The 'Percussion Discussion' I played on last night was pretty interesting. Headed by visiting professor, John Beck, the concert was an eclectic amalgamation of percussion works, from Yankee Doodle to Steve Reich's Music for Pieces of Wood, segued with brief lectures on the evolution of percussion and world music. In an interesting coincidence, Professor Beck used to work with the drum line at my high school back in the late eighties.

I finally finished reading The Fatal Shore, a giant history of penal colonization in Australia. The book reminded me a lot of A Beautiful Mind, very in-depth and interesting, but its epic proportions make it hard to keep with it. There's plenty of great stories and information in the book, but it probably wouldn't be your best choice if you're just interesting in the material in passing. Still, I'm glad I read it, as it was an area that I had no knowledge about at all.