Himan & Cyril

Cyril (aka Hyphen, aka Vyrgill), will be my electronic extraordinaire on my album. I approached him a few years ago. He agreed then, but things never really got started.

What struck me when I first heard his music was the subtlety of his sounds, the fluidity and great sensitivity he showed in his work. Highly clever, yet almost innocent, like a child.

I’m happy to count him among my collaborators.

It was the first time that I really saw Himan beyond his physical self. He appeared as a vibrant, radiant and wonderful person to me. Like a flow of energy. He showed me some ideas he had for the Prayer. Then I told him where they could match. We were very pleased in the end. We also worked on Ru Em, the lullaby, trying to find a rhythm that could express the flow of water, and the soothing effect of all the sounds that surrounds when you fall asleep.

I was introduced to his mother in law, a Vietnamese woman who has a gift and brings light to all the people around her. She told me things I needed - and was ready to hear. I reconnected to the brighter side, and opened the doors to joy and contentment.

That was a wonderful time.

Bloomsday 100

“Are you a bookseller?” She asked.

I was on a ladder, trying to spot a Murakami book. One of those old bookstores where climbing up is sometimes the only way to reach bliss.

I felt trapped. Like a little kid who’s been caught red handed doing some trick. Mine is to be the shepherd to the books. Organising, classifying... I can't help it! If I see one book that is lost on a shelf somewhere it shouldn’t be, I bring it back to its intended place. Alphabetical order. My little mania. Not only with books, mind you, records too. Just have to do it. But I have to do it unnoticed. Like a little elf that would come during the night perform his magic trick. Kann nicht! Muss!!! Muss!!!

She has seen through me.

“Because I do that too whenever I see books” she went on, smiling.

So, no Murakami, it was useless to stay up there on the ladder. Simon was reading on a chair, absorbed in some Iris Murdoch novel. Pretending not to hear.

Beethoven’s Violin Concerto was playing rather loud on the speakers.

“I wanted some nice nineteenth century music to soothe you…”

True, I had been whistling along.

Really, this woman could see every single detail. She handed me a little card.

“Since you’re such a bookish person, here’s an invitation. Bloomsday 100 in Vienna”. 
I  felt honoured.

“There will be readings the whole day long, from eight in the morning to three the next morning.”

“If you want to join, and maybe read yourself…”

Two boys entered the shop. Proper, polite and charming. Hoping to get a book they had ordered. She didn’t have it. But she gave them the same invitation for the reading.

“If you want to join. And read… or sing.”

The boys looked at each other and took the flyer.

“You know, they are from the Vienna Choir Boy”.

“Vienna Boy choir”, they timidly corrected.

She insisted that I put my name on the list of readers. Even if I didn’t come. I joked, saying I could read a haiku. Minimum reading.

I left my e-mail address. I might do something. Say a Vietnamese poem. Or recite Goethe’s Erlkönig, the only poem I know by heart…

“She had a big pint of beer on her desk” Simon later told me.

Circlesong: Starting the work

It’s not easy to rework songs written six years before especially when they haven’t even seen their final state of completion. I don’t want to repeat myself, and couldn’t if I wanted to. But then, leaving my mind open to new musical ideas, gives way to hundreds of possibilities. It's confusing.
I’m now thinking of recording some songs I have left aside, namely Halcyon. It was originally meant to be played by a Rhode piano and a grand piano, a string ensemble, a whole set of percussions and drums; now I just want to use a simple guitar, a cello, and tablas. No big drum section, no electronics…

The battle, if battle there is, is between what I have been clinging on for so many years, and letting everything go, without trying to retain the control. The task isn’t made easy by the fact that I work alone. Mario hasn’t started his part, the musicians haven’t played anything yet.

So it’s all happening in my head - I've already sketched some ideas on the computer, just a tool, a promise of what is to come.

It’s impossible to stop my mind from imagining, fantasizing. I wonder if that state of not-yet-done is not the one I prefer, when all is about to be created.

Death and the first violin

When one walks in a forest, it’s the tallness or the largeness of a particular tree that attracts one's attention, if it has enough room to be visible and stand out. Distance is needed anyway.

A soloist stands out when he performs with an orchestra, if you have the means and the charisma to be one.

The problem arises when one plays chamber music. I’ve witnessed a shining example of a tree trying to be taller than the others on that concert given by the Küchl Quartet.

The music program was appealing: Schubert’s Der Tod und das Mädchen, and Dvořák.

What really spoiled my pleasure was the first violin who obviously was the founder of that quartet which, unsurprisingly bears his name. Whatever he had to play, he played it louder than the others, regardless of the importance of the phrase. It was the first time that any musical instrument produced such an unpleasant effect on me. His sounds were like stabs of a sword dipped in acid. It’s really a shame when music is merely an excuse for a battle of ego.

Simon was more cunning: he managed to sneak in the big hall, while his two friends from Switzerland Aline, Henri and I sat through the whole concert with the Küchl Quartet. Aline seemed delighted. At least the evening wasn't totally spoiled!

Circlesong: Getting ready

Today is the first official day of work on Circlesong. I chose not to bring the keyboard I used when I did the demos. I didn’t want to go back. I will trust what comes ahead.

I felt the same on my first working session with Régine Chopinot. I wanted to get preprared. But a little voice inside me knew better and prevented me from preparing anything, so I went to La Rochelle with lots of doubts and questions but also the certainty that everything will be fine. Once you have to get going, you go.

New ideas are coming to my head. I will keep all the midi programming I had done, but will use them with new sounds. The joy of having a more 'professional' sound. Those demos have done their time now!!! Mario has got hold of excellent software which uses orchestral samples that outrageously sound so live! Even my father suggested that I could have a violin or a viola play on top of sampled strings. 

Alfred Brendel in talk

Simon couldn’t resist telling what it was. The surprise. Even though it would no longer be a surprise once he’d have told me.

I was on internet chatting with him, me in Paris, him in Vienna. So after a minute of guessing, I found out he got tickets to see Alfred Brendel playing at the prestigious Musikvereinssaal.

That name is like a ‘madeleine de Proust’. Say it and I would instantly see a scene of my childhood. Not only my times at the piano – which weren’t that joyous then. Maybe one of those harmonious family evenings, with the two parents reading silently and me and my brother making up new games, while a Beethoven or Schubert record would be playing on the stereo.

When I saw Alfred Brendel explaining to the audience his choice for the upcoming concert, I was more moved by the aerial passion he was exhaling, than what he had to say.

Here was a man who’d devoted his entire life to music. I don’t know how he was like as a young artist. It took time, he said. Now he’s taking time, and hopefully, will have a little more time to take.

Non Alfred Brendel hasn’t aged.

And we’re still alive!

Alfred Brendel

It immediately struck me that the man I saw coming in the shop was Alfred Brendel. Then I thought twice; maybe he just looks like Alfred Brendel. And the man’s eyes were blue. Were Alfred Brendel’s eyes blue? Since I’ve only seen black and white pictures of him, it was impossible for me to tell. That’s the problem when you know somebody from pictures only. You don’t know how they walk, talk, how tall they are, what body language they have. You remember one photograph in particular, but it’s an old one. And if it’s a profile, then you’re done. Do people age in a picture? How did Alfred Brendel age? I thought he would always be the same young man I remembered from the booklet of the Beethoven record set my parents would play when I was a child. How would it feel three decades or so later?

But that man was Alfred Brendel. I heard him talk two days before at the Musikverein, and I saw him walk. I was surprised by how tall he was. I thought he would be the Woody Allen type. Or my father type. But his mild manners are deceiving.

A open air concert isn’t my ideal of a classical concert. But tonight, Bobby McFerrin is conducting the Wiener Philharmoniker. A celebration for Europe to be taking place at the Schönbrunn Palace garden.

From the crowd that gathered tonight, it could have been a new Woodstock, a pop concert or a demonstration for human rights.

‘Let’s play another polka!’ he said by the end of the concert. ‘That was cool! That was fun!’

That cool rasta man conducting a Viennese waltz was a sight not to be missed. And above all, he didn’t let the orchestra take it for granted. So during the rehearsal, one of the Viennese anthems, ‘Wiener Blut’, was stopped, resumed, stopped again, replayed from the beginning. The program might have been a corny one, but Master McFerring never allowed it be a boring one.