Yesterday morning when I came back from work I found this lying on my doormat. I order a lot of CDs on the internet, but I could not recall ordering this one. Seeing that it was send to ‘Pays Bas’ and that is a Joe Hisaishi CD it was a no-brainer to me to know from whom it was from. Alchemist you are an awesome dude and thanks a lot for your present!
As the most of you probably know I have a thing with film music. In the digital age I still prefer my music on those shiny little discs called CDs. After picking it up, I rip them to music files and put them in a box. But it always nice to have a ‘hard’ backup on CDs. The four CDs below are my latest addiditons.
This weekend I went to meet some StreamingSoundracks.com friends for another meet and greet in Ghent. Reason for this is that Ghent hosts every year the World Soundtracks awards. The weekend consisted of having fun with good laughs, good dinners and a lot of good Belgian beers.
You probably need to be a film music expert to understand the title… :-) A friend of mine has connections in Japan. He arranged the following CDs for me:
They are:
I have been looking for them for quite some time. But for us Europeans they are too expensive. The Bebop will be in my car for quite some time. To Alchemist: thanks for getting me these CDs!
For those who do not know: The Seat belts are the artist performing on the Bebop CD.
As could be read on my twitter and facebook. I did an interview for the Dutch film music magazine Score. My friends on StreamingSoundtacks.com asked me to provide an English translation for this interview. I did an exact translation as possible. If you can read Dutch please go to http://www.score-magazine.nl, register and download the magazine (No. 163) yourself instead of reading this English translation. They deserve our support.
The other article about me was about the Krakow festival. Translation of that is not really needed. It is about the same I have written down here on my blog.
After the busy day yesterday, we took today more slowly. After our standard breakfast and some internet in the lobby we left to the shopping centre. We had a very large lunch at a Mexican restaurant. We shopped for dvds and cds in the Saturn. Saturn had free wifi, so there I found out that Ad has been promoted to ambassador for StreamingSoundtracks.com. So I was the one who could inform him and congratulate him. Afterwards it was time for the pool.
Before the concert we ate hamburgers with a beer. We took the taxi this time to make sure were on time for this concert. That was a good thing. We met Umebayashi again and he asked Ad for his email address. Ad was happy the rest of the day. The concert started with a short movie: it was a parody on James Bond. The reason for this is that John Barry composed a lot of Bond scores. The next part of the concert was hommage to Bernard Herrmann. Music was played from for example 7th voyage of Simbad, Citizen Kane, The day the earth stood still and Taxi driver with a solo for saxophone.
During the break we had a chance to meet up with interested fans and other friends. We had to hand out the last business cards we had. Let us hope it will result in a couple of new active members. After the break the short Bond movie continued, and the hommage to John Barry started. Music was played from Born free, Midnight cowboy, Dances with wolves, Goldfinger, Diamonds are forever and it ended with The Lion in winter. Overall a satisfying performance.
Fortunately after the concert we had chance to say goodbye to most of our friends. A lot of them we will see again in Ghent in October!
To conclude this festival. Overall Ad and I had a good holiday were we got some things done for SST. In the evening we had nice concerts in absolutely gorgeous locations. We have spoken to a lot of people. Composers, agents, festival organizers etc etc. Unfortunately the organisation of Filmucite did not have time to speak to us about the collaboration next year. Which was one of our main goals of being there. But overall we we had a good exposure for SST and had a very good time on Tenerife. My next report will be in October in Ghent. Thanks for reading.
Today Ad went to the airport to collect a rental car. When he returned at the hotel we went for a drive. We took a nice mountain road to the vulcano El Teide. The journey was very cloudy/foggy but when we were above the clouds we had a nice view over the mountains. Too bad the view to the ocean was blocked by the clouds. At a visitor centre we decided to eat some lunch.
After continuing our trip we drove through a nice vulcanic landscape. We stopped at a lot of points to take pictures and go for a small walk. We ended our scenic route in Playa Las Americas, the place to be for the common tourist who is visiting Tenerife. We had beer (non-alcoholic for Ad) at the beach served by a Belgian/Dutch waiter. It was a totally different experience than we were having in Santa Cruz. It was just rare to find any local population over there, it were all tourists, while in Santa Cruz it is the other way around. Ad and I preferred Santa Cruz more ;-) Afterwards it was time to return the rental at the airport and to return to our hotel.
We ate dinner at the same place as yesterday, because they were fast yesterday with delivering our food. After dinner we met our score loving German friend Andreas and went for a quick ice-cream. That resulted in being a bit too late at the Audiatorium. Luckily we got in right before the opening. Robert Piaskowski (director of the Krakow film music festival) and Anna (Diego’s wife) did the opening. The Polish composer Bartosz Chajdecki worked together with Diego in Krakow. During the opening he was shown on the big screen. Thanking Diego for his work in Krakow and wishing him all the luck for this concert. It was great to be reminded again about our Krakow experience.
The concert started with Umebayashi’s work. Music from House of the flying daggers, 2046, Curse of the gold flower and others were performed by a choir, orchestra, chinese percussion instruments and a lady singer. Umebayashi is a very nice friendly guy. As a bonus he writes pretty good music. I was glad that during the break I could give him my hand and thank him for his work.
After the break it was time for Patrick Doyle’s work. Music was played from Hamlet, Much ado about nothing, Thor, Harry Potter and others. The concert was concluded with Patrick’s music from Henry V. The audiotorium is an awesome place to hold concerts in. Overall the performance was good, Diego and the composers did an outstanding job. Afterwards we had some drinks with our new French friend Rafael we met at the concert.
The day started very relaxed. After breakfast and some coffee we left downtown for something to drink. We ate lunch in a small cafetaria where we had a nice steak with salad and fries. It was grilled in a kitchen where a small one year old child was also spending his time. Afterwards we went to a shopping mall and closed the afternoon off by spending it at the pool.
We went for dinner where I had a medium steak hawaian style and Ad had rabbit. Afterwards it was time for the third concert of the festival and our second. It was this time in Santa Cruz itself. Like in la Laguna it was a very nice old theatre. The orchestra consisted of music students from the local university.
The evening started with music from Pascal Gaigne a Spanish composer. It was with a small orchestra which played some very nice tracks with piano and strings and the wood instrument section. After the break a track from There be dragons written by Stephen Warbeck was played with an excellent cello solo which was played very emotionally by Stephen’s friend Nick Cooper.
Next Spanish film music critics awards were handed out: to VareseSarabande for rereleasing Alex North his Spartacus score that is finally released, to Arnau Bataller for being the best Spanish composer in 2010 and to Roque Banos for best score. Ad called him the Spanish John Barry. The rest of the evening music from the Spanish winners were played. Where Banos conducted some of his own work.
Overall the performance was very good. You could see that the young musicians had a great time. And for me it is awesome to hear new film music from composer that I do not know. This concert was a good oppurtunity to talk to people in the scene. We spoke to Stephen, Patrick and Pascal and told them about SST. I met the Krakow people Agatha and Robert, and the guy from Costa communications that provide us some very good soundtracks. We also met Andreas a german film music lover who was quite interested in our site. Let us hope he becomes a member.
After a good night sleep some breakfast and some time on the Internet we decided to do something you are supposed to do in an hotel in Tenerife: swimming in their pool. Afterwards we went downtown to collect our tickets and for some beers. We found a restaurant where we could eat. Which is very rare because restaurants open up at around 7 pm. We have a concert to attend to at 9 pm, that makes eating at that time a bit troublesome. Ad liked the food that much so he arranged that we can eat there with a group next year. :-)
The concert for this night was with Stephen Warbeck. It was in the town La Laguna in a small theatre. The theatre itself was small and was still in its old authentic style with three rows of balconies. Sadly for the organization it was not sold out. I was expecting it to be a concert with a complete orchestra, but instead it was a small group of musicians. The group consisted of:
Piano and accordion played by Stephen himself
Klarinette, saxophone and flute played by his wife
Cello
Guitar (weird red shoes)
Contrabass
Mallets
And drums (weird baggy trousers)
The concert was a mixed of happy tunes, some jazzy tracks and some drama songs. After each track Stephen walked to the microphone to talk about the tracks. He did that in English and a bit in Spanish that he had written down in a book. During the concert he played music from all movies. Songs from Two Brothers, Opa, {Proof}, Polisse, There be dragons and Shakespear in Love. The last track was made for a 65 men orchestra. It was well done by the seven musicians! The concert was a wonderful experience.
During the break (no coffee..) we met Diego, Pedro, Robert, George and Nancy again. They were now also joined by the composer Umebayashi. He was a very nice person and of course recognized Ad immediately. They have met in Krakow last year. Afterwards Ad and I went to a bar to have some drinks.
Day one of the festival was not a big succes. The flights were plagued by heavy delays. After the a delay of around two hours, the plane started to land to the final airport but suddenly aborted the landing. After that we circled for quite some time, when we finally landed we found out that we had landed on the wrong airport. The reason they told us was because of bad weather. After lots of hours waiting for leaving the plane and getting our luggage we finally borded a transferbus to Santa Cruz, but were quite irritated on missing the concert. Also the lack of information in english was not a good point.
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