bullets

a view from the bullet train... we just threw ouselves on... it only stops for a couple of minutes at the station and of course the French musicians, being very French, have to get on, then stop, grumble, discuss, try and get back out, make a joke etc etc etc until the interpreter and conductors were freaking out at the back of the group... we managed to get on by the skin our teeth...

A new language, a new meal

I think I'll have this with the hyphen dessert and an apostrophe cocktail....

Bar Bar Bar

Then Jean-Michelle, the percussionist, dragged a gang of us on the metro to the centre of town. I have to admit I was not totally impressed when we got there... seemed to be another anonymous modern town centre, but I trooped along dutifully to the Jazz cafe where he wanted us to see a singer and a band that he knew. And I was totally blown away. I'm not sure if the quality of my casio still camera video setting is going to capture the magic of this Bassist's playing, but he was extraordinary. Wow. Amazing and light and funny and deft and just wonderful playing.

Backstage Pass

The show in Yokohama was great... nice theatre, the big band swung, the people loved it, the tap number went great... I got to sign autographs afterwards... what could be better... here's a video of the pre show chaos as the crew sets up and the Band warms up and the dancers do sit ups...

Shin means New

Shin means 'New'... now I know that. After a good hour of walking the streets of what looked like a business suburb of Kansas City or La Defence we decided just to give up on Shin-Yokohama and go to the mall...where we browsed in the mega-Muji and admired the strange and novel ways that the English and French languages are used and abused....



Then we sat in a Starbucks and listened to Nat King Cole singing Carols while Japanese commuters napped at the tables around us. (This country just seems more and more surreal.) Perhaps tomorrow evening we'll hop the metro and go to the heart of Old Yokohama with its historic Chinatown and the cemetery where the first foreigners to visit (or to force their way in) to Japan are buried. Meanwhile I'm going to hole up for the night with a whole pile of amazing Sushi and fresh made Tofu from the take-out in the mall and Green Tea from the dispenser in the lobby and get some work done... and maybe take another look at the Tap number that's been plaguing me for the last month.

The Japanese production company has been flawless so far, but the minor (MAJOR!) snag is that they painted the tap floor with a paint that is steadily getting more and more polished by the steel of the tap shoes. Last night it was literally like tapping on an ice rink.... our dance captain has said we'll cut the number unless they change the floor.... but just in case they don't, and we do it anyway then I want to be really sure I'm comfortable on my feet...

Tomorrow night we take the bullet train to a theatre and do another afternoon show. The theatre last night was more like a stadium than a theatre - 3000 seats maybe... 2500 at least and packed to the rafters. People are loving the show and I think its just getting better and better... the Big Band is tighter and we're having more fun on stage. It lasts almost two hours, but it races by. We do a costume change for each number and change in and out of our tuxes constantly... by the end of the show the backstage changing room is just a litter of clothes - they get thrown right left and centre as we're desperately getting into the new outfits.


And new Yokohama obviously needs a new hotel, so we're staying a 40 story circular tower with a hollow centre (thank goodness only on the 11th floor..) Later this evening I'll head up to the 40th floor cocktail bar and take a look at the view... see if I can recreate that 'Lost in Translation' feeling...

Halloween Treat... from the vaults...

So Happy Dancing People

The sacred and profane

My spiel for the Weill theatre show has always been : 'well, I wrote this piece so I wouldn't have to do the songs in recital: that is, so I could put them into some kind of dramatic context.' Which, since they're all music theatre songs, is where they came from in the first place. I've always felt that they had more power in some kind of theatrical framework...and in the many, many times I've done the show its been proven true...

However, on Sunday, Alissa Duryee (who played for one of the original incarnations of Whiskey and the version we did in NYC) and I did the songs strictly 'a sec'. In classic recital pose, hand on the piano, in the wonderful space of the American Church in Paris, we sang through the whole repertoire from the disc and from the show. And... I have to admit that it was nice... I wasn't thinking about staging, I wasn't thinking about the next lighting cue, I could spend all my energy thinking about the songs and what Alissa was doing with them, and responding to her ideas.





What was wonderful for me was that the idea behind the show is how much of Weill's work is about more than just a great song... he wasn't just a song huckster. Instead his work goes back and forth between earthy and spiritual and political. In the show I talk about how some of his songs could be sung in a Cabaret, or a Cathedral... so after many, many years in the Cabaret, it was nice to give them some time in the Cathedral...

I'm here, Its Cathy, I've come home

Honestly all I could remember of Wuthering Heights was that rather screechy song by Kate Bush with the catchy hook. But it didn't prevent me from enjoying a night at the absurdly, insanely, wonderfully over the top Opera Garnier. Gold and glitter and cherubs and gargoyles and more gold and glitter and a whole bunch of chandeliers (and then some more glitter). Such an amazing building.




The ballet was a contemporary work, I think from 2002, so it was a blend of the Paris Ballet's perfect classic technique with a contemporary dance language. Sometimes an uncomfortable blend, but mostly a success. I lost track of what the plot might have been in the middle of the 2nd act, but it didn't stop me from totally enjoying the dancers swooping around (and above - there was a fair bit of flying apparatus used) the stage.

There's a strange Ad around for the Ballet - I can't remember if its in Paris or Toronto, that shows the male lead of the Ballet and says 'Pound for Pound, when he's dancing he's stronger than an elephant'. I'm not sure why that would make you want to see the ballet, but, I admit, watching them you're stunned by the incredible strength and athleticism of these dancers. They're just amazing.

There's a nice video at

http://www.operadeparis.fr/Accueil/Actualite.asp?id=285

Bigger than life

what can I say... finally got Lisa on stage.... she was, of course, a huge success

Sublime Contradictions

I don't think I can adequately describe how utterly French are the towns around where we have our barn and little farmhouse. In our tiny hamlet there are really only three family names in the whole village and the folks refer to each other through three generations of connections.... 'Pierre's Thierry's Marguerite'. The nearest town of any size, Corbigny, has a little winding market street that has cheese shops, butchers, bakeries, wine shops... and on the edge of the town an old roman road still pokes its flagstones out of the grass. So these places have been around for a long time and feel so deeply French.. multiculturalism hasn't exactly made a lot of inroads here. It is amazing down here...but occasionally you just would die to see a larger mix of people and backgrounds on the streets


So it was with a sense of sublime discombobulation and satisfaction that we stumbled upon a parade that was held to publicize a festival of the arts in another little village nearby. These guys were the Rajasthan Gitane Orchestra. As near as I could understand from the little bit of information they are a branch of the Gypsies that still live in India.



They walked, and danced through the centre of town playing brass band instruments. I guess they are a heritage from the British military marching bands of India. The two drummers had managed to turn themselves into a sort of Tabla for two...but played on marching drums. They were quite amazing and obviously were enjoying themselves immensely... probably just from watching the expressions of complete astonishment on the faces of the villagers.






They played a short set in the local park and then drifted away. Leaving the village as calm and unperturbed as before.... but maybe ever so slightly less 'french'...

Harvest

Ah...the fall: spent the last few days in Burgundy pulling fruit from the trees and grapes from the vines... I wish we had the know how to make wine from the grapes, but the juice is amazing, so we just cook them down and live on pure purple anti-oxidants for a couple of weeks



it's been a funny summer here (hasn't it been everywhere) and so everything is ripening early.



We won't be down again till the end of september, so we took everything off the trees early in expectation that it will be overripe when we get back.



The entire kitchen had become purple by the end of the grape experience...

Cycles and Sore Legs

Paris has yet another amazing thing it is doing for the folks that live here ( sometimes it gets a little daunting how many perks the city offers to the residents)... there are now free bikes all across town... 10, 000 of them at the moment, with 20,000 projected by the end of the year. They're not totally free. You have to take a year's 'subscription' for 30 euros, but then every ride under a half hour is free and it's about one euro an hour after that.

Here is Lisa showing off her ability to ride through the 2nd busiest intersection in the city (Place de la Concorde) in high heels.



The city isn't completely a bunch of trusting fools handing out bikes to all and sundry. You have to register your credit card and there is a fine if you damage or lose the bike... but they're very sturdy little things and it would be hard to do much damage to them.

We rode all over the city on a beautiful, but chilly Saturday and then down onto the Quai of the Seine and over to the left bank.




The only flaw in the system is that we picked up the bikes on the edges of the city and tried to drop them off in the centre, but we weren't the only ones with the same idea, so all the drop off points were already full. But, cycling around Paris for 15 minutes looking for a space on a calm afternoon is not exactly the worst thing in the world, and eventually we found a space near St. Sulpice and clicked them and headed into the pedestrian throng...

Cortin

Prince has a song on his new album with lyrics that go something like 'I love you baby, but not like I love my guitar"... I don't know if I'd go that far... (especially with Lisa being able to read this blog and all) but I'm powerful fond of this new guitar.. It's a Cort Electro-Acoustic and it's just a lovely little thing... not an expensive machine, but with a great finish, a gorgeous back made of American Maple and (at least according to my research on the net) some really good technology packed into the pickup in the body. Certainly the sound that's coming out is very fine. I'm looking forward to getting on stage with it in the fall.

Rocks and Pigs

Well it is great to back in France and down in Burgundy for a while... and what better way to welcome ourselves back to the rich and wacky history then a visit to a (surprisingly not wacky) medieval castle in process. Yeah, in process: about 10 years ago the owner of a chateau in Burgundy came up with the idea to find some wild land and build a 12th Century Castle.



They're using the plans that have been found from the period and working with archaeologists and historians to try and recreate the construction techniques of the period, and experiment with theories in places where they are not sure of how they did it.





All the material comes from the neighbourhood of the Castle... i.e. the Castle itself is built out of the quarry that will become the moat, the mortar is mixed from the chalk that they've dug out of the land beside them, the forest around is their supply for wood, they weave their own rope from the sheep on their land...etc, etc... our fear was that it would be kind of disney, but it was very serious and calm and informative.



The workman break their tasks to explain to you how and why they are doing their work and the work itself progresses very slowly and steadily. I was struck by how quiet the enormous worksite was. I'm used to thinking of a construction site being all pounding and noise and metal on metal, but here there is only the slow movement of stones and wood and the chinking of chisels... i guess in medieval ages when there would have been a whole rowdy village around the site it would have been a little more lively... as it was the snorting pigs were the rowdiest things there that afternoon....