More Music

Another musical weekend just past. On Saturday, Ken invited us to a meeting of a group of musicians that he is part of. I gather that they meet at one-another's place and "jam" from time to time. This meeting was at Ken's own place so his friends and family were invited too. The music was what I would call "light" music -- folk songs, blues and the popular music of yesteryear. I know heaps of folksongs so was rather tempted to sing along at times. Anne and I both enjoyed the occasion. Paul and I chatted a lot as usual and I was pleased that Brian Ruffles was in attendance. Brian is a great character and, despite his name, not easily ruffled. He lives in Indonesia these days running various speculative business ventures but was back home in Brisbane for a couple of weeks.

On Sunday there was the Christmas party of our Westside Music Circle. It comprised a BBQ first followed by the usual concert. Anne had been to another function that afternoon so we skipped the BBQ and just had a light meal together by the Brisbane river at a Lebanese restaurant called "Cafe Laila's". I may be wrong but I fancy that the name of the place is taken from the character Leila in Lawrence Durrell's once-fashionable "Alexandria Quartet" of novels.

The concert was unusually good. The performers are usually amateurs and that can led to uneven quality but there were very few sour notes on Sunday. One of the performers played the usual Spanish guitar favourites quite impeccably. I was mildly surprised to see some delicate Mozart played on the piano with perfect expertise by a rather large young chap. Such delicate music from such a large person seemed faintly odd to me.

As usual, I got into the supper afterwards with gusto. There was some excellent apple and raisin strudel that I can still remember and some very fancy sandwiches. After such a big day of socializing, Anne was just about staggering by the time we got home. Even her great social capacity has its limits. And neither Anne nor I had any alcohol all evening.