December 1st: Yesterday, the team finished a wonderful week working with Jim Aitchison. This began on Monday 23rd, recording his quartet (based on the work of John Hoyland), in a wonderfully atmospheric church in Walthamstow village. On Thursday 26th, down to the Royal Academy of Arts to perform and discuss his response to the Anish Kapoor exhibit there. Wonderful questions from the audience: one particularly challenging one on the issue of music and memory. Then yesterday the whole team reassemble at the beautiful Parish Church in Tring. As the cold set in, we recorded the quartet commissioned last year in response to the life-altering Rothko Exhibit at Tate Modern. This done, the quartet stayed back to record Mihailo Trandafilovski’s (Violin in the Kreutzer’s) Quartet.

The ‘Aitchison Team’ for the week has been: Nicholas Clapton-Soprano, Michael Thompson-Horn, Neil Heyde, Mihailo Tranadafilovski, Morgan Goff and PSS (Kreutzer Quartet). Engineer on the recordings, the indefatigable Jonathan Haskell (Astouding Sounds).  Colin Still (Optic Nerve) was on hand to film. Many thanks to Beth Schneider at the RA for making us so welcome.