The Two Rules

There are two main rules in life I've realised.
The first is that if you ask a hairdresser not to take too much off please, they will cut your hair to within an inch of its life. If you don't want very short hair, never, ever, let that slip in the hairdressers. Red rag to a bull.

The second is that if you ask in a hotel for a room "with a nice view please", you will get one of a selection of rooms they hold back for such people, with the worst views the building has to offer.
The receptionist here at my Heathrow hotel was particularly proud of this one, it took him a full 5 minutes to select it for me.

Sunny Wales

Today I'm in Cardiff where the sun is shining, and I have this lovely view from my hotel room. That's the Millennium centre there on the left, which is a rather splendid building I think.
I'm here rehearsing with the BBC Welsh orchestra, the leader of which just helped me to discover I'm only 6 degrees separated from Louis Spohr, via my teacher Ruggiero Ricci, and Viotti. I'm Playing Spohr's 8th concerto with them, and I feel a new, profound connection with the piece on learning this news.
And apparently Spohr invented the chinrest, so we have a lot to thank him for there.

The Other Side

I would like to write a few words about something called the IAMA conference, which I found myself attending last month.

IAMA is the International Artists' Managers Association, and it is the body which holds together every manager or management company of any worth around the world.
I made my way there as a delegate to represent my record label, and it was an eye-opening experience to say the very least.
The first day I spent telling everyone this is something no artist should ever have to see. By the end of the 3rd day I was convinced every artist should be forced to see it.

As with any conference, the idea is to do business. As delegates we gathered in a large building, drank vats of coffee, and had 10 minute meetings during which one buys, sells and generally does a year's worth of business in a day.
The interesting part is that we didn't get taught this at music college. We never learnt of the way the whole thing comes together- two sides of the same coin, artists and business people working in completely separate worlds which somehow join in order to bring music to the public. As musicians it is too much accepted to pretend the other half doesn't exist, and when it does it is only a necessary evil.
The Curtis Institute, where I studied, had a class called "20th Century Musician', which attempted to teach us the basics of building a career in the music business. There was a tour of the IMG offices in New York, and a show of hands was requested in the first class to clear up who already had major representation. (Quite a few did.) We learnt how to write a good CV, (something I have never done in my life) and had some very interesting lectures from people on 'the other side', in other words managers and career builders, but they may as well have been from another planet to us musicians.

For me though, the fascinating part of the IAMA conference was that it was the music business laid completely bare. The endless coffee drinking, cigarette smoking cafe debates we had at college about the relative merits of seeing music as a business rather than an art were shattered in the face of a room filled with 300 men and women who were creating the music business. Just like any industry there is an engine room, and here it was. We as musicians spend our lives in darkened practice rooms, worshipping composers (quite rightly) but we too often choose to ignore what it is that goes on beside us to create the opportunities we need to play in front of people.

Of course, playing the violin is something like my reason for being. But how much fun it would be visiting the engine room of the world of music I never would have known.

Listen and watch

The Young Musician of the Year finals were on the telly last night, but I could only listen on the radio as over here in Paris I can't get BBC TV. My manager kept me updated by text on the contestant's outfits, which was important. Interesting though, how differently you judge things when you can only hear, and are not disturbed by the visual aspect of a performance.

Anyway, I want to clarify that when I said on my Twitter page that I agreed with Sam Wallaston from the Guardian on his appraisal of the string finals which I was on the jury for, I meant the part about how we were all much too sweet and friendly, and only ever said sugary things, which perhaps was less interesting than Simon Cowell tearing young people's hearts out.
This led to several people thinking I was against the result- which I wasn't!
Just so we're all clear...

God Reads My Blog

The moral of this story is clear: be careful what you wish for.
Within minutes of my posting a blog in which I mourned the lost days before global air travel and instant communications, a discreet little volcanic eruption was arranged and the first of my wishes was granted. Then Vodafone accidentally cut off my blackberry.

I'm now on a train, one of about 10 trains in fact, lasting around 17 hours in total, that should eventually get me home 4 days after I was meant to fly from Sweden to Paris.
And I have learnt that it isn't quite the romantic, relaxing picture I had thought it would be.
Imagine a world, I'd thought, where the time it took to cross countries was days rather than hours. How much slower our pace of life would be. How much more time we would have during travel for reflection, reading, writing, enjoying the landscape and having arty thoughts.
In reality I am standing for the 6th hour straight, hungry, hot, aggressively tired and without an arty thought in my head.
My wife texted me to suggest I wrote my blog during this useful free time on the train. I bet Prokofiev's wife wouldn't have texted him that. Anyway, he would have replied "I have a near complete sketch of the new 3rd symphony in my head now, the second subject of the last movement came to me fully formed as we passed through Siberia".
All I could manage was "I can't write coz I'm facing backwards and I'll probably be sick."
Still, there have been moments of good will among passengers. Lots of talk about volcanoes. A lady next to me offered me an extraordinarily revolting sweet which I didn't have the heart to spit out once I'd accepted it.
But all things said and done, I'm quite ready to rejoin the 21st century.

A thoughtful airport moment

On Sunday, I was sitting in Stanstead airport, delayed, and annoyed. I was only there because my Heathrow flight with BA was cancelled due to the strike, and all my plans had to be changed. So I started to wonder what would happen if I said I no longer wanted to fly, ever, anywhere. Like the old days. If it means crossing water, I'll get a boat.
While I'm following this train of thought, how about I throw out my mobile phone too. Just travel the world with a pen and paper, on a boat.
I've often thought about this. The stories my old teacher Ruggiero Ricci used to tell, of learning to play the 5th caprice of Paganini, backwards, or of learning left hand pizzicato because it was the only technique he could practice lying in bed, could only belong to a time without planes, high-speed trains, blackberries and, of course, TV. My generation has come of age, slightly awkwardly, during the exact time the internet took over the world. We didn't have computers as children, but have had to build careers and lives in an age which revolves around them completely.
I shall use mine to watch a movie on the plane, to keep up with emails, to skype with my 2 year old daughter when I arrive. A daughter who thinks I exist in two forms- in person and on a computer screen- neither particularly less odd than the other. She will grow up completely at one with the technology my parents are still fairly confused by.
But, this year, for the first time, we will take a holiday- a no-phone holiday, where the only criteria are flip-flops and a hat. And maybe I'll learn the 5th caprice, backwards.

Never forget...

Finally home after another long trip. This time I came close to actually drowning in all the music I had to play, but there were some lovely concerts along the way.

I sometimes feel that playing music for a living is a little like childbirth. (For the mother that is, not the child.)I mean this in as much as that you forget, completely, just how stressful something was almost as soon as you finish doing it. I can be standing backstage, swearing blind to all who will listen that I have had enough, and that a life of simplistic pleasures was all I ever really wanted, and I can't imagine how I ended up doing something so silly and so stressful. 29 minutes later I'm busy explaining how my only real sadness is that I don't play a concert every day.

I'm very happily relaxing in Paris now though, with a concert on Sunday to raise money for Haiti, which is the least we can do really.
Then back on the road Monday.