music hath charms

[jazzfish]

Sunday before last (the 23rd) I'd felt kinda tired for most of the day, but I went off by myself into Clarendon that evening anyway. I wanted to see Turku since several of the dancers from Tribal Cafe were performing with them. I got to Iota early, had dinner, did some revising, read my book. Mavi and Belladona and Michael came through at some point and all seemed to recognise me, at least as "guy who shows up to Tribal Cafe on a semiregular basis," which was pleasant.

I was expecting the space to be like Jammin' Java, if not Asylum: places to sit and some amount of light. Instead the eatin' section is separate from the show section, and at least for this show there weren't any chairs, it was all open floor. So I watched people mill about and talk to each other. I found a bit of light so I could read my book while I waited for the show to start.

The show was fantastic: fine music, good energy, and lovely dancing. I don't think I've ever seen Mavi etc do quite that much traditional dance. Or maybe I only think it was traditional because the music involved instruments rather than a DJ.

The crowd got into the dancing as well, which was both 'good to watch' and 'isolating.' Note to self: tired + alone + crowd = soul-crushing waves of loneliness.

Last Sunday (the 30th) Alison and Jeff-of-ABG and I saw Dar Williams perform with a chamber music group as her backup band. One of the artists in the chamber music group is Dar's sister-in-law and they've been planning arrangements for years now. This... worked better for some songs than others. "Beauty of the Rain" was damn near perfect, for instance, and "Traveling Again" worked well, and it even made me like "The Buzzer." Oddly, the extra instrumentation pushed "February" over the edge from heartbreaking to maudlin. On the other hand it was nice to be able to hear that one done live and not end up in tears.

They played a handful of non-Dar songs as well, such as my favorite:

"I set out to do an arrangement of Duke Ellington's 'It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)' but the bass line was inspired by the music from the Daffy Duck cartoons where he gets thrown in the cement mixer and comes out looking like the sculpture of 'The Thinker'. And then the violin part was in G minor and started sounding like Brook's 'Adagio in G Minor' so I went with that. Which is why this arrangement is called 'Brook Don't Mean the Thinker.'"

The last song was an old Celtic folk song that I think was called "Leanan Sidhe," which sounded an awful lot like the Mediæval Bæbes's "All Turns to Yesterday" / "Aria." I kept thinking "why are there not three or four other voices on this?"

Good times. Not as good as last Satyrday, but still good times.

Comments

[skreidle.livejournal.com]

I find that I prefer to do very little alone, especially including outings/concerts/shows; I enjoy it far more if I have someone to share it with. :]