Veljo Tormis

Watching the first episode of the much talked about Jane Campion TV series "Top of the Lake", I was struck by the theme music. I've heard that before. But for female voices, not piano as featured here.
The soundtrack is credited to one Mark Bradshaw, who is new to me, so no clues there. Internet searches failed to answer the question. It kept eating away at me. It was the female voices that I could hear in my head, but who were they?
First name that came to mind were the Icelandic group Aniima, so I listened to all their albums & eps, but no, not them. A couple of tracks are similar.
It took 8 days, but eventually I found it! It's an arrangement of the tune "How Can I Recognise My Home", which I had on an album by Estonian composer Veljo Tormis. Released by ECM on the album "Litany to Thunder".
And the original version is so much better! Yes, really.

Out

At about 5:30 this evening, as I started to prepare tonight's meal, I heard the shout of "Howat?!" through the open door. The sound of the players from the cricket club at the top of the hill (about 400 yards away as the crow flys). Never watched a game there, but often heard the expectant cries during the summer.

The Train in the Night

Recently finished this book by Nick Coleman.
Subtitled "A Story of Music and Loss", it details Coleman falling victim to Sudden Neurosensory Hearing Loss, after many years not only listening to music, but writing about it.
Really, it wasn't just loosing his hearing in one ear, it was worse than that, he experienced constant noise in the deaf ear & it also effected his balance.
So now deaf, but with constant uncontrollable noise and not able to stand up. (All a bit frightening really!)

He details the difficulty in listening to music in the state and how his relationship to it changed.
Coleman is only a few years younger than me, so most of the references about his teenage years I get. He makes a number of good points. Particularly about the arrival of Punk not been quite the simple straight forward event that most would have it be.
Don't follow his taste in music I have to say - Nazareth get more coverage here than they've had for many a year! And while I don't mind the Rolling Stones, I'm not a fan as he is.
Thankfully, Coleman's situation isn't as bad now, he can control a number of the symptoms & is back enjoying music, even if his hearing hasn't come back.

The Difference

"Unlike hearing, listening is an active process that requires hard work and intense concentration."
Des Coulam, from an article in the Caught by the River produced magazine, "An Antidote to Indifference".
Too much hearing not enough listening. Guilty as anyone.

Today's News Report

"Super fast" hand dryers have the same impact on the human ear as a road drill at close range and are causing "unwelcome stress".

Another example of current sound policy..............convenience over noise.

3 Installations

Monday to Durham.
In among all the usual castle & cathedral attractions and the current Lindisfarne Gospels exhibition are 3 installations.
"Stillaphone" by louie+jesse, which is in the Music School on Palace Green. Actually commissioned for the Brass International Festival (an annual event in Durham), it cleverly uses brass containers; bowls, jugs etc and turns them into instruments by dropping water droplets into each. The items are suspended at different heights & as the drops bounce into the containers, a sound, or note is produced. It works very well, visually interesting as well as sound wise. Would have liked to has gone back a few hours later to hear how the amount of water, now in each container, would have changed the sound.
"Book of Bells" by John Kefala Kerr took place in the very grand Monks' Dormitory Library at Durham Cathedral. This mixed the Brass festival with the Lindisfarne Gospels by being more directly related to religion & to Durham itself. The sound of distorted and modified bells and brass was multi-layered and played over hidden speakers. You were then encouraged to take part by ringing bells of different shapes and sizes that there on reading tables in the library. These were linked to books and texts that, for the committed, you could follow in sequence around the room.
Lastly, to a chapel around the back of the cathedral, for a commission by famous sound recordist Chris Watson, "In St Cuthbert's Time". This was tied to the Lindisfarne Gospels exhibition. Watson had recorded the sound of Lindisfarne over the course of a year, just natural sound, to create the soundscape that would have existed when the Gospels were written. However, my visit wasn't the ideal experience.
We arrived about 70 minutes after opening time, to find two attendants, restarting the computer that controlled it all. "Perhaps I shouldn't have pressed that button?" She said.
"You'll hear some music in a moment if we can get it working" was the next comment, followed by a very loud laugh. Remember this is in a chapel that is supposed to be quite, and we are expecting natural sound to illustrate the contemplative world of the monks, not music. Oh, and they were cutting the grass outside, and there is a lot of grass. After a few minutes we left.
Just as well I've already got the CD version that Touch released!

Portable CD

Came across my "old" portable, battery CD player. Haven't played it since I got the iPod.

So, I put in new batteries, picked a CD & sat outside listening. 

The sound was great! What have I been doing only listening to MP3s while out and about these last few years?

Need to play more CDs at lunchtimes! (That's when I mainly listen to the iPod)

Dobrinka Tabakova

About 10 days ago, I discovered Dobrinka Tabakova.
During a trawl through various internet sites I came across reference to her album on ECM's New Series - "String Paths". What made me investigate further? I'm not sure really.
She was born in Bulgaria, but moved to the UK while still a child. She won a classical music composition competition at age 14! So, she's been doing this from an early age.
What sort of music? Well, classical. Using styles and forms both old and new. It's not radical, it's not traditional, but there is something I really like about it. I've read a couple of interviews with her and listened to a podcast interview (from ECM, and very poor sound quality for them!) and it's interesting that she plays down the Bulgarian folk connection that everyone seems to guess at & plays up her love of music outside of classical, everything from Keith Jarrett to bluegrass & Alison Krauss.
The "Concerto for Cello & Strings" on this CD is just wonderful! It's the music I've found myself wanting to listen to at every opportunity. I've even found myself humming the tunes!

http://dobrinka.com

The Wrong Nina

Discovered Amazon's new audio service this week.
Now when you buy a CD, you get access to an MP3 version to download (called AutoRip - look for the symbol!), or stream via your Amazon Cloud Player page. Yes, you have one if you've ever bought from Amazon.
What you also get once you've logged on to this, is not only all the MP3s you've ever bought from Amazon, but a whole bunch of the CDs you've bought as well. So, I got access to 161 albums I've bought from Amazon - going back to 2003!
It's not all the CDs  I've bought are there - can't quite figure out why, as they are advertising that many of them are available in this AutoRip format. Who knows?
I can now listen to these via my computer at work, on to an iPad or phone if I want. But if at home I'll still be playing the actual CDs of course.

Where will it all end? You never need be with out your favourite music.

Amongst the items that became available were some CDs I no longer have. Also were CDs I've bought for others. This explained a strange glitch, in that I appeared to have bought a CD by a singer called Nina from the Philippines! I hadn't - I'd got P a CD by Nina Simone & in the digital/catalogue confusion, the wrong Nina was delivered to my Cloud Player.