The view from my hotel room in Nyon, near Geneva. That's lake Geneva there. I was slightly worried about sleepwalking out onto my balcony and falling in.

AT THE MOVIES IN SWITZERLAND

Yesterday I got to do something I've wanted to do for literally as long as I can remember- I took part in the recording of the music for a movie. I love the movies, and am usually the last person to leave the cinema as I always insist on sitting through to the end of the credits. I'm fascinated by the process, the sheer number of people involved in the production of a film, and the music is such an integral part of it, so I've always longed to get in on the action.
As with most things that appear to be incredibly exotic and exciting, it was a mixture of great fun and long, long periods of doing nothing at all. We finally started to record our parts at midnight, and went on until 3am when the owner of the studios appeared to be physically assaulting the composer in the sound box, so the decision was taken to stop.
The music for the film, which is starring Gilbert Melki (Largo Winch) and Emanuelle Devos (The Beat That My Heart Skipped), is fabulous- composer Grégoire Hetzel had written some gorgeous solos (some of them horribly difficult) which violist Beatrice Muthelet and myself played, whilst trying not to be distracted by the movie being shown on a screen in front of us. Since the film is about murder, drugs and prostitution I adopted my special 'murder drugs and prostitution' sound. We'll see how effective that was when the film comes out in September.


Beatrice Muthelet playing one of her solos, at about 2am...


Director Frédéric Mermoud trying to put on a brave face at 3am...

MADAME POLIGNIAC

So far Paris is twice as good as we thought it would be. Le Marais makes Hampstead look like a rubbish tip and our local patisserie is so expensive it feels like we've been shopping in Tiffany's every time we pop out for a baguette. Anyway, we are blissfully happy and don't ever want to leave.
Last week I played a concert in the magnificent Salle Poligniac, once the home of Madame Singer-Poligniac, a lady of legendary status in France as patron and supporter of almost every great French composer there ever was. The house holds letters and manuscripts by Ravel, Stravinsky, Cocteau, Poulenc and many, many others. The decor is extraordinary- in the concert hall (which once doubled as Madame's living room) there is an opera house style box built into the wall where the great lady would sit to watch performances by the great and the good of the time. It really is the sort of place which makes you shiver when you look around- which is tricky when you have to play long slow notes.


The box in which Madame Poligniac sat for the concerts held in her home, with her portrait underneath