Blowzabella, Béla Fleck and Chick Corea

Well, the Sunday before last, Manon arrived, which set off my preparations - I packed some of the roast lamb and quiche that I'd made, went off to meet her at Liverpool Street, and then we headed off to Bush Hall to see Blowzabella. I'm sure it was a very good concert if you wanted to sit and listen, and they did of course play wonderfully, but as we'd gone to dance it was a bit disappointing. We arrived late (an hour in) but they wouldn't give us a discount on the door, and when we got into the hall we found that the floor was carpeted, and there were very few other people up dancing. On top of that, they were playing at concert speed, not dancing speed, and so the two successive sets of jigs and reels they ended the night with were almost undanceable, and the fast waltz they played earlier was just as bad. And then there was their hurdy gurdy player, who was fantastic when combined with the rest of the band, but when given a solo spot played about five minutes of what I can only call self-indulgent prog folk. When they played schottisches, they got plenty of people up dancing - but as they only played one set of schottisches all night, the dance floor usually had only one or two couples on it. Bush Hall is a fairly small venue, and had been set up cabaret-style, so the two hundred or so attendees took up most of the floor space, leaving a (did I mention it was carpeted?) dance floor of about eight metres by three metres. Since their website stated (the relevant page has now been deleted) that their concerts were aimed at both dancers and the seated audience, I feel they weren't exactly living up to that on Sunday night. I'm sure the seated audience had a great time, but next time I'll try and see them somewhere else. Did get some nice dances in with Manon, though only three: a polska to a slow waltz they played, a schottische, and a bourrée. I sat out and watched some of the dancers, though - one guy doing some lovely shuffly almost soft-shoe stuff in a bourrée, and the couple who managed to get round the fast waltzes and one of the sets of jigs (though they were exhausted by the end of it, and couldn't manage the encore) through speed and impeccable footwork.

Went off to work the next morning, leaving the computer on for Manon to have a look through my MP3s for anything she wanted, and my umbrella and A to Z to let her survive the day in London - which was spent mainly at the British Museum, going round the exhbits and then reading her book until chucked out by the curators.

Then, along to something I would never have gone along to without her: Béla Fleck and Chick Corea at the Barbican. Though I had something of a post-dinner dip at the beginning of their set, I got up to speed eventually, and their musicianship was just amazing. I was very glad I'd brought my glasses so I could see precisely what Béla Fleck's fingers were doing on his banjo (seemingly very little for the sound that he produced) and could catch their little interactions as they played together. They seemed very comfortable, telling jokes together, talking about their tour so far, etc, etc, and then playing off each other wonderfully. As they said at the beginning, they were going to jam off the album, and though you could hear the themes in the album you could also hear the freshness in how they were varying them. Really a lovely experience, to the point where I had my eyes closed a good deal of the time, just letting the banjo and piano play off each other. I'm listening to the Early Music Show on Radio 3 at the moment, and Bach's fugues make an interesting contrast to my memory of their playing; both based around elaboration and (if you're as good as Bach) interesting improvisation on a theme, though Bach declines to explore the possibilities of varying rhythm inside a piece that seems such a feature of jazz to a complete jazz ignorant like me.

Torrential rain, and back to Stoke Newington, and playing favourite bits of music, learning mazurka variations off Manon and abjectly failing to eight-time waltz and reading odd bits of poetry from The Rattle Bag until two in the morning, really far too late for a work day, but once you're on a roll....