Grapevine Review- Mýkir Músíkdagar

I have my very first piece of writing published in a newspaper, it feels like a milestone. It's a music review of the Dark Music Days Festival, which was a contemporary music creezycrazy weekend. I ended up seeing 12 concert total from Thursday night to Sunday night. Not every concert made it into the article, as I knew in advance that I would have to chop it down into something digestible for print. Luckily all that was changed were two semi-colons, or if there were more edits, I really can't tell the difference.

I did have to leave out the story where I wasn't told that there was an intermission to a concert, and I was asked to be a stage crew hand, so I wandered out right in front of an orchestra taking a bow, leaving me to look hilariously stupid, standing in front of a sea of violins trying to move around me. But that's a story better left for the blog. I doubt that anyone but me remembers who the weirdo volunteer guy was. Well, now I just gave it away. Next time I'm not volunteering to do more than help with programs and set up chairs, or even better, just be the guest composer who has a piece on the program. That's more my speed.

The published text is pasted below, or you can read it at the Grapevine's website; it's from Issue 2 and turning to page 22. Fancy!


Dark Music Days
Nathan Hall

Reykjavík’s ‘Dark Music Days’ Festival is a bit like Iceland Airwaves, if Airwaves catered mostly to hip classical musicians, threw in a ton of contrabass instruments, and was operated entirely by about four people. This year, the usual multi-week festival was squashed into three-and-a-half days, exhausting my ears in the same way as Airwaves did, only this time with more sixteenth notes and fewer earplugs.

THURSDAY

Dark Music Days kicked off with a grand concert by the Iceland National Symphony. Daníel Bjarnason’s conducting of György Ligeti’s ‘Atmospheres’ squeezed out of the double bass section a low sustained note more fantastically vulgar than I’ve ever heard in orchestral music. Steingrímur Rohloff’s ‘Clarinet Concerto’ could have just given me the parts of the piece featuring growling, didgeridoo-like squeals for the bass clarinet, and I would have been perfectly content. The composition, and Rúnar Óskarsson’s performance as soloist, particularly showcased the bass clarinet as well-balanced against the forces of the full orchestra.

Daníel conducted his own ‘Birting’, the crowning achievement of the evening. Daníel’s work was full of primordial shifts of light and darkness, mysterious and unexpected sounds at just the right moments. I went home comforted.

FRIDAY

The onslaught of events began on Friday at lunchtime, with one-hour events placed at roughly three-hour intervals until late in the night. At Kristín Jónína’s lecture, Þorkell Sigurbjörnsson mentioned that for years he had to have an unlisted phone number after receiving threatening calls—apparently nothing made Icelanders angrier than his hosting an avant-garde music programme on the radio during rush hour.

Sigurður Sævarsson’s ‘Missa Pacis’ was hauntingly beautiful, performed in the darkly-lit Neskirkja. The restraint of the vocal writing made the work’s deliciously full moments shine even more. It is soon to be a Hljómeyki Choir hit when it’s released on CD.

The electro-acoustic performances at Hugmyndahúsið in the late evening included several works featuring altered found sounds. Ríkharður Friðriksson stood on stage for his piece, writing out computer code that propelled the work in real-time. Strangely enthralling.

SATURDAY

The highlight from Hnúkaþeyr Wind Octet was ‘Andar’ by Anna Þorvaldsdóttir, containing ideas ‘under the influence of breathing and tidal waves’. It was also a perfect nod to the sounds of pounding waves of rain on Kjarvalsstaðir’s roof. Dark Music Days this year was sponsored by Iceland’s worst winter weather: wind, rain, slush, and snow coming at you from all directions.

Kira Kira’s late-night concert at Norðurpóllinn was…eclectic. I bet that she could leave out the heavy reverb and echo effects and still have interesting pieces left over. For most of the evening I thought to myself, if I would feature all these low-sounding instruments: double basses, cornet, contrabass clarinet–I’d definitely have a tuba as well.

SUNDAY

Pulling myself together after a long night (it was the weekend, after all), I took a bus to CAPUT’s performance of Atli Heimir Sveinsson’s ‘5-hjóladrif’ at Norðurpóllinn. The two dancers on stage sadly only performed during 20 percent of the work, but Atli Heimir’s multi-genre, vigorous and virtuosic (read: ‘crazy’) writing held my interest. After the concert, I got a ride back seated next to a sexy Danish opera singer-slash-rock-theatre-collaborator. Ah, how I love Scandinavia.

The final concert of the festival was held at the National Museum (Listasafn Íslands), an acoustically dull but obviously artful venue for the Reykjavík Chamber Orchestra. Hlynur Vilmarsson’s ‘Héxié’ for piano, strings, and low-frequency pulsing electronics conveyed a stillness that resonated the best through the museum’s space. Arnold Schoenberg’s ‘Verklärte Nacht’ was the final work on the programme, with intense anguish that melted into sighs of romance, and finally into an uplifting spiritual breath. It was also the bookend to the symphony concert a few nights before; it tied together many of the works over the weekend that seemed to explore inhalation and exhalation, the passions of simply being alive.

These kinds of festivals are a rare opportunity to hear so much contemporary music for such a reasonable price. Much like I experienced at Airwaves, I found it best to just be a ‘sponge’, soaking up all of the highs and lows of new classical music in Iceland today, and taking them home to ponder.

Nathan Hall is a composer and artist on a Fulbright Fellowship to Iceland this year. He can be reached through www.nathan-hall.net.

Judd Greenstein, Alex Ross, Julia Cameron

Just a couple quotes that I've found recently in reading which are nice little tidbits for my own compositional life:

On the compositional process, from an interview with the esteemed Judd Greenstein. I had a piece of mine premiered on a concert that his work was in as well, in Brooklyn. My piece was okay. His was pretty awesome...

"If you do something three times, in your head you've actually probably done it a hundred times, and most of those different ways that you tried to work out the rhythm or the harmony never made it in, but, god, do we really have to do this a third time because haven't we done this enough already? Well, no. In the context of the actual piece, we haven't, but in your brain you've done it way more than enough and so that's a challenge.

I need to want things to stay in play longer than they actually do. I want to be disappointed anytime something stops happening. If something changes, I want to make sure that the thing that happens is even more engaging, for whatever reason, than the thing that has just left."

I've done this so many times in my own work, and then regretted not repeating something, because it changed too quickly.


From writer Alex Ross, on new music, particularly about the composer George Fredrich Haas, who I know nothing about, but will inviestigate ASAP!
"Perhaps audiences are finally beginning to approach twentieth-century music with the same open-mindedness that they have long accorded twentieth-century painting."

My only comment to this is, well, we are now in the 21st-century, in fact about 11 years into it, and folks are finally warming up to music written 40 years ago. But I suppose that's good. If Ross senses a trend into audiences finally enjoying this kind of music-making and artful performance, then that may bode well for me as an 'established' musician later in life. I guess it takes the masses a long time to warm up to new ideas (ahem...civil rights...ahem...gay marriage, cough cough...).

And finally, from Julia Cameron's 'The Artist's Way', which makes me feel a lot less guilty about having beacoup de temp to myself on this Fulbright. It makes me think more and more that it is time well-spent on growing and thinking, reading and writing, pondering new ways of working.

"One of the great misconceptions about artistic life is that it entails great swathes of aimlessness. The truth is that a creative life involves great swathes of attention. Attention is a way to connect and survive."

Bad Hostel Art

Here are a couple quick sketches I made of some great/horrible art in the hostels I've stayed in around the country. Disclaimer: I don't claim to be accurate in scale or even three-point perspective. And one picture is technically a 'still life' of two lamps on the table. But those lamps just had a certain '70's-design charm that they were almost as great/horrible as the needlepoint sailor; they just had to be given a small tribute.

New Music Wednesdays at Listasafn Íslands

Today ended my four mini-concert stint at Listasafn Íslands, and I must say I have never been so pleasantly surprised at the results of a small event. Well, even these small, intimate concerts had a fair amount of prep work, as I wanted to have special guests for most of the concerts.

Two of the concerts featured Magnús Trygvason Elíassen on drums. He's amazing, I hope to work together again. We did two pieces together, one almost freely improvised, and one more traditional pop song. Here is the best recording of 'Dust', the free improv piece, that we got from the live concerts.



Two of the concerts also featured Luciano Becerra, a singer and musician from Argentina, who lives in Iceland. He sings in my choir and has a beautiful clear voice.


This last concert was packed with special guests; Hörður Torfason sang a song he crafted many years ago, and I rearranged his guitar part for piano, in my own particular style. He sang and his crisp tenor rang through the museum. There is a clarity in his singing that so effortlessly reveals texts. No wonder he has released 22 albums of his songs.

I also performed a workshop of a piece that Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir and I are working on for an outdoor spring performance. She spoke Icelandic texts while I played and sang. The work is full of color imagery and we tried to dress colorfully appropriately.

One of the most moving performances was by Karítur Íslands, a young girls' choir. Several of the girls sang a song that I wrote when I first moved to Iceland. The poem was written by a 12-year old girl, and is simple but moving. The girl is now around 30, and she didn't think she's be able to come to the concert, but she surprised me by being there! I hope she didn't freak out when I gave her a hug, I wasn't prepared. The performance was also hauntingly magical. Here is the recording of the rehearsal, the piano is a little loud but that's what I get for only bringing one stereo mic.



One of the reasons I wanted to take time and live in Iceland was that I thought my music would be better appreciated here. I'm certainly inspired by being here, and I have lots of time to think and listen to music here. Perhaps it's in my particular musical styles, or that I pick certain themes or demeanor about working, that I hoped my works would resonate with Icelanders, on par or more than with American audiences. I think this may indeed be the case. I have gotten a lot of positive feedback here from relatively larger audiences than I've had in the States, and for works that most people would consider 'classical' or 'experimental'. It's great to see everyday people show up to concerts to which they don't even know what to expect. This is a great sign; it gives me a little extra boost that I'm making good decisions, and continue to be happy here.

Grey Hairs Cometh

It was inevitable. And the time is now. My first grey hair has multiplied.
The first one was/is in my beard. You can't even quite see it most of the time, it blends in with the other sort-of-blonde hairs I have.

But let's take a close-up.

Nope, definitely not blonde. It has a funny texture to it- it almost points directly out sometimes, pointing like a finger mocking me from the inside of my body.

There's another hair I spotted on my head, and this one has a little curl to it.


I even spotted one on my shorter-trimmed side-head hairs.


I know there are some on the back of my head, but those don't exist in my mind yet because I haven't seen them. Obviously if I can't see it, it doesn't exist! Just like the atom. Or possibly also evolution. Or anything that I can't Google.

Well, I joke as if it's a crisis but really I'm actually quite fine with the grey hairs. I am looking forward to a really sexy speckly beard full of them. And having grey hairs reminds me of two things. One, that I still have lots of hair left! And my default look of the future is sure to please: robust beard with crazy glasses. And Two, every hair I do lose on my scalp gets re-rooted onto my back and chest; I pretend that it's a system that my body is using to keep itself in stasis. My hairs formerly on my scalp are emigrating to a new country (apparently called 'Shoulderland') and they notice along the way that they have some new grey buddies who are along for the ride.

Detox Hotel, Car Accident

This past weekend was a whirlwind of activity.
I had lunch and coffee with a great Icelandic musician named Hilmar Örn Agnarsson, formerly of the punk band Þeyr, and currently a multi-choir director and all-around happy, intelligent, and helpful person.
He played the bass in þeyr, and thus got to wear a cool hat and glasses.


Thru Hilmar, literally several hours later, I was invited to play a gig out in Keflavík by a man named Ragnar, who used to be the 'mayor' of sorts of the þingvellir/Gullfoss/Geysir area. Now, he's the co-owner of a Detox Hotel/Spa out by the Airport, along with an Iceland celebrity, Jónina Ben. Ragnar wanted me to play some live music at the Hotel this weekend in exchange for some free healthy meals and a night in a comfy hotel, hot tub, massages, etc. I said, what the hell. Jónina picked me up and I found out she was the person to bring aerobics to Iceland in the 70's/80's. That's pretty great. These are her fancy exercise balls.


I played a few songs at the detox place, where people come from around the world to stay for two weeks and eat only fruits and vegetables, lose some weight, exercise, and get pampered. I had some weird meals and a breakfast that included sweet potatoes, onions, and carrot juice with garlic and beets. No sugars, no shampoo, no chemicals anywhere, and for sure no chocolate. But I did feel refreshed when I was done. Or maybe it was from getting a massage by a hot Russian named Sebastian.

I thought I'd be in for a strange weekend when I saw my room, not much to see here.

But then the room turned out to have a very soft big bed. And I ended up having some of the best chats I've had here, finding out about Ragnar's time as 'mayor', his bringing cool musicians to Iceland to work with Hilmar Örn, and all the escapades that are involved when one works on large music projects. Also, I danced a traditional dance with some people from the Faroe Islands. And, went to Keflavík for the first time and ate some delicious dinner that was full of wonderful things like sugars and carbs, completely the opposite of my detox-hotel stay, and those carbs were amazing.

But on the way back to Reykjavík, Ragnar and I were the first car to respond to a pretty bad car accident on the road, involving 10 people. It was probably the worst accident I've witnessed in my life. I obviously didn't take pictures while it was happening, but I tried to get a quick snapshot of the two cars on the side of the road after help had arrived.

One car slid on some ice, striking another on its side, and there were two cars full of screaming children and a very bad-looking mom in the driver's seat. She was covered in blood, windows smashed, and the jaws of life later needed to come and get her out of the car. Ragnar was a complete live-saver, on the phone with a nurse and calling the ambulance, and talking to the injured woman, keeping her alert and calming the situation. I stayed with the kids by the side of the road and gave a couple hugs as everyone waited, shaking and scared. Ragnar and I left after the ambulances got there, and before the TV crews arrived...not the way I wanted to get on television. Later I read everyone was taken to the hospital but no one was seriously injured. Let's not repeat that event again here, shall we?

I also met two of Ragnar's friends at the Kjarvalsstaðir museum, and they might help me promote my music a bit. One of them had a very interesting day-job, currently importing socks from France, and also working with the American-French alliance here in Iceland. That's kind of bizarrely fascinating. I want some French socks!

Then, I went to a play-party with Hilmar Örn, which was really difficult to translate, but I'm glad I went. The evening was a sort of one-woman play-lecture about humor and health, including a lot of jokes. It was all in Icelandic, most of it colloquialisms, and I got about 25% of it. I did meet another composer my age, though, and got a free box of chocolate cookies, so the evening really turned out for the better. I was finally able to verbalize, (in Icelandic!), that I am in sort of a difficult place with my language acquisition, where I don't understand everything, but don't want to use English all the time just because it's the easy way out. It's sort of like being in between two languages- one you don't want to have to use, and one you can't quite use fully.

Hilmar also invited me to a rehearsal of his girls' chorus, which I may be writing music for, and they may sing one of my songs next week at Listasafn Íslands for my last concert there in this little music series. But that didn't happen within the weekend, so maybe I'll tell about that another day.

Meeting of the Worlds: Parents in Iceland

Worlds collided this past week when my parents came to Iceland. I was glad they were so enthusiastic about their trip, even though half the time one of the three of us was queasy or tired, and the other half of the time the weather was too bitterly cold and windy to really have any fun in. They also brought me magazines from home, lots of hugs, and music notation software. And wine, from the duty-free. Bless them.

The 'rents were surprisingly adventurous on their visit here, and I was happy that they were still interested in taking road trips considering that once you got to the sights, most of the dramatic views in Iceland look so different than the summery, green pictures of the tour books. But no less astonishing! I took them around the traditional Golden Circle, with Geysir, Gullfoss, þingvellir. Everything was windswept, icy, and frozen.

We also went around to Reykholt, Hraunfossar, and Barnafoss, which I had last seen only in the fall. The sights are still totally stunning in the winter- monochromatic, sometimes like black-and-white photos. The waters from Barnafoss are even more milky blue in the winter from all the glacial runoff.

Even Deildartungahver looked quite stunning in the winter- frost on one side of the hot spring, and red rocks on the other, with blue sky and green moss. Four quandrants of color and textures, y'all!

I had never been down on the Reykjanes Peninsula (excepting the Blue Lagoon) and it was totally beautiful; we stopped at Kleifarvatn, a very calm, still lake which is dropping at a rate of about 1cm per day due to volcanic activity in the area. It's also a supposed home to a sea monster. That sea monster better get out to the ocean soon before he's left with a puddle.

We saw Séltún, or Krýsuvík, which is a geothermal site that looks like hot springs, but is in fact the remnants of a geothermal bore-hole that exploded inexplicably a few years ago, and left in its wake a bubbling pit.

The area around Krýsuvík is also one of the best I've seen so far for the rolling, slightly mossy lava fields that could easily be homes for the elves.

I enjoy using the Icelandic skills I've gained to sort of show off for my parents- even though half of the things I say are gramatically incorrect. Still, I can order fish dishes for them or get a taxi and have a little chat, and I don't have to use English. The cute receptionist at the Blue Lagoon and I had a nice Icelandic moment while my parents had a 'huh?' moment. I helped explain the process of Icelandic showers to the parents, and we had a rejuvenating swim in hot waters while the freezing air icicled up our hair.


At the end of my parents' stay, I had my second concert at Listasafn Íslands, or the national Art Museum. It went really well, a short lunchtime concert featuring special guests- in this case, Magnús Trygvason Eliassen and Luciano Becerra. The program was a mixed but well-balanced bag of piano solos and piano with drums. In Luciano's case, he sang 'Amarilli mia Bella' by Cacchini and I made an interior-piano plucked-string arrangement of the piece. I sang a brief song about leaves falling, and cooincidentally, all my pages blew off the piano. Luckily I had most of it memorized. I also had fellow Fulbrighters come and videotape, and some staff of the American Embassy came to listen. How fancy. I was glad my parents got to witness all of it. It was great to see them and I'm sad to see them go, but I've got more work and fun to do here which is already keeping me busy.

Music for One

One of the sometimes-frustrating parts of being a random foreign composer in another country may turn out to be one of the best reasons I am here.

In the last four months, I haven't been able to actually make working with many people materialize. It's not like I haven't met anybody. I've met three symphony players, three composers, the program director of the symphony, a drummer, a pop violinist, several fine artists, and a lot of community choir singers. I'm impressed with that! But making plans with any of those people and actually making a recording has been much more difficult than I anticipated. Optimistically, my 2011 plan is to not worry 'bout that crap anymore, and just see what happens naturally.

Much to my surprise, I seem to manage to be making some interesting things on my own, and with the people I do know who step forward to help. I started in September making some simple piano works, and then used recorded sounds around the country to make some sound-collages. Before I knew it, I had some interesting new pieces with spoken texts in different languages, whale noises, pianos, organs, and nature sounds! (If you can see the music clip below, click the link to my blog or website, where you should be able to hear them there.)

I think the only other electronically-manipulated works I'd ever done were two exercises in college. Being in Iceland gives me a change to experiment with sounds in my own way, and to take time to explore what I think might be interesting about them. I didn't expect to have such little contact with sheet music when writing these works! But the process still involves a lot of decision-making about combining sounds, timing, dynamics, form, textures- so many of the decisions I normally make in chamber music. Here's a sample of a sound-collage I like to call a Quick Tour of Iceland. Sounds from around the country in four minutes or less.


One project I am loving more and more is an ongoing collaboration with Pittsburgh writer Mark Mangini. He sends me texts that are inspired by music that I write, and I send him back music based on his latest texts. It's correspondence-based, but so far doesn't use the old-fashioned Postal Service/Pósturinn. This is a clip of a current work.


I've written a couple choral pieces, and they are in Icelandic! This also gives me a chance to try and set texts in another language, which I think I've only done once in high school (that was a long time ago). There are a lot of differences to think about! Syllable-setting, stress of certain words, which word to accentuate, &c. I'm hoping something gets sung here, but I could probably take them back to the States and do something with them as well. 'Cept I'd probably have to create an Iceland-pronunciation guide to accompany the sheet music.


I also wrote a piece for Irish artist Rhona Byrne, for a project called 'Friday Morning Balcony'. My piece will be released in a limited-edition audio-book/box in which different artists' sound pieces can be played from different sides of the box.

Not so bad for having one sort-of-broken laptop, one portable microphone, and basic ProTools. The quality of the sound in all the works might be varied, but such is the nature of working for five minutes in a graveyard here, ten minutes in a church there, maybe even a minute in a cave over yonder. I'm hoping that some mixing and mastering genius will be able to take care of smoothing out the various room sounds.

I'm about at the halfway point now, and though things are very different musically than what I thought they'd be, I'm looking forward to continuing!

I'm planning on releasing an album of the works with Mark Mangini in late summer, possibly including other Iceland works as well- do look ahead for that!

Gleðilegt Nýtt Ár/Happy New Year

Happy New Year from Reykjavík, where everything is sparklier than the rest of the world.

New Years' celebrations here seem to last for a week! This is just what happened last night.

I went to a bonfire down by the seacoast. It was enormous. It was a giant pile of all the wood that's being trashed, and a sort of philosophical 'throwing away' of all the bad mental junk that accumulates in one's life.

That's a perfect tie-in to my goal for 2011- not quite a resolution, but my goal is to stop worrying about goals! Seriously, I always obsess about what's coming next that I sometimes don't get to enjoy the process of getting there. I'm hoping that whatever happens in the next year happens more organically, and that I will try to enjoy the results of my normal hard work and times in Iceland.
Back to the bonfire, where the whole damn thing was doused with some gasoline and up she went.


I went to my friend's mother's apartment to watch the annual TV show that mocks the year's events in Iceland, in a sort of SNL style. There were a lot of jokes involving 'Inspired By Iceland', the clever marketing campaign to get tourists to come back to Iceland after the volcanic eruption. We lit some sparklers and then it was off to the main event.

The view of a gazillion Icelanders lighting off thousands of fireworks is a sight not to be missed. Thankfully the kids watching have protective eyewear. There is no company that lights a show from a particular place- instead, the whole city is ablaze with individuals setting off their own fireworks.

My friends brought some champagne, some sparklers, and we joined in the fun!


Next in the evening (yes, there's more) was a drink at the Danish Pub, where we met some random Welsh people who just decided on a whim to come to Iceland for New Years because they Googled 'Top 10 Things to Do for New Years' and 'Go to Iceland' was apparently Number 1. I met up with other friends after that for a drink in a fancy loft apartment, then to end the evening and settle in to one place, I attended a fabulous party at Barbara and Trúno, the two gay bars in the city. The crowd was good and there were thankfully few screaming teenagers, and I got to dance to some hot jams. Before i knew it I was pretty drunkxorz and it was near 5am. Time for bed, indeed. Now that the next day has passed and I wasn't completely useless or hungover, I can say that the New Years in Iceland was totally worth it! Fits right into my 2011 goal of enjoying every bit of it fully.

Dublin Christmas, Whole Lotta Craic

I spent about a week in Dublin, not doing any work, but instead catching up on ideas about art, capturing the christmas spirit, reading, walking, but mostly drinking a lot.

My friends' apartment is amazing, for one thing. I had my own room, with a balcony, and it was snowing like crazy! Mark and Rhona threw a party for me as well, and many of the Irish artists I met from Mattress Factory Museum were there. We partied down until the wee hours of the morning, and made mini-pizzas to munch on.


I took a tour of Temple Bar area, where a lot of the touristy Dublin things are but where Rhona's studio is located as well. It looks as fun as I imagined, and totally different from my own working space, i.e. one IKEA desk, tiny keyboard, and a box of jewelry supplies-- hers is an artist's shop brimming with potential, AND room to dance around. I was delighted to see our Coaster Choir project on beautiful laminated sheets, and my face conducting in a catalogue of her work!


I met up with Rhona's family for Christmas Day proper. They live in Sutton, which is near Howth, the peninsula-like formation on the coast of Dublin. Little did I know that a taxi would take me across the bay, where I saw snow-covered palm trees and sandy beaches covered in this frosty/foamy ice. Apparently in the 1970's, someone brought a bunch of palm trees to Ireland from some tropical region, planted them, and they've been hardy enough to stick around. It was so unusual to see palm trees when I was expecting, I don't know, ivy and pine trees, but then add to that a bunch of mansions and villa-like homes in pink, yellow, and blue, and this is like the Miami rendition of Dublin. Top it off with a heavy covering of snow and it was something unreal. The freshwater of snow and ice was mixing with the foam of saltwater ocean, and making these strange little puffy ice piles along the coast.




Further down the peninsula was Howth Head, a lookout point with lighthouse and some beautiful (if very slushy) trails. Howth Head is redundant really, seeing how the word 'Howth' comes from Old Norse (hövuð), meaning head. Same word in Icelandic, basically. So it's really 'Head Head'. I digress. The views are stunning.


Christmas was delightful and full of family. Fairly stressfree for me, and lots of food, and lots and lots of wine. Also, fancy tables! But unfussy guests, which is the perfect combination. Most of the rest of christmas was spent hovering around the children and watching their cute and sort of stylish Peppa Pig cartoons.


The city of Dublin was also beautiful, and I went out for many a pint. We passed by this building and I liked the blue LED lights with the old Georgian architecture.


Time in Dublin was wrapping up quickly. With Christmas craziness out of the way, I went to the National Gallery and saw some works that I've definitely seen in art history classes before. They had a gorgeous Caravaggio, which was apparently hidden in some storage area of a Jewish building for centuries, until a restorer unearthed it. I also got to briefly stop into St. Patrick's Church, which is so gosh dern old I can't quite comprehend it. My map said it was built in the late 1100's. You can definitely feel some energies inside of it- if not souls, God, spirits, whatever, then at least the memories of 500-year-old flags, fluttering in tatters from the rafters, and thrones with helmets and swords next to the altar.



This time, with planes landing on time, I had a real day in London and could be myself. I had a delightful lunch with Lucinda and saw her gallery of music photography. I went to a leather shop, and the largest HMV record store. However, their appallingly small selection of contemporary classical (in the wake of rows and rows of Bach and Mozart) might deserve a post all in itself. I'll give them that it was just days after the Christmas hordes ransack all the stores, but in general Not Pleasing. I'll just go back to buying my music directly from artists and online...you know, the old-fashioned way.

Some graffiti I walked by in a tunnel; the blurring wasn't intentional, I was just walking and didn't stop to take the picture but I kind of like the motion of it. There were probably five or six graffiti artists working in the tunnel when I walked through, all doin' their thing without the police invading.


I also got to see the London Eye, and the Tate Modern, both of which had not been built when I was in London last in 1999. And that was even in high school, which almost doesn't count as real life. The most spectacular thing there was Ai Weiwei's massive installation of sunflower seeds. Millions upon millions of them were handcrafted--handpainted by Chinese artisans, and made of porcelain, poured out on the Tate floor. Visitors could originally walk on it, but concerns were raised about the toxicity of dust from the porcelain crunching, so now you can just walk up to the seeds and stare in awe.


I walked across the modern Millennium Bridge with the hordes of tourists, and felt happy to be going back to Iceland. Where I'm sort of a tourist, but at least I'm not surrounded by loud American teenagers all day. London is an amazing place where you can do about anything and acquire just about anything, but the pace and the crowds and the waiting on the underground is all just a bit too large-scale for me. I liked the scale of Dublin better, and the openness of all the friendly people there. And of course, the delicious Guinness.

Thus ends the quick tour of good times in Dublin, a day in London, and I'm back to Reykjavík, ready to work for a couple days. Oh wait, there's New Years. Maybe I should just keep celebrating.

Christmas Travel Saga

Posts have been scant lately as I took a week out of Iceland to go to Dublin, Ireland for the holidays! I'm thinking I'll separate the travel stories into one post, and then actual fun times into another post. So Here begins the Travel Saga. Ferðasaga, if you will.

First of all, I should have realized that traveling to a different country for the holidays would involve some kind of travel disaster somewhere along the line. The devil appeared in the form of an apocalyptic-like Heathrow airport with thousands of stranded passengers during one of the worst snowstorms that Britain and Ireland has ever had. Thankfully, I was not one of the many people who were forced to sleep outside of the airport, as in "the outdoors", in temporary white tents set up for stranded people. It felt awfully cattle-like. The airport literally had no space to house everyone. Lots of temporary pillows and sleeping mats everywhere. Angry parents yelling at staff members, while crying children look on in horror. Staff members under a lot of stress as it's not their fault but they have to bear the brunt of arguments as best they can. Some poor people from places like Singapore had their flights canceled three days in a row, and couldn't get a hotel, so they just have to wait in the airport every day, checking to see if their one flight to Singapore will be running. Pretty terrible. We humans are no match against the 5 tons of snow that fell on each of Heathrow's hundreds of plane stanchions, which all had to be dug out. And Buffalo, New York this is not: Heathrow is not as prepared as my hometown would be, where rescue teams would likely soon come barreling through in some giant tractor-snowplows with chains on them, and soon the pathways would be clear.

My flight to Dublin was postponed. Then delayed. Then it was canceled, as it was Dublin airport that had closed. I was luckily to get a standby flight the next morning at 5:30am, but it meant having to travel two hours by underground to a friend's flat, sleep for two hours, and then take two night buses for two hours to get back to the airport at 5am. Thank goodness L in London was kind enough to house me and feed me, I was kind of a mess and appreciated a hug. We looked for train tickets, to get to a ferry to Dublin, in case the plane would be canceled. All sold out. What about that random other train to the south of England, and then the train from Cork? Sold out. What about the other airports? Sold out. There was literally no way for me to get to Ireland from London unless this standby flight came through.

When I got to the airport, it hadn't even opened yet! There were queues outside of the airport, hundreds of people long. It was also a mess. There was a random guy with a tiny megaphone shouting to everyone things like 'Berlin! Anyone for Berlin #55? Step forward!! Don't push!' and then everyone going to Berlin would RUN into the airport like a Black Friday sale at Walmart.

I made it into the airport just in time for my flight...and them right as we were supposed to board, the flight to Dublin was postponed about an hour. But magically, through some stroke of Christmas brilliance, we landed in Dublin, just before Dublin airport closed yet again.

The sun was just rising on a snowy, brilliantly white Irish airport. The Paper Bag Theme from American Beauty was totally playing on the airplane speaker system. Everyone else on the plane was clapping with joy and the pilot said 'I bet a lot of you are happy to be here, happy christmas'. I lost it and cried a little bit o'joy. But my tears were not unwarranted. This was the scene as we exited the plane. Kind of surprised we could land at all.


Dublin was a snowy wonderland, and I even got to spend a fun day in London, which made all the frustration more worth it. London is also huge, and makes Reykjavík seem like a little po-dunk, one-horse town. (see the next post about all the actual things I did during the holiday, and not just travel stories.)


There are a couple funny tidbits too, in all of this. Much to my surprise, no airport security stopped me or asked questions about the sex toys that I had bought for Icelandic friends. You just can't get that stuff in Iceland. Nor did anyone stop me about the leather gear which I may or may not have bought for myself (merry christmas, ho ho ho to me). I was fully expecting to have a 'what's THIS' moment with the security people. Instead they stopped me about my Kindle. I forgot that it's got a little hard drive in it, a tiny computer.

Also in security-land, I had to open my bag at a random security check after picking up my luggage in Iceland. The security guard thought he saw some food in my bag, so asked to open it. But my bookbag was stuffed to the max with clothes, ready to burst. As I attempted unzipping the bag, I said 'I think this might explode!'
Oops.

The guard looked at me so seriously and said, 'Let's hope not'.

Awkward Silence.

I tried to backstep. 'No, not like that! I meant I have so much stuff in here.' My figure of speech was lost in translation, apparently. The security guy found what he was looking for- a box of Irish tea that I was given for Christmas. Nothing to worry about.

I left the airport and was on my way back to Reykjavík for a long sleep and return to the quieter beauty of my Icelandic home.

Iceland National Symphony

Let me just give a little kudos to the Sinfóníuhjlómsveit Íslands for a second, or the Iceland National Symphony. This is the little orchestra that does giant things. Iceland doesn't have a Philharmonic, so the options for playing orchestral music are limited to this one group, but when looking at their concert season, you wouldn't guess that these were all the same group.

SÍ is also in a unique place that they allot several slots for performances each year to local composers. There used to be a rule about playing a certain percentage of national works each year, though this may have relaxed a bit. It might seem strange to have this constraint in programming, but

Much due to the constructive and forward-thinking director of programming Árni Heimir Ingolfsson, and choosing a variety of conductors throughout the year, the symphony has several programming categories, from 'classics' to 'kids' to 'contemporary', usually varied from week to week. This fall I heard 'Porgy and Bess', Stravinsky's Violin Concerto, and Ravel's 'Tombeau de Couperin'. This spring I'm looking forward to a hugely diverse program including Pendereski's 'Threnody', Steve Reich's 'Drumming', Ligeti 'Atmospheres' and several concerts featuring mostly Icelandic composers. Having a tradition of performing local composers also seems to keep some fresh music mixed in with Classical and Romantic-era works. And for me on the Fulbright, it is a vital part of my listening to the 'sonic landscape' of the country. (Fancy, eh? Sonic landscape? I might have to use that one again.)

When playing several live (and videotaped) concerts with the chamber pop band Hjaltalín, the orchestra put down their instruments at one point to clap several rhythms in one piece. This sounds like no big deal, right? Try getting another major-city orchestra to even do something like a single hand-clap, or a foot-stomp. Getting the orchestra to whisper, shout, speak text an extended technique? NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE. I wouldn't be surprised to read that most orchestras in the US have written in their union contracts that a violinist must only play his violin and may only play it one way, and may be under no obligation to do things like lower himself to the point of a silly rhythmic clap. Col legno battuto, well, you're pushing it, mister.



My point is that SÍ doesn't seem to conform to anyone's conceptions of what they can and cannot do as a group. Thank goodness! Their sound really benefits from it. Here is an orchestra that is personal, a bit experimental, and yet also delivers solid interpretations of classics for my hungry ears.

Winter Observations in Iceland

Here are a few random things I have observed about Iceland in the winter time.

I am surprisingly not as tired as I thought I would be. In fact, I am weirdly not at all tired when I should be, because it is so dark so much of the time that it messes a bit with your internal clock. I am a bit restless in bed, and then sleep in late, a vicious cycle. What with the sunrise at nearly 11:30am, it's a surreal experience to wake up at 9am and it is still dark for a couple hours, then you have lunch, and it gets dark soon after.

The Jólasveinar, or Yule Lads, are awesome and make for much holiday amusement and a delightful change from a fatty Santa. There are 13 Santas in Iceland, and each one is traditionally a trouble-maker, though now many of them have adopted Western Ways and give children small gifts for being good instead of doing sneaky things like plugging up the chimney, or eating all the sausages, or gobbling up the skyr. Jólasveinarnir also come out of hiding one per day, 13 days before Christmas. Their hideout is the mysterious Dimmuborgir, which I visited in late September.

I did not know about the existence of the Christmas Cat, or Jólakotturinn, nor Grýla! They are also holiday traditions here- the Christmas cat will steal children away unless at least one knitted good is given to a child for the holidays. You don't want to mess with that cat. Likewise Grýla, who will also steal children, is a scary-ass hag who is fabled to have long tails coming out of her backside, and the tails have bags strapped to them in which she hides 100 children per bag. Frightening. Nothing you'd ever see in America, even in The Nightmare Before Christmas.

I recently heard that about 90% of Iceland's published books come out during the holidays. The people here are well-read, or so it appears; at least they buy a lot of poetry and give it to others, who knows if it sits on the nightstand unread. There are even displays of new books that pop up at the grocery stores- I think in the States we would more likely see piles of cheap toys and DVDs. Iceland has plenty of those too but the books seem a little more respectable.

This Christmas I hardly did anything for gifts, but the things I did do I made almost completely myself. I bought one item for my parents and two souvenirs for relatives at local shops, but everything else was hand-crafted. It cost about as much to ship home the gifts as it did to buy all of them, but I think my family will appreciate them.

Also, where are the gays. It's been a few months in Iceland and I have yet to really meet any gay men my age. I've met teenagers, and middle-aged men. Are the 28-year-olds hibernating for the winter? Gone abroad? Some I know are already married, seeing how marriage often happens at younger ages here, and you can get gay married and it is no big thang (our prime minister is lesbian). But I go out on weekends to a club and everyone looks all stylish, I can't pick out the gays from straights, the society is so integrated. Eurochic style is a godsend, and a curse.

Finally, Iceland in winter is a place that one can go out wearing a custom-designed cape made from a sleeping bag (the designer Andrea Sisson made me a long-lusted-after cape, it's very warm and even has snaps and beautiful sewn folds) and in Reykjavík, no one bats an eyelash. It's like, oh, I have one of those too, no big whoop. 'Cept mine has a sleeve.

Kangaroo Sousaphone

A friend asked me to draw a kangaroo playing a sousaphone, just for grins. I didn't have the internet at the time so I drew everything from memory...or sort of. An actual kangaroo has a tail in the correct position, and an actual sousaphone doesn't look like it was made by Dr. Seuss. But my version is still very important.

Darkest Days in Reykjavík

We are nearing the darkest days of the year in Reykjavík; there will be two more weeks of increasing darkness until the Winter Equinox. Then slowly, the reversal begins, back to brighter days, and the frenetic activity of summer.

When I first moved here in September, things outside looked pretty much like they did back in New York State. It was bright and cheery when I woke up at 9am, and then dark around 9pm, pretty much like autumn. This picture was around the beginning of October.

Come November, I started to say, wow, this sun is quite low in the sky, and everything is golden-hued from sideways lighting. You can absolutely feel the shortening light, which at its peak, decreases by about 6 minutes every day.

Now in December, there is less light lost per day, but it's just basically grey out a lot. If it's cloudy, then it's even dimmer. When it's sunny I like to run out and stare at the briefly-appearing ball of light, just to say I saw it that day. The sun doesn't climb high enough in the sky to really melt even the frost on the sidewalks, so if the temperature stays below freezing, the sidewalks could stay slippery for a whole week.

To some, it sounds depressing, which it could be, especially for people working- they go to work when it's dark, sit in an office for most of the day, and leave when it's dark- one might never see the sun all week unless to go out for a lunch break. But because of my schedule here (or lack thereof), I can go out for a walk, do some exercises, go to the pool; having this kind of change in daylight is really quite magical. Time really does move differently this time of year; people are sleepier, they have more parties at home, they might be a little quieter.

Today the sun officially rises at 11:01am and sets at 3:37pm.
This is a shot of my bedroom this morning at 10:45 in the morning! It be dark.


And this is a shot of my bedroom at full daylight, around 1 in the afternoon.


Now if you'll excuse me, it's time for my early afternoon nap. Yawn..

Choir Concert

I survived singing in my first choir concert in Iceland, congrats to me. The choir is not a professional one, which is new to me, but everyone loves being in the choir so the atmosphere is quite festive (and certainly not competitive, like some divas like to make it so in the States). It's more like social club, with a lot of singing in between coffee breaks. I'm not a very loud singer, but it is nice to feel like I can help out the bass section with the music, as it's usually very sight-readable for me. Not to toot my own horn or anything but music is sort of, like, you know, mon field d'expertise. The giant challenge for me is that all the choir rehearsals are in Icelandic, which is great for my retention of the language, and the choir director is very clear in his direction, so I almost always know what's happening either musically or through his clear Icelandic speaking. Most of the other choir members are also very patient with me when I try to chat with them in their language, which makes me feel less self-conscious.

This concert featured Dvorak's Mass in D major (with organ), a couple different 'O Come O Come Emmanuel's, and a sneak-attack 'Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring' as an encore. This piece and one of the 'O Come' works were in Icelandic; what an interesting experience to sing a song you know quite well in a translation that only makes half-sense. Thankfully Icelandic is very phonetic. There aren't any crazy exceptions to speaking rules like in English. (How stupid that we have words like 'through' and 'trough' and 'dough' which all have similarly-spelled endings but sound totally different. Dis iz DUM.) In Icelandic there are the ways that letters are put together and the rules of how you say them, and thankfully that's really without exception.

The choir sounded better than I expected. Things shaped up a lot in the 24 hours prior to the concert, i.e. 'panic time'. There were a couple moments of lock-in that I thought were quite resonant. But still, there were parts that I wish could have been in tune, entrances that didn't make it. There was one part I thought would be a total train wreck but luckily we just started that particular movement over again just two seconds after it began. The director was scolding people for not looking up from their music and said something interesting, that 'the people looking at their music the most, they read the notes the least'. Something which I never had thought about before-- if you are in a choir and don't read music very well, it would probably benefit you more to just listen to the people around you and basically memorizing the music than be chained to your part that only makes half-sense.

After the concert, there was much rejoicing. There was a lovely round of toasts at a dinner/drinks party, and everyone got tipsy and huggy and thankful and guitars appeared and songs spontaneously began, and I think that was one of the loveliest times I've seen here in Iceland, everyone congratulating each other on their hard work, and lots of glass-clinking. (Skál!)

The choir director also asked me if I might fill in for a random 1st-bass in a small all-male choir who will perform a couple songs at an Advent concert. What a dramatic change from SATB! I've never been surrounded by so many booming resonant voices before in TTBBBB. All the guys knew their music well by now, so it was me trying to keep up with sight-reading hand-written Icelandic lyrics to Christmas carols and barbershop arrangements of Jingle Bells. It was also really funny/great to sing songs in English with non-English speakers; I would generalize that most Icelanders over 30 speak English with British accent, but most younger people speak with an American accent (blame the cast of 'Friends' and American TV for this).

I'm enjoying all the Christmas-fest that's been happening around here, including a bunch of choir concerts, parties, decorating, and twinkly lights everywhere. With the sun so low in the sky during the day and limited day light, this holiday time is nice way to feel warm and cozy and forget about the winter blues. For now...we'll see how I feel in still-gloomy March.

In only two weeks I take a flight to Dublin for Christmas to spend time with some fantastic artist friends. I'm looking forward to even more new places to see. Here's a toast to a bit more Vitamin D in my daylight! Skál.


(photo: Kór Neskirkju on Facebook, from April, a few months before I joined.)