I've finally managed to post on one of my other blogs another one of the letters I wrote to my mother from London back in 1968. This one discusses the Double Bill we presented (Angelique and Dido and Aeneas) and the imminent Christmas holidays.
I haven't had the time to type up more of the letters recently: there have been several things on the go. I've been working on the latest draft of the novel version of the musical I wrote, Grimhilda!, and getting some feedback from people about different chapters. I'm learning the lines for another play, The Sunshine Boys, which I went straight into after finishing the play we did for our church's 150th anniversary. And I'm working on various pieces of music: one of them is the accompaniment for Enesco's Legend, a piece written for Trumpet in C, but the soloist in this case will be playing a cornet. It's a good piece, but has some sections that take quite a bit of working out in terms of time, with hemidemisemiquavers scattered about all over. I'm also (slowly) writing another piano piece: it started off well, but has stuck one of those points that music sometimes does.
Twice a week I've been going to a course run by English Language Partners; it's to learn how to tutor a person for whom English is a second language. This is done in their own home, on a one to one basis. I was supposed to be there this afternoon, but had a spell of ill-health yesterday afternoon/night, and so was still feeling rather under the weather when I got up this morning. The last session is on Wednesday, so I'll need to be there for that. It's been an interesting group: included amongst the participants have been two Muslim ladies, two women and a man with Chinese backgrounds, along with half a dozen or more Kiwis.
And of course, my wife and I have been going for some long walks.
Showing posts with label trumpet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label trumpet. Show all posts
Monday, April 29, 2013
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
The Band's Visit
I caught up with the charming movie, The Band's Visit, the other day. It's an Israeli-made film, but its focus is on a number of Egyptian characters, the members of the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra, who find themselves lost, and somewhat at sea, in a little Israeli town they've arrived at by mistake. A confusion over the sounds, P and B, hasn't helped. The Orchestra, with its odd combination of instruments, seems unlikely to make much of an impact on anyone or anything, since it consists of so few people - eight or nine in all. And during the course of the movie, when we hear one or two of them playing (the clarinettist, for instance, who presents the page or so of his unfinished concerto, and the trumpet player - who also doubles on the violin) we think they're not going to impress anyone. But at the end of the movie, they come together for their concert (in the right town) and are superb. They need each other to perform their best.
The film, while it's about music and its effect on people, is more focused on relationships. It doesn't primarily set out to tell us we should all love one another, and that Israelis and Arabs should just get along, though it does achieve this as a by-product. It's about resolving things from your past, and being honest and open. In other words, it's a film about real - and delightful - people. The 'messages' come naturally with the content of the story.
The casting is superb. The orchestra's conductor is played by Sasson Gabai, who was born in Baghdad of Israeli-Iraqi parents. He's a withdrawn person who finds it difficult to communicate directly with anyone - though he does come alive when conducting, which is perhaps why he never lets his next-in-charge take over the role. In the little town he meets Dina, the owner of a small cafe. She's played with wonderful fire and life by Ronit Elkabetz. Dina seldom minces matters and her up-front honesty eventually breaks through to the conductor and allows him to tell her what little we need to know about him to understand him.
The youngest member of the band, the trumpet/violin player, Khaled, is played by Saleh Bakri, a Palestinian who was born in Jaffa, and now lives in Haifa. He seems to be out of place in this group of middle-aged and older men, and certainly he gets under the skin of the conductor more than a little. However, he's the one who is prepared to make the most of life, and who can encourage others to do so. In one of the film's most delightful scenes he shows an unconfident and scruffy young Israeli how to court the woman he's been landed with in a blind date. The interplay between the three actors has to be seen to appreciate the subtleties and humour.
The film doesn't just show everyone as being happy about the situation. One of the unemployed young men who hangs out at Rena's cafe takes three of the bandsmen home with him, much to the annoyance of his wife and her mother. They remain intransigently opposed to these visitors, undercutting the Jewish ideals of hospitality in no small measure. Only the young man and his father-in-law respond positively to the three bandsmen. In a later scene we discover that the young man is the father of a baby, who's sleeping in a cot in his room. We don't know whether this is why his wife is at such odds with him, or whether it's because he can't find a job, or whether it's because they're stuck in this awful town - and it is awful: Rena shows the conductor the 'park.' It has no grass, no children's play equipment, nothing. The streets are bare, and the landscape barer. The roller-skating rink is half-empty, and even those who are there seem lacking in much energy.
But this gloomier section of the movie can't undermine the joy that's apparent in much of the rest of it.
Apropos of my comment about the mix-up over P and B in Arabic and Israeli, in the last two or three weeks my wife and I have been learning Arabic. (There's a reason, but I won't go into that at the moment.) Pizza is bizza in Arabic, and potatoes are bitatis, so we were already aware of this confusion when we saw the movie. In fact we got the movie out of the Library in part because it was in Arabic and we wanted to hear people speaking the language. As it turned out, of course, it's only partly in Arabic. The Jews speak Israeli, and when the Arabs and Jews speak to each other they mostly use English!
I was thinking about this because of the brand name, Vater Drums, which I came across today. Vater is the German word for Father, and in German/English there are a number of corresponding words that are virtually identical apart from the F/V substitution. Years ago I did a course in England that showed how many words had connections between the two languages. Unfortunately someone borrowed the notes I'd been sent by the person who wrote the course, and I never saw them again. And so far I haven't found anything similar on the Net.
Vater percussion accessories are big time, apparently, though not to me. Although I've been around percussion players and drummers a good deal over the years, I've never paid much attention to the brand names on their instruments, although I know that these instrumentalists are very aware of the better brands. Vater produce accessories for drums: the sticks, the mallets, brushes, etc, rather than the drums themselves. And they make the holders as well, along with holders for the all-important drink bottle!
 |
| Sasson Gabai |
The casting is superb. The orchestra's conductor is played by Sasson Gabai, who was born in Baghdad of Israeli-Iraqi parents. He's a withdrawn person who finds it difficult to communicate directly with anyone - though he does come alive when conducting, which is perhaps why he never lets his next-in-charge take over the role. In the little town he meets Dina, the owner of a small cafe. She's played with wonderful fire and life by Ronit Elkabetz. Dina seldom minces matters and her up-front honesty eventually breaks through to the conductor and allows him to tell her what little we need to know about him to understand him.
The youngest member of the band, the trumpet/violin player, Khaled, is played by Saleh Bakri, a Palestinian who was born in Jaffa, and now lives in Haifa. He seems to be out of place in this group of middle-aged and older men, and certainly he gets under the skin of the conductor more than a little. However, he's the one who is prepared to make the most of life, and who can encourage others to do so. In one of the film's most delightful scenes he shows an unconfident and scruffy young Israeli how to court the woman he's been landed with in a blind date. The interplay between the three actors has to be seen to appreciate the subtleties and humour.
The film doesn't just show everyone as being happy about the situation. One of the unemployed young men who hangs out at Rena's cafe takes three of the bandsmen home with him, much to the annoyance of his wife and her mother. They remain intransigently opposed to these visitors, undercutting the Jewish ideals of hospitality in no small measure. Only the young man and his father-in-law respond positively to the three bandsmen. In a later scene we discover that the young man is the father of a baby, who's sleeping in a cot in his room. We don't know whether this is why his wife is at such odds with him, or whether it's because he can't find a job, or whether it's because they're stuck in this awful town - and it is awful: Rena shows the conductor the 'park.' It has no grass, no children's play equipment, nothing. The streets are bare, and the landscape barer. The roller-skating rink is half-empty, and even those who are there seem lacking in much energy.
But this gloomier section of the movie can't undermine the joy that's apparent in much of the rest of it.
Apropos of my comment about the mix-up over P and B in Arabic and Israeli, in the last two or three weeks my wife and I have been learning Arabic. (There's a reason, but I won't go into that at the moment.) Pizza is bizza in Arabic, and potatoes are bitatis, so we were already aware of this confusion when we saw the movie. In fact we got the movie out of the Library in part because it was in Arabic and we wanted to hear people speaking the language. As it turned out, of course, it's only partly in Arabic. The Jews speak Israeli, and when the Arabs and Jews speak to each other they mostly use English!
I was thinking about this because of the brand name, Vater Drums, which I came across today. Vater is the German word for Father, and in German/English there are a number of corresponding words that are virtually identical apart from the F/V substitution. Years ago I did a course in England that showed how many words had connections between the two languages. Unfortunately someone borrowed the notes I'd been sent by the person who wrote the course, and I never saw them again. And so far I haven't found anything similar on the Net.Vater percussion accessories are big time, apparently, though not to me. Although I've been around percussion players and drummers a good deal over the years, I've never paid much attention to the brand names on their instruments, although I know that these instrumentalists are very aware of the better brands. Vater produce accessories for drums: the sticks, the mallets, brushes, etc, rather than the drums themselves. And they make the holders as well, along with holders for the all-important drink bottle!
Sunday, January 04, 2009
La Dolce VIta
After watching the possibly-pseud, Babel, a couple of nights ago, seeing La Dolce Vita again after more than fifty years brought on similar misgivings. Is it really a classic? Does it say anything at all, apart from condemning paparazzi? Is there actually any acting in it, or were ninety percent of the cast merely playing themselves?
When I first watched it, in the enormous St James theatre here in Dunedin, the place was packed. A typical Saturday night out for most of the people in the audience. By the time the movie finished, the place was half empty. Fellini had managed to alienate most of his audience.
Nearly fifty years on, the film is highly regarded by anyone who writes about it, and Fellini’s name has entered the film history books as being one of the great film directors. There’s no doubt he was that. Quite apart from La Dolce Vita, he made increasingly detailed and visually-stunning movies that kept on hammering away at certain themes, particularly the loss of self in an existential society.
The films also became increasingly long: La Dolce Vita itself finally reaches its last scenes after some 160 minutes, and the rather overblown Satyricon, while only 128 minutes, seems endless.
So what are the plusses?
LDV boasts superb cinematography, with wonderful use of the wide screen, and a black and white view of the world that is a feast for the eye.
In spite of my remarks above about the acting, there are any number of fine performances in the film: Marcello Mastroianni holds it all together, while playing a character who’s losing his soul; Anouk Aimee is Maddalena, promiscuous to the core because she doesn’t know how else to live her life; Yvonne Furneaux is Emma, Marcello’s long-suffering girlfriend, who first appears just after having tried to kill herself because Marcello continually neglects her in favour of more seductive and powerful women; Alain Cuny is the world-weary philosopher who proves to have no inner life after all; Anita Ekberg plays herself pretty much, but does it wonderfully. There are hundreds of others, some of them given moments of high comedy, some given moments of drama, some playing people full of tosh, some playing people spouting arty nonsense, some playing dilettantes, some playing people whose lives consist of nothing but endless, tedious parties, where happiness is almost completely absent. And there’s the not-to-be-forgotten Annibale Ninchi, who plays Marcello’s father, seeming at first to be more virtuous than his son, but proving to be just as empty.
There is the directing. The details are endless: so many things thrown into the mix that it’s impossible to pick up all the clues as to what’s happening. The extraordinary moments: the famous Trevi fountain scene (or Ekberg’s calling to the wolves just before this); the procession of aristocrats first looking for a ghost and then walking in the dawn (‘I’ve never seen the dawn before’) like a procession of ghosts themselves; the trumpet-playing clown, Polidor, who calls a host of balloons to follow him, after playing a typically Felliniesque piece of melancholy (compare the trumpet playing in La Strada, for instance). And on and on. But beyond this is the putting together of a dozen or so sequences which are each as extraordinary as the other.
The script. Such an open-ended script as this can barely exist. Fellini prompts us to think in certain directions, but continually throws us off-course. He lets us empathise with Marcello one moment, and then loathe him the next. We are dropped into emotional relationships but given only the minimum of clues. We are handed hundreds of sharply-drawn characters, and left to wonder at who these people really are. (Only a handful of characters appear in more than one sequence.) And always, always, we’re asking ourselves: Why? Why does Marcello commit himself to this lifestyle? Why do so many of the people hate life? Why do the paparazzi invade people’s privacy with such disdain? Why do at least two of the main characters wear sunglasses at night? What is the anger underneath Marcello’s handsome exterior? How does he manage to include himself in so many different circles?
The cons. The film is too long. The final party scene, in which Marcello has apparently reached his nadir, adds little to the film, and merely makes us loathe him all the more. The sequence before this, with the aristocrats, comes at a point when the audience has been saturated with people. And though it includes an important scene, it seems to me to wander off course towards the end.
Still, if those were the only quibbles, the film would still remain an extraordinary achievement. As a work of art it has so many layers most viewers would never get to the bottom of them. As a work of filmmaking, it is superior still, even fifty years after it was made, to many other films that attempt something similar. And curiously, in spite of its age, it doesn’t appear dated. Apart from the odd piece of women’s fashion, and the styles of the cars, little has changed.
When I first watched it, in the enormous St James theatre here in Dunedin, the place was packed. A typical Saturday night out for most of the people in the audience. By the time the movie finished, the place was half empty. Fellini had managed to alienate most of his audience.
Nearly fifty years on, the film is highly regarded by anyone who writes about it, and Fellini’s name has entered the film history books as being one of the great film directors. There’s no doubt he was that. Quite apart from La Dolce Vita, he made increasingly detailed and visually-stunning movies that kept on hammering away at certain themes, particularly the loss of self in an existential society.
The films also became increasingly long: La Dolce Vita itself finally reaches its last scenes after some 160 minutes, and the rather overblown Satyricon, while only 128 minutes, seems endless.
So what are the plusses?
LDV boasts superb cinematography, with wonderful use of the wide screen, and a black and white view of the world that is a feast for the eye.
In spite of my remarks above about the acting, there are any number of fine performances in the film: Marcello Mastroianni holds it all together, while playing a character who’s losing his soul; Anouk Aimee is Maddalena, promiscuous to the core because she doesn’t know how else to live her life; Yvonne Furneaux is Emma, Marcello’s long-suffering girlfriend, who first appears just after having tried to kill herself because Marcello continually neglects her in favour of more seductive and powerful women; Alain Cuny is the world-weary philosopher who proves to have no inner life after all; Anita Ekberg plays herself pretty much, but does it wonderfully. There are hundreds of others, some of them given moments of high comedy, some given moments of drama, some playing people full of tosh, some playing people spouting arty nonsense, some playing dilettantes, some playing people whose lives consist of nothing but endless, tedious parties, where happiness is almost completely absent. And there’s the not-to-be-forgotten Annibale Ninchi, who plays Marcello’s father, seeming at first to be more virtuous than his son, but proving to be just as empty.
There is the directing. The details are endless: so many things thrown into the mix that it’s impossible to pick up all the clues as to what’s happening. The extraordinary moments: the famous Trevi fountain scene (or Ekberg’s calling to the wolves just before this); the procession of aristocrats first looking for a ghost and then walking in the dawn (‘I’ve never seen the dawn before’) like a procession of ghosts themselves; the trumpet-playing clown, Polidor, who calls a host of balloons to follow him, after playing a typically Felliniesque piece of melancholy (compare the trumpet playing in La Strada, for instance). And on and on. But beyond this is the putting together of a dozen or so sequences which are each as extraordinary as the other.
The script. Such an open-ended script as this can barely exist. Fellini prompts us to think in certain directions, but continually throws us off-course. He lets us empathise with Marcello one moment, and then loathe him the next. We are dropped into emotional relationships but given only the minimum of clues. We are handed hundreds of sharply-drawn characters, and left to wonder at who these people really are. (Only a handful of characters appear in more than one sequence.) And always, always, we’re asking ourselves: Why? Why does Marcello commit himself to this lifestyle? Why do so many of the people hate life? Why do the paparazzi invade people’s privacy with such disdain? Why do at least two of the main characters wear sunglasses at night? What is the anger underneath Marcello’s handsome exterior? How does he manage to include himself in so many different circles?
The cons. The film is too long. The final party scene, in which Marcello has apparently reached his nadir, adds little to the film, and merely makes us loathe him all the more. The sequence before this, with the aristocrats, comes at a point when the audience has been saturated with people. And though it includes an important scene, it seems to me to wander off course towards the end.
Still, if those were the only quibbles, the film would still remain an extraordinary achievement. As a work of art it has so many layers most viewers would never get to the bottom of them. As a work of filmmaking, it is superior still, even fifty years after it was made, to many other films that attempt something similar. And curiously, in spite of its age, it doesn’t appear dated. Apart from the odd piece of women’s fashion, and the styles of the cars, little has changed.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Catching up on writing
Over this Easter weekend I've managed to get on and do some more writing for the Triond site, where articles can be left indefinitely, and can keep on getting viewed, and making money. (Peanuts, but it is money.)
I sat down a week or so ago and tried to chart out my writing/composing priorities. Doing an article a week for Triond was one of them. I kind of caught up by writing four articles, a couple of which were rehashes of pieces I'd done before.
So for those with an interest in other things I do, here are the links:
Blowing My Own Trumpet. This is a piece about trying to promote yourself on the Net. Self-referential is the term, I think!
Friends for Life. This one looks at some of the books on my shelves and concludes that some of them make better friends than the real people I know. Hmmm. This was a piece I started some time ago and never did anything more with.
The Delightful Lives at 44 Scotland St. Another 'rehash' - in the best sense. I've taken the four book reviews I've done of the four episodes in Alexander McCall Smith's 44 Scotland St series and woven them together into a long overview. It's called recycling.
Support Your Local Circus. This was written new and fresh yesterday after I went to see Weber Brothers' Circus in Mosgiel, one of the outer suburbs of Dunedin. It's a lovely little circus, full of energy and life, with clowns that are genuinely funny, and some wonderful Asian acrobats. And three absolutely crazy motorcyclists racing around and around inside what seems a very tiny metal globe.
Photo by Atelier Teee
I sat down a week or so ago and tried to chart out my writing/composing priorities. Doing an article a week for Triond was one of them. I kind of caught up by writing four articles, a couple of which were rehashes of pieces I'd done before.
So for those with an interest in other things I do, here are the links:
Blowing My Own Trumpet. This is a piece about trying to promote yourself on the Net. Self-referential is the term, I think!
Friends for Life. This one looks at some of the books on my shelves and concludes that some of them make better friends than the real people I know. Hmmm. This was a piece I started some time ago and never did anything more with.
The Delightful Lives at 44 Scotland St. Another 'rehash' - in the best sense. I've taken the four book reviews I've done of the four episodes in Alexander McCall Smith's 44 Scotland St series and woven them together into a long overview. It's called recycling.
Support Your Local Circus. This was written new and fresh yesterday after I went to see Weber Brothers' Circus in Mosgiel, one of the outer suburbs of Dunedin. It's a lovely little circus, full of energy and life, with clowns that are genuinely funny, and some wonderful Asian acrobats. And three absolutely crazy motorcyclists racing around and around inside what seems a very tiny metal globe.
Photo by Atelier Teee
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