monoceros blogs
You know you're in for some fun and whimsy when a quartet names itself after the Italian dessert. Quartetto Gelato, however, is not Italian, and neither are they amateurs. They're classicaly-trained muscians, and they play classical music, with strong elements of spontaniety and improvisations. The quartet (two violins, one cello, one accordian) is actually Canadian and their music covers Baroque to classical tango (Astor Piazzolla) to Neopolitan songs. One of their violinists is also a capable tenor, and his voice adds another dimension to their music.
They've got a new album out, and the site to check it out is fun, fun fun! The album's music is inspired by the stops the Orient Express made when it first ran through Europe. So they play the music of Turkish, French and English composers.
The cool thing is that they're headed to Singapore to perform at the Esplanade next March. The not-so-cool thing: I won't be in Singapore to attend! Yet another performance I'll have to miss.
On my way back from the bookstore today, I was driving over a bridge by Gallup Park (Lin Kiat and I used to eat sandwiches there in our hmm...courting?...days) when I saw a bunch of people on the frozen river. I was intrigued, and I also remembered that I hadn't been to the park for a while. Not since last fall when I walked by the river with my mom. So I made a turn just in time and parked in a muddy car park right by the path.
The sky was perfect - blue, a few strips of cloud - and the river was still frozen and covered with snow that was slowly melting (the temperature today was 2 degrees celsius - very warm!). I walked off the small pier and actually stepped onto the frozen river! It was a great feeling. I wanted to walk out further, but didn't dare to. The crowd I saw were indeed ice-fishing. They were sitting rather far out, sitting on overturned buckets and holding their reels in the sun. I wish I had my camera with me.
I went back to the path and walked further down because I wanted to get a closer look at the white geese on the river. There were two pairs. One pair was sitting comfortably out there, their bottoms snug in the snow. Another was strolling about. In one place, the snow had melted, leaving the glassy surface of the river. And when one of the geese crossed it, his lovely webbed feet began to slide a little with each step. He was unfazed and actually seemed to enjoy it! I watched them for a while as they made little webbed footprints all over the snow, like tiny arrows telling you, this way, this way! And when they spread their wings, what a sight! I'd never been more enthralled by these beautiful migratory birds. I wondered where they would fly off to after today.
My great love for Ennio Morricone, ultimate film composer of over four hundred film scores, has led me to another wonderful artiste. Dulce Pontes from Portugal has been heard before on a more popular CD, sharing a duet with Andrea Bocelli on Sogno. However, I only learned of her recently when checking up on Morricone's latest releases (and boy, does he have a lot: two albums of remixes to mark his 75th birthday, more film soundtracks, more contemporary musicians playing his compositions, a live concert CD, and a couple of albums in which he orchestrates non-film compositions).
Focus is a collaboration between Morricone and Pontes. They met years ago when she was asked to sing on one of the soundtracks that Morricone was working on. Morricone is known for his use of the human voice as an instrument and Pontes was the voice, and a lovely, haunting one at that. He told her that he hoped to record an album with her one day, but that she should wait until she hit thirty years old. I believe he wanted her to mature and be able to express the rawness of emotions, emotions that come only with age. Her thirtieth birthday came and went, and now at last, Focus, is out, although it's a little hard to find.
Morricone allowed several of his famous movie themes (think Once Upon A Time In The West, Cinema Paradiso, The Mission, Lolita) to be set with lyrics. He also wrote new songs for Pontes. A most beautiful album with orchestration, acoustic intruments and that soaring voice.
Pontes is famous in her home country for her modern interpretations of fado. Fado is a Portuguese musical genre in which a man or woman (usually the latter) sings songs of melancholy, expressing the pain of life and loss felt by the people of Portugal. A fadista usually dresses in black with a black shawl in her hands or round her shoulders and is accompanied by a guitarist. She stands motionless as she sings and only moves her hands to express the feelings within the song and within herself. Perhaps the experts could tell you better. Go here to read more.
What I like about Pontes's music is that it's traditional and modern. Her recent release, O Primeiro Canto, has the classic fado songs as well as new compositions. The new works feature poetry by Portuguese poets, and though I understand none of it, I love that powerful voice and the simple acoustic instruments (guitars, violins, cellos). Here is one song whose English translation moved me:
The Heron (Garca Perdida)
Darkness fell
across my eyes of sorceress,
of starfish, of sky, of full moon,
of lost heron in the sand.
Darkness fell across my eyes,
lost my feathers, cannot fly,
I left nests and fledgings,
cares, affections, in the sea...
I only fly internally,
and dream of embracing
the endless sky and sea, the whole earth!
And I take the sea inside myself,
and the sky alive and dreaming,
and I will dream, until the end,
until I can awake no more...
And then I shall return crossing over sky and sea,
I'll fly, I'll fly endlessly around the world entire!
Nests I would build from the full moon, and then
I would go to sleep in the sand.
Back from my hiatus! Well, not really a hiatus. I was slogging away last week for school, and then later for a project for my old boss back home. A freelance thing, which I'm not sure I can do again during school term. At least it's spring break now, and all I missed were a couple of days of DVD-watching.
It's great to be in town when everyone else is away. It's nice and quiet, I can hear my neighbors laughing and having fun watching DVDs too.
On my rental list:
1. Runaway Jury (my friend Vantan wrote about it, I had missed it, might as well watch it)
2. Le Divorce (what's a DVD marathon without a chick flick...set in Paris?)
3. Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa's classic. I might as well watch the great one that spawned The Magnificent Seven. And apparantly, Orlando Bloom studied the Samurai's body movements in this film to bring Legolas's fluid grace alive on screen.)
Plenty more on my wishlist, but I'll have to see what else is new on the shelves.
Films in theaters that I hope to catch (I haven't seen a new movie this year!):
1. Twisted (Ashley Judd, one of my favorite lasses in another thriller.)
2. Dirty Dancing: Havanna Nights (loved the original. This has Diego Luna of Y Yu Mama Tambien. Chick Flick, of course.)
3. The Passion Of The Christ (It's Ash Wednesday today. Wonder if I can handle the graphic scenes. Jim Caviezel is a great actor, he might have me in tears.)
4. Hildago (Viggo Mortensen on a horse saving the day...sounds familiar. Oh wait, this is set in a dessert, not Middle-Earth. And Viggo wears a Stetson, not a crown.)
Waiting for:
1. Girl With A Pearl Earring (missed it in the movies, so I have to wait for the DVD).
2. Triplets Of Belleville (I'm a sucker for good animation, and something out of Montreal, my favorite city, after Vancouver, in Canada...this I have to see.)
3. House Of Sand And Fog (Ben Kingsley, Jennifer Connelly...damn, I shouldn't have missed this. I think I like looking at Ms. Connelly as much as I enjoy Ashley Judd's face, and oh, mustn't forget Monica Bellucci too!)
This evening, Peiming got us "rush" tickets (tickets bought an hour and a half before the concert, and at half price) to Hilary Hahn's performance at Ann Arbor's newly renovated Hill Auditorium.
For the first half, we were seated on the mezzanine level. The sound was good and my only wish was that I could watch Hilary's facial expressions as she produced such silvery notes of Bach. Well, I got my wish. Jake and Lim Jia (tuba and trumpet player respectively) told Peiming and me that there were vacant seats right before the stage, just three rows from the front! We rushed down and made ourselves comfortable during the intermission. Well, I really got to see Hilary up close, but the sound was a lot more raw. Then again, it was interesting to be right there, watching the violin player, seeing the gold tip of her bow flash and catch the light.
A grave, matured girl with intellectual and senstive playing. Her body swayed with each phrase and when she stopped for the pianist to extend the line, she lifted her heel as if to echo the rise of each swelling phrase. It really was wonderful to see her and listen to that music.
She played a lovely encore, Bach's Siciliano, and dedicated it to her pet mouse which died three days before.
Later, the bunch of us went down to talk with her and beg for autographs. I asked her accompanist, a lovely Chinese-American girl (very good, according to Peiming, and she would know), to sign my program too. I gave my condolences to Hilary about her mouse. She must have been tired, the poor girl. But she was lovely and composed and spoke with everyone.
I'm not sure she'd want to return to Ann Arbor to play again though. Every time the music stopped, the whole auditorium was filled with unmuffled coughs and other terrible noises. At first, she'd wait until everything died down before beginning the next movement, but after quite a bit of such rudeness, she didn't bother to wait, so the rest of us would miss the first few notes that were drowned in the cacophony of "ahems." Very rude audience.
Oh well, just another day in the life of a concert violinist.
For the exercises in my imitation (as in learning the writing craft through imitating six masterful writers) class, I chose to write about my January 6th experience of landing in Detroit from Singapore and having my photo and fingerprints taken (I was also nursing a fever and desperately missing home). How interesting then, to read in The Straits Times online edition this evening about the second American who has been arrested this month for flicking his middle finger while having his photograph taken. Earlier, I was very tickled about this move Brazil made in response to America implementing its photo and fingerprint system to monitor incoming foreigners.
I'm less amused by how different the responses are to such systems. The rest of the world, it appears, has taken in stride America's new, rigid systems and immigration laws. I don't recall seeing anyone complaining about the extra length of time spent in queues at the immigration counters because of photo-taking and fingerprint-recording. Everyone waited their turn, then stood still for the camera and let the immigration officer take our fingers and press them deeply into the scanner.
I wonder what these two American men (the first was an American Airlines pilot no less!) were rebelling against (for certainly, their rude gestures are a feeble sort of rebellion): the principles behind the system itself, or the fact that Brazil was responding to America's decision to have the system? The only result is that they encourage popular belief that Americans are frivolous in the face of other nation's rules. Those familiar with Michael Fay will immediately think so. I don't believe most Americans would behave as these two men would (or perhaps they'd think along the same lines, but they wouldn't have showed their thoughts so), but with many nations around the world quick to find fault with Americans, these two really diminish the already tarnished image of America.
Go here to see the offending shot of the American tourist in Sao Paolo.
Comfort comes swiftly in the form of a hot mug of Horlicks. It's 9.40 p.m. on a Saturday. My unproductivity level has reached heights it has not known before. I forgot to do my whites laundry today. I did not get out of my pyjamas. I did not wash my face. I did not comb my hair (oh wait, I don't comb my hair; I only do so after the every-other-day hairwash). However, I did eat three meals, I did make my bed, and I lay on the futon getting through Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse. Adapting my airport experience for the Woolf version of the imitation exercises will be interesting. My professor has already teasingly remarked that in the Woolf version, the narrator won't ever get to the immigration counter, just as the party never reaches the lighthouse in Woolf's novel.
Tomorrow will be sunny. Good. It's church, and then round the corner to the Borders store where I'll get 20% off my purchases by showing my student ID.
Then the week will begin with snow, and more snow. Two more weeks of school before spring break. (What spring, I say.) After that, it's 8 weeks of school, 1 week of exams and then the summer vacation arrives.
After a nap (on my futon; more on this later) in the afternoon, I drove back to school (I had a morning class - my gradership assignment, a Pacific Islands and Culture class) to attend a reading by Michael Byers, an MFA student here in 1994. He's since gone on to be a Stegner fellow at Standford University (very prestigious) and won the Sue Kaufman Prize for first fiction from the Academy of American Arts and Letters for his collection of stories, The Coast of Good Intentions. One of the more successful students to emerge from the MFA program, this fellow has also won a Whiting Foundation Award and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Prize. His stories have been selected for both The Best American Short Stories and the O'Henry Awards. Oh, and he also happens to be assistant professor for fiction in the University of Pittsburgh's MFA program.
He read from his debut novel, Long For This World, which features a doctor as its protagonist. His study of Hickman's disease, which makes children age quickly and die in their teens, produces important discoveries. I think Amazon has better blurbs so I'll just skip to how the reading went. He began by waxing lyrical about his Ann Arbor days, studying with Nick Delbanco and Eileen Pollack, and then began reading the second chapter, which is told from Ilse's perspective. She is the amusing, witty wife of Henry, the protagonist, and a Viennese doctor who specializes in bones. Michael breathed life into these characters as he read from the novel. It was by turns funny, sad and moving.
I had to purchase a copy and have him sign it. I was very pleased when he asked how my name is spelled (with one or two 'n's?). Six years ago, Ethan Hawke really ruined my name (zero 'n's and one 's' short), even after I had it written on a post-it note which was stuck on the page facing the one he was to sign on. Unless he was struck by my astonishing good looks (which I very much doubt, because I don't really have such looks), I do believe he just didn't put much effort in signing books.
I then had dinner with Boon, who never ceases to astonish me by the amount he reads (he's read more literary fiction than I have, I'm sure! And his field is Engineering, not English!), the number of video games he's played, and the list of movies he's seen and plans to see. We went to a sushi place that I've never been to. Interesting and a wide variety of sushi. I had some nice hot udon and a special sushi called erm, Michigan. A california roll wrapped with salmon and avocado. Not bad despite its moniker (we didn't manage to figure out how it earned its name).
Then we headed to Shaman Drum bookstore to catch Stuart Dybek, a Polish, Michigan-based writer, whose stories are set in Chicago. Another lively (very lively. He sang, he chanted the lines that the characters did. And the section he read was very musical) reader and a brilliant writer whose short story "Chopin In Winter" I admired very much when I was an undergraduate. He read from his new novel, actually a series of inter-connected short stories, titled I Sailed With Magellan. The store was packed and I refrained (after much thought) from buying another hardback just to get the author's autograph. I can and should live without such expensive treats.
A freezing drizzle and then some. I listened to Yo-Yo Ma's Obrigado Brazil, a delightful selection of South American music, as I drove home.
I love cello music, and Obrigado Brazil, together with his other album, Soul Of The Tango: The Music Of Astor Piazzolla, simply makes me want to dance across the floor of a dark little cafe in Buenos Aires, or sit in a corner watching dancers tango under dim lights and shifting shadows. However, I don't appreciate the cello that much when it's being played at eight in the morning daily (and also for two hours each afternoon), and in the room right behind where my bed is. I can't sleep in when I want to, and I can't take naps in the afternoon either (unless it's on my futon in the living room). I've written a note and delivered it this evening. I hope the cellist will take my advice and start at nine instead.
Bagdad Cafe...anyone seen the movie? I haven't, but would like to. A German middle-aged lady tourist gets thrown out of the car by her husband in some Californian desert, and she heads towards a cafe, the Bagdad Cafe, where she proceeds to carve a space for herself, working together with the African-American owner to turn the cafe around. Soon, her visa expires and she has to decide where her life is headed.
The only other thing I know about the movie is its famous song, "Calling You." It was originally sung by Jevetta Steele, and then covered by many other artists. And I mean many. Holly Cole, Barbra Streisand, Lara Fabian, Sissel, Jeff Buckley are some of the more recent singers to have done so. It's a haunting song that fans the dark and buried emotions; stasis, emptiness, visions of wide spaces, the endlessness of time, dreams and desires. Here are the lyrics:
A desert road from Vegas to nowhere
Some place better than where you've been
A coffee machine that needs some fixing
In a little caf? just around the bend
I am calling you
Can't you hear me
I am calling you
A hot dry wind blows right thru me
The baby's crying and can't sleep
But we both know a change is coming
Coming closer sweet release
I am calling you
I know you hear me
I am calling you
I found an MP3 version of Geroge Michael (featuring Queen) singing it here. Just right click on the "download" button and then "save as".
Yesterday was the big game. I spent the afternoon running errands - buying groceries, buying a bathroom mat (accidentally picking one that cost U.S.$19.99 and promptly returning it, and then driving to Target to buy a $5.99 one), getting petrol in Ypsilanti, getting the White Rabbit washed. While at Meijers (where I purchased the plush $19.99 bathroom mat), I noticed plenty of folks loading up on beer and snacks, no doubt in preparation for the big game.
I don't have cable TV, as Lin Kiat can testify (rather grumpily, I'm sure) after his visit here, so I couldn't watch the intense action (and I missed Josh Groban singing "You Raise Me Up" to honor the fallen in the Columbia Space Shuttle tragedy that occured a year ago on the very day). I merely kept track of the scores and touchdowns online at Yahoo sports. I support the Pats, or New England Patriots, for two reasons. Tom Brady, who played for the Michigan Wolverines when I was an undergraduate here and who is now known as the come-back kid and a rising football star (even Britney Spears has confessed to having a crush on him) often compared to the other great one, Joe Montana. And NELP, the New England Literature Program that I joined in the summer of 1999, which changed my life forever. I spent seven weeks camping, hiking, sleeping in a sleeping bag, learning to eat cous cous and watching the lake waters while reading Sarah Orne Jewett. I have a soft spot for New England.
So I'm very glad that the Pats defeated the Panthers from North Carolina, although it was a very tough fight. For every touchdown that the Pats delivered, the Panthers answered with one of their own. Till the very last minutes of the fourth quarter, the Panthers kept responding with touchdowns. They were tied at 29 until Adam Vinatieri kicked a late field goal to gain the Pats 3 more points to win the Bowl. He kicked another late field goal two years ago to help the Pats win the Super Bowl.
So Tom Brady has won his second Super Bowl MVP Trophy. His status echoes his playing style, Brady came up from nowhere. Go here to read more about Brady's rise. Michigan, I'm sure, is very proud.