Yesterday we saw the Ken Loach film, Sweet Sixteen � recommended � not at all what you expect from the initial context. A tragedy in strange circumstances but despite that ennobling as the original theory requires.

I have been trying to get a quantity of the collaboration with Gilbert Isbin loaded up onto the Creative mp3 device so that I can carry it up to Leamington and think about what I make of it. There is an issue about what the definitive version of any tune is. At the moment I think it is the version which emanates from the Cubase Go settings in the tune file sitting on the Dell. That can be made to yield a WAV and the wav can be quite easily ported to the Creative as a high definition mp3. It all requires a level of version management that is pretty much at the limit of my capabilities. This well may be my undoing when it comes to using the new Acer portable that I have got from Industry Forum � which has a CD-writer built in.

There has been an exchange of e-ms with Gilbert about what we like about the new current tunes � the answer seems to be that we like the way they lie across genres without giving up the freeness of jazz. Some of it is beginning to remind me of Berg to be honest � a mixture of sadness, discipline and hedonism. Anyway I think its pretty interesting stuff � but then one has to in order to bother with it all. In fact in order to get the pieces to what feels like their optimum possible I have to do so detailed stuff that is not quite my forte.

The Webern orchestral score I got this week has some really interesting pieces in � one is only six bars long � written I think in 1913. It is an interesting question whether this could be a proto-minimalist piece.

The BBC Music Magazine this month has a review of a CD collaboration between a virtuoso trumpet player and Andy Powell � who was at school with Jon Cole and Paul Bell, helped get Fred Frith into experimental music, produced the first Kate Bush album and then well �.. then what. Although the name is quite common, I think it is likely to be the same person � a composer who uses electronics. The review is positive � I think I might stump up the �16 to find out more.

Moving books around the house so that Vita can move into the big front bedroom � wears me out .

I am having a bit of plate-spinning trouble at the moment especially vis a vis the Recital.