New York City, YEAH!

Level of conviction in own genius: 6
Hours of creative activity achieved in last 24: None
Reading / Watching: Brilliant book on New York's essential five years of genre-making music, 'Love Goes To Buildings On Fire' by Rolling Stone writer Will Hermes / Back in Blightly, getting our Brooklyn fix with the second season of 'Girls'
Hair Day: Under a hoodie. Best kept out of sight.

I've had a wondrously fulsome two weeks flitting about North American cities - initially solo while Andy worked his book publisher chops. It was a whistle-stop tour to Toronto, home of my early childhood (I was there ages 3-5), and thus I had a proper heart-pang when I saw the CN Tower spike perforating the wide blue sky. Rather than a suburban house on Bayview Avenue, this time we stayed in the uber-cool Drake Hotel. I didn't have time to investigate much of the town as all-new, grown-up Kerry, but Queen Street West was one long hipsterdream of vintage shops, boutiques and places selling raw carrot cake with maple syrup cream cheese icing and mushroom lattes. YES! The waterside was lovely, and I came across my ideal exhibition at Powerplant: Beat Nation: Art, Hip Hop And Aboriginal Culture -  contemporary responses to Native Canadian traditions/mythology, featuring custom-made bikes, light installations, massive murals, and THIS very cool Cree/English/video/speech/song piece (intro only here):


To a week and half of neck-craning, eating and gig-going in New York! I made a concerted effort NOT to do all the obvious sights, but to absorb the city through a lot of street-pounding, and general hanging out. Here are some highlights:

Food
Ginger potato hash at haute-Indian Devi with Andy's lovely workpals; crunch-and-melt falafel from a stall in Central Park, where we talked to the English football-obsessed server; divine Ukranian pierogi, borscht the colour of an East European vampire-bite and stuffed cabbage at my favourite East Village hang out, Veselka's; decaf lattes by Brooklyn Roasting Company, fresh from the grinder in Dumbo, home of Girls actress/writer/director/producer all-round heroine Lena Dunham!; polenta, poached eggs and home fries for brunch at Olea's in Fort Greene; a garlic wurst on rye which stared me down at Katz' Deli (Harry, Sally, etc).

Gigs
We happily saw that Oli, who we'd met playing with Laura J Martin in Oxford last week, was in town with his main band, indie-folksters Stornoway; he invited us to their secret rooftop gig in the McKittrick Hotel, abandoned in the 1940s and recently opened up by Punchdrunk Theatre. We caught James Blake at Terminal 5 in the mid-West Side - he was pretty cool, some nice rumbly bass, but I felt it was a bit samey... I crammed in four bands at the Mercury Lounge: the three gorgeously dewy girls of Paper Bird (bluegrass harmony/pop/folk), who deserve to be Mumford-famous; the slightly disappointing, given her comparisons to Joanna Newsom and Sufjan Stevens, Dana Falconberry; Empress Of, talked up as the new Grimes, mixing power-pop balladry a la early Madonna, ribcage-splintering bass and ebullient electro; and the silly Doldrums, who stoked initial excitement by using only a mic and a suitcase full of gizmos, but ruined it all with crap songs delivered in a needlingly whiny voice. We also caught a night at the Glasslands Gallery in Brooklyn, featuring some indie-doom from Creep, wonky-pop with a Frank Zappa-meets-Jarvis Cocker frontman from The Flinstones, and yowly gloom-electro from Exitmusic, headed up by the actress who plays Angela Darmody in Boardwalk Empire. Finally, I played my own teeny You Are Wolf gig in Williamsburg's Goodbye Blue Monday!

Books
New York gives off a damn good indie bookish vibe, and, partly for Andy's work, we scouted many a fashionably literary temple, and dreamed ourselves around the tomes. Housingworks was the best; we went to a brilliant event called 'Ask Roulette', in which two people are divided by a screen. One asks the other a question about themselves. The other answers, and then gets to ask a new person, picked out of a hat, their own question. I got picked, got my hair compared to Grace Jones', and ended up telling 30 people how terrified I was of cows and once got stampeded by them. It's a brilliant wheeze - wordy, human, and witty. We want to do our own London version!

Walks
The Highline, of course; around the gorgeous Prospect Park on a hot sunny day; and an epic hike from Brooklyn's Greenpoint past the Brooklyn Navy Yard, through Dumbo, over Brooklyn Bridge, through Downtown to the West Village. I also popped to Washington D.C. to see my old university friend Stu, and tramped enthusiastically through the whole city catching the sights.

People
At least in Manhattan, and in complete contrast to London, many people really want to talk. They got the jaw-jaw good there.

On the subway, a man asked to take a photo of my Beastie Boys t-shirt - he said that they were his favourite band, and we chatted about MCA. He asked what I was listening to, predicting Pantera; he was a little disappointed when I let him hear my headphone, and said that Roy Ayres was far too mellow for him. A waiter in a Queens diner told me it seemed like yesterday that it was 1994 and he was dancing to the 'Sabotage' video. A guy who ran a bike shop said the Beasties were around when 'MTV was MTV, y'know?" We went to MCA Day in Brooklyn, which celebrated the life of Adam Yauch, who died a year ago. Check the kids' tribute gallery!

I played chess in Washington Square with one of the hustlers, retired 60 year-old Joe, who persuaded me to play two games with him, one without his queen. He still won $10 out of me. He was a charmer, who sat there every sunny day, or else went and watched action movies, and told me my husband must be a dream to have married me...

At the Mercury Lounge, I found myself earwigging next to a guy who performs with the Wainwrights at their annual Christmas show, who was chatting to country/folk star Anais Mitchell, who it was hilarious to hear say that her current project was singing British ballads that are all 'a bit too long'. Ha ha!

A guy in the lift up to the rooftop at the McKittrick's compared hair product notes with me, and said he wouldn't normally be seen DEAD in the Meatpacking District (it was OVER a decade ago), but that it was for a friend...

Stumbles-upon: 
The ethereally calm St Paul's Chapel, next to Ground Zero, which has become a monument to the memory of the victims of 9/11; being invited in to a Raw Chocolate Party in Downtown; Andy busted into an art fair full of chained concrete babies and sheep with telephones for heads; the gloriously calm and unkempt community garden of the Sara Roosevelt Park; the amazing Pratt Sculpture Park in Brooklyn.

I'm pretty happy to be back in London, though this cold is just outrageously affronting. The city feels like the shorter, wiser, wittier, friendlier older brother to Manhattan's tall, gym-buffed younger sibling. I'm looking forward to getting stuck into my second chamber opera of the year - this time a wild-swimming themed affair to open the Tete a Tete Festival in August! MaJiKer has also being whizzing through the mixing of my You Are Wolf debut album, woo hoo!

Sunken Gardens, Dalston Power Lunches And Wonky Folk

Level of conviction in own genius: 6.5

Hours of creative activity achieved in last 24: 3

Watching / Listening: ‘The Master’ on my flight to Toronto / Emily Portman’s back catalogue

Hair Day: The Most Expensive Haircut I Have Ever Had (like Emeli Sande but without the twin-sets and achingly dull songs); firmly considering having zig zag lines etched into the sides by a Brixton barber!

I’m a bit late with getting my oar in on the ENO’s much-trumpeted, look-at-us-we’re-down-with-da-yoot 3-D opera Sunken Garden at the Barbican; but I’m picking up my paddle anyway, to add to the smokin’ ‘was it good? Or was it SHIT?’ online debate, with the Telegraph/Guardian/Standard/Indie etc firmly crossing their arms in the former camp, and Norman LeBrecht looking a bit billy-no-mates in the latter. Sarah-juicette and I happily got bumped up to some good seats, upon which to take in the undisputedly impressive technical heft of the various screens and the synchronisation of filmed singers with live orchestra and vocalists. I do think there could be a lot of fun to be had with 3-D film in theatre, but fun was to be heard slamming the door and skipping off, laughing maniacally, to some club in Clerkenwell to pump its fist for four hours while WE sat, increasingly baffled and squirming slightly.

 As Mark Kermode is extremely wont to rail, 3-D is not a marker of quality, but instead too often thrown in desperately to add gloss to a soulless flibbertigibbet of a movie in which a) story b) writing and c) characters are found lacking. For every Cave of Forgotten Dreams, there are plentiful Transformers 3. Whilst Sunken Garden’s use of film, and in the second half, 3-D film, WAS integral to the story (documentary filmmaker gets increasingly drawn into his research about a missing guy, who has in fact been trapped in a verdant virtual purgatory by a crazy woman), I couldn’t help but hear Kermode shrieking like a disapproving great-aunt in the background. For this opera had a pretty dreadful story, chased down with weak characters and fist-in-mouth dialogue. Honestly, no-one should EVER have to hear the phrases ‘I am the head of a charitable arts foundation’ or ‘it’s an arthouse documentary’ sung operatically in slightly angular phrases. David Mitchell has not made an auspicious start in the world of libretto-writing, and Michel Van Der Aa’s music was mostly uninteresting vocal lines and swampy orchestral writing which had so many dramatic peaks that when the biggest revelations happened, they were rendered musical damp squibs. It was hard to make out the revelatory details anyway, as they were being histrionically wailed by two sopranos at pitches far too high to get the words out, and mostly whilst one did some madly hammy hand-thrashes to splash 3-D droplets towards the audience, and the other writhed around wrestling a long bit of apparently threatening material in unconvincing fashion (Van der Aa also directed). Having gone in rooting for it, we emerged underwhelmed and slightly embarrassed, and found many friends and acquaintances equally irked. Let’s hope the next big things do a little better…

 Two days later, Andy and I were in Mangal 2, rubbing shoulders and plates of tzadziki with various Beeb writers, conductors (André de Ridder, who’d waded his best through Sunken Garden) and BBC Radio 3 presenters (Sara Mohr-Pietsch, with him), which made up for the fact that we (gasp!) didn’t see Gilbert and George (they were reportedly in later. PHEW). We then headed to Dalston’s latest bottled-beer-and-dank-basement-dive called Power Lunches (of course!); it turned out to be a highly illustrious and extremely select audience, including André, Sara and Radio 3 producer Peter Meanwell, who had rocked up to see a bunch of Manchester music students, including young composer Tom Rose, put on their second night celebrating their new record label Slip Discs (nice). Olly Coates played a stunning solo ‘cello set as we sat on the concrete floor (Kagel, Britten, Squarepusher), followed by a fab electric guitar and laptop/drums duo with Leo Abrahams (who has the most amazing CV as a producer and session musician, from Brian Eno to Imogen Heap to Grace Jones), and Larry Goves did some live electronica alongside Olly. It was fun, and Very Dalston.

I had a smashing You Are Wolf gig in Oxford this weekend, at The Cellar’s Irregular Folk night. Vez, the promoter, looked after us beautifully (tea, cake, general super-niceness) the sound (by Geezer – that was his name!!), for once, was really excellent, meaning Andy and I could really respond to each other, and the crowd was fulsome and full of cheer. Headlining was the very wondrous Laura J Martin, a Scouse lass wielding the same Boss RC-50 loop station, a flute (she did some mean jazz-spitting and singing into it), a voice that really was like Kate Bush’s (rather than just a lazy reference point) in its mixture of ethereal gossamery tones and sudden, more strident edge, plus some mandolin and keyboard. She was occasionally accompanied by bassist Ollie from Oxford mega-folkpopsters Stornoway, and did brilliant fawn-like dancing to quirky beats that evoked Greek ancients having a rave. Check her out!

Creative news: juice have now recorded their final second album session, tackling Dai Fujikura’s 2.5-minute beast of a piece, and Anna-juicette’s marvellously dislocated Mariah Carey cover. The You Are Wolf sessions are now fully recorded, and beginning to be mixed by MaJiKer, who sends me rough cuts over email from Paris. And Woodwose, my community chamber opera, is finished! Hurrah. I am rewarding myself by hot-tailing it to New York via Toronto and Washington D.C.: full report to come!

Terror-Rave, Soundwalking and Leek Tartlets

Level of conviction in own genius: 6.9
Hours of creative activity achieved in last 24: 5, if making instrumental parts from a score counts, urgh
Reading: Sped through the wonderful 'Londoners' by Craig Taylor, a birthday book from Andy; now weeping hopelessly at every other page of Vera Brittain's amazing 'Testament of Youth', 80 years old this year.
Hair Day: Needs Serious Cutting Soon

As is my wont, I packed in a few cultural things into my birthday last week. I was in Cambridge the night before to collect my joint winnings (along with fellow Yorkie and all-round fab lass Stef Conner) from the Incorporated Society of Musicians' inaugural choral prize, hurrah! The Queens' College Chapel Choir sang my SATB version of the trad. song (which I do as a You Are Wolf number) 'All Things Are Quite Silent' in a very pure, super-perfect version, as well as singing Stef's and other winner, talented whippersnapper composer Toby Young. We were then ushered into the ostentatiously Arts and Crafts-y Queens' College Hall for a posh meal, complete with slightly weird, archaic graces in Latin and toasts to the Queen and that sort of thing. The Oxbridge ways seem pretty damned sniggersome to the likes of progressive -'60s-university-going husband and I, and even more so as I'm reading about Vera Brittain's (see above) breathless recounting of her debut at Oxford in 1914, complete with through-the-night cocoa parties with equally lofty, serious fellow studentettes. Still, it was nice to chat to Toby and also to meet gregarious, uber-gifted clarinettist/composer and voracious reader Mark Simpson over tenderised beef and leek tartlets...

It was back to Queens' for a lunchtime concert from Mark, Melvyn Tan, Guy Johnston and Jack Liebeck; there was no better day than my birthday for my first live performance (shocker!) of one of my favourite pieces of classical music, Messaien's 'Quartet For The End of Time'. It's so masterfully and transparently constructed and with such craft: chamber music as filigree jewellery. The final movement - though the 'cello and piano is my favourite - with its ever-soaring violin line, was enough to make me fall apart. After a brief schlepp about Cambridge, it was back to the safe heartlands of Dalston for a hang-out in a new tea shop, dinner at Mangal II with friends (and Gilbert and George, naturally), and we mopped it all up with some punishing terror-rave at Cafe Oto from the likes of Birthday: BAM!

It's been a packed concert-going schedule: the next night we went to Wigmore Hall to support Team GB, otherwise known as seeing some of the George Benjamin celebrations, with a concert version of his first, chamber, opera, 'Into the Little Hill', which was pretty marvellous, though even seated right at the front below the bellowing/shrieking soloists I still thought that the words could have had more space. The highlight for me though was David Sawer's 'Rumpelstiltskin' suite, which whilst not exactly ground-breaking in soundworld, was a brilliantly-orchestrated, deeply delightful affair.

This week, juice were busy in Sussex, recording and filming a new music-film piece for composer Paul Robinson, and we were filmed by a chap who is usually to be found shooting the likes of 'Frankenweenie' and 'Fantastic Mr Fox'. We also did initial workshops for four composers as part of the Sound and Music 'Embedded' scheme, trying out loops, hockets, vocal white noise and medieval erotic letter-settings, and discussing being wheeled around in shopping trolleys to represent Jupiter's orbiting moons. This is quite, quite normal for juice...

Juicette Anna was also part of Brit composer and hair arch-rival Tansy Davies' UBS Eclectica series retrospective at LSO St Luke's, singing her song cycle 'Troubaritz' with our percussionist/composer buddy Damien Harron. The night was packed full of halting riffs and broad genre references - the highlights being violinist Aisha Orazbeyeva's solo scratchy, glitchy piece, influenced by the Bach partita that preceded it, and the closer, 'Neon', complete with Tansy standing up to piledrive in a bit of electric guitar. It was quite a sceney night, and good to mingle with new musicky types in the pub afterwards.

Thank god for the sun today! I was not so lucky at The School of Life recently, when running my first workshop, in the art of listening and soundwalking. We'd planned for it to be April so that the birds would be tweeting merrily, the zephyrs balmy, etc; instead we got air so cold it practically scalped you, and a sound-palate of cars and people shivering. STILL, a successful night was had by all, and I got the class of clever adults thinking about their sonic environment and composing soundwalks, inspired by the likes of my walk-art hero Richard Long, John Cage, Chris Watson and many more. The next one will be in sunnier climes!

Lots of radio recently! I went into the Resonance FM offices in Borough to record a little session for Sam Lee's Nest Collective Hour (also to be found on Folk Radio); it's a very marvellous, old/new/no-folk show, and a pleasure to be on, though frankly my performance was a mitigated disaster of loop station confusion and general calamity, urgh! STILL, even James Blake accidentally left a sliver of yelpy loud loop in his recent 6Music session, so the loop station gremlins get about a bit. Curses upon them! It was also rather lovely to turn on Jazz on 3 and find myself singing on it - a second album track from Metamorphic opened the show, yay!

Falcon Conclusion

Level of conviction in own genius: 7

Creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 4

Watching / Listening: Pining after finishing 'Boardwalk Empire' Season 3 / The traditional song Molly Bawn as sung by a 93-year old man

Hair Day: SERIOUSLY considering coppertop in order to maintain standards as quoted by Sam Lee (see below)


It's all go as usual here, all while battling with the evil maggoty-looking infection that keeps hanging around in my throat (URGH!). But I have still managed to fit in some birding of various varieties.

First: a visit to the English School of Falconry in Bedfordshire! I got to fly a big ole owl, a harris hawk, hold a three-week old baby owl (looking remarkably like an infant gremlin to me), hold a 9lb juveline bald eagle, and my favourite, the very gorgeous Peregrine/Lanor falcon cross. It makes me think I should get back there, rather more glamourously-clad than in this Battling Winter-look below, and do a photo-shoot for my You Are Wolf birdlore-themed album, all glitter and feathers and faux-nonchalantly attempting to hold up a golden eagle or sumfink. The album is ticking along nicely, with just a few bits to send to MaJiKer before he can get on with mixing. I'm planning to call it 'Hawk to the Hunting Gone'...

I've thus been cramming some bird field recordings to possibly add into the album, though finding the perfect sonic environment has been tricky. It's either too noisy (Ruskin Park on Easter Sunday, Hampton Park on Easter Monday under a flight path), or too damned quiet (Rainham Marshes in Essex). In the secret garden at the back of Brockwell Park, it was like flippin' Snow White or something: as I quietly sang 'The Bird's Courting Song' into my Zoom recorder, a dunnock hopped across my path, a robin perched on the bench to listen, a squirrel climbed the trellis above my head and sat looking down at me, and two doves sputtered down on the grass. And none of them made a GODDAMNED PEEP.

It was lovely to sing some of the 'birdlore' songs at Sam Lee's Nest Collective night at the Old Queen's Head in Islington this week (I'm going to be on his Resonance FM show this Tuesday 2nd April, 12pm!). Sam very kindly (and rightly) introduced me as possessing 'the finest hair in contemporary classical music' - ha, take THAT, Eric Whitacre! I was mostly there to sing as part of MaJiKer's ongoing NORTH project, exploring the traditional folk songs of Scandinavia through new English lyrics, looping, much vocals and projections. It was a GOOD excuse to get a new dress (an all-white maxi t-shirt dress that looks a bit like a net curtain, since you ask) and I have really thrived on exploring different characters in my voice when taking the lead. We hit the Albert Hall with it (and with Sam) on June 11th!


Whilst most people (judging by Twitter, anyway) were watching 'The Voice' on telly (HONESTLY! The ADHD-editing in the first minute made me feel SICK), Andy and I donned extra layers and headed up to Clapton for a hipstertastic-sounding event: a shadow puppet theatre play; with live improvised violin, electric guitar and electronics; in a former dentist's. YES! In truth, the prospect of the night far outweighed the actual show itself, as it started over an hour late, the rest of the (tiny) audience were friends on the guest list, the shadow puppetry was distinctly underwhelming, not least because there was often  5-10 minutes of darkness between each tableau vivant, and the venue seemed to be MORE cold than it was outside, meaning my legs lost all hope of feeling after about 10 minutes. STILL, we giggled our way home on the bus, imagining that we were probably there right at the start of something big, y'know, like the Sex Pistols at the Manchester Lesser Free Trade Hall.


In other news, juice are two recording sessions down, one to go, with our Nonclassical chum Gabriel at the helm, and have really noticed the difference between this and our last album recording, since working with MaJiKer. We are much more interested in and aware of the colour of our voices, which is lovely. We are recording lots of love songs, original (by Jim Moray, Dai Fujikura, Michacu and more) and arrangements of Rihanna, Mariah Carey, Kraftwerk and much more. I'm refining my community chamber opera score, Woodwose, and am making plans for a NEW chamber opera. On wild swimming. Hurrah!

Attack of the Fallen Women

Level of conviction in own genius: 6.5
Hours of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 3
Watching / Listening: 'Boardwalk Empire' Season 3 / suggestions for my radio show
Hair Day: Floppity, moppity

Nonclassical, my label (juice have started recording their second album, woo hoo!) have just held a big festival of pioneering electronic music, so Andy and I made it along to a bit at XOYO, where the demographic was almost entirely men in their 30s with beards. I sadly missed Raymond Scott and the final set by The Orb man Alex Patterson, but did catch the bludgeoning percussion/electronic piece by Stockhausen, Kontakte, plus, much more soothingly, two Messaien pieces for ondes martenot and synth/piano. The ondes martinot is a sort of electronic theremin, and is basically a hopeless romantic of an instrument, espeically when playing the achingly meandering phrases of Messaien's 'cello and piano duo from Quartet From The End of Time. There is no more beautiful piece! And did you know that Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood is the only owner of an ondes martinot in Britain, fact fans?!

To the gods at the Royal Opera House for George Benjamin's much-lauded (a new opera! With contemporary music in't! That everyone LIKES!) Written on Skin, with George, or 'team GB', as I rather too loudly and excitedly shouted jst before he lifted his baton, conducting. The set was excellent, these contrasting rooms of clinical heaven/archeologists' lab with rough-edged medieval-ish chambers. The orchestral writing was mostly glorious, especially with the slightly sci-fi-sounding glass harmonica for the bit where everyone suddenly moved in slow motion; all lush and filigree and delightfully detailed, though I sometimes thought it burbled along in too unrelated a fashion underneath the singers. I thought it started slightly sluggishly, dramatically-speaking, but the slow-burning tension was ratcheted up from act to act to proper Greek drama/Shakespearean tragedy-style heights by the end, and complemented in a way by the scoring that I'm sure would be easy to take for granted but is in fact highly skilful. I didn't really see much need for the modern-day bit - it was all about the central ferocious love triangle for me. Barbara Hannigan was storming as Agnes, the young wife whose lust is awakened by the visiting Boy/Angel who comes to write an illuminated manuscript: rolling around, or being thrown around, usually whilst singing perfectly controlled, pure high notes. But therein lies the rub for me: here's yet another opera with a central female character who is another fallen woman - what a BORE! It made me REALLY want to write The Descent: The Opera (if you don't know the film, 5 super-cool pot-holing lasses fight terrifying monsters in caves, with nary a male in sight), or at least SOMETHING where the girls are MAD REAL, not defined simply by their sexuality, and DEFINITELY winning out in the end.

Finally, my career as a radio DJ has begun. Well, in a teeny tiny way at least! I am presenting the Strawberry Shortwave Radio Show live on Haggerston Radio on Sundays at 4-6pm and I've done two so far. The idea is to play music inspired by a weekly theme, and play a very eclectic range of tunes. Proof of pudding: this first boat-themed week featured Gavin Bryars, Guys n Dolls, Laurie Anderson, three versions of the traditional English song 'A Sailor's Life', field recordings, poetry, angry postpunk about the NHS,and Iron Maiden. YES! The shows are archived. Here's two to treat your ears to!

You're So Dane

Level of conviction in own genius: 6.5
Hours of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 3
Watching / Reading: Two excellent films: 'Lore', just beautiful and dark, and the screamingly tense and screamingly '70s 'Argo' / 'The Year of The Flood' by Margaret Atwood
Hair Day: awight

To venues both big and small as a punter recently. I went to the Rose Theatre next door to the Globe for a short, sharp shock of a 'Hamlet', there to see our friend Jonny Broadbent go all Dane, complete with 'The Killing'-style knitwear. The Rose in the site of Bankside's very first theatre, and this show had the delicious tagline of being the first 'Hamlet' there since 1594. There was a wonderful use of the space: hemmed in by the teeny cardboard box style-set for much of the play, upon a hammy version of the play with the play, the black screen I assumed had a wall behind it was pulled down to reveal, behind a balcony and to audible intakes of breath, a cavernous space with a big pool of water at its centre: the foundations of the old theatre, underneath the canopy of a massive new building! String of red lights suddenly lit it up, and it was then used for Ophelia's mad singing scene, the Yorick scene, complete with brilliant Hamlet-and-skull shadows, and more.

Then it was to the Barbican to finally see Bobby McFerrin, one of our greatest living vocalists, live. It was a very chilled set of spirituals, many recorded by his dad (the first black male opera singer at the Met), with some raspy blues and some typical Bobby-ish chest-hitting and scatting. He leapt about all over his preposterous four-and-a-bit-octave range like a gleeful springbok; commanded his louche players; and introduced his 21-year old daughter as a honey-toned backing singer. Just lovely.

I had the very touching experience of having my graphic score for recorders, Screech (which you can toy with to create your own video-composition right here!), interpreted by five groups of recorder players aged from about 8 up to 18 at St. George's, Hanover Square, in my final outing as Handel House Composer in Residence. It was so fab to see a class of 20 Year 4s avant-gardely squealing, pipping and hissing, in partly-improvised renditions led by recorder masters Consortium 5. The new music future is kids! With recorders! Here's Yerbury School giving it some:
There was a time when my ambition was to play Cargo in East London. Then I did, in 2006, with juice! Then  I wanted to play Cafe Oto. And I did! Finally, The Vortex was in my sights; and lo! now I am a regular. I sang with Metamorphic in February, and DOLLYman finally got their foot in the door, having fun playing off-the-dots for the first time as support to the Kandinsky Effect's album launch. Let's up my targets. Next: The Barbican!

Silent Opera, Foxy Opera, Singing Kate Bush For World-Famous Fashion Designers, etc

Level of conviction in own genius: 7
Hours of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 0
Watching / Listening: Daftly enjoyable enigmatic poshos in the new Poliakoff, 'Dancing on the Edge' / recommendations on Gorilla vs Bear blog
Hair Day: pleasingly short; am considering a dyed copper-top. Nice!

Pah. London's current prescription of cold rain and rainy cold has not been much fun, though the last couple of days have given glimpses of a good-weather renaissance. But how I long for the summer, for freckles and wild swimming! There's nothing for it but to hurl myself not into the warm, chlorinated fug of the municipal pool but instead into much culture...

Seeing as I'm writing one, I've started itching to see more opera. First up was Silent Opera's version of Monteverdi's L'Orfeo, in a brilliant corner of London I've never ventured to before, a mile past Canning Town to Trinity Buoy Wharf. This feels a bit like the north-west docks in Amsterdam, looks south to the O2's startled yellow feelers, and includes super-cool, brightly-coloured live-work containers. The opera was in a lovely big warehousey wharfey space, and we were all handed wireless headphones at the door. The idea was that, with a reduced 5-piece band, we could hear the full orchestra in our ears, along with amplified vocalists and the live players. The singers, with very subtle radio mic clipped about their persons, were free to roam amongst us, and the audience was moved, faintly promenade-like into two different spaces for Acts II and III. I have to say, I found the headphones (and the core idea of silent opera-ing) pretty unnecessary: everything was being gently amplified through a PA anyway, and moreover, it was miles more thrilling to listen to the singers, unadorned, live. And it would have made much more sense to simply pare down the scoring to the harpsichord, harp, theorbo, etc, and be rid of the extra strings completely. It was too much like Renaissance-karaoke for me. The costumes - a sort of Camden-rave-in-1998 - were vile, and the bunch of gurning dancers ineffectual; that said, the singers were marvellous, and it was fabulous to have them sweating and bellowing up close and personal. But a flawed project, I feel.

To the Southbank, and a weekend amongst their epic The Rest Is Noise season. I caught the Aurora Orchestra doing George Antheil's very-ahead-of-its-time Ballets Mechaniques, which smacked barnstormingly of the fear and wonder of encroaching technological onslaught. And it was good to catch Barbara Hannigan showcase her duo role as soprano and conductor in an afternoon of, if I'm honest, soporific Satie and rather more zingy Stravinsky, in his mini-opera Reynard, performed with puffed-out glee by the likes of Roderick Williams. The aim with the season, as in the Alex Ross book, is to place 20th-century music in socio-political context; I'm not sure that, so far, this has been the most successful part of the concerts I've seen: pre-cursing the Antheil was a jazz singer rather uncomfortably attempting to seduce a Saturday afternoon crowd including an impressive amount of avant-garde-loving under-10s with Josephine Baker songs, and a too-slight cubist film of the Aurora. Harriet Walter read from diaries by the Russian princess who commissioned Satie and Stravinsky, which was fascinating, but too long.

To my own shizz!

juice have performed with MaJiKer in Wigmore Hall to an excitable crowd including many Tower Hamlets teenagers who screamed with sugar-high abandon at our Rihanna cover. I debuted by little suite of songs on London's forgotten rivers, lostriversongs, with loop station and killer acoustic improvising trio 7 Hertz at Handel House. Most recently, I did another hymn-leading stint at The School of Life's Sunday Sermon, fulfilling a personal and flatteringly insistent request for my services from the day's lecturer, high-art fashion designer/filmmaker/artist Hussein Chalayan! He also wanted a Kate Bush song, so I learnt 'The Man With The Child In His Eyes', to sing to the 500-strong intellectual massive. Hussein casually informed me before the show that he'd told Kate I'd be singing it today. WARGH! I tired to dismiss daydreams of Hussein providing me with clothes for all award-going occasions for the rest of my life, passing my number along to Kate, etc. Just another usual Sunday for moi, then!

January Do's!

Level of conviction in own genius: 7
Hours of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 8
Watching / Listening: Have soared through Breaking Bad Season 2 and Mad Men Season 5 already this month. Middle-class Guardo-reading box-set perfection. / Peter Grimes, for inspiration.
Hair Day: crammed under a pink beanie. Brrr.

Yeah, screw that ole January-is-the-crappest-month-Blue-Monday nonsense. I love January! New projects, new resolutions (I have sensible ones that I have to complete at some point in the year, rather than any stupid read-every-day-eat-alfalfa-do-zumba sort of ones) and cultural fun. You've got to stomp through that snow in your most unashamedly nerdy stout walking boots (I have new ones - they are old-fashioned brown leather ones, like Wainwright would have worn on his travels. Fashionable if you're in Keswick. Not so much if you're in Camberwell.) and DO STUFF.

CREATIVE STUFF has included laying down a lot of material with producer maestro and 2013 collaborator of choice, MaJiKer, for my debut You Are Wolf album, featuring the birdlore set. I have a got a truly special guest to sing a little something for it too. Excitement!
My big project for the next few months is my community chamber opera Woodwose. I wrote the libretto whilst snuggled in front of a log fire up in the Yorkshire Dales at Christmas, and now am knuckling down to it at home. I'm quite proud of my ability to not look at the internet until mid-afternoon - I really CAN live without cat videos and Fantasy Football League after all!

SOCIAL STUFF has included being jostled at Brixton's Hootenanny, as is par for the course, and enjoying rather more the lovely vibes up the road at Mango Landin', which is ten times less skanky. DOLLYman had a very fun time playing a charity gig there and went down a storm. We're extremely excited about our gig at the Vortex on Feb 21st!

I popped to the PRSF party earlier in the month; it wasn't quite as fun as last year's - the Scala was a bit soulless really - but it was nice to see (a slightly sleepy) Sam Lee and band play, as well as Ayanna Witter-Johnson. Speaking of Sam, I am proud, and a little sheepish given the company, of having done a remix for 2012's Folk King, which is part of a free and downloadable EP here!

Last weekend, Platform 33 had their 1st birthday party in a cool (and COLD) railway arch in Waterloo. The night, always designed to be super-eclectic, crammed in a brass ensemble, South African township funk, sword dancing, and razor-sharp recorder quintet Consortium 5, who played my badluck birds pieces. Here's a lovely review!

Speaking of badluck birds, check out my online composing/video/webgame of one of the movements, Screech. See if you can make your own version of the piece...

ACTIVE STUFF has been on the QT, BUT I reckon I redeemed myself slightly by going to Covent Garden's Oasis and swimming very, very fast in their outdoor pool with a temperature of -1 outside and many gulpfuls of snow. YES!