17. A new year, a new Adventure (Jan '05)

Hello from me, long out of contact and thought to have been abducted by sheep. It's all a lie. They were chickens in really fluffy jumpers. And we just went for a spin around town in their convertible. Of course that town happened to be Zanzibar, and it took a while to get there and back. But back I am. Back where, you ask? Good question. Firstly, I will give you my new contact details, then I will give you the details behind those details:

Andrea Blumberg
87 Forest Road
Selkirk
TD7 5DD
SCOTLAND

Tel: +44 (0) 1750 725 514

Selkirk is a Borders town (the border between Scotland and England) in the far southeast of Scotland, about as far from Lewis as you can get (sadly. I do miss being on Lewis). But, happily, it is less than an hour south of Edinburgh and is also the hometown of Corrina Hewat and David Milligan, two of my favorite musicians in the world. Selkirk is a tiny town by anyone's standards, but is huge compared to Tolstachaolais. I actually have to worry about finding parking! (though I still don't have to lock my car). There's a high street where you can go shopping or have a cup of tea in the Jaggy Thistle cafe. And there's a library, a fitness centre and a slowly deteriorating mill on the river. Plenty of subsistence facilities and plenty of quaint character. No sheep wandering across the road, though, and no deserted moors. I'm definitely on the mainland.

So, what gives? When last we sat down in our respective computer sanctum sanctori for a temporally-displaced tete-a-tete I stated that I was going to Ireland to work at the Irish Harp Centre. Well, the world keeps turning, and my life keeps foiling my desires for settling down, stability and predictability. So, the Ireland idea fell through. I was in a bit of a gently-fretting lacuna in September, roaming aimlessly around Scotland, visiting friends and killing time before I returned to the US (to spend two lovely months with family and friends in Philly and Portland). I noticed that there was going to be a concert by Bachue (consisting of Corrina on harp and David on piano, plus a drummer [sometimes they have a jazz trumpeter, too]). Their music is primarily traditional Scottish tunes and songs, plus some original ones, twirled around by a jazz mentality and decked with innovative harmonies and rhythms; still retaining the purity of the traditional, but made more stunning and surprising and rich. Anyhow, I went to the concert. It was great :).

I chatted with them afterwards (I knew Corrina through various harp-festivals and workshops and had met David a few times) and ended up going for a meal with them. I mentioned my situation of future-plan-less-ness, and Corrina mentioned her desperate need of someone with organizational tendencies to help them with the admin side of the band; publicity and tour-planning and general chaos-into-order-type magic. And a match was made. It's still in the volatile-gasses-and-dust-condensing-into-a-planet stage; ie. I'm not sure exactly what my job entails or what the hours are, but it seems to be settling out at about three days a week, 6 hours a day (and because they're musicians, those hours never start before noon; what a great job). And the central task I've been given is to get gigs for Bachue. Corrina said to me, "we'd like to do a tour of of the Highlands in July, here's a list of the venues that would probably like to have us, go to it." Which is both daunting and exciting for me, a shy introvert who doesn't like talking to people on the phone. But somehow in this context I'm able to lose my shyness and get into the swing of it. Probably because I know that the product I'm offering is so good that I don't need to sell it, just inform people that it's available.

I haven't made too much progress on that yet, though, because for the last week I've been with them at the Celtic Connections festival in Glasgow, and the week before that was spent *preparing* for the Celtic Connections festival (the festival is a three-week long extravaganza of music from all the celtic regions: Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Brittany, Galicia, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, and more). Corrina and David have another band called The Unusual Suspects, and it was that band that played at the festival. The Suspects are a 24-person big band: harp, piano, guitar, bass, percussion, drums (so far, so normal), fiddle section, accordion section, bagpipe section, and four-piece brass section! It's an amazing sound (especially when the horns square off against the pipers). There are some mp3 clips on their website at www.unusualsuspects.uk.com, if you want to have a listen (the "Reels" clip gives the best overall impression of what the band is like. Oh, and go for the higher-quality clips; the lower quality ones sound a bit like you're lying in a bathtub, listening to the music gurgling up through the drain below). As you can imagine, organizing 24 people (and 24 *musicians* at that!) is a bit daunting. So I played shepherd and gopher and just generally helped the gig run smoothly. Which it did. And to great acclaim. And then on my time off I got to see about six other concerts at the festival (not as good as ours [naturally :)] but an enjoyable musical binge).

As far as teaching and playing.... I'd like to do a lot of both while I'm here, but those ideas are still swirling around in the asteroid belt somewhere. I hope that they will become stable satellites around my planet, but see above for the reliability of "expectations" in my life. I don't know how long I will be doing this, or what unforeseen trajectories I'll spin along next. But for now I'm in a really good spot; having fun, absorbing the music that makes me grin with glee, learning new things, finding strengths I didn't know I had, and breathing a sigh of relief as my recent leap of faith has landed me in a situation that is better than I could have imagined for myself.

Much love,
Andrea

Andrea Blumberg

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