Resa, who has Graffiti Lux Art & More and Art Gowns, commented on my post Now For The Rest Of The Story earlier this afternoon with “Well, that’s something I’ve never seen. The food chain ……. is freaky.” I replied “Freaking On The Food Chain. I might have to make a song out of that phrase.” Resa, not missing a step, said “You go for it! Waiting to hear it.” After I got all my outdoors work done in the late afternoon, I came in and created Freaking On The Food Chain. It’s pretty much an improv on all tracks. Below is a photo of a couple of beavers on the opposite bank of the Rio Grande after sunset you can ponder while listening to Freaking On The Food Chain.
This week’s improvisation is called Saturday’s Improv (not a very creative title I know). I find playing lead guitar solo improvisations are very difficult. Coming up with fresh melodies is most frustrating. So I’ve started laying down base tracks: percussion, rhythm guitar and bass, and them playing improv solos all the way through the song, and taking them however they come out. I laid down all the tracks and the solo work today between watering, doing chores around the house, and taking a couple of walks in the bosque. There are two different guitar solo improvs that are very raw as the song goes back and forth between modes. I’m having lots of fun, and thought I might as well share the fun. I’ve include photos of Loki, Spunk and Marble, a photo of pear blossoms, and a photo of my darkroom/music studio showing the 10 tracks that make up Saturday’s Improve on the computer screen.
My music studio in my darkroom.SpunkPear blossomsMarble
What to do on a cloudy, wet, windy, cold spring day? Work on music in my cosy darkroom/music studio, go for a walk out to the river in the rain, capture the above photo, and finish an improv for this post. I created “In a Vacuum Improv” by playing the rhythm guitar and a bass line over a recording I made of a vacuum pump the Iceman used to suck moisture out of the refrigeration system when he repaired our floral refrigerator. The pump made such interesting sounds and rhythms, I simply had to record it. I added a couple of percussion tracks, and played the lead guitar to finish it out. I say it’s an Improve, because I only played the lead guitar once through.
Today’s video is original music I wrote using a prayer by fellow blogger Michelle Marie for the lyrics. On December 7, 2018, Michelle Marie posted Still… Small… Voice on Tell Me About Itat https://tellmeaboutit.co/2018/12/07/still-small-voice/, and I had a feeling there was an issue with her daughter, Alex, who has serious health problems. I commented that her prayer was beautiful, but sad, and asked how Alex was. Michelle Marie responded that she had been very sick and in ICU the week before. Michelle Marie mentioned that Alex just wants to lead a normal life. I could certainly relate to that having had a lot of health issues myself over the years. I didn’t realize the gravity of the situation until Michelle Marie emailed me with details. Alex almost died.
After getting the full story, I was inspired to write a song using Michelle Marie’s prayer for the lyrics. I was trying to imagine what is was like for Alex to be in ICU clinging to life, and started working on creating an etherial lullaby. I finished recording the song on December 15, 2018, and sent it to Michelle Marie. When I learned that she plays piano, I transcribed a short version of the flamenco guitar into piano and sent her the sheet music. She sent me images to use in a video, but I had to think for a long time how to do a video to go with the music. I finally came up with what I believe is a suitable video. Here’s my version of Michelle Marie’s Still… Small… Voice.
After discovering the large and vibrant music scene in Madrid, and after seeing LaBanda live at Cafe Jazz Populart, we started finding flamenco shows, and went to five flamenco shows in the first 3 months we were in Madrid. Flamenco shows usually had several different performers that included singers, guitarist, dancers and various supporting musicians playing palmas (hand clapping), cajon (a box drummed on by hand) and sometimes flute and/or strings. Sometimes a show was simply a singer and guitarist, solo guitar or a dancer or dance group with accompanying singer, guitarist/guitarists and palmeros, but shows with many artists seemed to be more common.
The first show we saw included Potito (singer) accompanied by guitarist Tomatito in the first part of the show and then Jose Fernandez (dancer) and his company the second part of the show. The second show was El Lebrijano (singer) accompanied by guitarist Enrique de Melchor with supporting palmeros.
18 April 1996
Flamenco
The first flamenco concert we saw featured Potito with Tomatito on guitar the first half and Jose Fernandez and company the second half. It was a good performance, but different from the shows we’ve seen at home. This was Potito’s debut performance promoting his new album. He sang and Tomatito accompanied. On some of the songs there was a second guitar, bass, cajon and palmero. Jose Fernandez is a dancer, and he was the only dancer. He had two guitarists, two singers, two palmeros, a cajon player and a cellist to support him. The theater is under the plaza at Colon circle, just down the street from where we live. The volume was not high and the sound was good.
The second show we went to featured El Lebrijano and Enrique de Melchor. El Lebrijano is an excellent singer, one of the best we have heard. Enrique is a fine guitarist. El Lebrijano’s voice is strong, his expression, delivery and sincerity are honest, and animated. He sings right to the audience and relates his stories through song with gestures and facial expressions that convey the convictions of his heart, soul and words. Enrique de Melchor is a flashier player than Tomatito, but was still very restrained as compared to many I have heard at home. His quick busts of speed, his clear tone, and clean changes assure the listener he is a fine guitarist, but again, he never does anything to upscale the singer. He is attentive, supportive, and does what is required to accompany and enhance the singer’s tonality. There were three palmeros that assisted at times and towards the end, one palmero, who was the same person with Potito, and I was thinking maybe he is a house palmero, got up and danced during a bularias, mocking the style of women dancers. He was very good actually, with strong, fancy displantes, hip movement, and great facial expression and greetos. On another bularias, El Lebrijano did his share of dancing while, the house palmero sang. The audience brought the group back 3 times for encores. This was good cause for them to call one of the other, younger, palmeros to dance. His dance was short and simple but fun, he is not a ham like the house palmero and the singer. The house palmero danced some more and then he and El Lebrijano danced together a little bit and danced off the stage together to end what was a very good show.
Insert of LaBanda’s No todo es Seda CD that the band members signed for me
In the last Letter From Madrid we were looking for flamenco classes and I had found a great guitar teacher. Today I move to the music scene we encountered in Madrid soon after we got there in 1996. I wrote the first letter I’m sharing on April 18, 1996 after we had been in Madrid about three months — we discovered at that time Madrid had a very active live performance scene, and we had already seen more than a dozen live performances by the middle of April. We were there primarily to study flamenco, and one aspect of studying flamenco was to go to as many performances by different flamenco artists as possible so we could see what was current, and the different styles of flamenco being performed. While flamenco was the majority of shows we saw, we went to every kind of concert from Rock & Roll to jazz to chamber music to classical. I found a spreadsheet that I kept on every concert and artist we saw perform live in 1996. The tally was 83 concerts and 187 individual performers.
The “Music” section will take several posts because the descriptions of many of the performances we saw in the first three months in Madrid are detailed and long.
I discuss LaBanda in this post. They were the first band we saw perform live in Madrid, and after some time we became loyal followers of the band, groupies if you will, and got to know the band members well enough that we would sit around and talk with them between sets. Be sure to check out the Youtube videos at the end of this post. Two of the videos are from a TV series on the arts. The lead guitarist, Leo, talks about the group, and if you don’t understand Spanish, don’t worry, most of the time is spent on them performing live.
18 April 1996
Music
The music scene in Madrid is big and hopping. There are advertisements for concerts all over the place. Green Day is coming as are “The Smashing Pumpkins” as the posters have it written, Sting, Kiss (unplugged), the Sex Pistols (what’s left living I guess), Mark Knoffler and about every other currently popular or once popular group plus a lot of Spanish and European groups we don’t hear about in the states. There are classical guitar concerts, ballets, musicals, plays and orchestras playing almost every night. We went to a really good salsa dance with two bands that played until 5:00 am, and we saw Irakere, Cuba’s most celebrated salsa/jazz group. We have seen five really good flamenco concerts. We went to Jazz Club Populart on Friday nights in March and listened to the bands they have (April’s lineup didn’t look as good, we will have to see what’s on in May). The first band we heard was a Celtic music band named LaBanda and they were excellent. I would like to see them again. The second group was a blues group. They were pretty good. The leader is from New York and gave us his telephone number, and we have talked a few times since. We are planning to get together with him, his wife, and his daughter. We listened to a reggae band there also, but they did not do much for us. We have seen many ads for ballroom dancing but have not made it out to see what it’s like here. There is so much going on that we could spend every day and night of the week going to museums, concerts, plays, symphonies and discos, listening to whatever live music we are in the mood for in bars and night clubs. With that we would not even begin to see or hear a fraction of what’s available.
Celtic Music
The band that plays Celtic music is worth mentioning. The group is called LaBanda, and they were quite good and the music fun. There was a bass player, drummer, keyboard player, guitarist/vocalist, violinist and a guy who played all kinds of flutes, small reed instruments and the bagpipes. The music was a mix of traditional rhythms with a rock under-beat. The tunes went from traditional to rock and roll. A lot of the tonality between the guitar, violin, and keyboard had an early Kansas sound to it. The band was tight, there was good balance on the sound, and they sounded great. They did lose a little of the Celtic quality from the vocal arrangements being sung in Spanish. However, in one song the guitarist/vocalist got the whole crowd to yell “hey”, “hey hey” at a break in the music. It was pretty funny hearing a bunch of Spaniards yell “hey”. The second time around he said we had to sound more English “you’re learning the language now” he said in Spanish, “say it” “heyy”, “heyy heyy” drawling the words into two syllables. This was even funnier. The band was not very loud. For a matter of fact, the band was having a bit of trouble competing with a few groups of Spaniards setting in the front of the bar. The guitarist finally went back and turned up the volume to drown out the Spaniards, which I think they only matched the volume. The evening was lots of fun and very entertaining.
We went to A Lenten Penitential Prayer Concert. A Dedication to Our Lady of Sorrows presented by the Albuquerque All City Women’s Catholic Liturgical Choir at St. Thérèse and the Infant Jesus Catholic Church last night. The concert included a service with the Stations of the Cross — the first time I’ve attended a service with the stations of the the cross. After the concert I was talking to Father Vincent who gave me the history of the church. Built in 1954, St. Thérèse and the Infant Jesus Catholic Church just happens to be one of four shrines in the world for Thérèse of Lisieux. The full name of the of the church is the Shrine of the Little Flower, St. Thérèse and the Infant Jesus Catholic Church.
I learned that they have some of the bones of St. Thérèse in the marble under the statue in the first photo, in marble at the main alter, and a bone fragment in a small gold reliquary the priest takes out of its nook to venerate St. Thérèse. They also have rare statues of her, and various other relics such as her choir robe. One of the first priests at the church was French and he designed the stained glass and statuary — he had the stained glass made in France and the statues carved by craftsmen in the Italian Alps. Father Vincent said the Church cost over $3 million dollars to build in 1954, and he was estimating it would cost about $18 million to build today. I looked around at the quality of the construction, the marble, stained glass and statuary, and told him that from my experience with construction costs, I thought it would cost around $30 million to build church like it today.
St. Thérèse was a French Carmelite nun who died of tuberculosis at the age of 24 in 1897. known as “The Little Flower”, Roman Catholics love her for what’s considered the simplicity and practicality of her approach to a spiritual life. St. Thérèse was beatified in 1923, and canonized in 1925. She was named co-patron of France with Joan of Arc in 1944, and Pope John Paul II made her the 33rd Doctor of the Church in 1997. A collection of her autobiographical manuscripts called “The Story of a Soul” became very popular in the early 1900’s, which ended up making her one of the most popular saints in the 20th century.
The cats were in winter mode most of the day. Even though it was sunny and a blistering 40º F (4.4º C) outside in the afternoon, Guildenstern, Rosencrantz and Diné chose to lay around on our bed most of the day. We went to the West Side Chior’s Christmas concert Saturday night, and Jerri had me help record the concert. I didn’t think of it, but I could have taken equipment and shot a video of the concert Saturday night. Well, they had another concert on Sunday, so I shot a video of it with my Canon 5D and a stereo mic. The video and sound are great, but it’s going to be a lot of work putting the hour long concert altogether into one video.
In the afternoon we walked to the Cathédrale Sainte Croix des Aemeniens about 3 km east of our apartment to attend three recitals. Along the way we saw a lot of interesting triangular buildings, some women on a building holding up a balcony, and we walked through a large flea market before we got to the church. The church was old and not in the best repair, but the acoustics were phenomenal. The first recital was Youn Soon Lee on piano. She played Beethoven so well her playing was like listening to an orchestra. The pieces she played were light and showy with lots of flashy runs and arpeggios that she would build up, pull down, build up, pull down and build up again until she brought the pieces to their explosive climaxes. Ms Lee’s performance was magnificent.
After the first recital we walked down to a restaurant/bar and got coffee before the next recital. The area we were in had a lot of art studios and private art galleries, the bars were filled with people, and the streets bustled with people walking, riding bikes and navigating cars through the crowds making their way to and from the flea market.
I didn’t think we could hear much better than Ms. Lee’s performance, but Miran Dévétak’s interpretation of List and Fauré was nothing short of phenomenal. List was heavy, complex and melodic, punctuated with fits of quick runs and dynamic, loud sets of chords. Fauré was a little lighter with a modern (1900sh) rhythm, and very quick, complex fingerings that Mr. Dévétak executed flawlessly.
The third recital was a violin/piano duet by Eun Bi Gang on violin and Jean Dube on piano. They were also fantastic performers. Ms Gang started by doing a solo of Martinon Sonatine No 5 op 32. The piece had some amazing secondary rhythms that she played under the melody, which was really remarkable. Mr. Dube accompanied her on the piano on Bach’s Sonate 2 Andante, Mozart Concerto No 5 1st Movement and Tchaikovsky’s Concerto op 35 1st movement.
On our way to Notre Dame in the morning, we came across a bird market that had cages and cages of small parrots, parakeets and finches. While I was photographing flowers (the poppies were huge) and roses in the garden behind Notre Dame, I came across an early bird getting worms.
Off Center & Not Even 