From the June 2007 Financial Times “How To Spend It” monthly (not yet online), comes the Perfect Weekend with British composer Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. The abstract joins him on the island of Sanday, one of the islands in the Orkney Islands off the north coast of Scotland where Davies has made his home. ha ha Sand-ay. Get it? It's sandy there.
With roughly 300 works under his authorship, and as the founder of the Orkney St. Magnus Festival (which is celebrating its 30th year this summer), we regardless like to regard Max as one of the blazing pioneers of internet-driven musical downloads, which he started 11 years ago via his website MaxOpus (he is also one of the cofounders of Napster -- jk jk).
His mornings and afternoons are spent in the studio, which he breaks-up with walks on the beach with his dog Judy, and leisurely dinners with his partner Colin Parkinson: his passion for good food was sparked in Rome in the late 1950s while a student, and he now cooks, ‘a lot of risottos with saffron, and pasta with lemon, olive oil and garlic.’ He frequently stops in London’s Moxon Street La Fromagerie for cheesy goodness since Sanday Island boasts only three proper shops (Opera Chic herself is partial to Neal Yards Dairy but La Fromagerie is cool too).
We’re so stopping in the Max's house when we find ourselves stranded on the island (as long as we don't have to pet his feral cats).
