Oye, Com ova here [bad play on words I know, but it's late]

still liking the saxes!

got some good practise done today, which was nice - heard downstairs go out just as I came out of the shower, & Liz was at her parents' house - so I was free to make honking noises in the music room!

Did about an hour of warming up stuff (mainly on the alto), then worked a bit on "The Pink Panther" [yeah, ok, I know it's a cliche - but it's a nice tune, & it's got some good bits in it for getting clean note changes worked on] & played through another couple of bits on the tenor. Went back to alto to do some more stuff - including "Lullaby of Birdland" - which has some fingering patterns that are a little bit awkward & is a rollocking good choon too!

During this segment of practise, Janet arrived - she was going to do some cello-ing (for the Grade-1-a-thon) with Liz, but Liz had been delayed by pharmacist-picking-up-parental-pills issues, so Janet very kindly agreed to being coopted into piano part playing. Went through 2 of the 3 Grade 1 pieces (Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen & Oye Como Va), and sight-read another one ("Solitude") too. The tenor let the piano be in a nicer key than the alto did - so we went with that, then we tried the "Noggin the Nog" suite - the middle two little movements 'coz the last one looked fast & Janet didn't fancy it and the 1st one had 2 notes I don't yet know in it. I'd not tried it before (it looked a bit more difficult than the stuff I've been doing!) but was pleasantly surprised that I can sight-read on sax. I suppose once you can do i on one instrument without a problem, it kind of gives you a bit of a head-start!

Janet also said the nicest thing while we were playing; that I was "born to play the sax" - more a reference to my enjoyment of busking than to my great skill & gorgeous tone, I think. She & Liz both said they thought it was going well & getting on quickly though - which was nice.

In other news;
We met up with Jon & Ena & 10-year-old Jack Burgess this evening, and the 6 of us had our first outing to the refurbished Coliseum to see the ENO production of G&S's "Pirates of Penzance". It's funny - with a "Pirate King" who's a cross between Freddie Mercury and Johnny Depp's character in "Pirates of the Carribean", which means he's as camp as a bedouin settlement crossed with being as camp as an abbreviated bellringer.

Am-dram groups, and other singists who're not of a first-class top-notch professional operatic standard should really leave any G&S well alone - it was a different piece being performed tonight to the one I last played at a bucket gig in nowhereville south of London!

The last ENO G&S production we saw was "Mikado" which was utterly hilarious - one of the funniest things I saw in the whle of last year. "Pirates" wasn't quite as side-splitting, but still a nice amusing evening - camped up just enough to be funny without being soooooo camp it was annoying.

time for bed, methinks, otherwise I'm going to turn into a pumpkin.