Suddenly a burst of activity on several fronts at once. Next week is looking very busy indeed. I'm not normally someone who knows what he'll be doing in a year or even a month from now - my work comes to me suddenly, unexpectedly and usually in a hurry - in fact to have no gaps in my short-term schedule can be a real turn-off to clients.

My thanks to Robin Frederick for introducing me to the work of Israel Kamakawiwo'ole. The liberties that he takes with classic melodies like "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" and "What A Wonderful World" thrill and delight me. He knows that we know the tunes well and he uses this knowledge to twist our emotions by confounding our expectations through his unpredicatable but exquisite deviations (improvisations?). In this way, he somehow he manages to boil the melodies right down to their essentials. Mind you, if I were the composer, I'd probably be FURIOUS! But what a voice!