terry riley

nala sinephro

 

philip glass

 it's all holiday, bike and making for me at the moment so yes, a bit lax on the posting. and kind of unimaginative for the next few posts because it'll be what i've been listening to and maybe some technique stuff. but not uninteresting! lol 

wildflower guide

 it's that time of year and came across these really handy guides for common flowers - quite why i felt the need to post a pic of a forget me not when it doesn't include those i don't know! lol

abel selacoe

 i was out to see ludovico einaudi last week and was very taken by his support, abel selaocoe. i'm not going to lie, i was taken by the idea of chilling out to some mellow classical music but that absolutely wasn't what we got. selaocoe had plundered his whole toybox and presented a dazzling array of styles - classical english, gypsy, folk, west african, mongolian, who knows! and didn't sing in english! it was spellbinding. if i was picky i'd say i didn't like his efforts at crowd involvement much as it took away from his playing, and he relied a bit too much on open string playing for percussion in the pieces he played for me. but that'd be hard nitpicking. on the basis of this i'm off to see him in a solo show later in the year, i see from his repertoire he's doing some samuel coleridge-taylor, which i'm really looking forward to, as i've never heard any of him played live since i discovered him on a graveyard ramble back when i was a londonist

einaudi? einaudi was lovely. he started with just him on piano which was what i was expecting but he really picked up a gear when he got his musicians on in the middle segment. i wasn't expecting an autoharp! then to finish a medley of crowdpleasing favourites. the venue was rammed - i'm not fabulous with crowds and this was the biggest venue i've been in outside a football stadium -  and they loved it. very, very different mix than the usual classical music attendees!

hermanos guttierez

 i'm listening to this a lot while working these days. good kick back at the end of the week music

zakariya al-qazwini

if i had my time over, i'd slap some sense into my young self and encourage him to learn at some arabic/persian so i'd actually be able to read/understand at least some of the titles of books from the past. my podcast recommendations provided akbar's chamber in the field of islamic history podcastery this week and i can hardly be blamed for getting deep into this episode on zakariya al-qazwini immediately. i haven't listened to anything else yet but on the basis of this i'd highly recommend

the pond on my window sill

pleasingly, my algorithms threw this up the other week. it's unlikely i'll repeat the exercise but, happily, i'm at a stage where i am actually paying a lot more attention to what's going on in my back garden - hand lens, close focus binoculars, making mini environments - and even making moves to resestablish my portable lab! anyway, here's this 

philip glass

 one of my favurite soundtracks - here it is adapted for piano. an ideal start to the week