Best concerts of 2010 :)

1. Rufus Wainwright - Crossing Border, The Hague, November 18
Stunning. Great seats (second row, just left of centre) and an awesome view of the grand piano. The hands! The big surprise of seeing Stephen Oremus enter to accompany Rufus on a set of Judy songs. I could never have imagined that I would enjoy these so much. Stunning indeed :) Third time around this year but The Hague was the best. Meeting Rufus per chance again outside the venue. I love being able to thank him for the performance and I know he enjoys that. He truly loves his fans. Being recognized = bliss :)

The Walking Song. Emotions rippling through the theatre. The tears. Nuff said.

2. Sam Amidon - Cultuurcentrum Roepaen, Nijmegen, November 7
Imagine a nightclub setting in a former convent. Red drapes everywhere, small tables, red wine on the table. Front row. Sam singing 'Im Wunderschoenen Monat Mai', at least part of it. Alienating, mesmerizing. Saying hello to Sam passing by the ladies room. Getting a big smile and a 'Hi!'.

3. Jónsi - Paradiso , Amsterdam, June 3
Awesome show with amazing visuals. Great view from the balcony. Loved every moment! The album didn't make it to my list of 10 but was a great runner up!

4. Britten Sinfonia with Pekka Kuusisto & Mark Padmore - Muziekgebouw Eindhoven, January 27
A duet by Steve Reich, John Adams's Shaker Loops and a world premiere by Nico Muhly. Cafavy's poems set to music and sung heavenly by British tenor Mark Padmore. Goose bumps. So looking forward to see more world premieres by Nico next January!

5. The Whale Watching Tour - Barbican, London, September 27
Had front row tickets for the concert planned in April, went to London only to find the gig cancelled because of the ash cloud. Returned my tickets and got front row tickets again for September. Ah well, another trip to London... Glorious gig!

Best albums of 2010 :)

"Those lines that I before have writ do lie,
Even those that said I could not love you dearer:
Yet then my judgment knew no reason why
My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer."
Sonnet 115 - William Shakespeare

Sometimes passion returns with a vengeance and that's what happened last year. Here's my list of 10 Albums of 2010, in alphabetical order - please click the titles to listen:

1. Antony & The Johnsons - Swanlights
I saw Antony last year and his concert made it to my list then. Must admit that I did like 'The Crying Light' a bit better than this album but Antony's albums are always of such high quality that they make it to my top ten!

2. Daníel Bjarnason - Processions
What a revelation to hear this album! Awesome music on the crossroads of experimental, noise & classical. This should have been on my list of 2009 because that's when a few lucky devils (including me) got the special pre-order edition... but it came out officially in 2010. Will be seeing Daníel at Cross-Linx festival in February and looking forward to that very, very much!

3. John Grant - The Queen Of Denmark
Discovery of the year for me. Very intense and self deprecating (with tongue in cheek), just the way I like it! Hope to see him live sometime.

4. Nico Muhly - I Drink The Air Before Me
This album blew me away, it's soooo powerful! Everyone should listen to this at least once. Saw Nico live 3 times last year and already have 2 concerts planned (with tickets in hand) for January 2011! Talk about crossroads... Nico is always exploring new horizons while working with some of the finest musicians in both the classical and pop/rock world. Catch one his many gigs if you can!

5. Owen Pallett - Heartland
Intellectual pop with an edge, always a pleasure to listen to. Will catch Owen at Cross-Linx festival as well! (hey, guess cross-linx music is my music)

6. Rufus Wainwright - All Days Are Nights, Songs For Lulu
Ah, what can I say? Back with a vengeance indeed. The album I've been waiting for: pure, naked Rufus (lol, I wish). Only for the initiated! Attended 3 of his solo shows and already have tickets for 3 more in July 2011...

7. Sam Amidon - I See The Sign
I did a blog review of this album a while ago. Sam at his best with haunting folk songs that will touch you to the bone. Was lucky to catch him live 3 times this year, once with The Whale Watching Tour and twice solo. Amazing experiences!

8. Sufjan Stevens - The Age Of Adz
The Brooklyn Scene on spots 8 & 9. Sufjan surprises again with a very upbeat album. Again, melodies with a twist and layers of sound & meaning. Get dancing!

9. The National - High Violet
I just love the side projects of the band members, always in for some fun. Hope to see the Dessner Bros perform in some side projects (along with a full set of The National) at Cross-Linx festival next February...

10. Valgeir Sigurðsson - Draumalandið
Ah, Valgeir - one of the friendliest and most generous musician/composers I've met last year. Turned out an album called Dreamland but don't be fooled by the title! Powerful landscapes of sound that are sometimes soothing and sometimes menacing, like Iceland itself I guess. Saw him live twice this year (as a duo with Ben Frost and with The Whale Watching Tour) and both concerts were mindblowing :)

Best concerts tomorrow!

Whale Watching Tour - second time

Last Monday's concert was a second time in two ways. It was not only the second time I saw the Whale Watching Tour in full glory (the first time being in 2009, Eindhoven), but also the second time I travelled to London to catch them at the Barbican (the first time in April cancelled due to the Icelandic ash cloud).

Second time's always better, they say... we'll see.

What I liked better about this concert, was the fact that the four 'supporting musicians' -who were kept at the back of the stage in Eindhoven- got to take centre stage now in certain compositions. Una Sveinbjarnardóttir on violin was stunning in her glorious performing of 'Honest Music' by Nico Muhly. Her face reflected the different moods of the piece and I really got absorbed in those moods; absolutely beautiful.

And Nadia... I love Nadia Sirota and the things she does on her viola. When Nico Muhly asked her to step into the limelight for 'Keep in Touch', I held my breath for it's such a demanding song - not just to play, but also to listen to. The piano understream, the repetitively disrupting sounds made by Valgeir Sigurðsson tapping the microphone, together with Antony Hegarty's (taped) wailing vocals, provided a perfect background for the haunting sounds Nadia created. She's something else.

What I liked less was Helgi Hrafn Jónsson singing 'Baby Architect' and 'Kin' at the front of the stage. In Eindhoven, Helgi amazed us when he started to sing Nico's 'Mothertongue' composition from the back of the stage. Who'd have imagined that the unassuming trombonist could sing? Centre stage, and in these specific songs by Valgeir, Helgi is not well casted (IMO). His overly dramatic gesturing, his often artificial dynamics and abrupt changing from high to low singing, was a bit distressing to my ears. I would have loved to hear Sam Amidon sing 'Baby Architect' as he has done before.

Sam doesn't need any addings to his pleasant voice and easygoing stage presence. He's just there as if he was singing in his parents' living room.

It was very nice to see the chemistry between all these people on stage again. Nico brilliantly conducting with his eyebrows and pointed index finger, Ben Frost testing the hall's foundation with his deep drones (I can still feel them in my stomach). Ben & Valgeir exchanging glances & laptops. All four of them changing places at times. Borgar Magnason on double bass being the steadfast character on stage, providing rhythmic undertow and eerily channeling whales as well as wolves in Ben Frost's haunting noise pieces.

All in all an excellent evening that went past much too fast. Oh, did I mention the different start from Eindhoven? As an 'opening act', we got Marc Silver's bird film featuring half a million starlings, coupled with Ben Frost's music 'There are no others, there is only us'. Magnificent.

Some pictures to be found HERE.

Birthday weekend

Had a lovely birthday last Saturday! Per chance, I'd found out only a week ago there was to be a festival of sacred music in Maastricht (which is quite close to us), called Musica Sacra. The two things on Saturday that I wanted to attend were both free and quite extraordinary! The family was with me.



We saw Alain Louafi performing 'Inori' by Karlheinz Stockhausen in the morning. Inori is Japanese for prayer, evocation, adoration, and the performance consisted of ritual movements as laid down meticulously in the score by the composer. The Centre de Recherche et de Formation Musicales de Wallonie delivered the sounds, beautifully distributed over the immense factory hall of Ainsi. When we lived in Maastricht, we used to know this as Enci (Eerste Nederlandse Cement Industrie), a cement factory that took away large chunks of the landscape of the Sint Pietersberg. It's great to see these old industrial buildings being reused as buzzing cultural centres.

I was very moved by Stockhausen's score and the performance of Louafi. My husband couldn't stand watching him because of the 'artificial movements' that kept repeating to certain recurring sounds. Well, ritual movements are inherently artificial and I found the repetition in both music and movements quite trance inducing. But then again, listening with eyes closed is nice too :)



After lunch we went for the heart of the city, the relatively new Entre Deux city mall. This is an enclosed, but open-aired mall - check the picture! Imagine the impact of the beggar's voice in 'Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet', slowly pervading the space between the shops. This well known composition by Gavin Bryars was performed by ensemble Insomnio, sitting in the middle of the mall. A lonesome trombonist walking the higher shopping galleries, intermittently taking over from the beggar's voice. Powerful stuff. Nice to see some people watching and listening for a while, then just going on with their shopping - while others stood there silently and attentively for 45 minutes.

A lovely dinner with my beloved ones afterwards, what more could one wish for? Extended family on Sunday, as it should be... Great weekend all in all, thanks everyone!

Cagelist

The late Mr. John Cage celebrates this Sunday his ninety-eighth birthday. Last year or the year before, someone on the Internet — was it The Standing Room? — had the excellent idea of marking the occasion by creating a 4'33" playlist on iTunes.

I'll follow Alex Ross's example but couldn't find as many tracks as he did... Lots of Cagelists on Twitter, just use the hashtag #Cageday to find them. Fun! Please click the image below to get a better view of my list:



We went to see Else Olsen Storesund playing Cage on prepared piano yesterday which was awesome.

Form vs function - why (micro)blog?

A few interesting things I came across last week, pointing in the same direction. Someone complaining about nobody apparently missing his tweets that hadn't come through for quite some time. When nobody notices, why twitter at all?

Then someone else worrying about the nature of his own tweets, compared to the blogposts he used to write. While his former blog read as a diary -an external memory-, the chronology of tweets offered at best a fractured, incomprehensive and utterly useless list of seemingly random quotes (rephrasing and exaggerating a tad here...). Had he been wasting his time microblogging?

And then there's the 'outsourcing of memory through Google' that I wrote about in my last post. I've heard this before. When printing was invented, pessimists predicted that it would be the end of human kind as we knew it. People would become lazy and dumb because they would no longer have the need to remember or recall. Before long, they wouldn't memorise anything anymore and their brains would shrivel.


For a few years, I've used Flickr as an emotional diary. Pictures speak a lot of words, you know... I was into a few hobbies that were easy to catch in images and evoked reactions from likeminded people. We felt connected through these images, captions, tags, comments & faves.

Then I started using blogging alongside to Flickr, because some work-related stuff was more suitable for posts. Again, there was a community of people that shared information and opinions through comments, blogrolls & trackbacks.

I've stopped blogging the way I did when I started checking and doublechecking whether somebody else had already blogged about this new thing. Twitter has neatly filled this space. Anything new is on there within a minute of publication elsewhere in the world. It's kind of an express RSS-feed, a digital marquee. And I don't feel the need to be the first to announce the news anymore so I'm more a consumer than a producer on Twitter :). Moreover, tweets are disposable. If I want to keep a link someone tweeted, I keep it somewhere else - not by retweeting it. I never look back.

Like everybody else, I started using Facebook as well. Now here I am a true prosumer. Facebook has gradually become the emotional diary of choice for me, with things like Flickr, YouTube, blogposts, events & links coming together. And here I DO look back, my notes, links and embedded clips neatly stored chronologically. Everybody has their own 'blog' on Facebook and the 'home' setting acts like an RSS-reader of sorts.

I don't really care if I miss anything. Important issues will inevitably come to me sooner or later. My contacts are my filter on the world. Their interests and daily doings are reflected on my screen. We are connected in many ways. Even with the ones I know IRL, there's an extra connectiveness.

And then I felt the urge to start blogging again. I needed my own emotional diary again. If I don't blog for a week, nobody will notice and that doesn't bother me. I'm still visible elsewhere. This is MY space.

picture: British Library, London

Preciousness

"It's hard not to develop an aural antsiness when YouTube is there for the flighty browsing, iPods for the impatient shuffling. Meanwhile, Spotify and every other streaming service allows us to take for granted a song being there for our ears when we demand it. In short, our restless listening might mean we're in danger of becoming careless listeners, too.

(...) Perhaps we need just a bit more reverence when it comes to listening.

(...) Over the last few years, theatre in this country has realised the heightened awareness that odd venues and small-scale performance instill in audiences." (Hermione Hoby for The Observer)

Hoby thinks 'precious' is a word in need of rescuing, whether it's about music, theatre or any other art. In a time where everything that can be reproduced digitally seems to be there for the taking, anytime and anywhere, she might just be right.

In the same issue of The Observer, Geoff Dyer (writer) claims that 'Googling has drained some of the purpose from his life'. No less.

"Then there's the outsourcing of memory. From the age of 16, I got into the habit of memorising passages of poetry and compiling detailed indexes in the back of books of prose. So if there was a passage I couldn't remember, I would spend hours going through my books, seeking it out. Now, in what TS Eliot, with great prescience, called 'this twittering world', I just google the key phrase of the half-remembered quote. Which is great, but it's drained some of the purpose from my life."

But there's relief too, from Colin Blakemore (neurobiologist):

"It's curious that some of the most vociferous critics of the internet are the very sorts of people who are benefiting most from this wonderful, liberating, organic extension of the human mind. They are academics, scientists, scholars and writers, who fear that the extraordinary technology that they use every day is a danger to the unsophisticated.

They underestimate the capacity of the human brain to capitalise on new ways of storing and transmitting information. When I was at school I learned by heart great swathes of poetry and chunks of the Bible, not to mention page after page of scientific textbooks. What a waste of my neurons, all clogged up with knowledge that I can now obtain with the click of a mouse."

Related issues in my opinion. When everything is available at a mouseclick, you can either consume what's right before you until you drown in middle-of-the-road entertainment or use the advantage of unlimited choice (the far end of the long tail) and sophisticated filtering to find hidden gems. To uncover preciousness. Yes, this can be as time consuming as going through your bookcase to find a certain line of prose used to be.
Who's with me?