Strider has been brought up from the vaults. Gilbert is working with Scott Walton who has just flown in from the US. They are doing a short tour.

Yesterday I set off for Oxford after lunch so that I would have time to look in Blackwell's music shop. I wanted to buy some analysis of Debussy. I thought that the anniversary of his birth would mean that new books would be available. No luck and so I ended up buying some Debussy piano music - a thick album for �13.

Then it was off to Pembroke College for a presentation by the Army Training leadership. It was extremely interesting and lots of the SKOPE crew were fired up by it. Needless to say dinner afterwards was good fun and I managed to catch the 9.30pm coach back to Heathrow.

Just listening to the Miles Davis fest live on Radio 3.

Today I discovered Pour Le Piano. Of course I knew it but I didnt realise that as the predecessor of Estampes it represents the start off his major piano compositions. I began to look carefully at the Sarabande from PlP. It sounds great but there are a lot of musical quirks. In particular there are passages of parallel chords - but the chords which are used vary from place to place in the piece. Perhaps the most interesting one is a stacked fourth chord - G C F G. This is really quite early for quartal harmony.