the nyman performances in spain have been rescheduled to may 2002, as follows (these are all michael nyman band concerts):
21st: granada, spain
22nd: salamanca, spain
23rd: san sebastian, spain
24th: barcelona, spain
25th: barcelona, spain: tbc
+ the germans are the lucky ones: if you haven’t seen songs for tony performed by saxofourte, there’s no excuse now.
no.no.no.no.no. i’m sorry, this is the second negative review in a row, but i honestly cannot recommend any more tiersen. or rather i can, but i cannot recommend buying the albums. let me explain.
there are definitively some gems on the two cds that arrived yesterday from amazon.fr (le phare & l’absente). unfortunately they are burried under a lot of crap (pardon my french) and do not give sufficient reason for buying the full albums. most of the songs really sound like cheap pop songs (and probably are). i can understand that work very well in the context of a movie soundtrack, but they do not have much value on their own
i am sorry, because i really wanted this to work out, but i’m afraid amélie is tiersen’s best work (out of these three albums at least).
to end on a good note, if you’d like some good french soundtracks, i can wholeheartedly recommend gabriel yared’s 37° le matin (betty blue in english) and eric serra’s le grand bleu (the big blue in english)
maybe i was just over-eager. maybe i listened to the wrong album. after listening to amélie yesterday, i thought i’d be in the mood to listen to goran bregovic, so i brought ‘la reine margot’ ost with me, to listen to on the way back home. what a mistake. dave may dig disney, but i most certainly don’t dig bregovic -at least not ‘la reine margot’. when i switched to the radio, they were playing an excerpt from puccini’s madama butterfly (i think it was io seguo il mio destino). what a relief.
btw i so dig o mio babbino caro from gianni schicchi (also by puccini) ever since i heard it in room with a view. actually, forster’s novels (and then james’) is what steered me towards reading ‘adult’ literature
still, tessa used to be (?) a fan of bregovic, so we have a couple of his albums at home. i’ll try ‘underground’ and ‘le temps des gitans’ tomorrow, and let you know if these make me change my mind
the amélie ost is very worthwhile. i’ve been listening to it on my way to work, and i agree with the reference to tiersen being the french nyman. there are lots of similarites with nyman; some tracks you could swear to that they’d been composed by nyman. and yes, it’s very french. it’s got that french joy-of-living (savoir vivre) aspect to it, to which the use of the accordion certainly contributes
i’ve ordered two other tiersen albums from amazon.fr (le phare & l’absente), and you might be interested in ordering the older tiersen albums from them, since they’re on sale: 9 EUR. never mind the french, just enter ‘yann tiersen’ in the search box (recherche rapide)
(incidentally, here’s my wishlist @ amazon.fr)
i’m (almost) ready to give in. *sigh*
i’ve been enthusing about my mac (as you’ve all witnessed), and it would be a matter of time before this would extend to apple’s iPod. after all, since i’m converting all my nyman cd’s to mp3 using iTunes, i now need a tool to carry my complete nyman library with me, wherever i go. and i do mean complete. the iPod can do that, and can do it fast.
the only ‘problem’ is, i have a complete b&o setup, and it really doesn’t look like they (b&o) are going to support apple any time soon. plus they’re going to release an mp3 player of their own pretty soon – but since it’s going to be form over function (only 64 or 128 Mb vs the 5 Gb on the iPod), i’m more interested in the iPod anyway.
but i digress. b&o have a (potentially) fantastic product, called beolink pc 2. it allows you to connect to your pc from your (other) b&o products, thus effectively enabling you to listen to music located on your computer’s harddrive. it’s just a ‘network’ card and some software, but it’s not compatible with the mac.
ay, there’s the rub (to throw in some shakespeare), because i would love to manage my mp3s on my mac, using itunes, but still being able to play them via beolink. what a luxury problem it is, i know.
Good news for Michael Nyman fans.
David Nye has been so kind to transcribe the BBC Radio 4 broadcast (on 7 January 2000) of the programme ‘Desert Island Discs’, where Sue Lawley asks Michael Nyman a little about his life, and which eight discs he would like to have with him if he were to be stranded on an imaginary desert island.
A very interesting read (40Kb RTF document).
Thanks David !
Ok. So it was a good concert. I was listening to Klara on the way home, and they gave a review of last night’s performance. All in superlatives.
The good news is:
1. they’re going to broadcast it (in Podium; daily programme, starts at 19:30)
2. apparently there’s going to be two other performances, in March, on the 15th and the 16th.
The question:
When I started listening, the review had already started, so I don’t know where those two other performances will be. I searched the Brussels Philharmonic Society and BBC Symphony Orchestra websites, looked at the Earbox website, but to no avail.
Does anybody have more info?
Did I miss the first good concert of the year (in Belgium), or what? Yesterday night the BBC Symphony Orchestra performed work by John Adams (conducted by John Adams) at the PSK/PBA in Brussels. The city where I work. *sigh*
The work performed was
Tromba lontana
Violin Concerto
The Wound Dresser
Guide to Strange Places (Belgian Creation)
I’m intrigued by that ‘Belgian Creation’ bit.
Did anyone attend? Was it any good or just plain bad? Either way, I could hit myself on the head for missing it. Repeatedly.
A bit inspired by Kyle Gann’s discographic selection. If you’d like some recommendations on ahem… minimal music, do buy the following CDs from Materiali Sonori:
Ai Confini / Interzone
Century XXI UK a-m
Century XXI UK n-z
Century XXI USA 1 – electronics
Century XXI France
The Greetings Compact Vol. 2
Fluxus – Anthology
Utopia Americana (not really minimalist, but hey…)
You can find them via this list.
Miniatures is on there as well.
At first I really didn’t understand what the big deal is about the “Glass Engine”. For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s on the official Philip Glass website [ direct link ].
I considered it just a way of displaying information, and nowhere near intuitive (hence the lengthy page with instructions). It’s supposed to enable “deep navigation of the music of Philip Glass. Personal interests, associations, and impulses guide the listener through an expanding selection of over sixty Glass works.” On a side note, said personal interests are of “Philip Glass’s longtime producer and sound designer, Kurt Munkacsi”, not of the listener.
But I think it’s a fun tool. It needs calibration, and it should have been written in flash, not in java (which tends to freeze computers globally), and it shouldn’t by default eat up your screen. Maybe it’s a project I should add to the list, developing a “Nyman Engine” in flash (needs another name though). Instead of having somebody from Nyman’s entourage mark up the emotions, I could ask the visitors of the michaelnyman.com site for input. As an added bonus, I could ask somebody from MNL (maybe MN himself) to add their own ratings, and have it available as an option.
Hmmm? now there?s a thought…