Heavy Metal and Classical

heavymetal

There was a disaster in the final Home of the Wriggler gig in Plymouth, the hand-wheel broke 20 minutes in and couldn’t be repaired, as a result all the subtle lighting in the show was knocked out. Somehow they muddled through using the lights run off the two bikes but it was a bad business.

Fortunately Mark had prepared us for this eventuality by packing us off with a spare motor and today Craig was able to perform the transplant and revive the hand-wheel. At the same time his on-going efforts to mitigate the attritional effects of touring and keep the racing bike operational had hit a major problem. An indentation needed to be drilled in a tough bit of metal and our cordless drill was making little impact. After a period of frustration boarding on despair it occurred to me that our landlords are metal fabricators. A quick chat with the boss and a visit to one of the workshops and our recess was precision drilled and the bike was back together more robust than it has been for months and ready for a tour of duty in Dartington tomorrow and Frome on Thursday.

From bike repair we zoomed directly over to the CBSO Centre to interview players from Birmingham Contemporary Music Group for our forthcoming collaboration I See WIth My Eyes Closed. We are gathering thoughts about what it is to be a professional musician and these interviews were set up to help us. It was a fascinating afternoon. The players were all very generous with their time and open in their approach to our questions, I would happily have stayed on all afternoon pumping them for information and stories. We learned a tremendous amount, not least that we are going to have to rethink how we approach Section 3 of our piece. Damn. Two steps forwards and one back.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *