The Journey Itself Is Home

I was just browsing through the gigography section of Björk.com and found the following comment: “One thing that ruins a show for me, are the people who sing along to every song during a concert. No one paid to hear YOU sing.”

I’m a classical musician and in a classical concert no one does that. I can only imagine a live performance of Beethoven’s Ninth with someone next to me in the audience humming along. My gawd!

We gave our concert in San Francisco last night. It took place in The Shoreline Amphitheatre. Some twelve thousand people were there and I was told some of them were from Google. Google is practically next door.

Just like in Red Rocks we performed two “new” songs, this time Aeroplane and Mother Heroic. My part in the former was originally played on a marimba, but one of the vibraphone voices on the electric piano is exotic enough. The last bit, a really tropical melody on the marimba heard in the distance in the original version always gave everyone a laughing fit when we rehearsed it. This time we decorated it with really loud jungle sounds!

As for Mother Heroic, it is one of my favorite Björk songs. Unlike the other quiet songs Björk sent me last fall, this one I didn’t want to change at all. So my accompaniment last night was exactly like in the recorded version. It is so pure and exalted in its simplicity.

Incidentally, our first rehearsal of Mother Heroic was just one hour before the concert last night!

My personal flag has been fixed and the Qabalistic Tree of Life is now in its correct position, i.e. not on the side. When Björk sang Declare Your Independence I noticed several people waving their own flags in the audience. That was great! I hope more people will do this in the future. Raise your own flag!

It was fun to have Einar Örn play the trumpet solo in I Miss You. He was absolutely wonderful.

All in all we had a fabulous time during the show and Björk was simply fantastic. And the party afterwards was lively. In the coach, as we were driving towards Eugene, Andrea Helgadóttir, Björk’s make-up artist, insisted that I let her give me a pedicure! She then put black nail-varnish on my toes, with Mark Bell assisting, holding my toes and blowing on them to dry the varnish. Surely a fitting end to a day in San Francisco…