Several years ago I premiered Traversing, Rand Steiger’s concerto for cello and live electronics at Cadogan Hall in London with the Southbank Sinfonia. It was memorable partly because we checked, double-checked and triple-checked all the electronics before the performance, left the hall at 6.55pm, came back at 7.30, no-one having touched anything…I started the piece, the orchestra came in…and the electronics did nothing! The engineers then had to spend several minutes dismantling various bits of gear and re-patching, and then it worked miraculously. But it was a memorable evening mainly because the piece is really fantastic. We recorded the following day, and Rand took the audio files and worked wonders with the electronics to produce a very exciting disc that also includes other pieces of his, all equally beautiful, imaginative and often moving. Check the link here

Last night I played at the Landmark Arts Centre in Teddington – what an amazing building! It appears that two wealthy Victorian ladies wanted to make a statement with a bigger church than the one across the road, so they set out to build a cathedral! But, sadly, they ran out of money half way through, so the gorgeous stone vaulted roof (it’s all done in perfect French Gothic Cathedral style), ends about a quarter of the way down what would have been the full length, and the building itself only makes it half way – there is a brick wall that cuts it off in its prime. It was a place of worship for around 100 years, but de-consecrated in the 1970s and is now an arts centre with a really wonderful acoustic – especially for solo cello – just close to the Thames in one if its most pleasant urban stretches. Very good audience who really listened (or were asleep) quietly and attentively. Go check it out.