update [1]

I've been too busy to write anything much for a while; indeed: I still am, so this is briefer than I'd like. An aide memoire for future expansion that will likely never happen.

Last Friday our friends Sean and Sandra (WANOLJ) got married in Woodstock, with their reception in the Feathers Hotel. I had the great honour of being appointed Best Man Pro Tempore, owing to the unavoidable absence of Sean's first choice, Pteppic (who nearly died, but got better thanks to the healing power of CHICKIE!).

I don't think Sandra stopped smiling all day, and even Sean (who, although he is one of the best and nicest men I know, tends toward a dour exterior) managed to look cheerful much of the time. There are photographs to see if you're curious, including ones of the bigger of the two ValerieCakes that we delivered (valkyrie_k sadly was not well enough to attend herself). As of this writing, none of the images are captioned or otherwise tagged with metadata, but that will come over time, as will more photos.

It was a wonderful day, and I'm not sure I've ever seen two people happier with each other; the whole thing has warmed the scabby encrustations of my cynical old heart. It was about time something good happened this year...

update [2]

As ramtops reported, we went to see the Kronos Quartet at Colston Hall on Sunday. The programme was eclectic, to say the least:

1. Clint Mansell (arr. David Lang) / Requiem for a Dream Suite
This was enjoyable enough, but (and I suspect that this is mostly a generic fault in film scores) managed to sound like two or three other pieces of music that I carry somewhere in the crannies of my psyche. I'm slightly dubious, also, about anyone playing to taped backing tracks - the odd plip, bing or loop is ok (and I suspect that most if not all of the loops in other pieces were derived at the mixing desk from the live performance), but this one would have worked much better for me, arranged for Kronos or no, if the other musicians had been on stage too.

2. Franghiz Ali-Zadeh / Oasis
This piece by the Azerbaijani composer, written for Kronos, was absolutely entrancing. Probably the best (scheduled) piece of the night for me; Kronos' album of her music is going straight on my Amazon wishlist.

3. Tanburi Cemil Bey (arr. Stephen Prutsman) / Evic Taksim
Also interesting and enjoyable, I've had a largely unexplored fascination with middle-eastern music (Sufi in particular) for many years; this resonated nicely with that. The arrangement for string quartet worked very well; I would be fascinated to listen to it side-by-side with a performance on whatever instruments it was originally composed for (kemence and tanbur, I think).

4. Sigur Rós (arr. Stephen Prutsman) / Flugufrelsarinn (The Fly Freer)
ramtops nearly bolted from the hall when this was announced; her association of Icelandic music with the person she always refers to as "that Icelandic bint" is that strong. As it turns out, both she and I enjoyed this one too. I've not heard the band yet, but on the basis of this arrangement, I reckon they're worth investigating further.

5. Felipe Pérez Santiago / Camposanto (Holy Ground) and
6. Alexandra du Bois / String Quartet: OCULUS PRO OCULO TOTUM ORBEM TERRAE CAECAT (“an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind”)
These were (respectively) the second and first recipients of Kronos' under 30 project commissions. This is a wonderful idea, but I confess I was less than moved by either of these compositions, at least as performed that night. Nothing wrong with them that I can put a finger on, but they both rather passed me by.

7. Steve Reich / Triple Quartet
This was more like it :) - but there again, it's entirely possible that familiarity was at least part cause of my enthusiasm here, and further listening might be repaid for the preceding two pieces. In any case, I really must do more intentional listening to music (as opposed to background random iTunes or iPod). There's so much I know of that I want to hear, or hear again, quite apart from all the wonderfulness out there that I've yet even to discover.

We had two encores: the first, a Lebanese piece either written by or called Habibi - either is possible - but Islamic in its roots it was and good it was too; the second, announced with words along the lines of "it's a sad day when the only way American musicians can register their dissent is by playing a song from Woodstock" was the angriest rendition of the Hendrix arrangement of The Star Spangled Banner I've ever heard. I would be willing to hazard a small wager that the members of Kronos didn't vote for GWB... :)