Australian Chamber Orchestra review

For my birthday my wife thought up a brilliant gift for me; two tickets to each of two concerts the Australian Chamber Orchestra was holding in Wollongong, so for each concert I would bring one of my two daughters so they could experience both the brilliance of ACO and that of going to a concert with a bit of pizzazz!

The first concert was called 'Baroque Virtuoso' and is, I think, one of the first times the ACO's newly aquired Stradivarius violin (price: just short of 2 million dollars) would be on display and played by the beautiful Satu Vänskä. The program for the concert promised a few Greensleeves baroque pieces but interspersed by a few contemporary pieces I knew nothing about.

First, here's Satu introducing the concert;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3PIv2w9OXA&list=UUYj5cJizFqEY

I brought Grace (11 turning 12) who's been playing violin for two years now, and she was excited, but did remark that the ratio of people to age was something bizarrely far above even my own age. Together we spotted about less than 10 people that looked anything less than 30 years old (or so, not counting me), and the concert was sold out (which means 515 seats, according to the Merringong website) with lots of older folks about. Not a bad thing in itself, but does perhaps say something about the state of classical music in this region.

I won't say too much about all the pieces in the concert, but I'd like to make a few general remarks and point out the highlights.

First the bad, and let me make it clear straight away that I'm a huge baroque fanatic; I study it, love it, live it, I have so many baroque recordings and have been to so many baroque concerts that it makes people worry about my sanity, but I love it from the sheep gut strings to the various baroque tunings, and unless you try to be as HIP as you possibly can be, I won't be pleased. And as such, I wasn't pleased. The baroque pieces in question - Handel's 'Concerto Grosso in B minor', Vivaldi's 'Concerto in B minor' RV580, Teleman's 'Viola Concerto in G major' (!!), Tartini's 'Devils Trill' G minor violin concerto and Corelli's 'Concerto Grosso in F major, op.6 No. 2' - all had the same tokens of baroque pieces played for modern chamber orchestra in modern tuning on modern instruments.

However, within that framework there was lots to love, so don't get me wrong, the playing was at times quite sublime, with the highlight for me perhaps Corelli's because I love it so (but they could have put a bit more gusto into it). Satu's solo work on Tartini's concerto was of course brilliant; she's very, very good, and has a lovely playing style and touch, not to mention that remarkable timbre in the Stradivarius (first time I've heard one live, I believe). But for me, the music lose their soul in the sharpness of the modern instruments, and cry a little in modern tuning. But that's just me.

The best part of this baroque concert was the music that wasn't baroque, starting with probably the highlight of the evening for both me and Grace;

Stuart Greenbaum's "Moments of falling" is a gorgeous Aeolian fantasy that falls off a cliff, dragging other motif's with it on the way down, rumbling lyrically until its timely death. Lots of people around us, too, were stunned at this one, and the applause, I think, captured our surprise and delight quite well, an applause that wouldn't be repeated again until the big solo pieces and the bug finish. It was a wonderful piece, and one that the ACO just nailed; this is their true domain! This is what they do best, there's no doubt about it.

Colin Brumby's "The Phoenix and the Turtle" was up next, of which I found the first movement just as wonderful as the Greenbaum piece, coming and going in and out of similar motifs, circular developments and sharp constraints that really don't constrain much. Absolutely lovely stuff, and really well played. Second movement was somewhat different from the first, and didn't quite capture me, but still good.

James Ledger's "Johann has left the building" was Grace's favourite, a delightful romp through Bachesque brilliant motions without the genius. I wasn't quite into it as I was the others, but perhaps the promise of Bach had me looking for something it wasn't trying to be. Probably. My bad.

Peter Sculthorpe was the only contemporary composer I had actually heard of (from my years at the National Library of Australia and the Music Australia project, I think), and they played his "Port Essington", a remarkable piece and perhaps the most abstract at times as well as being the most complex composition, going from ensemble, to trio, to abstract, to trio, and back to ensemble, all interspersed with various degrees of overtones (six movements in all). The bush and the life around Port Essington came alive on stage, and it was quite remarkable. I could tell some of the audience didn't quite know what to do with this music, but I loved it! The playing was simply astounding, from the syncopated abstracts to the trio cadences (on which Mr. Cello, Timo Valve, did some fine fiddlin' indeed) to some people-giving-eachother-looks discords. I sucked it all up and was enthralled in it all, and was definitely the second highlight of the evening for me.

I can't say enough how wonderful it was to hear these Australian contemporary pieces, an area I'm completely ignorant of. However, this crash introduction have me wanting more (lots more!), and that is a testament to the brilliant playing of the ACO and the pieces they chose for this concert. Every player bounced off the next, and the timing was impeccable. I'd however advice them to stay clear of the baroque period (especially when you mix it like this, because you're forced into modern tuning and playing which doesn't suit baroque music, in my snobbish and faulty opinion), and do what they otherwise do so brilliantly.

I can't wait for my next concert next month with their take on Schubert.

Salut Baroque! concert, and true love

Ok, so last night I went to see the disgustingly good Salut Baroque ensemble at the Conservatory of Music in Sydney, and I got mostly what I expected (Hans Diether Michatz [who's student Shaun Stewart is my two girl's violin teacher!] in his normal good form, Valmai Coggins getting more and better sound out, Tim Blomfield doing his usual funky bass violin, the beautiful Monika Kornel making me wish I was a harpsichord, Sally Melhuish keeping it all together) with a few new faces worth noting ;

Matthew Greco was a new name (and face) to me, playing remarkably well (although the Folia could use some extra booyah!) and with an extraordinary body language. He seems to be involved in a lot of good stuff, so I'll keep me ears open for more. Brilliant left-hand technique.

Simon Martyn-Ellis was a pleasant addition to the line-up; mellow playing smooth as silk which I'm sure he's "inherited" from one of his teacher, the best lute / theorbo player in the world (uh, yeah, I'm biased), fellow Norwegian Rolf Lislevand (of Jordi Savall fame, and who was musical director of the last concert I went to in Norway, the 1610 Vespers by Monteverdi, and you see him briefly in this video I recorded from the event and which I wrote about here). Or maybe he's got talent, who knows? :) Really nice playing.

Then there was soprano Anna Fraser which had a most delightful timbre to her voice! No unnecessary vibrato, no fake phrasing, just full goodness the whole way. Loved her voice.

And then there was my new love, soprano Jane Sheldon, who blinded me with her expressive and passionate rendering of anything she did, clear, passionate and full of life, no silly-billies or cheap courtesying, beautiful as a summers evening. Even sitting still she moved in the most enthralling way. Of course I can't here write a love letter without lamenting much about the meaningless of life away from mountains and the severe lack of spring in my walk to and fro work, so I'll spare you the details, except to say that she did a most thrilling Zefiro Torna I've ever heard a non-Italian ever do (yeah, I'm a Monteverdi geek).

Oh, Salut Baroqe, you tease me and pain me and drive me crazy with all that I long for. Until next time, thanks a lot.

Updates and recommendations

Right, so here's where I'm up to these days ;

I'm working for a local (but fairly large) health care provider as their intranet guy (building an empire from scratch, and may well include Topic Maps) both in design, implementation, usability, and process management, a role that is being expanded crazily with every day as we discover new territories to conquer and submit to our new reign of knowledge management. So yes, I'm actually enjoying it, even though the challenges are sky-high and densely packed.

I'm writing a book tentatively (and probably) called "The well-tempered monkey" (with some fancy sub-title, I'm sure), and it's about evolution, baroque music, the IT industry, software development, human psychology and cognition, category theories, philosophy, geeks, procreation and laser-guns! I'm roughly 1/4 finished with the first draft, and it contains heavily edited blog posts, lots of new writing and thinking, and my own pictures and designs. (Can an eBook embed music? If yes, I'll put some of my music in as well for good measure) Looking for tips, but think I'll make it a eBook-friendly PDF with a donate button at this point, unless you have a better way.

A good friend and librarian / cataloger Saskia has started a new blog called "All things cataloged", and she is well-versed in the black art of Topic Maps and identity management. You should check it out, it's good stuff.

Today I stumbled upon a Dutch version of a Norwegian classic by Sigrid Undset on a lonely bookshelf in the corridors of a health care facility in Albion Park, Illawarra. Man, that was a seriously crazy moment!

I'm closing in on xSiteable RESTful event-driven resource-oriented PHP framework for enterprise application development with embedded Topic Maps / identity management. I've started documenting the thing, and I'll release it soon-ish, I think. It also feature a funky Topic Maps-based XSLT dynamic GUI templating framework that I think should be a project all by itself, but hey, I'll throw it in for good value.

I've created a number of upper and core ontologies that I might release at some point, some of them obviously designed for more fuzzy Intranet stuff, but I'm increasingly getting all representialist on my arse, outing basic category theory and generally thrashing the good name of entites everywhere. I feel a long blog coming on.

Did I mention that all enterprise knowledge management software friggin' sucks? Like, sucks balls? All of them. I've tried them all, extensively, and they all just fail the one simple rule I've got; make KM easy for people. Confluence, Atrium, Documentum, SharePoint, SocialText, LifeRay, all the portal apps and associated server technologies, Vignette, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Sun (hehe), I could go on and on, they all SUCKS BALLS! They are technologists solutions to human problems, and failing basic compassion and respect for the generic user! Usability is not about pretty friggin' colors and cute graphics! I'm disgusted with the state of affairs as the usability of these things have not improved much or at all in the last 20 years I've worked in this field. (And yes, I'll friggin' make my own, I'm sick of this ...)

Anyway, on that happy note, life isn't so bad, and I'm eagerly awaiting the next crazy chapter in my life. We'll talk soon.

My creative past

Moving to a different country away from old friends and family can make you somewhat nostalgic, so add to that when playing my music collection at random I bump into either something that has memories attached, or, as in this case, blows the memories meter. I can't not want to share and talk about it.

Many years ago now I had a music studio down-town Oslo (near Børsen, top-floor where that great Indian restaurant is) which I shared with an old musical buddy of mine and a movie production company (more on that later, I suspect). There I laid down the foundations of much which was to become my music and musical style for years to follow. It was sitting in this loft office in the murky hours of the night I first met my wife online in one of the few chat sessions I ever did back in those days, chatting with Julie who was in the Australian bush near Bowral in the Southern Highlands. Instead of continuing my musical and movie carreer, I chose to go to Australia to meet the woman I fell in love with instead. And 10 years later I'm married to her, got three kids, a house and a Volvo S70 station-wagon and live in Australia. Things certainly took a different path.

But before my married life happened, there was a few years of back and forth and the pain of separation from both Julie and my first daughter, Grace. Two years in which a lot of my frustrations and lonely nights after long working days were filled with the remnants of my old music, and in this brew I concocted a whole slew of stuff. And some of that old music I stumbled upon by random last night, and I've got three tunes I'd like to share.

I popped them into my MySpace, and they are ;

Flying Through - an alien observing life on earth. Well, probably an alien. Could be anything or anyone observing us. This tune is somewhat in the style of Klaus Schulze, and features some well-planned syntheziser counterpoints, and probably most importantly my old friend Bjørn Rummelhoff-Hansen (my old band-mate from Sundrunk) on guitar. It's dedicated to another friend of mine, Øystein Aarseth, who turned me on to old-school synth music. Oh, and if you followed that WikiPedia link, don't take the bad stuff written there as absolute truth; there was more to Øystein that could fit into his act (our shared passions were classical and old-school synth music, protagonist philosophy and port-wine, stuff rather far from the public image he put on).

Sexy DJ - Back in the days when MP3.com was a place of good music and a fantastic community, singer/songwriter Nadine Renee started a cool competition where she release the vocal tracks from her song "Sexy DJ" to the hoards of the interwebs, saying "let's see what you can make of it", and my contribution won the Rythm'n'blues category (although I think this is rather far from rythm'n'blues). She has sadly passed away during complications of child-labour a few years back, so I note her for posterity that the whole competition was as fantastic as she was good-natured and kind. This tune happens to also feature my own dad on saxophone, Milos Ocasek.

Dunish - I'm a Dune-fanatic. If Frank Herbert was a woman, I'd have a crush on her for sure. This music is like a collage of musical themes and styles, and was for me an excercise in music production as I was working on film music at the time. If you loved the movie by David Lynch, you'd hopefully enjoy this one as well.

Update: added a song ;

Bekk - What e-business consultancy company with respect for itself doesn't have a theme song? My old company in Norway, Bekk Consulting, is truly the most rockin' gig in town. This is a tune I made in the wee hours of the night for no apparent reason, featuring my dad on sax, my good friend Hanne Svenningsen on "vocals", and Bjørn Rummelhoff-Hansen again on guitar (what would I have done without you?).

Let me know what you think of my MySpace adventures of the past.

Weird coincidences

On Sunday me and the family went to Sydney to celebrate 17th of May, Norway's national day. I was looking forward to resupply myself with things I can't buy in the shop, and hopefully catch up with someone else who speaks my freaky native tongue.

We went to Circular Quay to see the parade, and then took the ferry to Manly to get to the Norwegian Seaman's Church where some more festivities would take place, some more fiddle music, a speech or two, and cakes, and waffles, and sausages, and caviar on tube, Lofoten sauce packets, salty liquorice and other assorted funnies and yummies.

At the church we lodged ourselves in an area fit for children, mommy looking after Sam while daddy stood in queue for an hour getting the goods. Getting back to them with said booty, I entered into a conversation between my wife and some other mothers about. All of these women were Aussies with some Norwegian connection, and at the centre of this discussion was a woman who was "a violinist", and a few enquires later and my brain realigning itself that, holy Mustard!, I'm talking with Myee Clohessy (and her daughter Freya), so I said I've seen her before ("yeah, right", I'm sure she thought), pointed out Salut Baroque and the fact that she played in Norwegian Baroque Orchestra with a good friend of mine, Anna Helgadottir (cellist). Then she remembered something and asked if I was a blogger, in which I said yes, and she was reminded of a posting she read of mine, bragging about a performance of her (and Melissa Farrow!!) and the Salut Baroque gang some years ago, and she had to tell Melissa about it. They both, of course, play in the Australian Brandenburger Orchestra of which I'm also a fan.

Talk about weird and wonderful. I joked that I should have gotten her autograph, but the more I think about it, of course I should have gotten it, and I'm beating myself for being stunned by the circumstances! I've seen Myee a few times and love her style (you'll notice her up on stage; she's the bendy-swayie one, in the sexiest meaning of that made-up word), so how often does a guy like me, living down in the Baroque wastelands of Kiama, get to see their idols up close like this?

Exactly, I'm an idiot. I hope only that I get to see Salut Baroque again soon, in either Sydney or Canberra. Incidentally, and the reason I was reminded to write this post, is that they are having a concert on tonight in Canberra and I'm jealous of anyone going and sad that I'm not.

Monteverdi and me and tonight

I am in total awe, almost to the point of being at a loss for words. Although, as most of you know I'm never really at a loss for words, so indeed there is something I need to say.

I love Monteverdi. But of course, you knew that, no surprises there. But I was surprised a few weeks back while reading the newspaper; Terje Kvam and the Oslo Domkor (choir of Oslo main cathedral) was going to perform Monteverdi's Marian Vespers (of 1610 fame) tonight! And of course I went; I've been waiting for this moment my whole adult life, for something as momentous as this happening up here in the cold north.

First, let me explain just how crazy this is. The Vespers is a collection of music which is regarded some of the most challenging and beautiful music, for many the defining piece of work to separate mouse from men. It's an amazing piece, it's rather out of the common practice of its time, revolution and tradition all mixed up in a magnificent duality of old and new. Monteverdi who was just starting out in writing opera (and being damn successful at it with one of the first operas "L'Arianna" he wrote for the Gonzagas and performed in 1607), but he wasn't happy with his current boss. He probably thought that writing a piece of music that shakes some booty could be a good way to attract different employer (and he even dedicated it to the pope, probably kissing some Roman butt), and so he did. In 1610 it was published, and the world became richer.

So, anyway, here Terje Kvam decides to tackle this amazing work. You would think this could go so-so, but if you read between the lines you see names such as Rolf Lislevand (superstar lutenist of Jordi Savall coop fame), impressive tenors Joshua Ellicott and Johan Linderoth (these guys *got* Monteverdi, and more or less made this concert what it was), Njål Sparbo (always lovely to hear his bass) and assorted people from Norsk Barokkorkester and of course the Oslo Domkor itself which always has one of the nicest tones around. (My best friend Magnus' mum sings in the choir, and this night was her last concert with them after 18 years in it)

Here's my poor-quality camera-phone shot of the intro ;



This was an amazing concert, on a high international level. I've heard the vespers more than any other piece of work, I've got all available recordings of it (including a few that should have been burned and forgotten ever happened!), I know the music and lyrics off by heart ... and this concert blew me away! I was sitting there crying it was so good! The tone of this choir is amazing, and the soloists were fantastic, every single one of them (and especially the tenors; amazingly good!) , the band in fantastic form with the amazing Rolf Lislevand upfront.



Now, it's not too late to see this for yourself. Tomorrow (sunday, 30th of November, 2008 at the Trefoldighetskirken next to Deichman main library down town) they're doing it again. I know Magnus is going to be there, and if I get tickets (and permission from my wallet) I'll be there again. It's the one concert I would never want to end. If you're in Oslo, like this kind of music and want a kick-ass version of a piece of music that was written to kick-ass, you know what to do. I dare you!