My Invitation

What a wonderful invention Skype is! I had a fruitful conversation with Luis yesterday about me coming to the Gouveia Art Rock festival in April. Not only could I speak to Luis for free yesterday, Luis' festival co-organiser Eduardo joined us for a brief phone conference. Unfortunately, the quality left something to be desired, but it was still great to hear about Eduardo buying a Volvo and that everything was going according to plan with the festival. Ticket sales have just started and things are going very well: a third of the tickets are gone already. Trust me, this will a packed festival with some truly fine music courtesy of the one and only Peter Hammill.



The very well-recieved lecture I gave last year at the Gouveia festival is to be published in this years' program. I have two, three weeks maximum, to get it ready. No problem really, but I want to have a closer look at it before I send it off. My manuscript was to be read, not to be printed. This can be compared to playing live and recording an album. Live, it might sound great and people may like what they heard, but when you commit to something being printed, you have to think twice about what you've written, your wordings and readability in general.

Luis and me also discussed my talk for this year. I mentioned a couple of ideas to Luis which he was kind enough to find interesting. I hope something interesting will come out of this in the end.

At Jazz i Malmo, I've got my hands full since our administrative producer has gone on to an exciting project. Hopefully things are now set for our concert with Miroslav Vitous on Saturday and Marc Johnson/Eliane Elias/Victor Lewis on Tuesday.

* * *

NP: The Work of Director Anton Corbijn
A DVD featuring a selection of superb director Corbijn's work. Some great stuff here and some things I have never seen before, like Golden Earring's "Quiet Eyes". Generally speaking, this well-planned series featuing other great directors.

* * *

"My Invitation" is a song from Canadian vocalist/pianist Sarah Slean's Night Bugs album. She isn't that well-known, but if you're into Kate Bush, Tori Amos or Rufus Wainwright, check out this truly fine artist. Night Bugs is a great place to start.