Ronnie Scott's of Cambridge

Here's a couple of photos taken at my Alimentum gig in Cambridge earlier this week, taken by the esteemed Mr Williams.

From left: Nigel Price (guitar), Simon Little (electric bass), moi

As you can see, it was a little cosy on the stage when I was standing up (as opposed to lying drunk on the floor ... I mean, playing at the piano). Good job we all get on! I had been a little jittery before the gig as it's a while since Simon (bass), Nigel (guitar) and I had played together on my songs. I shouldn't have worried, though, as they're both superb players and remembered everything. We also played one of my new songs - the Rocker one - and it worked really well with the line-up. Must get that recorded soon ...

We had a busy night - the manager told me the venue could have sold out twice! It was a little bustly to start off with, what with with people ordering food, arriving etc. But in the second half, when most people had finished, they dimmed the lights and it did feel a little like the Ronnie Scott's of Cambridge. I think we'll be back.

Gigs on fire

In a bizarre twist of fate, I didn't actually sing at the Pizza Express with Jon Regen on Friday. The reason being that the whole street was taken out by a fire in one of the buildings, so nobody could get near it from the afternoon till the end of the day. What are the odds?

Reminded me of a time, many moons ago, when I went to work in Covent Garden one sunny morning to find the street cordoned off and a crowd gathered at the rope. The fire was actually over but I guess everyone else was hanging about for the same reasons I was: wondering what the hell was going on and whether they were going to get their arse kicked for being late.

I said to the policeman, "That's my work in there - I'm supposed to be in."

"Not today you're not," he replied. "Go home and enjoy the sun." Far be it from me to argue with a policeman.

Of course, it's much more fun going home when you were supposed to be at work, than when you were supposed to be doing a gig. But such is the way of random urban fires and you can't plan for these things.

As it is, I'm now swotting up for my gig tomorrow at Alimentum in Cambridge. I played there last year and it's a classy joint. This time I have Simon Little on bass and Nigel Price on guitar - absolutely top players and on my album to boot.

You can check the details on the venue's website, or I have actually set up an event invite for you Facebook lovers out there.

Feel free to join the lovin'...

Pizza Express Dean Street performance

I'm guesting on NYC artist Jon Regen's gig at Pizza Express Dean Street tonight. For those of you who don't know the place, it's not just a random Pizza Express that happens to have some music, as you might think - it's actually a really top jazz venue, second in London possibly only to Ronnie Scott's. So it's pretty exciting to be singing some songs there tonight.

Jon is a singer-songwriter who also happens to play piano amazingly well. Some other guests could include David McAlmont (of McAlmont & Butler fame). It's gonna be rocking! So if you are in London and were wondering what to do with your Friday night, now you know :-)

Where to write, and what on

Met up with an old Guildhall mate of mine the other day. C is now a composer, and fully au fait with all manner of music software. We were talking about writing, and he was encouraging me to explore a little more of that technology to generate ideas. I do admire people who use that software, and often enjoy music that's been created in that way. Frankly, though, the thought of getting my head around it right now is up there with doing a car maintenance course: I know it would benefit me, and come in very handy if I broke down, but do I really want to bore myself to tears? Not yet. In this respect, I'm a typical girl. A woman's got to be a typical girl sometimes, hasn't she?

In contrast to the computer, the piano, where I write most of my music, represents a space, mentally and physically, to be creative - to be something else. I'm not alone in this. I recently read a book that charted a lifetime's obsession with the piano, The Piano Shop on the Left Bank. Now there's a real piano nut. A writer discovers and gets to know a particular atelier in Paris, and begins to relive his childhood interest in the instrument, delving into and exploring all its facets - technical and historical - as an adult. It has points of resonance for a pianist, although I'm not sure non-pianists would find it as intriguing. It's certainly a fairly counter-cultural memoir for our technological age.

For a complete change of headspace, I came in and caught the last part of Michael Jackson's memorial service on TV. Not a current fan of the artist, and ingrained with that peculiarly British aversion to sentimentality, I can't say I really entered into the spirit of things. But I was transfixed by the reverence and weirdness of it all - sort of like a variety show for the deceased. I happened to switch on just as Usher was starting to sing, weep and touch the coffin. I can't help feeling that if that was in Britain, said artist would be whisked away on the grounds of health and safety, and headlines the following day would read: "So-and-so dropped by record label for breach of contract and inappropriate behaviour" - or something like that. As it was, it seemed to go down a storm.

The commentating - by Paul Gambacini and Trevor Nelson - was also very weird. Normally reserved for state events or traditional annual sporting events (eg Wimbledon, just gone), it felt odd and awkward for an artist the British press has mercilessly mocked for the best part of his latter years.

Personally, although I admire Jackson's early work and talent, what I find most poignant is the story of an artist who seems impossible to empathise with, who was almost unreal - whether that was due to his ever-changing appearance, his secrecy, his penchant for the company of children and animals or whatever. To me, the ability to generate that emotional resonance is a key part of the artist's skill. Clearly, the man had millions of fans, so I guess a good deal of them felt empathy of some sort. In the end, the public displays of grief, ostentatious group hugs and teary performances of the memorial seemed a fitting tribute to a man whose life was all about spectacle - a man who, until the last, managed to reveal very little about the real "man in the mirror".