listening 0708

I'm a bit listened out after the Festival, and I've been reading to clear my head a bit. While I'm half way through a few non-fiction books in preparation for our Literature Weekend, the books I have devoured in the last fortnight include:

• Ken Follett - The Pillars of the Earth
• Neil Gaiman - American Gods
• Maurice Dantec - Babylon Babies
• Charlie Higson - Hurricane Gold
  
• Nicholas Shakespeare - Secrets of the Sea
  

listening 0608

i get sent cds constantly from artists either hoping for a performance at the Lichfield Festival or at Abbotsholme Arts Society or from artists that I'm interested in hearing a little more about. Inundated would be one appropriate word to use. I would like to think that eventually everything gets listened to, but I am quite behind, not helped by the fact that the cd player in my room has been broken for months, and I can listen only at home or in the car on the way home.
If you are reading this hoping for a sniff at what my future programming might include, this is unlikely to provide much insight. I listen to far more than I could ever book, and enjoy many things that may not be appropriate for the audiences I programme for.
Recent things I have enjoyed listening to include:

• the smith quartet - philip glass complete string quartets - signum classics - SIGD117
• spiers&boden - vagabond
  
• haydn trio eisenstadt - scottish songs - brilliant classics - 92278
• la serenissima - the golden age - AVIE - AV2154

of course, this last cd (volume three of three), which I found in my in tray earlier this week, is the programme La Serenissima will be performing when they visit Lichfield on 9 July. This is brilliantly performed stuff (I seem to concur with the only review I could find online here) and I know from experience is much, much better live...