My days and nights are filled with dreams and visions, of pomegranites and lions, sea monsters and palaces and valleys filled with diamonds. Of a prince as fair as the moon, and of magnetic mountains, and of sea journeys and adventure!
Rehearsals are fully underway for the de Havilland Philharmonic Family Concert, exactly a week today. Both performance are very nearly sold out, and while the musicians grapple with the oriental cadenzas in Rimsky-Korsakov’s score (and indeed the music by Nielsen that will also be performed), I’m making final decisions about the stories, which easel to use, which materials and paints, and exactly what to paint to match the music and the composer’s intentions. So an intense week of painting, drawing and listening and reading and writing and rehesarsing. And it may just be my favourite week of the year!
Anyone who is coming, please remember to buy a raffle ticket BEFORE the show, for your chance to win one of the paintings created during the performance. The money raised will go to the National Literacy Trust, also supported this year by Orchard Books, my publisher, in the hope of getting more stories into the lives of more children. With Scheherazade as a theme, it seems very appropriate!
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