I spent a good (as in a lot and also as in enjoyable) part of yesterday setting a list of proper nouns to music in the grand tradition of Tom Lehrer
and Yakko from Animaniacs.
Late night but it’s hard to actually sleep in so I got up to bring Jen to her photography course. Listened to ‘Falling to pieces’ by The Script on the radio on the way back – good song.
Breakfast of French toast (with bacon and maple syrup) and Earl Grey tea at The Lennox Café, our local that is all of a hop, skip and a jump from our door. Sitting in the morning sun reading The Sunday Times.
Some interesting articles:
Niall Toner on recycling…he speaks about the new thing in everyone’s life – waste – and how there are still a lot of materials and packaging that can’t be put in the green bin. My thinking is that one should put everything vaguely possible in there. NT mentions the necessity of removing the labels on cellophane…even I’ll admit this to be a bridge too far and a waste of time. I do wash out plastic meat trays (and take-away trays and microwave meal trays) and put them in the green bin, though.
He also mentions the depressing fact that a lot of our recycling gets shipped off to China. We should develop our recycling processing, surely? As an island we need to be self-sufficient with our disposal. Why not bury clean all-the-same-type plastic for future ‘harvesting’? It’s not going anywhere and might prove valuable (I’ve seen Back To The Future 2) whereas now it’s a costly headache. Let’s concentrate on the composting problem, which is much more pressing and smelly…
Good to see non-faith-based summer camps for kids springing up in the UK. Poor Richard Dawkins gets a bit of a bashing in Lois Rogers’ piece, although conspicuously more on the front page… He has done remarkable work.
Sarah McInerney writes about the Constitution. Seems like it needs changing (I have to admit I’ve never read it) to be, well, better. There have been loads of recommendations by committees of clever people that have been ignored by government. Change it! We can always fix it again down the line but let’s make it right now, for us and our children.
Family at the next table had a retired guide dog – lovely idea and I found myself smilingly respecting him or her. They also briefly talked about Michael Jackson’s death. The papers are full of more sordid detail (which I ignored). There is *perhaps* an argument for the usefulness of celebrity-watching as a moral reference point but it is such a shocking waste of time. I feel similarly about sport which is granted its own supplement so I can just ignore it. Is it too much to hope that papers might one day do the same with celebrity fluff?
Anyway, Michael Jackson is pop music for people of my age (+/- a generation). If you’re jaded by the same handful of songs that the radio will offer find ‘Speed Demon’ from the Bad album. Programmed bass line, blistering horn parts that’ll blow you away and that voice…brimming with energy and literally bursting out around the melody with soul. Genius.
I’ve ordered the homemade beans on toast and some Japanese Gen Mai tea. I’m sitting in the corner, having moved from sitting outside (beside the wonderful ‘found object’ mosaics): it’s a bit colder today. That’ll hopefully not have been the extent of our summer!
I’m sporting a new haircut from the nice Arabic chaps on Camden Street. They’ve left my fringe a bit more down than I normally wear it, so I’m feeling a little self-conscious 
Tea’s just arrived – smells, as promised, of toasted rice.
Mmm, beans have arrived and they smell good!
…
Very tasty – canelloni beans, sausage, tomato (pulverised) on two generous slices of buttered toast. Toast was sliiightly burnt and a bit tough, but it all added to the homemade vibe.
The tea is really good. Went well with the food and the toast theme of today’s lunch. Very clean, I’d say it would go well with a lot of foods (on up the spice scale) in that it doesn’t get in the way.
A little blonde girl in a long white lacy skirt and red leather shoes with a strap is waiting at the door for her mum, holding a well-behaved puppy on a lead. Cuteness 
This weekend was the 11th international chamber choir festival in Marktoberdorf, Germany, and New Dublin Voices made the trip.
The opening concert was given by Consono, from Köln, who won the top prize at the festival in 2007. We first heard of them then and we learned a piece written for them by Michael Ostrzyga called ‘Iuppiter’. We met the choir at the Cork festival last year and, in a whirl of giddy choral excitement, sang the (amazing, but certainly not ‘light’) piece to the bewildered festival club attendees. While not making us hugely popular with the gathered choir folk that night, it did forge a link between ourselves and Consono (who won the Cork festival that year).
Link to video of Consono singing ‘Iuppiter’ at Marktoberdorf in 2007
Their performance at the Marktoberdorf opening concert was a real pleasure to behold. One of the best things about these choral festivals is the opportunity to hear other choirs and we certainly listened attentively to the wonderful, disciplined sound of Consono.
It was great, too, to bump into another choir we have become great fans of, the Stockholm Musikgymnasium Choir.
The competition consists of two rounds: the first is a twenty-five minute programme of more ’serious’ music and the second is a ten minute set of lighter material. In the first round we sang: Musica noster amor (Handl-Gallus), Sonnet No 76 (Janson), Bogoroditse dyevo (Rachmaninov), Bagairt na marbh (Holohan), Ecco mormorar l’onde (Monteverdi), Bealach Conglais (the world premiere of the piece written for us by Ian Wilson), and Rotala (Karlsons).
In the second round we performed: Double double, toil and trouble (Mäntyjärvi), Wade in de water (Koepke), and Lady Madonna (arr. Carol Canning). I sang the verses in Lady Madonna, which was great fun
The festival was run like clockwork and had a wonderful atmosphere. The competition element was not overemphasised and the organiser, Dolf Rabus, has done an amazing job of cultivating such an inspiring event. One of the exciting and forward-thinking things about it is that all the performances are recorded and videoed, so hopefully I’ll be able to point you to some YouTube links soon…
I subscribe to about two dozen blogs and browse through them most days. Today I heard this great cover of an Elliott Smith song, ‘Needle in the hay’, by a lady called Mélissa Laveaux. On a blog with the marvellous name of Aurgasm. Check it out…I just found a bangin’ track by a Swedish band called Damn!…on my very next click from the blog.
The internet can be great when people like this curate
Unfortunately there’s no mp3 file of Mademoiselle Laveaux’s available to buy, but scroll down on Aurgasm’s ‘About’ page and read the part (on the right) that says ‘Read this part’…
Last night was the first of a four-Thursday residency in The Purty Loft by Hamlet Sweeney & The Handsome Strangers (of which I am Handsome Stranger No. 1 
). On the way out to the venue in Dun Laoghaire we stopped into a garage and I picked up a box of Cadbury’s Heroes – miniature versions of popular Cadbury’s chocolate bars – for half price. This competition product to Mars’ ‘Celebrations’ contains Bournville and the addition of the dark chocolate brings the Heroes collection up a level in my estimation. It brings a maturity and gravitas to the box, like the plain licorice or ‘the bobbly ones’ in Licorice Allsorts…or the coffee Revels.
Cadbury's Bournville
I was just giving a guitar lesson – working on Regina Spektor’s lovely songs ‘Samson’ and ‘The Call’. ‘Samson’ is a beautiful, wistful piano ballad that offers a fresh perspective on the familiar bible story and it was interesting to figure out how to play it on guitar.
‘The Call’ was a different challenge again, it being scored for orchestra. It actually works well with slightly unconventional Bb (6×056x)/ Eb (x6506x) chords I like the sound of. The F chord, when it arrives, is scored strongly and, though I would often cheat on F, the way it’s used in this song means that the full barre chord is best. It strikes me that the F barre chord is possibly the meatiest chord on the acoustic guitar: it requires the most physical strength to play properly and so has a pent up power that’s not as present in its jangly neighbouring chord of E.
Before she left, my student told me to go and look up a duo called ‘First Aid Kit’ singing a cover of Fleet Foxes’ ‘Tiger Mountain Peasant Song’. Great harmonies – what @hamletsweeney would call ‘kitchen table harmonies’.
I was going to try and link the dark chocolate to the melancholy streak in the best songs and art. The link is that I was eating mainly Bournville as I listened to the beguiling First Aid Kit girls, Hamlet and the others having scoffed most of the other varieties!
I posted up the videos of New Dublin Voices in Budapest. We won the chamber choir competition singing this programme:
- Salve Regina – György Orbán
- Ecco mormorar l’onde – Monteverdi
- Bagairt na Marbh – Michael Holohan
- Lullaby (from Four Shakespeare Songs) – Jaakko Mäntyjärvi
- Double, Double Toil and Trouble (from Four Shakespeare Songs) – Jaakko Mäntyjärvi
Much to our surprise and delight we went on to win the Grand Prix the following day singing these pieces:
I’m looking forward to playing The Stables in Mullingar on Friday with Hamlet Sweeney. We’ve played there a couple of times and it was there that I first heard Audrey Ryan. This time we’re supporting ‘Villagers‘, who I first heard in the distilled form of village chief, Conor J. O’Brien, performing solo at the launch of the Purty Loft a couple of weeks ago. I was also introduced to the music of Andrew Bird yesterday. This is a radio slot he did on Californian station KCRW’s ‘Morning Becomes Eclectic’ show (thanks to Gail for this and, indeed, for introducing me to Mr Bird).
There’s something wonderful about hearing somebody for the first time and them drawing you in with whatever it is. It’ll be different after that, but the first time everything is new. The lyrics may be the aspect that delights you, some turn of phrase that makes you laugh or catches you off guard with its honesty. It may be the music, some charming riff or perhaps an instrument or combination of instruments that sounds beautifully fresh on your ear. Whatever it is, it hooks you and beguiles you and crowns your day.
What a perfectly marvellous thing this music can be
Hamlet Sweeney and I climbed the stairs to the auspicious Balcony TV studio a little while ago. Thankfully I didn’t have to lug the keyboard with me, just the cajon. We played ‘Sunshine’ which, after the gig in Whelan’s the other night (30 April) with the full band, is fast becoming one of my favourite Hamlet songs.
click to go to Hamlet's MySpace page
We’re starting a four-week residency in the Purty Loft on the 14 May (not the 15th, as Hamlet says in the video). Come along!
I found The Anderson & Roe Piano Duo on YouTube yesterday. Graduates from Julliard, these two have done some really fantastic work reimagining works such as Strauss’s The Blue Danube waltzes, Astor Piazzolla’s Libertango and John Williams’ Star Wars music to delight those who hear and see them.
The playing is flawless, but what really fizzes is the video work. I haven’t played many piano duets, but it’s really quite an intimate experience. Since they spend so much time alone there, I’m sure most pianists feel like the keyboard is theirs alone when they sit in front of the eighty-eight keys and so sharing the space with someone else is quite a charged environment. One can only speculate as to the amount of piano duet music written for pretty students by admiring teachers! (Greg) Anderson and (Elizabeth Joy) Roe’s videos allow the viewer access to the physical element of piano duetting and they use the medium to explore the narrative suggested by the music they play. The most recent video, of Mozart’s Sonata in D for two pianos, is very well judged and uses various methods to sustain our visual interest, my favourite being the pianists’ hand reflections mirrored in a beautiful editing trick.
Of course Anderson & Roe are not writing music for the drawing room, but for 2000-seater concert halls, and so they purposefully rewrite the music to tangle themselves together. It must take them so long to rehearse! They claim not to do it for the ‘rock’-style, but some of their acrobatics are just plain dangerous (one false move and delicate pinky collides with sweeping elbow…ouch…piano career scuppered). That’s what makes it such good viewing! We love that stuff, right? I personally could take less of their yearning, passionate moments. Yeah, we love Eric Clapton’s/John Mayer’s guitar faces but for some reason that’s allowed in a way that some of this pair’s antics just aren’t. IMHO. (Which, when you think about it, should really be rendered imho, for extra humility…)
Enjoy
