Long time

no blog, maybe I should bring a short update for the ppl that still look in here occasionally.

Last blog was about first stage performance, well I did get 15 shows and loved every one of them, now no more. I’ll definitely try for another show sometime, shame I’m not a very good dancer, they seem to want people both dancing and singing most of the time. But at least I did get to experience this sort of work.

Winter’s coming to an end, finally, hasn’t been a hard one at all but I’m looking forward to my summer holiday. Which will start earlier than usually actually.

Went to Norway for a performance of my big Mass for choir, soloists and orchestra (Amazon has it, here if anyone’s interested – I do recommend it, even though I say so myself), met up with some family, great trip.

Middle daughter got confirmated, had a nice family gettogether for that, Easter weekend.

And now I’m travelling again, this time all the way to Australia. Again to follow up a piece of mine, chosen to be on the ISCM new music festival in Sydney in May. Can’t wait. It’s a great honour to be picked for this festival and I hope to meet up with some distinguished colleagues and hear exciting music from around the world. Husband’s coming along and we’ll be Down Under for 2 weeks.

Kreppa news, well Alda covers that on the Iceland Weather Report blog, I really can’t try to beat her, nor do I want to. Our family isn’t doing badly at all, everybody’s got jobs, the elder teenager didn’t even lose her job-along-school. Which is nice.

Maybe – just maybe – there won’t be 7 months till next update…

my first

appearance on stage tonight, yeah! The Sound of Music show up here at the moment is really tight and good, totally loved the experience. Can’t wait for my second show – next Thursday.

Red wine in glass. Raining outside and the country going to hell. Doesn’t detract from my bliss at the moment. Cheers!

chairman of the board

The other day, I was elected a chairman of the board in a company. Probably wouldn’t tell anyone about it – except for that this company doesn’t have the remotest thing to do with money speculations. It’s the Iceland Music Information Centre, mostly owned by the composer’s unions here.

Must remember to add this to my CV :p

Not easy to run a company, nowadays, though…

and so

the winter’s begun, started teaching in the Academy of the Arts, 2 private composition students and 3 aural training courses, the Suzuki method school starts next week and so does the other children’s music school. Yes, I teach in 3 different places, could probably pick one of them and get a full job – or at least as much as I care to teach. But I like the variety, teaching children from 8 year olds up to graduate students. Most fun teaching the composition, I have the kids come to my place instead of a school room, make coffee or tea, listen to and look at their work and discuss. Thought it would be much harder to teach this.

Of course, inspiration can never be taught. Just try to point the way as well as I can.

a bit

less tired, still lazy and not doing very much, that’s nice. Went swimming with the eight-year-old yesterday and today, not bad at all.

The plan is to recommend that we go next time as well – haven’t the faintest idea where in the world the symposium will be next time, maybe New Zealand, who knows? (will be announced tomorrow, I think, exciting). This symposium is every 3 years. Then we might want to frequent the ACDA thing too (American Choral Director’s Association), have to find out where that is. And if all this happens, I can look forward to jetsetting around, whee!

Would want to take my choir with me sometime, though…

back

from Denmark, brilliant to be back home.

Had a great trip, though, (one of the best things being having this great free internet at the hotel – definitely paid for the breakfast not being included in the price, which I didn’t realize beforehand).

Well, actually, hearing all those great choirs in concerts, listening to interesting composers in workshops and more, I can’t and won’t complain. It was a brilliant trip, I managed to give all my booklets away, plus the 10 CD’s with my own material – didn’t want to promote myself too much, since the trip was paid for by Iceland Music Export Office, and I wasn’t supposed to use it for my own promotion any more than my fellow composers’s.

Heard choirs (choruses to you US citizens) from the whole world, Korea, New Zealand, Philippines, France, then all the Nordic countries, followed the Icelandic choir around, since their were the venues to give away our promo material. Didn’t have any time off at all, hardly, and now I’m totally tired.

Next trip looming

yes, Denmark this time, the enthusiasm for travel’s started to wane, I must say, especially when I don’t have any of my family with me. Glad this isn’t a very long trip, I’ll definitely have a good time but it might be hard, I’m going to be a public relations person for Icelandic choral music in a big international forum for choral conductors and composers, in Copenhagen.

Never been a public relations anything before, though. At first, someone from the Icelandic Music Export Office was going to go along, but the last I heard (3 days ago) he hadn’t given a definite answer. Hmm. I don’t even know him by sight. Well, we’ll see.

Sort of looking forward to coming home for a hard-earned holiday, next Wednesday.

čas pět

or day five:

House key worked fine in the morning, we didn’t dare go outside both at once, but it wasn’t a problem.  Weird.

Jón Lárus fell asleep again after breakfast, this was actually his worst cold day.  I let him sleep for a while, but then we had to go to town, wanted to maybe buy some clothes for the kids (might be cheaper than home) and look for the drapes once more.  Went to a Tesco downtown, but it turned out to be way more expensive than the Interspar, so the only thing we bought there was a sweater for the eight-year-old.  No drapes around there, either.  Wanted to buy some Bohemia Sekt to take home, but in Tesco it cost almost a third more than in Interspar, so we decided rather to go there on the way back.  Then we found it even cheaper in a little wine shop on the way downtown, so we got 2 bottles there, one for us and one for our hosts.

Went to the same pub as the day before, for some beer, in the same house was the Beer Museum.  Bought a dark beer from Prazdroj, called Master, it was probably the best beer we had the whole trip.  Even the dark Budvar (which we admittedly only got from a bottle, not from tap) couldn’t compete.

Wanted to buy the glass, (no, we don’t steal them – not anymore), asked the waiter, he said:  In the museum.  So we went there, but they only had boring old Urquell glasses, told us to go to the brewery to get a Master glass.

(as an aside, see our beer glass collection):

Didn’t have the time to go back to the pub to try again, nevermind the brewery, rehearsal in Plzeň’s City Hall ten minutes later:

We helped the players carry their equipment upstairs, Jón only managed one trip, then sat down, terribly weak, I’ve hardly ever seen my poor husband so weak.

Andrea, the singer had her little son with her to the rehearsal, a really sweet little boy who can almost crawl:

The group ran through all the pieces, sounding good, the city hall has good acoustics so it was a huge change from the radio studio, which is of course really dry.

After my pieces had been ran, we headed back, Jón for some needed sleep, and both of us to change clothes for the concert.  Meant to take the bus to the concert, but when we were back, we had thunder and lightning and of course the pouring rain to go with it.  (Temperature dropped from 31° to 19° Celsius in an hour, that’s quite a lot).  Called Eydís to ask if somebody could pleeeeaze pick us up, or maybe call a taxi for us.  Not a problem, Vašek came for us, a bit earlier than we’d planned to leave, so we changed in a hurry – then had to wait, since there was an accident on the way and he got stuck in traffic.  Never mind, we were in good time for the concert.  Jón got an aspirin from Jaromír, which helped a great deal.

Concert was excellent, both I and Bezdék had to stand up and introduce our pieces (I got to speak in Icelandic and Eydís translated into Czech).  Sorry not to have a recording of the pieces – well I do have some rehearsal run-throughs, taken on my little camera, but don’t want to publish them without the permission of the players.

Afterwards we went to a private little pub, for something to eat and drink.

Found out that Katka had contacted Freyja via Stardoll, that was fun.

Keys worked, thankfully, when we got home after a loooong day.  Set the mobiles to ring in the morning, and fell straight into bed.

My travel itinerary

I tend to write day-by-day travel diaries after my foreign ventures; this is the first time I’ve ventured to do one in English, do it mainly for my newfound Czech friends.

Anyway, we woke up at that awful hour one has to get up when flying out of Iceland (definitely if you need to take a transit flight), half past four in the morning. Kissed the kids without waking them up, no need to do that, the younger ones would go to my parents later in the morning and the teenager had the permission to stay home alone for the week (first time ever, for more than one night).

Airport, couldn’t check in ourselves, as our ticket was a Reykjavík Airway Bridge one (Reykjavík and Icelandair have a sponsor program going, for musicians exporting their art abroad, not bad), the woman checking us in watched us and our 2 small bags and wondered why we had 100 kilograms weight allowance each, for the plane (a lot of the Airway Bridge ticket holders are of course bands, with tons of equipment).

Anyway, once inside the airport we had the mandatory coffee (Jón Lárus)/hot chocolate (me) and croissant, bought a book to read on the plane, opened the laptop but of course the net wasn’t free. No way I needed it so much I’d pay for it, so we just turned it off again. Bought a new memory card for the camera, turned out to be the wrong size (must remember to go to Elko electronic supermarket today and have it changed)

Flight was uneventful, then we landed at Kastrup in Denmark, had an expensive burger and even more expensive beer at a Nørrebro Bryghus pub at the airport, then check in again for the Prague flight, found an Italian food magazine laying around in the lounge area, Jón reads Italian so he had something to look at in the flight. An interesting story of how the ice cream cone came to be.

The plane was interestingly enough Faroese, a small jet. We had to take a bus to the plane and then when everyone had boarded and we were on our way, I thought the plane was actually going to drive all the way to Prague, took ages to drive to the end of the runway.

Once in the air the flight took a short time, and when we landed, it only took about 15 minutes for us to get off the plane, get the bags and out. Exchanged some Euro into Czech Korunas.

Eydís and Vařek the bassoonist came to pick us up at the airport, thanx, and drove to Plzeň. Took about an hour more, then we arrived at our destination, the flat we borrowed in Plzeň. Amazingly enough, not only could we borrow a flat, no fee, for the whole time, but they had also filled the fridge with food, store-bought and homemade, f.ex. a huge jar of the most amazing mouth-watering meatballs, made by Jaromir the flute player’s father.

No lacking in beer or wine, here’s me on that first night, we were pretty well tired. Nice red wine helped…

I sort of like the colour of the walls (most anyone reading my Icelandic blog knows my absolutely favourite colour)

Not long after this photo was taken, I fell asleep nose down in book.

finally

online again, been in the Czech Republic for the last 5 days in a flat where I didn’t have a chance for the net (oy vey!).

Now in Copenhagen, the Czechs were brilliant, already missing them, hope to go back soon. Must try to remember my German better, if I’ll be going regularly to Plzen, English isn’t all that widely spoken there.

Holiday in Denmark for a couple of days, home late Saturday evening. No more now, onwards to my almost 300 rss entries…