insufferable.

Theatre

In the afternoon my random Fringe choices brought me to Assembly Roxy to see an hour of Dylan Thomas: The Man, The Myth. Narrated by Thomas's grand-daughter Hannah Ellis and performed with Guy Masterton's mellifluous tones, we learned about Hannah trying to find out about the grandfather she never met, and whom I never really knew beyond the image of the drinker poet. What came out most strongly from this was the strength and character of his powerful wife, Caitlin Macnamara, and as I left I passed by Blackwell's bookshop and picked up a copy of some of Thomas's poems. Bizarrely, although I've read all of his prose fiction I've never really given his poetry a go. I also didn't realise how autobiographical many of his writings were until hearing this performance.

Echoes, a play by one-time Spitting Image writer, Henry Naylor, is performed at the Gilded Balloon by Felicty Houlebrooke and Filipa Braganca. They play two 17 year-old women from Ipswich who, separated by over 100 years, go to Afghanistan and Syria to marry and to do their perceived Christian/Muslim duty. The parallels become apparent once we learn that British women were needed to go and marry British soldiers, out in the east fighting for the Empire and trade. As their overlapping monologues unfold we see history repeating itself and gain some insight into the hopes, expectations and disillusionment of both women. It was a fascinating idea, well acted and well told.

Hearts 3-0 Partick Thistle. Tynecastle, 22nd August 2015

On Saturday I was back in Edinburgh with the hottest ticket in town. A sell out crowd filled Tynecastle to see Hearts play Partick Thistle in the SPFL match of the day. Sadly Thistle didn't turn up and Hearts had a straight-forwards 3-0 victory. After this I was in the mood for some uplifting theatre, but as we had tickets for Antigone, we settled for Greek tragedy instead.

I do like the ancient Greek plays, and always try to catch them whenever a version comes around. I have seen some really memorable adaptions of Sophocles and Euripides works, particularly I'm thinking of Theatre Babel's productions of Medea and Elektra. More recently I enjoyed a very traditional performance of Antigone by Strathclyde Theatre Group. My earliest exposure to Antigone was as assistant stage manager at the Knightswood Secondary School Drama Club when our teacher had us perform it for the school. A trifle ambitious I feel in retrospect.

The production at the Edinburgh Festival had already played at the Barbican Theatre in London and featured Juliette Binoche in the lead role. A new translation by Canadian writer Anne Carson and directed by Ivo van Hove, this was a mouthwatering prospect. The thing about Antigone is its ongoing relevance and the fact that it can be so open to interpretation. After the two brothers of Antigone on opposing sides of a civil war die in battle, King Creon decrees that one will be buried with honour, the body of the other left on the battlefield for the birds and wild dogs to eat. Antigone cannot countenance this and defies her uncle, the king, to bury her brother with the dignity she feels everyone deserves. From here we can decide whether obedience to our rulers must come first, trumping family, tradition, personal beliefs, or not. "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists" as George W. Bush put it. The programme notes suggest that the Ukranian conflict was an inspiration behind this production, the bodies from the shot down MH17 flight lying ungathered between the opposing forces. We could alternatively think about refugees with this play, or even the Greek economic crisis. Do we obey EU rules above all as Creon may, or act as responsible, feeling human beings as Antigone does? If any of these ideas were floating about, it was the case that they decided against exploring them in this production. Antigone does not seem to have a moral or solid reason for her actions as Juliette Binoche plays her like a rather stroppy teenager. The stripped down setting and modern dress drains a lot of the melodrama of the play, the ending feels underplayed, losing so much impact. The amplified voices of the cast sometimes make it hard to identify who has spoken. The phenomenal story at the heart of it all survives, despite some clunky modern phrases that don't fit well, but it all feels like a missed opportunity. It was good, but it didn't seem to say anything or speak to us.

This was all that I managed to squeeze in with my 2 days at the other end of the M8 motorway. There is another week to run and a thousand other things out there to see and do that I didn't get the chance to. Many of the exhibitions will run on for longer or tour to other places.  Book festivals, comedy, political theatre...aargh, too much choice.

Typical Edinburgh scene during festival.
A man plays a didgeridoo in Princes Street Gardens,
ignored by everybody including the seagulls

May Music in Glasgow. Tectonics and Minimal 2015 Review

Review : Minimal Glasgow 2015, Tectonics 2015 Glasgow

If you have flicked through the pages of the excellent new book "Dear Green Sounds - Glasgow's Music Through Time and Buildings" you will know that Glasgow has a long history of being an enthusiastic creator and audience for live music. In 2008 Glasgow was named one of nine UNESCO Music Cities and ever since the days of the "Glasgow's Miles Better Campaign" the city has tried to re-position itself as a cultural rather than an industrial hub. 

It seemed that this May Day weekend there were multiple entertainments fighting for our attention, and I just fear that as a result attendances at some of them may have suffered a wee bit. In the Venn diagram of musical tastes the overlapping set of people interested in modern classical music, jangley indie-pop and experimental new music contains maybe only a handful of people. However I was one of those people so could not attend all the Glasgow music festivals on the go this May Day weekend that I fancied. We had three days of Minimal 2015 at the Concert Hall, three days of the Tectonics Festival in the Fruitmarket and City Halls and Live at Glasgow playing at various venues around Sauchiehall Street on Sunday. Add to that the fact that Take That were playing 5 nights in the city, Partick Thistle were at home to St Mirren on Saturday and the Glasgow Open House art festival was on this weekend there were almost too many choices on offer. (I thought that the Rugby Sevens were on all weekend in Scotstoun too, but that is next weekend - not that I was planning to go to that, but I suppose some people do as it is already sold out). I have certainly spoken to a few people who fancied attending some of the above, but could not decide between the various offerings or just couldn't afford it.

Minimal Glasgow 2015 - Philip Glass, Music in 12 Parts

Glasgow Royal Concert Hall has been running a series of Minimalist music concerts for 5 years now and this year they had attracted two of the world's foremost modern classical composers. First up was Philip Glass on Friday night. This is the third time that I have been lucky enough to see him perform (1 and 2), and it was by far the most intense performance. Now 78 years old, he performed his 1975 piece "Music in 12 Parts" with the seven piece Philip Glass Ensemble. Glass, from Baltimore, and is most associated with the term minimalism which he dislikes, preferring to describe himself as a composer of "music with repetitive structures". Nowhere is that more clear than in this composition. The 12 parts of roughly 20 minutes each, can be played singly or in any order but tonight we were given the rare chance to hear the whole piece from start to finish, divided into four hour long sections with an hour long "dinner break" in the middle meaning the performance lasted from 6pm until after 11pm with both the musicians and the audience showing rapt concentration throughout. 

Philip Glass Ensemble in Glasgow

On stage three musicians, including Glass, played electric organs throughout whilst the other three musicians alternated between flutes and saxophones with a solo female vocalist the final part of the jigsaw. With a burbling, repetitive structure, small changes over time grow and shift giving it a gripping, mesmeric quality. Over the piece I found my thoughts drifting off occasionally, being drawn back into the room with a change in the rhythm or tone. It reminded me of an overnight train journey that I once took across Europe, with the constant soundtrack of the train on the track and the countryside out of the window slowly changing, almost imperceptibly, over time. A hugely enjoyable night. 

Tectonics Glasgow 2015

Part of Goodeipal's
performance

Having seen Philip Glass on Friday and having seen Partick Thistle see off St Mirren on Saturday afternoon, I was belatedly able to join the Tectonics Festival down in the City Halls on Saturday night. This is the third edition of this music festival in Glasgow, with Tectonics events also on the go from Iceland to Australia, curated by conductor Ilan Volkov. With the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra (BBC SSO) at the heart of it, this is a festival of contemporary classical music, new commissions, experimental performers and improvisers. Or to put it another way "that weird shit" as a friend said to me yesterday. Unfortunately I wasn't able to catch any of the performances by French composer Éliane Radigue, 83-year old pioneer of electronic music. I did get to dip in and out of Danish/ Faroese artist Goodiepal's weekend long performance which involved lectures, electronic music and some pipe playing whilst his colleague wandered about blowing into a conch. 

The main concert featured the excellent and adaptable BBC SSO in the main hall performing five pieces. In the first half the most interesting piece was one written by Paul Newland, Angus Macphee. This is about a South Uist crofter who served in the Faroe Islands in WW2 and then was transferred to a psychiatric hospital in Inverness, where he remained largely silent and created woven pieces from found objects. It was an interesting and nuanced piece with many a pregnant pause. In the second half there was a nocturne by John Croft (...che notturno canta insonne) which felt like a very restless night sitting up waiting for someone to arrive home. The concert was finished off with a lovely cello concerto by Cassandra Miller, with soloist Charles Curtis. The lead cello sawed steadily at two notes whilst the orchestra swirled around him, the brass almost verging on a Mariachi sound at times. It was interesting hearing the cello as the solid backbone of the piece until we got to the last page when it let loose a brief lament. 

The late evening concert was a mixed bag of electronic manipulation, bangs and crashes in the Fruitmarket.

Minimal Glasgow 2015 - Steve Reich

Now 78 years old, Steve Reich was back in Glasgow with a new piece he had written for the Colin Currie Group (two years ago he was in town to watch them perform Drumming). First up he and Colin Currie were interviewed on stage and Reich was urbane and relaxed as ever. He is clearly a demanding critic of performances of his music, but it is nice to see that when audience questioners over-analyse his music, he responds with a flat "no, I don't think so" attitude.

Steve Reich and Colin Currie interviewed on stage 

The first piece performed was Music for Pieces of Wood (1973), a rhythmical piece played on five wooden claves and then Quartet, performed by two pianos and two vibraphones. In his talk beforehand Reich had talked about the process of creating this complex piece and how it has been refined by the performers to complete what we heard today.

The highlight came in the second half with the Colin Currie Group performing Music for 18 Musicians. With a steady, energetic pulse of the four pianos, the xylophones, marimbas and metallophone, seeing it performed live was fascinating as the musicians swapped positions and themselves ebbed and flowed across the stage with the music. A visual and aural spectacle that left me with a warm smile as we headed out into a cold, wet Glasgow evening. 

Tectonics Glasgow 2015

Having sacrificed an afternoon of Tectonic entertainments to see Steve Reich, we headed back down to City Halls to catch the evening concerts there. The BBC SSO were on impeccable form again as they struggled with the jerks and twiches of Peter Ablinger's "QUARTZ for high orchestra". The premise of this piece irritated me at a pedantic level as the orchestra were recreating the "sonically different" individual beats which a pre-recorded quartz watch made. However as the whole point of a quartz timepiece is that the crystal oscillator of a quartz watch creates an extremely precise frequency of signal. We were really listening to the different sounds of the watch mechanism next up the line. So not "quartz" at all, but more a chop, chop, plink, plonk Psycho shower scene pastiche.

Enno Poppe's Altbau was a more satisfying cacophony, which fell into a more melodic second movement. The second half of the concert was made up with a brooding, slow piece by Christopher Fox, Topophony, with harpist Rhodri Davies completing the composition with improvised accompaniment.

Finally we were through to the Fruitmarket, always a lovely venue for the closing concert of strangulated brass and mellifluous glass. Robin Hayward and Hild Sofie Tafjord played tuba and French horn to each other in the style many free-jazz musicians play saxophone, with a halting, choked action. Personally as someone with a love of Jamaican ska, when I see a brass instrument I prefer to hear it blow the roof off. The final performance was a treat, Daniel Padden's Glass Hundreds. Members of the orchestra were accompanied by performers getting a note from running their fingers around the rim of glasses of water. Their impressive finale of making music from blowing across the the tops of bottles whilst gulping down the contents to change the note was a suitably entertaining way to finish the weekend.

Instruments ready in the Fruitmarket
for the closing concert of Tectonics 2015

Both the Minimal series of concerts and Tectonics plan to return to Glasgow next year. As they both use Glasgow Life venues I am sure it is not impossible to try to avoid them arriving in town on the same weekend.

NB - Ticket prices

Partick Thistle vs St Mirren £22

Tectonics weekend pass £24, day ticket £16

Steve Reich or Philip Glass ticket £20-25

Live at Glasgow pass £23

Rugby Sevens weekend pass £50, day ticket £30
Take That £60-£90!

Review. Steve Reich in Glasgow, March 2013

One of the most influential composers of the 20th century, Steve Reich is now 76 years old and still as busy as ever in the 21st century by all accounts. Last year Bang on a Can and the London Sinfonietta performed some of his music in Glasgow as part of the "Minimal" series at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall. Now 12 months later the man himself was in town to perform a weekend of his music. His name is usually associated with minimalism, the use of tape loops, field recordings, repetition and hypnotic rhythms which often move apart and come together again and their were plenty of fine examples of this over the weekend.

The Saturday night concert promised a "full night of Reich, including a performance by the man himself". With two intervals and 4 hours to cover pieces from 1967's "My Name Is" to the recently commissioned "Radio Rewrite", premiered last week in London, a full night was definitely provided.

The first part of the evening  was performances by Powerplant with Joby Burgess. He is a percussionist who has often worked with experimental electronic artists and previously recorded versions of Steve Reich's work, which formed the core of his set here. However he didn't get off to the best start as his attempts to record audience members saying "My Name Is..." was thwarted by his computer crashing. Steve Reich managed to do it in the 60s with a tape machine, but the computerised version flopped. I also thought it was a bold move for a man called "Joby" to ask a Glasgow audience "What is your name?" but nobody turned the question back to him. With a 10 minute pause whilst they farted about with their computer one irritated chap tried to start a slow hand clap, but got nowhere as someone at the back of the hall replied to him in the style of Steve Reich's "Clapping Music" which was due up later. The version of "Electric Counterpoint" using his xylosynth, a halfway house between a xylophone and a synthesiser worked well and for someone my age awoke memories of "Little Fluffy Clouds" by the Orb which sampled Reich's original guitar version of the piece. Where the xylosynth really came into its own was on Graham Firkin's "Chain of Command" using samples of speeches of Donald Rumsfeld and George Bush looping like the droned music played in Guantanamo to wear down prisoners. It is very much a "Oh, I'd like to play with that"-type of instrument.

Next Steve Reich himself, peaked cap as ever, came onstage with percussionist David Hockings to perform "Clapping Music" before taking his seat back in the hall to watch the rest of the performances. It was interesting looking back at performances of the same piece on YouTube. When performed tonight, although the rhythm is the same, the softer clapping of a 76 year old man changes the sound and force of it all. "Electric Counterpoint" was performed again, this time with the guitar playing of Mats Bergstrom, which held the attention throughout playing live over the recorded sounds of him playing the other 10 guitar parts. Then 5 members of the London Sinfonietta played "2x5", which I had seen last year and was frankly disappointed with it. This performance was much sparkier and more lively, and steered away from classically trained musicians trying to be funky. However as a piece of music, I still find it drags a bit and this maybe reflects my ambivalence to electric guitars more than anything else.

During the interval Steve Reich was signing autographs and chatting to audience members. He seemed unfazed by being asked to sign someone's stookie (or plaster cast if you're not from round here). The queue of people waiting for signatures showed the same childish excitement in their faces that my 10 year old son had shown earlier today when he got his match programme signed by Partick Thistle's Chris Erskine. There can't be many modern composers that get this rock star treatment. Next up was the newly commissioned piece "Radio Rewrite" which he wrote based loosely on the Radiohead songs "Everything in its Right Place" and "Jigsaw Falling Into Place". I was hard pushed to discern any Radiohead in there, but I don't really know these songs well enough but it ebbed and flowed, fast and slow, through them and was one of the highlights of the evening. For a finale 12 musicians from the London Sinfonietta played "Double Sextet", two sextets of piano, vibraphone, flute, clarinet, violin and cello playing against each other. This was the real high spot of the night for me, an excellent performance of a superb piece.

 

The second part of the weekend started with a talk from Steve Reich in the concert hall's auditorium. I hoped he would expand upon the mad-sounding removal firm that he mentioned in a recent interview that he used to run with Philip Glass. However before that, big Joby was back to try again to perform "My Name Is" which was defeated by technical glitches last night. Firstly we cleared up the fact that his name is pronounced to rhyme with Toby, and the piece itself was worth making the effort to create, the effect of accents and technology making it a very lively work, the throbbing rhythms of peoples voices and names being looped.

The highlight of the weekend was the talk from Steve Reich. The clarity, sincerity and honesty of what he had to say was refreshing. His enthusiasm for African rhythms and music shone through and his desire that people find joy and ecstasy in his music was heartfelt. The insights gained from hearing him talk with such keenness and oomph will send me back listening to his music with new ears. WTC 9/11 in particular I'm keen to seek out and I'll be listening to "Different Trains" again with new perspectives.

I didn't have long to wait for the first opportunity to listen to his music performed again as rattling along next up was a performance of "Variations for vibes, pianos and strings" in the foyer with the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland and the London Sinfonietta.

The Colin Currie Group then took to the stage with "Drumming". The grand praise heaped upon them earlier by the composer was well deserved. I've heard this piece in recordings before but was blown away hearing it performed live. Your ears pick up the altering beats more easily than your eyes can discern any changes in the blurring sticks of the percussionists. By the time that there were nine musicians on the marimbas the hall was echoing to their droning bell sounds. I'd taken my kids along for this part and despite their normal reaction to music which I enjoy being "hmmmm" they too did really enjoy the performance.

It was a invigorating end to a fascinating weekend.

Minimal Extreme, Kids Comedy and Hunger

Another Friday night and another concert I can't persuade anyone that they'll enjoy. So off I trudge alone to the Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow to see the latest instalment in the current "Minimal Extreme" programme. Minimalism in music seems to be quite a broad church going by the line up tonight, and although they put on three consecutive concerts tonight I could only make it to the middle one. It was hearing Steve Reich's Eight Lines performed live that drew me. I'm not really qualified to judge the abilities of classical musicians, but the performance of it by the London Sinfonietta was full of energy, pace and I listened to it with a smile on my face. Before that was Bang On A Can doing Louis Andriesen's Life, played as accompaniment to four short films made as part of the piece. The gentle music and films were quietly disquieting and enjoyable. The part which dragged for me was Bang On A Can doing Reich's 2x5, a piece for two quintets of two electric guitars, piano, electric bass guitar and drum kit played on this occasion live and on tape simultaneously. It had all the dull, relentless features of prog rock's self-indulgence, not helped by Mark Stewart on guitar looking like Tim Robbins's wanky character from High Fidelity.

The last piece was from the excellent London Sinfonietta again, doing Gavin Bryar's Jesus Blood Never Failed Me - gentle, simple and the quiet singing of the tramp left me fumbling for some Tom Waits on my iPhone to listen to on the way home. I'm looking forward to the next round of these concerts with Philip Glass performing in Glasgow.

Partick Thistle 0-1 Ross County
I shall now just pass over Saturday as I spent a very long 90 minutes of my life watching Ross County grind out another result, this time winning 1-0 at Firhill. I try to get my three kids interested in coming to see Partick Thistle more often, usually with blatant bribes of chocolate, but if they'd come to watch this performance it may have been a while before they came again. Such a contrast to the fight shown in recent weeks.

Hunger Games and Kids Comedy Club
Sunday morning it was easier to persuade people to come along with me, as me and my 12 year old headed to see The Hunger Games. This blockbuster has only been out for two days but the hottest March day in Scottish records and yet another Old Firm game on at another part of town meant that we had the whole cinema to ourselves. Very weird. The film itself has a good solid story, individual style and works well, although the schoolkids murdering each other sits oddly as a teen film storyline. I can see where it's heading though and I'm sure good will out, and I was helped by my son constantly telling me "In the book, what actually happens is..." which was one advantage of having our own private viewing. It has fairly accurately been described on twitter as "Battle Royale with Cheese", but I'd add in a bit of The Running Man and some Twilight romance too to give you the full picture.

The Stand Comedy Club in Glasgow is always a great night out, though it does take me a while to relax in there, trying to work out whether the comedians are going to be big on picking on the audience as I try to avoid eye contact with them. Monthly on a Sunday afternoon, and more often at present during the Comedy Festival, they do a kids comedy club, when some of their usual acts try to entertain largely 8-12 year olds. It is a good laugh for adults too and fascinating to watch the varying degrees of success or failure they have in adapting their stuff for an audience where you can't get laughs out of putting the punters down and swearing and 80's references has to be replaced by fart gags and more physical comedy. Once the kids get their confidence up, a talent for crowd control also comes in handy, which the compere today, Billy Kirkwood managed to pull off. Headline act today, Patrick Monahan, has also I guess spent enough time in the company of kids that he managed to pull off the balancing act. (If you are free on Wednesday can I urge you to go see Tony Law at The Stand, I've seen him before and he'll have you quite literally pishing yourself.)

Emerging from their basement into the late afternoon sun to see what carnage the Rangers and Celtic fans were wreaking on the city, things seemed remarkably calm. Perfect night for eating out in the back where last year at this time we were making snowmen.