Ian Louis Harris

A Couple Of Gresham Lectures To Enhance My “Tudor Guitar” Knowledge, 17 January and 7 February 2018

I felt a little foolish at the end of the Gresham Society soiree in December, when Professor Cox asked me, after seeing my Renaissance guitar and vocal performance of Innsbruck – reported here and below, why he hadn’t seen me at Christopher Page’s lectures on 16th and 17th Century guitar…

Gresham Society Soirée, Barnards Inn Hall, 14 December 2017

…the answer, quite simply, was that I hadn’t even noticed that they were happening. I know I’m supposed to be finding more time for the things I want to do now, but I hadn’t even skimmed the Gresham College lecture list for the 2017/18 year.

Of course, one of the many wonderful things about Gresham College these days is that the lectures are all archived on-line, including in video form.

So over Christmas I caught up with Christopher Page’s series, by watching the first two lectures on-line.

You can find the whole series here – to the extent that it has already been delivered and uploaded by the date when you click through.

I found both lectures absolutely fascinating. I was particularly taken with the notion, which Christopher Page stated very clearly in the first of the lectures, that the Tudor guitar was, to all intents and purposes, a baritone ukulele; i.e. “my” instrument.

I learnt a lot watching those two lectures and/but I realised that such lectures, with live performance included, would be far more stimulating and enjoyable live…

…especially in the beautiful setting of St Sepulchre-without-Newgate…

…which is, after all, within even easier reach of the Z/Yen offices than Gresham College itself (by a few hundred yards).

So I booked out the remaining four dates in my diary and resolved to try my very hardest to organise my City working days around those slots.

I’m glad to report that my plan worked for lectures three and four.

17 January 2018 – The Guitar in the Age of Charles I

This was a wonderful lecture, not least for the diversity of the performances that peppered the lecture. Not only several different stringed instruments – the period covers the transition from four-course gittern-type Tudor instruments to five-course Baroque guitars of the Spanish variety – but also some performance with castanets which was a very pleasant surprise and addition. Christopher Page himself played a bit during this lecture.

So I commend the YouTube below if you can spare the time to watch it – most enjoyable as well as informative:

This link to the Gresham College site itself – click here – not only has the video but also the transcripts and audio file.

I picked up a few ideas for my playing at this lecture, not least realising that even I can muck around with the later Folia progression.

A charming lady sat next to me during this lecture – a visitor from Canada – who was strolling the City – had never heard of Gresham College and had simply wandered in having seen the sign outside the church. She was absolutely transfixed by the lecture and the whole idea of Gresham College. She chatted for a while with me, Professor Francis Cox and Frieda after the lecture; it turned out she was also named Francis.

7 February 2018 – An Englishman (with a Guitar) Abroad

I actually did a slightly better job of organising my work around this day, but that did mean that I really was squeezing in the lectures time slot, but still I was able to get to the church in time to grab a decent seat.

At the time of writing (9 February 2018) the video has not yet been uploaded, but the other resources are there and the lecture will go up in full eventually I am sure…

…update: below is the video of the lecture:

– click here for the full Gresham resource – i.e. the above video plus all other available resources.

Ulrich Wedemeier – the sole performer for this lecture

Again the lecture and the performances were fascinating and interesting.

My fun takeaway from this lecture was a vignette about Charles Stuart (soon to become Charles II) spending 50 livres to transport one guitar and 18 tennis rackets from France to England (presumably in expectation of the Restoration).

Click here for a link to the relevant page in Christopher Page’s book.

This possibly says something about Charles’s relative levels of interest in those two hobbies, but probably says more about his relative playing styles and the fact that broken tennis rackets cannot be repaired in quite the same way that guitars can be restored.

It brought to mind one of my favourite pictures from a busy day a year or so ago when I indulged both hobbies on the same day:

Packing it all in; real tennis and 16th/17th century guitar jam – did Charles Stuart’s consignment look anything like this?

An Unusually Busy Day With Tennis, Middlesex/Saracens and DJ Jamming Session, 9 May 2017

The rest of that day was littered with early music coincidences, which took me back thirty years and involved the Hilliard Ensemble and even Christopher Page’s Gothic Voices project too. Truly weird. Watch this space for a retroblog piece on’t.

The Believers Are But Brothers by Javaad Alipoor, Bush Theatre, 3 February 2018

“Please leave your mobile phones on and be sure to set the volume to loud”…

…is not an entreaty you’ll often hear in the theatre just before the start of the show, but for this show it makes a great deal of sense. It makes even more sense to join the Whatsapp group set up for the piece – not a requirement but an experience-enhancing move for sure.

Janie and I both obliged, but while I found all the social media discussion and exposition fascinating, Janie got lost in the techiness of it all and said the piece left her cold…

…which is a shame.

Because the story was, in my view, well written and well told by writer/performer Javaad Alipoor. He shows, through the stories of three disaffected young men, how people can be radicalised through social media, both to Islamic extremism and also to alt-right type fanatical politics.

Janie said she found the whole idea of it rather depressing. It didn’t make me feel that way. Concerned, yes, but not depressed. Disaffected youngsters have always been susceptible to extremism – social media is just the modern way of grooming and recruiting them.

I’m more concerned with the ways social media seem to be polarising opinion and dragging communities apart from each other, rather than fulfilling their potential role as universal media that can bring people closer together.

But that’s another story…and if Javaad Alipoor wants to write a play about that, I’d be up for seeing more of his work…

…but Janie might not be so keen to go with me.

Here is a link to the Bush resource on this piece/production.

Mixed reviews from me and Janie – similarly mixed reviews from the critics – click here for a search term that finds them.

The Lords, Then Lord’s, Plus A Coincidental Segue Between The Two, 1 February 2018

Just before Christmas , I received an invitation from the House of Lords to give some follow-up evidence to the evidence I gave on Brexit back in October 2016 – click here or below to read about that first occasion:

Two Visits To Two Different Lord Places In One Day, 27 October 2016

You can also read the report that came out in March 2017, which (I was pleased to discover) cited me several times – click here.

Anyway, I decided to make it a Lords/Lord’s day again, so booked to play real tennis late afternoon.

On this second occasion, the chair of the committee, Lord Witty, was away, so Lord Aberdare took the chair. I have embedded the vid below:

You can judge for yourselves how it went. If you are a Facebookista, you can see how my Facebook friends reacted by clicking here.

I think my key moment was at c10:36 (about 30 minutes in) when I made the topical West London analogy of the slightly leaky pipe c/w the major burst water main. Much of West London had been without water pretty much all day on the day before the hearing – which I found rather nerve-wracking while I prepared, but it did lend me a useful analogy.

I did say some other stuff too, so it is certainly worth getting a bucket of popcorn and hunkering down for an hour of viewing.

16 months deeper into my real tennis career (and into Brexit of course), I kept thinking during the hearing that the name “Lord Aberdare” was familiar to me in a tennis context…then wondered whether I was getting confused.

When I got to Lord’s later, I saw that, as I had half remembered, the name “Lord Aberdare” was all over the real tennis Gold and Silver Racket honours board.

It transpires that our man, the current (fifth) Baron Aberdare‘s, grandfather, who was the third Baron Aberdare – click here or picture below for bio – had a twenty-or-so year cricket playing career for Middlesex County Cricket Club before and after the First World War and also went on to dominate amateur real tennis between the wars; probably one of the greatest amateur real tennis players ever.

by Walter Stoneman, bromide print, 1930. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_3rd_Baron_Aberdare_in_1930.jpg#file – see there for full details of non-free use rationale, which also applies to my use.

You’d have thought that this wonderful coincidence would have inspired me to a great victory on the tennis court that evening…but you’d be wrong. The 3rd Baron would not have been impressed by my performance on the court…

…I wonder what he would have made of Brexit and or my performance before the Peers? Would he have yelled “better than half a yard” or “hazard the door” to mark the end of my pivotal speech?

Brexit, Middlesex cricket and real tennis…the story of a fair chunk of my life at the moment, I suppose.

Out Of Love by Elinor Cook, Orange Tree Theatre, 27 January 2018

Another day, another excellent preview of a short play at the Orange Tree Theatre.

We saw Black Mountain the previous night – click here or below for that one:

Black Mountain by Brad Birch, Orange Tree Theatre, 26 January 2018

Out Of Love is the same cast, same creatives, but a different play in this rep season.

The acting was once again excellent. The set was the same – no props; just light and soundscape.

Here is a link to the Orange Tree resource for this play.

Janie and I had different views on the relative merits of the two pieces. Janie preferred this one, finding the tender emotional elements of it more gripping than the psychological thriller.

I was a little surprised that Janie warmed so much to this piece – she is usually very resistant to plays that leap backwards and forwards in time, complaining that they mess with her ability to follow the narrative line. She felt that the way the actors deployed their bodies and their voices made it very clear, most of the time, whether they were children, youngsters or adults.

I’m usually fine with temporal gymnastics, but this play had even me a bit confused right at the end, when the two female characters suddenly acquired names we’d never heard before and pregnancies…

…I heard several people wondering about that as we left the theatre…

…but about 15 minutes later, while washing my hands at Don Fernando before dinner, I worked out that the pregnant duo in the final scene must have been the mothers of the two female protagonists just before the main pair were born.

Below I have embedded the trailer:

Here is a link to a term that should pick up all the reviews – at the time of writing just reviews from previous venues as this piece is still in preview at the Orange Tree.

Going by the reviews, Janie is right and I am wrong – Out of Love seems to have gone down better on the whole with the reviewers.

Black Mountain by Brad Birch, Orange Tree Theatre, 26 January 2018

We thought this was a very good play/production indeed.

We have been very pleased with most of our visits to the Orange Tree since the dawn of the Paul Miller era; one of those excellent visits was a couple of years ago to see a Brad Birch play called The Brink – click here or below:

The Brink by Brad Birch, Orange Tree Theatre, 9 April 2016

That experience was good enough to have us looking out for Brad Birch, so we very much wanted to see Black Mountain…

…so much so that we decided to make a rare trip to Richmond on a Friday…

…indeed we shall repeat the visit today (the very next evening) to see Out Of Love; the other play being shown in rep with Black Mountain at the moment…

…we are looking forward to seeing the same cast and production team again, because Black Mountain was that good.

Here is a link to the Orange Tree resource on Black Mountain.

Very suspenseful, it reminded us a lot of The Brink, in that we see the psychological disintegration of one male character and at times cannot tell the extent to which the images and sounds we are hearing are supposed to be genuine or in his head.

But Black Mountain is also about relationships and guilt and whether trust can ever be restored fully after a major breach.

Great trailer – embedded below:

I suspect that the Orange Tree’s success with these modern plays owes a great deal to the spirit of collaboration; in this case with Paines Plough and Theatr Clwyd. Long may that spirit continue.

Here is a link to the reviews Black Mountain has had – it seems to have divided the critics with some excellent reviews and some indifferent ones. None of these at the time of writing are from this Orange Tree production (which is still in preview), although I suspect that this piece is already quite well honed over the autumn by this production team.

Janie and I vote it a hit.

Makedonissimo, Wigmore Hall, 21 January 2018

This was a very interesting and enjoyable concert. It had sounded like an excellent idea when we saw it announced in the booking schedule:

Simon Trpčeski traces his Macedonian musical roots in Makedonissimo, a programme of folk melodies specially arranged for piano and a band comprising violin, cello, woodwind and percussion.

A close collaboration with Pande Shahov, this concert will be the project’s UK première. Listen out for the strong jazz flavours of the traditional Pajdushka dance.

Most of the music was based on traditional circle dance music or “oro” music. There is evidence of such music dating back to medieval times, although no evidence that the particular Macedonian folk melodies used by composer Pande Shahov for these pieces are of anything quite like that vintage.

Indeed, Macedonian traditional music, in particular its dance music, prides itself on some extremely complicated rhythms – maxing out at around 22/16 and/but some using 4/4 and trying just about everything in-between. I’d hazard a guess that the more complex ones didn’t emerge until well after the Renaissance. Who knows?…

…and who cares? We heard some wonderful music.

Yes, it was easier to clap along and imagine dancing to the simpler rhythms. Some reminded us a bit of Latin American dance rhythms, simply because of the complexity rather than the exact nature of the rhythms – there was not “too much syncopation” (as Kid Creole might put it) – but there was a decidedly jazz feel to much of it, as promised.

Here is a link to the Wigmore Hall resource on this event.

The musicians were all excellent and enjoying themselves (jazz culture showing its face again). The percussionist, Vlatko Nushev, had the most amazing beard – twisted into the equivalent of a long pony tail – you can only just see it in this picture:

Vlatko does great beard as well as great percussion

The audience was not the usual Wigmore Hall crowd at all. Hardly any of the usual faces. The Macedonian community had turned out en masse and in style. Before the show they had a reception in the Bechstein Room which must have been 90% of the audience – it took an age to navigate the hall for the start of the show.

Here is a short vid of Simon Trpčeski playing a short piece by Pande Shavov, based on Macedonian folk music, in this case with the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra. It also gives you a feel for Simon Trpčeski’s intense desire to talk about, as well as play, the traditional music of his country; although this piece is more orchestral/classical in style than the small ensemble dance pieces we heard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsZ-vunPaXQ

Janie assumed that the very dolled-up woman sitting next to her was a Macedonian beauty; during the interval Janie remarked on, as she saw it, this Macedonian/Eastern European trait of women paying great attention to appearance. So Janie’s heuristics were somewhat dented when that particular woman engaged Janie in conversation as we sat down and it turned out that she was a visitor from Colombia who, purportedly, loves the Wigmore Hall and had picked up a sole ticket next to us…presumably a return.

There had been a rather shady-looking gentleman in a union jack tee-shirt sitting in one of our seats, next to the Colombian woman, when we arrived. Janie speculated as to whether they were a pair or not. I guessed not, while Janie speculated wildly.

Janie’s other obsession that evening was with the cellist, Alexander Somov, who looked nothing like his picture in the programme. All was explained at the end when the composer, Pande Shahov, came on stage to take a bow and we realised that their pictures had been accidentally switched in the programme.

We had a thoroughly enjoyable evening and learnt a little bit more about world music than we had known before.

Yous Two by Georgia Christou, Hampstead Theatre Downstairs, 20 January 2018

We both enjoyed this play.

The subject matter overlaps with several plays we have seen lately – not least the notion of bad parenting sometimes emanating as much if not more from the mother than the father. Also the notion of major personality and mental health issues being passed down the line.

Thematically, it particularly reminded me of Anatomy Of A Suicide which we saw at the Royal Court a few months ago – click here or below…

Anatomy Of A Suicide, Alice Birch, Royal Court Theatre, 3 June 2017

…but in the case of Yous Two, these serious issues are portrayed in a mostly comedic, or at least light-hearted style. The mother is dead and the father is trying his best…which isn’t to say that he is doing very well in many of the parenting departments. The daughter is sassy and clever and wants life to progress for her in a hurry.

I was more impressed by the play and the acting than I was by the set. The whole play takes place in the tiny bathroom of the father and daughter’s grubby pad. The (perhaps unnecessary) full length panels depicting the outside and inside walls of the bathroom adversely affected sight lines for most of the audience, at one end or both. I think that could have been avoided without detracting from the claustrophobic feel.

Worse; the layout of the bathroom was contrary to all common sense – with the toilet backing on to the inside wall and the radiator backing on to the outside wall. Yes I know some botched up bathrooms might end up designed that way, but given the sight-line problem and the illogical nature of the obstacles causing the sight-line problem…

…in any case director Chelsea Walker should know all about bathroom sets. We saw her recent work at the Orange Tree, Low Level Panic, which was also set in a bathroom – click here or below:

Low Level Panic by Clare Mcintyre, Orange Tree Theatre, 25 March 2017

If directors can get type cast in the same way as actors, Chelsea might expect to be directing plays set in bathrooms for the rest of her career now…so she should get her head around plumbing and the basics of design around utility services. I did also wonder, briefly, whether the notion of “kitchen sink drama” has now been superseded by a new genre; “bathroom tub drama”…yes, I obsessed.

So to get back to the bit that really matters, we did really like the play and we thought all of the performances were very good.

All of the protagonists were there the night we went – Chelsea Walker, Georgia Christou the writer etc, as we were there on a preview night.

Unusually for downstairs, there was a proper programme for this show and apparently there will be a press night and formal reviews. Perhaps there has been a permanent change of policy downstairs?…the ushers were unsure. We have long felt it is a shame that some of the wonderful things we have seen downstairs don’t get formal reviews, although we did understand the “freedom for experimentation and innovation” thinking behind the policy. Times change.

Here is a link to the Hampstead resource on Yous Two.

Click here or below for an interesting trailer about Yous Two:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPNTgp6M1GQ

Still in preview at the time of writing, but this link should find formal reviews if/when they come.

The Italian Connection: Sounds Baroque, St John’s Smith Square, 19 January 2018

I sort of have to drag Janie to SJSS these days, especially in the winter. There is a rather cold, austere feel to the place; increasingly so. The main hall looks tired and well overdue for a refurb or even the major overhaul that has been oft muted for years.

But I still love the place. This programme looked very interesting as it comprised performers we’d not seen before and several composers & works that would similarly be new to us. So Janie relented for once, recalling that she loves the crypt bar and heck, it was Friday evening after all.

Here is a link to the full programme of works for the evening.

The concert had not sold well, sadly, which does add to the coldness of the SJSS atmosphere. We sat at the front to get a good look.

I was especially keen to see the advertised “archlute, theorbo and guitar”, having always thought that the theorbo and the archlute were the same thing.

I went home none the wiser, as I am pretty sure we only saw two such instruments and it is quite hard to switch theorbo-type instruments unnoticed, I imagine. Perhaps the rubric was supposed to read “archlute (theorbo) and guitar”.

I’m obsessing.

The soprano, Anna Dennis, is clearly a superb singer and performed wonderfully well, although we sensed that she was not feeling 100% well. What a trooper.

Henrik Persson blessed us with fine playing on a seven string bass viol, which always feels like a bit of a “buy six get one free” bonus when we see one of those. Perhaps that makes up for the lack of the third plucky-strummy instrument.

Julian Perkins was consistently excellent on the harpsichord.

We both felt that James Akers was more natural on the theorbo than on the baroque guitar. Perhaps we are becoming more fussy as I learn the basics of that instrument, but it just looked and sounded like more of an effort for Akers when he played the guitar. Challenging pieces, I suspect.

Anna Dennis and Purcell were the stars of the show; the rest all felt somewhat secondary. But we enjoyed the whole evening and lamented the fact that so few people had seen such truly top notch Baroque singing in that fitting, albeit now genteely distressed, setting.

If It Ain’t Baroque…Don’t Fix It, A Day Out With John Random, Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich,18 January 2018

John Random sits on the “Sounding Board” for the Old Royal Naval College. I’m not entirely sure what that means…

…I’m not sure John is entirely sure…

…but one thing it does mean at the moment is that John has the right occasionally to take a guest to tour the Painted Hall Ceiling.

This really is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the ceiling of the extraordinary painted hall up close and personal, while scaffolding is up as the ceiling is being conserved.

How could I possibly say no when John offered me such a tour?

John went the whole hog, safety-dress-wise, whereas I, on learning that the hard hat was voluntary, declined the offer to wear one of those.

We were part of a small group, led my the intrepid Martina; a young, pint-sized Italian woman who seemed to know an awful lot about the ceiling.

We are very much in the baroque period for the painted hall and ceiling. We are also steeped in the politics of the Glorious Revolution. So William and Mary take centre stage and sectarian symbolism abounds.

Symbolic characters…not the sectarian ones I am glad to say…I should have listened & memorised…River Thames & London I think…

To be honest, the detail was a bit much for me, but the awe-inspiring opportunity to see this extraordinary work up close and learn about the conservation project was extremely interesting and memorable.

I would thoroughly recommend a visit while there is still time – still several months at the time of writing this – I suggest you do it sooner rather than later.

It was a sunny winter’s day, so after the tour we strolled a bit and I especially wanted to see the chapel, where I had attended at least one concert in the past.

The chapel looked especially splendid in the sunlight – I hadn’t seen it on such a day before – plus it had clearly been through a clean up and refurb of its own since my last visit, perhaps 25 years ago.

As an aside, John Random seems to specialise in memorable days in Greenwich – my previous visit to the place, 20+ years ago, was with Janie to meet John and Jenny on an unforgettable day – click here or below:

Lunch With John Random And Jenny Mill In Greenwich, “The Day That Princess Diana Died”, 31 August 1997

John and I pondered whether any royals had (or would) die on the day of this Painted Hall visit. We decided that, if the worst did happen, we really should abandon any future plans to meet in Greenwich.

Next stop, lunch. John said he’d never tried an eel pie place before, so we chanced our luck in such a traditional place – Goddards – click here. The fact that John doesn’t much like mash and had never tried eel before did not daunt him:

I personally am keen on eel, although usually in the smoked form…

…indeed as soon as I have finished writing this piece I shall sup on smoked eel and salad…

…so let me press on.

John found the eel a bit difficult to navigate, because the stewed eel served alongside the pie has the bone still in. I told John that I seemed to be managing the geography of the eel pieces better than him, which he found a curious turn of phrase.

I was reminded of Charley the Gent’s nerve-wracking encounter with my smoked eel at Lord’s in September 2015 – written up for King Cricket – click here or below...goodness knows what Chas would have made of it if I hadn’t carefully filleted the smoked eel for him:

Middlesex v Yorkshire at Lord’s – day one match report

Anyway, John and I both found the eel pie shop food a little bland – not least the meat in the pie and the parsley sauce – indeed the eel was far and away the tastiest element.

We thought we might enjoy some tea/coffee elsewhere more than we’d enjoy it in the eel pie house, so we went around the corner to Red Door Cafe – a quirky place which was very much to my taste.

The proprietor, William, played a very interesting and eclectic mixture of music, ranging from Leonard Cohen to Arvo Pärt.

Red Door served a very good cup of coffee and also had an intriguing collection of teas…I sampled the white which was very nice. John tried some cake which he said was also very good. I’d certainly go to that cafe again like a shot.

John and I chatted until we realised that hours had gone by in this jovial fashion, but we both really did need to get on and do some other things before the end of the day.

A very memorable and very enjoyable few hours.

My Mum’s A Twat by Anoushka Warden, Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, 13 January 2018

Janie and I loved this short piece. It was funny and intelligent and emotionally complex…

…a superb debut play for Anoushka Warden. It turns out that Anoushka Warden is more or less telling her own story – about growing up with a mother who transforms from a loving parent into an all-but estranged mum running a cult’s outpost in Canada.

It also transpires that Warden works for the Royal Court as head of PR – explained in the interview/preview piece linked here. That might explain why Vicky Featherstone chose to direct it herself but also brought in the very promising director Jude Christian to co-direct.

Here is a link to The Royal Court resource on this play/production.

It’s a one woman show – this must be the first time we have ever been to see a brace of one woman shows in the same weekend – the other being Twilight: Los Angeles 1992 at the Gate the previous day:

Twilight: Los Angeles 1992 by Anna Deavere Smith, Gate Theatre, 12 January 2018

Actually I think we should start an actress emancipation campaign on the back of this weekend’s experience. In Twilight, Nina Bowers had to play 20 different parts and also serve the intermission tea and biscuits – yes really…

…while My Mum’s A Twat, albeit a less physical show, is running twice nightly, so poor Patsy Ferran will be on the stage for in excess of two and three quarter hours each night with not much more than 30 minutes break between performances.

And what a fine performance My Mum’s A Twat was too.

Here is a link to resources and reviews generally for this play/production. The reviews have mostly been good but not great reviews. We actually rated the piece and the performance very highly.

The main criticism seems to be that monologue itself is a limited dramatic form. I see that point, but it is also a very powerful form when done well…and this one has been done very well. The mixture of humour and sadness really works; you sense that the character/author has been both strengthened and emotionally damaged by her maternal experience.

We don’t have a picture of Anoushka Warden’s mum, so here is a picture of Janie’s mum instead. The use of this picture to illustrate this Ogblog piece does not in any way suggest that we think that Janie’s mum is a twat…

…so in the interests of balance, here is a picture of my mum (who also wasn’t a twat)

At the time of writing, My Mum’s A Twat only has a few more days to run at the Royal Court and is sold out. I hope it will get its deserved extension or transfer so that more people can get to see it.

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