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I went to a concert last night by our choral neighbours, The Mornington Singers. They are conducted by the lovely Orla Flanagan and sang in the marvellous Pro-Cathedral in Dublin.
It was my first time in the cathedral (the Catholic one…not sure why it gets the positivity prefix…) and it really is quite nice indeed. Not too over-the-top in terms of gold and such, but there are two domes in the roof and a large area around the altar that lended itself perfectly to the choir’s arched formation. (Note to self: do I mean ‘arced’? Looks wrong.) The building reminded me of St Cecilia’s Hall in Edinburgh, one of the concert rooms built in Georgian times. Of course, the cathedral is bigger and more, well, ‘churchy’, but it did seem to yearn for ancient Greece or Rome in the way that the Georgian architects favoured.
The programme for the evening was titled ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ but, apart from Veljo Tormis’s ‘St John’s Day Songs’, this was less a theme and more an apt description of the evening’s experience.
The concert opened with two pieces by James MacMillan: ‘A Child’s Prayer’ and ‘The Gallant Weaver’. I wondered about opening with the first of these. It does begin with the word “welcome” but it is an intense piece and I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear it straight off. It’s a great sing for the two soprano soloists, whose intertwining lines gracefully float over the sonorous repeated chords of the choir. The middle section flickers with ornamented notes in all parts on the word “joy” and propels the music upward to the final, heart-breaking duet.
My friend Brian recommended The Low Anthem to me a few weeks ago and lent me ‘Oh My God, Charlie Darwin’. It’s a mix of beautiful and barnstorming folk and I hadn’t even listened to the whole thing when I noticed, entered, and WON! a ticket competition in the last edition of Le Cool. Le Cool is a great e-zine that highlights interesting things happening in the city* every week. Or, as they more eloquently put it, “a free weekly cultural agenda and alternative city guide”. It works really well on the iPhone, too, with the pages sliding over to the side.
* It’s published for Barcelona, Madrid, Lisboa, London, Istanbul, Moscow, and Budapest, too.
The gig was in Vicar Street, having been moved from Whelan’s due to a large demand for tickets. The whole ground floor of Vicar Street was packed with 20s/30s cool people and older cool people. There were beards and checked shirts in abundance. We had our customary Jameson & Cokes in the bar. I thought it was more of a longneck beer night, but Brian has a predilection for that particular combo which wouldn’t be staved off and I joined him for auld lang syne. It’s a while since we saw each other and so we managed to miss the support act but we wandered into the main venue shortly after nine and contemplated where it would be best to stand. Having found the perfect spot that managed to suit our very different physicalities, we awaited the band’s arrival on stage. Tom Waits played over the PA system…
Photo taken using Hipstamatic iPhone app
At about twenty-five past nine they came on, looking just right. The lead singer said they’d be playing three types of songs: songs from ‘Oh My God, Charlie Darwin’, some new songs they’d been working on for the past six weeks, and some old American songs. I’m afraid I didn’t even bother trying to keep a setlist because I don’t know any of the titles and figured I’d have a hard time finding the names of two-thirds of the set anyway. Plus, it’s pretty nerdy to be tapping away on the iPhone during the gig!
It was all pretty chilled out for the first handful of songs and we were treated to the beautiful array of sounds they had brought to play for us: an old reed organ sat on the left of the stage; an upright bass, an electric guitar (Fender Mustang, maybe…?), a less-than-full-size acoustic; a lovely bits-and-pieces drum kit which comprised a proper marching bass drum, a snare drum, high hi-hats that wobbled about satisfyingly when they were played, and two great-sounding cymbals. In one of the early songs, a home-made shaker was produced. The girl interested me most (yeah, yeah, settle down…) as she played clarinet, bass guitar, electric guitar, sang, and played a set of crotales with a bow. Generally doing the kind of multi-instrumental shenanigans that I do 
Her clarinet tone was lovely and I really liked the way she played – using a wide vibrato for the slower, more sonorous songs, rising up on her toes slightly for the higher notes, not shying away from some lovely high lines up at the top end of the instrument’s register… In one of the last songs she and the reed organ player did some sweet harmonies, the sounds blending beautifully, as you’d expect.
When they let rip (on tracks like ‘The Horizon Is A Beltway’), we were riveted for a completely different reason. I was really drawn in by their committed, raw performances. One of the stand-out songs was something about whiskey and women driving you insane (sorry, rubbish not to have a title, I know…!) and on each climax of the chorus they held a chord for *just* a bit longer, the girl going up to the next harmony until they literally couldn’t hold it any more. It’s this kind of thing that makes a live performance trump a recording every time. (If the artists are prepared to take those risks…)
Another lovely moment was in a song where three of the four musicians played wind instruments: the girl’s clarinet being augmented by another and also by a brass band-style horn (i.e. not a French horn). On the last horn break the singer took out two phones (he’d tried to explain this to us, but we didn’t really get it until he did it). He called one with the other and put them on speaker, whistling into them, causing feedback. It made a ghostly, theremin-like noise throughout the crowd (some people had copped on what to do…).
This person got some really good footage from up near the stage. On this song, ‘This God Damn House’, you can hear that lovely clarinet vibrato and then the mobile phone thing from 3’56”.
Here’s a clip of ‘Cage The Songbird’ that I recorded. You can hear the bowed crotales well from about 0’22″.
Here is Damien McGlynn’s review and much better photos than mine, from state.ie.
Question:
- Since you all change instruments so much, how do you decide who plays what in each song?
Jen and I went to see the new Sherlock Holmes film the other night in our newly reopened local Swan Cinema in Rathmines. I really enjoyed the film and we cheerfully chatted about it as we strolled home, me wearing my new deerstalker hat. That particular part of the traditional Holmes garb was left out of the film but I appreciated l’homage myself…
The cinema are going to be showing live opera from The Met apparently, which should be interesting to go and see.
Guy Ritchie, who directed the Sherlock Holmes film, creates a wonderful world for his Sherlock reboot. London looks great and is alive with possibility: Tower Bridge is being built, Britain is at the height of her power, scientific advance and enquiry strain at the leash. And Holmes, of course, embodies that searching spirit. I felt the same admiration for the character that I felt about House in the first few seasons (before they explored his nastiness) – the thrill of watching a great mind pursuing truth and appearing totally in control.
[I think I may have copped on why American programmes are now referred to as 'seasons': what is the plural of 'series'? Yes, it's 'series'. Not confusing at all. I found a wonderfully narky entry in Wiktionary, too, under 'programme':
Funny.]
Anyway…one of the most delightful things about the film was the use of The Dubliners’ recording of ‘The Rocky Road To Dublin’ as the music over the closing credits. I usually sit to the end of the credits in films because the music info (what songs were used, the composer, musicians etc.) is always right at the end. Sometimes, though – like with Avatar recently – the credits go on for about a day! And the music wasn’t great anyway. This, however, was a real treat. Luke Kelly’s masterful vocal rolling and tumbling the words of this slip jig (three triplets in the bar) with barely a pause for breath. Have a listen. No, have two listens…first time read the words, too…
Now with the band…
PS No sooner had I posted this but I remembered that House is, of course, based on Sherlock Holmes! Holmes, House, Watson, Wilson, House lives at 221B, takes drugs, plays music, etc. etc.
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.
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 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
Last week we had snow here in Ireland and the second concert featuring Brian Denvir’s faithful arrangements of Sigur Rós music took place in the chapel of Trinity College Dublin. A music-loving friend of mine told me she went running in the white marshmallow woods near her home listening to Sigur Rós’s ‘Takk…’ album. Snow is such a wonderful thing: at a time of year when everything is dark and lifeless, it blankets everything in brightness. A number of words came to mind as I thought about snow and also this remarkable music that has captured the imaginations of so many people: pristine, natural, soft, all-encompassing…
Opening with the instrumental ‘Samskeyti’, Brian and his fellow members of the Dublin University Orchestral Society led an enraptured audience through just over an hour of music by the Icelandic band. All the other tracks featured Aisling Dexter, who sang from the chapel’s lectern to the side of the stage.
‘Starálfur’
‘Fljótavík’
‘Hoppipolla’
‘Vaka’
‘Andvari’
‘Njósnavélin’
‘Von’
‘Sé Lest’
‘All Alright’
‘Inní Mér Syngur Vitleysingur’
The (male) singer in Sigur Rós, Jónsi, frequently uses the high, ‘falsetto’ range of his voice, giving the songs a very wide span of expression but placing them beyond the capabilities of most singers. I asked Aisling how she went about learning to sing the songs – some of which are in Icelandic, one in English and some are sung in a made-up language called ‘Hopelandic’:
Mainly, I learnt the words aurally – by listening to the songs and writing down phonetics – and practising! It was fairly difficult, but the more I listen to Sigur Rós, the more I love it, so there was no problem with that!
I was exploring ‘eighteen seconds before sunrise’, the official Sigur Rós news source, and found lots of interesting information on the band but not much in the way of translations beyond the titles of the tracks. I’m sure part of the appeal of the music is that most people who hear it have no clue as to what the words are about. This is actually quite a special luxury for Anglophones, so used to being bombarded with textual information that we can’t help but process. Part of me doesn’t want to know what the songs are about because then I might lose the ability to listen to what they mean.
One point I’d agree with that I read on the ‘eighteen seconds…’ site was that Aisling’s microphone wasn’t good enough: they just used the lectern microphone through the chapel’s PA system. I’m all in favour of the group’s choice of venues – so far using the natural acoustics of sacred places – but the dire in-house amplification systems should be firmly ignored. The group – who might perhaps benefit from a name? – hope to play a gig in The Black Box in Belfast soon. It will be interesting to see how they fare in a small theatre; hopefully they know a good sound engineer!
Unfortunately our camera is in the repair shop, so I had to rely on the trusty phone. There are apparently videos of some of the songs soon to be available on YouTube, however, so keep an eye out for those.
Aisling Dexter and Brian Denvir
On Friday Hamlet Sweeney played his first gig of 2009, launching his release strategy on the world. He will release a single every month this year – the first one being ‘I am a man’. We recorded a handful of tracks in December with Karl Odlum (who has been the producer for, among others, Gemma Hayes) and some of these were then mastered at the iconic Abbey Road studios in London.
‘I am a man’ is one of the tracks that I’ve really enjoyed playing with Hamlet over the past year. Hamlet had recorded quite a full demo version in his home studio that impressed me from the outset with the dark, unapologetic tone of the words and music. It has a punchy riff – my keyboard version is different from his multi-tracked guitar original, which may get released on an anthology or B-side some day – and also now features a clarinet solo. This was good fun in the gig, as I got to switch between the two.
Hamlet Sweeney in Whelan's (30jan09) - photograph by Joanna Butcher
Playing with us on the gig were two excellent musicians, Gavin Fox and Binzer, who play together in the band Concerto for Constantine. It’s always interesting when Dublin musicians get together, swapping stories of who they all know! Binzer played on the initial recording sessions with Karl down in Wicklow (Karl was on bass) when we put down the basic tracks. Gavin I hadn’t met before, but he came in and did a great job with the songs. Which were:
‘Is she real?’
‘Sunshine’
‘Street lights’
These first three were just Hamlet and I, the guys joining us at this point.
‘Miss Inconsequential’
We played this at Bewleys and slowed it down considerably for this gig, helping the song find its natural groove, I think. It settled into a nice Del Amitri type feel.
‘Mr Slim’
‘Tie a ribbon up in your hair’
‘Canary in a coalmine’
‘Voices in my head’
‘The Una Molloy hangover song’
‘Hey girl (Ooh la la la)’
Dropped because of time restraints, which was unfortunate (’cause people really enjoy it).
‘El capitane’
‘Perfect day’
‘Buy this song’
This was great fun with the band!
‘I am a man’
‘The boogie man’
‘I am a man’, the first of twelve releases this year, is available for download now. Here’s how:
- Text ‘music 2274′ to 57501.
- Enter the pin code you receive on downloadmusic.ie.
- Download the song.
This last step is very important. If you don’t download it, it won’t register for the charts…
I followed a link to this album, which was featured on the iTunes Store front page…
Here’s what I posted to iTunes, although I suspect it may not be published:
If the blurb is anything to go by, this release is designed to be listened to with the accompanying booklet. iTunes doesn’t supply it, so why would I buy this from iTunes? I would *love* it if all albums were shipped with digital booklets. This release seems to show up the poorer experience that we’re being given by iTunes when album booklets aren’t shipped with the music. Why does the product have to be dissected for digital release?
I certainly can’t see any point in buying this release digitally from iTunes, when I’d be missing out on the fascinating-sounding booklet that the artist has prepared. To another retailer, methinks…
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