The Gerrard Chronicles 2005 - Art Scene

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Avis' Scene -
the Tate shows interest in her work

...at last. The Tate system is starting to take notice of Avis as an artist & not just as a donor & skivvy in the archive. The Curator of Tate Britain spent 2 1/2 hours looking at her work, was very impressed & is trying to get her a West End dealer to sell her work.
The Tate Volunteers have been given Staff Passes, which get them into most London exhibitions free & some abroad.

Jason's Scene

“Confetti” has not come out yet but 20th Century Fox have bought it, so it should do well from April next year. Meanwhile, he has played with Rick Mayall in "All about George" on TV & in "Funland", a sleazy TV serial (BBC3) about Blackpool, in which our friend Eve Pearce also played, due on BBC2 next year. From January 12, he will be in a new Sam Shepherd play "The Late Henry Moss" at the Almeida Theatre here in Islington.

Ken's Scene

He wrote a ten-minute piece for Avis, called "For Avis", scored for a chamber orchestra of 13 instruments instead of his usual Beethoven plus band, for which he started another piece in November.

THE CLUBS

For the Lilian Baylis Arts Club, Ken gave a full lecture on Wagner in May, with musical examples & a slide show, which went down well. He did a similar Wagner talk to the Stuart Low Trust & later, a talk on the Chamonix-Zermatt Walk to the SLT. Both talks got a straight 'excellent' on all the comment sheets. He is booked for more talks in 2006, one for RSVP, a knitting (!) club, which has speakers & is attached to the Barbican Keep-Fit system, called "Young at Heart" but called "Fit to Drop" by Ken. "Young at Heart" have fitted us up with pedometers to make sure we take 10,000 paces per day. Thanks to a new Apple presentation program called Keynote, the talks are taking off.

EDINBURGH FESTIVAL

Valerie Wise, of the Barbican Arts Club, had obtained some excellent student accommodation in the city centre with parking (!), so we drove up. Not directly: we visited the new Walsall Art gallery, which was very nice, unlike the rest of Walsall. We overnighted at the "Swan" at Bucklow Hill, an old haunt & visited the Baldrys of the Lake District at Howtown on Ulleswater. We did not overdo it at the Festival but all the fringe plays we went to were very professionally done & the early morning concerts were wonderful with a stunning Dvorak Piano Quintet no.2 but John Adams' opera, "The Death of Klinghoffer" was very disappointingly undramatic, despite the efforts of the cast.

Jacqueline Baldry of Howtown

Back of the Royal Mile

We had not discovered the amazing Royal Museum before

OTHER ARTS ACTIVITIES

Five other operas: Gerald Barry's "Petra von Kant", a new romp; Mozart's "Magic Flute", Poulenc's "Carmelites", Richard Strauss' "Salome" very good, Britten's "Billy Budd", excellent
The playgoing: "Little Women" after L M Alcott; "The Dresser" by Ronald Harwood; "The Dream Play" by Strindberg; "2000 years" by Mike Leigh; "Pillars of the Community" by Ibsen. All excellent. "Epitaph for George Dillion" by John Osbourne, which Ken thought had dated badly
We went to every show at the "Tates" & the Royal Academy as usual.

Renée Sinclair at 97

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Contact: Ken Baldry or Avis Saltsman, 17 Gerrard Road, Islington, London N1 8AY +44(0)020 7359 6294 or e-mail him or her
This page's URL: http://www.art-science.com/Xmas2005/artscene.html Last revised 6/12/2005 Copyright: Ken Baldry 2005 All rights reserved but print it off if you want to.