Launch of the bands 2019

It's the launch of the bands at the Tabernacle for this year's Notting Hill Carnival, hosted by Ty Mas, Adunni Adams and Nadia Valeri. Upstairs in the mirror-walled studio, people are getting ready.

Quick sketches:

 

More shodō (書道) with Taki Kodaira

For shodō (書道), Japanese calligraphy with brush and ink, one has to be poised and calm. Not trying to disassemble the Daiwa Foundation's multi-leaved dining table so that the class can fit around it. Star pupil Peter makes pleasingly calligraphic shapes with his legs:

 

Janick, joining us for one lesson before his next cycling tour (Alaska), produces photos of his trips to China and Japan. As a left-hander I'm struggling with having to achieve serenity right-handed, so I'm a bit jealous to see a southpaw in one of Janick's pictures.












I can't bear to show you my stuff so here is some more beautiful calligraphy from our teacher, Taki Kodaira. On 1 May, when Crown Prince Naruhito ascends the Chrysanthemum Throne following the abdication of  his father Emperor Akihito, Japan will replace the Heisei ('achieving peace') era with the epoch of Reiwa ('orderly peace' or 'beautiful harmony' depending on your standpoint):

 The pavement outside the Daiwa Foundation has mysterious calligraphic markings:

Calligraphy in the morning; life class in the evening where I can use my left:

Learning shodo with Taki Kodaira

To learn shodō (書道), a form of Japanese calligraphy, one should be calm of mind, maybe with a view of cherry blossom. Instead I'm ferociously chewing off my lipstick and by the end of the class I look like Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane.

I have a brainwave.  I'll ask my friend Peter to join the class for moral support. He's a graphic designer with a latent talent for long-range shooting, which is all about focus, waiting for the right moment and doing the tricky sniping stuff as you breathe out, just like shodō. I'm hoping he'll be a shodō black belt in no time.

 

On our way to the next lesson at the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, we pass the TfL lost property office with its affectionate window display, including a flat iron left on the number 23 bus in 1934. 

Peter mentions a mutual friend. 'Half his flat's in there,' he muses. 'And a lot of his portfolios.'

 








I've done some drawings in a calligraphic style but calligraphy is not drawing, not the same at all. This is Ayumi LaNoire performing on a golden pole:

But in class I'm struggling to be spontaneous. 父 over and over again.  

Chichi.  

Father.

Right or wrong: my struggle with kanji

Home is where you hang your hat. But in ancient China, home was where you sacrificed animals to propitiate the gods, so the early ideogram for 'home' depicted an animal on a slab.









I'm at the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation in London to learn the rudiments of kanji, the pictorial writing system imported to Japan from China in the fifth century AD. Here is the modern kanji character for 'home', drawn swiftly and beautifully by our teacher, Taki Koraida:

It's about to get difficult. I'm left-handed and it's obvious to me that the strokes, sweeps and upticks of kanji are designed by right-handed people. 'If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning' (Psalm 137). 








To prepare for this calligraphy course I've switched to using my right (wrong) hand in life class:

But, as Taki reminds us, calligraphy isn't painting or drawing. So my 'look - wrong hand!' performance isn't much good as preparation for kanji. At life class I have a moan with another left-hander. His family rejoiced when he fell out of a window and broke his left arm at the age of ten. They mourned when, once the plaster was removed, he remained a southpaw.

To be continued.

Big Voice London - model Law Commission report

Here's a challenge - I had to think of a single picture which combines these areas of law: 

1. Automated vehicles (e.g. driverless cars)
2. Insolvency
3. Landlord and tenant
4. Offensive weapons 

Graphic designer Peter Sloper added the warning tape.

On 5 February 2019 Big Voice London launched its sixth annual Model Law Commission Report, proposing reforms in these areas. 

Big Voice London is a social mobility and legal education charity. It enables pupils aged 16-18 at non-fee-paying schools to engage with law and legal policy. Its courses and events offer plenty of scope for volunteers who include students, law professionals and academics.

The Chief Executive Officer is Victoria Anderson, a solicitor at Carter-Ruck specialising in media and commercial law.

Here are some snippets from the report: 

Landlord and tenant

• Succession: that the category of persons who can succeed a tenancy be expanded and that up to two statutory successions be permitted.
• Service charge: that transparency be increased as to the cost and use of service charge and that a means by which service charge can be challenged be introduced.

 Insolvency

• We have proposed: greater protection for creditors, compulsory director training, the introduction of pre-packs in statute, and greater government intervention.
• We have also called for greater research into the implementation of our recommendations such as in the amount a business will contribute to a saving account.

Automated vehicles

• Compulsory training for those operating automated vehicles.
• Lanes created on motorways designated for automated vehicles and automated-vehicle-only zones in urban areas.

Offensive weapons

• We strongly support an increase of funding and investments towards youth clubs and other projects that increase awareness of the risks of carrying offensive weapons.
• We propose a removal of the fancy dress defence. There are certain loopholes that provide a defence during periods of the year, such as Hallowe’en.

Orchestra management fails to score

‘Seating can be a problem with loud brass or percussion seated immediately behind. You want them to bugger off because they’re deafening you, and it’s not their fault.’ – Violinist

This comment from The Prestige Economy of a London Orchestra, a revealing PhD thesis by Dr Francesca Carpos-Young, highlights a situation which led to Goldscheider v The Royal Opera House Covent Garden Foundation, the subject of tonight’s King’s College London event.

(The star turn for me is British Sign Language interpreter Richard Law. I can’t follow the speed of his gestures so my sketches are nonsense; I hope I haven’t introduced any obscenity.)

Chris Goldscheider, a viola player with the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, suffered career-ending hearing damage while seated in front of the brass section during a rehearsal of Wagner's Die Walküre in 2012. Noise levels were roughly equivalent to that from a jet engine. He can no longer take pleasure in listening to music, or be near a supermarket fridge: it's all painful noise to him. Awarding Mr Goldscheider damages for acoustic shock, the judge ruled that ‘musicians are entitled to the protection of the law, as is any other worker.’ The judgment is here 

Words from the projector land on Theo Huckle QC's head

This landmark case is of huge importance to the music business and the ROH is taking it to the Court of Appeal in 2019.

We are told this evening that orchestral musicians face a 40% chance of significant hearing loss; and it is not always explained to players that, if you don’t wear hearing protection for ten per cent of the time, you lose a substantial part of any protective benefit. (After the incident with the deer rifle at Bisley shooting range, an ENT specialist told me that, rather than relying on earplugs, one should avoid loud noise for ever.)

There are, it seems, no orchestral musicians here tonight. That's a shame, but they don’t want to make waves in an insecure, clannish industry where much work is freelance and the power is in the hands of promoters, conductors and fixers. Comments in the thesis cited above open up this world, even if they generalise:

‘Brass have an anarchistic approach, and are naughty, rowdy boys. Violins are sheep, violas are eccentric, and woodwind border on suicidal. Percussion are unstable, are experts at golf and killing time. They often get away with more misbehavior than others, and tend to stick together.’ – Double bass player

One violinist cites ‘Terrible levels of physical and mental stress. Abuse by managements trying to undercut their financial and working conditions. Woefully inadequate composers in the commercial sector. Ageism.’

‘People get to the top of the orchestral tree with a lot of drinking, a lot of sleeping around, or some ability to be business-like and tactical.' – Horn player

‘How many trumpet players does it take to change a light bulb? Three! One to hold the bulb and two to drink till the room spins’ – Trumpet player

‘As a piccolo player everyone leaves me and my section alone, but the woodwind gives the pond life [string players] a really hard time; taking the piss and calling them gypos and stuff.’

In today's accusatory, fact-free environment, quoting her thesis notes got Dr Carpos-Young hounded out of her professorship at the Royal Academy of Music. Warning students about name-calling in the real mucky professional world, she listed the names (see above). Her words were taken out of context by some. In November 2018 an employment tribunal upheld her claims for wrongful dismissal and victimisation. (All cults have their own lingo. The most offensive comment this evening is: ‘My wife calls all non-lawyers “muggles”.’)

Had enough? Here’s some naff clichéd prose from American one-time professional oboist Blair Tindall, author of Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs, and Classical Music: ‘Instrumentalists had a sexual style unique to their instrument. Violinists, anonymous in their orchestra section, finished quickly. Trumpet players pumped away like jocks, while pianists’ sensitive fingers worked magic. French horn players, their instruments the testiest of all, could rarely perform, but percussionists could make beautiful music out of anything.’

Acoustic shock: where law meets aesthetics

Chair: Professor Alan Read, King’s College London

Participants: Theo Huckle QC, Chris Fry of Fry Law, Dr Aoife Monks of Queen Mary University of London, Dr Lucy Finchett-Maddock of the University of Sussex, Dr Colm McGrath of King’s College London

Performance Foundation; Dickson Poon School of Law, King's College London; King's College London English Department Creative Seed Fund; Faculty of Arts and Humanities Research Fund