Dear people… due to various factors I will be blogging less in the coming days. Hopefully though, some of my tour mates will be taking it up. After all, the Volta Blog was meant to be done by “various members of the entourage.”
So, go for it, guys!
Archive for October, 2007The fourth leg of the tour has started. We are now in… Rio de Janeiro! It is amazing! Even though it is raining heavily, it was still a revelation to drive from the airport to the hotel this morning. It was a very long journey from Iceland. I had to wake up at four AM to take the plane to London at 7.40. I had a few hours’ nap in my hotel at Heathrow, then took the plane to Rio in the evening. I was in a plane with the brass and Mark Bell, the flight took 12 and a half hours. We then had to change flights in Sao Paulo, spending an extra hour in a plane to Rio. I hope the weather will get better soon. But I’m not complaining! I still have a gorgeous view over the beach from my hotel window. Rio seems great no matter how the weather is. Mihfolya mentioned Erna Ómarsdóttir. Here are three photos from the party I refer to in a comment to my last entry:
And here is Gabríela:
My departure to South America is approaching. I feel pretty good about that, though I’m slightly nervous to go to such a distant place! I have been able to relax quite well in the past few days. Today I visited a close friend of mine, Gabríela Friðriksdóttir, who made my favorite Björk video, Where Is The Line. She treated me with a strong cup of coffee and Turkish delight, and showed me her latest video (this time with original music). It looked pretty powerful. Gabríela has a Scorpionic element that resonates easily with my own (her Moon is in Scorpio, close to my Sun). I don’t quite know how to define that element any better, except with a piece of poetry by the occultist Kenneth Grant: For there are Thrones underground Invoke Them in Darkness, Outside In Silence, in Sleep, in Conjurations I’m often asked why we don’t perform Where Is the Line more often. According to Björk it doesn’t really work outdoors. It needs special acoustics that is most easily obtained indoors. I would love to perform it more often though! There is a Lovecraftian madness to Where Is the Line that is so capturing. And with the organ instead of a choir, it gets even more so… Conjurations of Chaos indeed! And here are still more videos. The first one was taken just as we were ending our concert in Nimes on August 23. The second video, which I took right after the first one, is my attempt to capture the atmosphere back stage just before the encores. Both videos are a bit long and NOT professionally made. Sorry about that. But what the hell… These days I wake up at seven to cook breakfast for me and my daughter. After she has gone to school I go back to bed with my latte and laptop, turn on the radio and enjoy not having to rush off to work. This morning I read a very funny article in one of the local newspapers, about a certain editor of an Icelandic magazine, who has been receiving threats after he published a cat recipe. One of the emails he got contained a recipe for an infant goulash! The lady who wrote it said that since he had already shown such bad taste by the cat recipe, he should publish the infant recipe as well… Have people no sense of humour? Anyway, here are two videos for you videophiles, from Austin, City Limits Festival, September 14. The first one was taken backstage just before walking on stage. The second one was taken half a minute later. Tonight I went to my third classical concert in as many days. This time it was the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra playing in Keflavík, a town in the vicinity of Reykjavík. Unexpectedly I met two of the brass girls, Bergrún, who was actually participating in the performance, and Harpa. After talking to them for a few minutes I remarked: “I can see that you are just as wired as I am.” After each leg of the tour you are in a different tempo from normal, and you don’t GET back to normal easily. It is almost like being on speed - or so I imagine. After one of our New York shows last spring we were talking about this bakstage, Björk, Anthony, Min Xiao-Fen (I think) and me. The question was: How do you ground yourself after a show? Anthony pointed out how unnatural it is being on stage in front of thousands of people. It turned out that some of us eat, others drink, still others do both and dance themselves silly. But no matter how you do it, performing again and again in a relatively short space of time makes you almost permanently strange. Then no amount of eating, drinking or dancing will get you fixed. Maybe the trick is to just stare at a wall for days. Maybe I should do that. Maybe… now! It is delightful to be in Iceland. I thought I would be lazier though, just taking it really easy, but now that I’m here, I’m unable to be the couch potato I wanted to be. Let’s say I’m a wannabe couch potato. So what am I up to? First of all the newspaper that I worked for before the tour started has asked me to review some concerts. Tonight I’m going to see a premier of Richard Strauss’ Ariadne of Naxos and there are some other concerts ahead as well. I’m also working on one of the tour songs that I feel could be a lot better on my part, Hope. All of our concerts are recorded and last night I asked Kevin, our front of house sound engineer, to send me a recording of our last performance of Hope, which was in Nimes if I’m not mistaken. I listened to it and liked some of what I did, but definitely not all. It is going to be so much better! Finally, a few of my students have asked me for a lesson, and I met three of them today. One of them is the pilot I mentioned earlier. Another is a physician and the third is a soprano whom I am coaching. It sure is interesting to play Wagner for a change! Here is a video I shot on stage in Madison Square Garden. Unfortunately it is a bit short… |
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