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.