Been up for a disturbingly long time. But found one of the songs from the Gavin Barras gig: and it's my favourite one too!

Hope to see you at Leicester later...

Today will be an odd day. It's my last session at the Arts Cafe for the Everybody's Reading project I've been doing with visual artist Sue Clews, Tim Sayers and Lydia Towsey—not as a poet this time but as Arts-in-Health co-ordinator for the NHS.

I've spent the last nine weeks listening closely and watching as people interact and engage with books, each other and themselves. This process was at the heart of the piece I was commissioned to create for the Festival. Since working on Heralds—and that's longer than most people would think—I've been moving towards making map-like scores and "scripts" for the music I want to hear. The older versions of my maps were very directed and quite prescriptive; so there would be a flow from start to finish; the musician was guided to the end point with descriptions as to what I wanted to hear as the writer.

But in this case I was writing for the trio. This is something I have never really had to do, since we neither play "tunes" nor rehearse. We just turn up and create music, through listening and awareness of our environment. So it was a matter of balancing the openness of the group with my intentions for the piece. So I decided to modify process I used on myself for Popular Delusions and Songs for the New Folk, which is more based on emotions and what is said rather than what I think. This is a Flickr set of the score, about 75% finished.

Some inspiring words from pianist Jessica Williams:

Practice? Always play, never practice. Music comes from the heart, not the hands. The hands are secondary. Big hands, little hands. No importance. It's the heart, and the ears. Hearing the music in the air around you and translating it into sounds that others can hear.

Read more about her approach to the piano.

Gateshead with Arun was really good; and had another magical time with Joshua Blackmore and Dave Kane in Nottingham. Thanks to all who came out and supported a great cause!

Talking and thinking about Graham Collier.

This is one of the first pieces of writing I read from his site, and still makes for a good and encouraging read.

So many "thank yous"... to all who came to Leicester, for a start—this was a new thing for the trio, actually performing a composition, AND at that length...

AND to Nottingham for the Framework Raise The Roof Festival. It was tricky listening with the DJing in the next room, but we put our souls into it. Good to see Nat Birchall, Gavin Barras, Rachael Gladwin and Matt Halsall, as well as a good chat/catch up with Julian Siegel.

The beauty of Rouse.

Rouse is an abiding influence: to me he was the quintessential player for Monk: the musical relationship ought to have been an entire chapter in Robin Kelley's otherwise excellent book; and much more ought to be said in musical circles of Rouse's ability to blend swing and bop phraseologies in a cogent and individual language.

Listen to some continuous magic... kaleidoscopic shifts of song. Glorious.

No one does vocal layering like Marvin did. An early influence...