​I sat at this bench every day during Lockdown – normally for several, totally content hours at a time. It is in my partner’s home which I have since moved into.

Lockdown turned out to be an incredibly positive period of reflection and a healing time for me. I feel gratitude for having being able to embrace this time which has been so difficult and challenging to so many throughout the world.

Over the past months, this bench has facilitated so much new music and the completion of a body of unfinished work.

I forgot I had covered this classic Proclaimers song (originally for my friend’s wedding some years back). I chose this as my offering to Take A Seat as it reminds me of the countless cover versions and re-imaginings of classic songs that I have had the total joy of exploring in my theatre soundtracks over the years. It is also undeniably a song that speaks universally (and I am sure quite risky to cover! – Hey ho, I feel rebellious and so I unleash my bedroom recording to the world!)

I honestly don’t remember the first time I was in a theatre, but my first memorable experience working in theatre was as a piano/composition student at the RSAMD. I was asked by Hugh Hodgart to collaborate with the Drama school in a production of ‘Seven Years’ by Howard Barker back in 1993. Thus began my love affair with Scottish theatre.

At the time of Lockdown, I was working as Musical Director for Michael John McCarthy’s score for Linda McLean’s Lennox Castle – a co-production with Lung Ha and the Lyceum.

The following quote reminds me of why the Scottish Theatre community plays a major role in my life and how its temporary absence is clearly felt:
“Nothing, in truth, can ever replace a lost companion. Old comrades cannot be manufactured.
There is nothing that can equal the treasure of so many shared memories, so many bad times
endured together, so many quarrels, reconciliations, heartfelt impulses. Friendships like that cannot
be reconstructed. If you plant an oak, you will hope in vain to sit soon in its shade...There is only
one true form of wealth, that of human contact.”

- Antoine de Saint Exupery Wind, Sand and Stars