Dotting the "i"s and crossing the "t"s

So... ploughed through various mundane tasks associated with the trip yesterday.  Now have most of the travel booked and most of the accommodation including travelling to Orleans for the association Francaise du Cor conference.  This conference is being organised by my former teacher the wonderful Claude Maury and (quelle surprise!) I'll be playing some Gallay at one of their "open mike" events.

I've also buckled down and completed my enrolment at Langue Onze - the French test as part of the application form wasn't too bad though I'm certain my written French it utterly lousy.

Things to do include finding accommodation for 15th - 19th of November and 22nd - 24th of November (following up one last lead on this), return after the recording (tempted not to book this until the venue is confirmed just in case it makes sense to leave later or even the following day) and coming and going for the Irish Baroque Orchestra patch around the 13th - 15th of November (technically this could be dealt with by the IBO office but as they'd normally expect me to be travelling to and from London we'll see...).

Roughly two months to go.

Welcome to "The Gallay Project".  This blog is purely a way of me setting down the thoughts and various adventures I have leading up to and during my month in Paris.  Earlier in the year I was fortunate enough to be awarded a scholarship by the Gerald Finzi Trust (www.geraldfinzi.org) which will finance me spending a month in Paris researching the composer and horn player Jacques-Francois Gallay.  The main thrust of this month will be preparing for a recording of the Gallay Caprices which is incredibly exciting.  I've just spent the last 48 hours finalising some of my plans and booking trains, accommodation and contacting various people who I'll be collaborating with - nerve racking business but incredibly exciting.

What I'm finding at the moment is that, though I'm used to having a certain degree of autonomy in my working life, some of the organisational aspects of this project are feeling quite daunting.  I suppose a lot of this is due to the fact that in effect I'm going to be not "working" for that month (bar two little gigs, one in Paris, which just neatly fitted in, and I will nip back to the UK to teach on a couple of occasions) and, though I have this fantastic scholarship, I do have to be careful with the money.  Also I suppose there is no "office" with whom I'm liaising with so I am very aware that the decisions are all 100% my own.

So a few loose ends to tie up with the logistics of the whole event.  Annoyingly I went to enrol on line for the French course I'm hoping to do and discovered I've answer a few questions in French.  A major aspect of this project is to go on a month long intensive French course and improve my woeful French.  Though my understanding of French and my spoken French isn't too bad my written is pretty hideous so what I thought was going to be a simple task (fill in form and send off to the school) is a bit more of an ordeal.

So really I ought to stop blogging and start doing my French homework.