I had a good, if slightly busy, weekend.

Saturday I went to a concert: the London Gallery Quire were singing and playing at Newington Green Unitarian Church. That’s only a short bus ride away from where I live so I went along to listen. I was pleased with what I heard: the performance was lively and enthusiastic, with all members of the quire clearly enjoying themselves. As they rehearse fortnightly and I’ve been itching to do some choral singing for some time now, I may have accidentally said I am interested in joining…

Sunday was teaching all day, as usual. I’m very glad I enjoy teaching as much as I do, I stayed up too late afterward talking to friends, which meant Monday was very tiring.

Yesterday I had a rehearsal with yet another new pianist. We played through some various bits and pieces by Lachner, and also some of the movements from Dunhill’s Cornucopia. I’m hopeful that things will work out well, but feeling a bit cautious: I’ve had a number of experiences where pianists were enthusiastic at first but then found that they don’t have a lot of time, and sadly chamber music always seems to be the first thing to go when people scale back on their commitments.

I also had my first horn lesson of the year yesterday. The good news is that I now have a slightly more coherent plan for how to approach the year. The bad challenging news is that much of the work needs to be done in the next few months: the idea is to learn the pieces for my final exam by December or January, then leave them to rest for a while before picking them up in time for the exam. Of course, the idea is also to complete my Year 4 Project in the same sort of timescale, and do the bulk of the work on various other projects this way.

Today is proving to be a slightly slow and sluggish day; I woke up with a cold and haven’t really managed to get moving properly. I’ve ordered some music, and dealt with a few e-mails, and in a second I’m off to improv class and then horn class and after that is dinner with a friend, though I’ll try to get an early night.