Slice of Life

The Joy of The Sixteen in Bruges

2011-11-26T10:44:00.000+01:00

As Harry Christophers' vocal ensemble The Sixteen sang of the glory of man and of trumpets sounding, a sense of sheer joy rose up through my body. The voices rang out and filled the Concertgebouw Brugge concert hall in what was a truly wondrous experience.

The main work on last night's programme was Brahms' 'Ein deutsches Requiem', an unusual work perhaps for a group best known for its Renaissance and Baroque repertoire. But as Christophers has said, "Since Brahms had been so influenced by the Protestant Church music of the great German master of the early Baroque, Heinrich Schuetz, the Requiem seems to be perfect material for The Sixteen."

And in case you're wondering how a small vocal ensemble pulled off a masterpiece that usually demands a large choir and full orchestra, Brahms also wrote a scaled-down version with an arrangement for piano duet: it is this version that The Sixteen performed with pianists Christopher Glynn and John Reid.

One advantage of the version with piano duet is a more intense focus on the text, with the voices at no point being drowned out by an orchestra. The tone and texture of The Sixteen's voices underscored the meaning of the words and I had the sense that even if you hadn't understood the German text, or had a translation to hand, much of the meaning would have been understood simply through the musical interpretation.

The importance of singers understanding the text of a vocal score was recently highlighted by another conductor, Collegium Vocale Gent's Philippe Herreweghe. As part of a Herreweghe celebration this month, the Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels showed the documentary film "Collegium Vocale, 40 years of passion" as a prelude to a performance by the choir of Beethoven’s Missa solemnis. In the documentary, several Collegium Vocale singers emphasised how, for Herreweghe, the text was of primary importance. You had to use your head as well as your heart when singing with him, they said. Those words would seem to be equally applicable to Christophers and The Sixteen.

Lang Lang seduces Brussels

2011-10-06T13:06:00.002+02:00

“The hottest artist on the classical music planet” is how the New York Times described Chinese pianist Lang Lang a few years ago; this week Brussels music-lovers got to find out why the 29 year-old is still seducing audiences.

At a concert at the Bozar on Tuesday evening, Lang Lang worked his musical magic as he opened with Liszt’s piano concerto no. 1 and followed it with Chopin’s ‘Grande Polonaise’. He wooed the piano, coaxing it to produce the textures and tones that he desired, and the piano seemed so smitten by this attentive pianist that it submitted to his every wish. Sometimes his fingers stroked the keys tenderly, at others he struck them ferociously as he explored the score’s possibilities and pushed at the musical boundaries.

The excitement he generated through his playing was enhanced by his gestures. As he played a slow, reflective passage he threw a cheeky, lingering look at the audience as if to say, ‘Did you enjoy that? Did you hear how I beautifully I interpreted the passage? You did? Yes, I thought so’. And as he launched himself into a fast section with such exuberance and panache, you couldn’t help but be swept along with his almost child-like enthusiasm.

He’s a showman, there’s no two ways about it. But it’s on the right side of showmanship. Lang Lang avoids the pitfall of his performance being just a spectacle, all gesture; there’s plenty of substance too. The musical accomplishment is admirable, the execution a breath of fresh air. His cheeky smiles, raised eyebrows and glances at the audience were not gratuitous; they helped the listener follow the musical line, providing pointers to Lang Lang’s musical interpretation.

When Lang Lang is on the bill, the attention is always going to focus on him. And yet Tuesday’s concert also featured a world-class orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw, which played as brilliantly as usual, and the British conductor, Daniel Harding, who in his mid-30s has already got a cv that many a conductor can only dream of.

It was always going to be tough to follow a first half featuring Lang Lang and orchestra by a second half with just the orchestra, but they pulled it off with a stirring performance of Beethoven’s symphony no. 3, better known as ‘Eroica’.

Whereas Harding had spent most of the first half of the concert hidden from my view by the piano lid, he completely captivated me in the second half as he directed the orchestra with his whole body, at times almost dancing as he followed the ebbs and flows of the score. By the end of the first movement, I wondered if he’d have the physical energy to continue for the rest of the symphony. Not since seeing Simon Rattle on the same stage have I been so mesmerised by a conductor; then again, in his late teens Harding was Rattle’s assistant at the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.

Lang Lang and Harding, who have worked together on several occasions and are said to be good friends, both came across as musical personalities who had something to say about the music they were performing, who loved the music they were playing, and wanted to share that joy with the audience. The result was a truly uplifting musical experience.

KlaraFestival: September adventures

2011-09-09T13:16:00.000+02:00

It’s back to school, back to work and back to a packed diary of cultural events. Just as suddenly as the concert halls and theatres of Brussels go very quiet in August (as most of the city disappears on holiday), come September there’s more to choose from than you could possibly have time for.

For classical music fans in Brussels, the first two weeks of September are dominated by the KlaraFestival, which takes its name from the classical music radio station Klara. This year the festival’s theme is ‘Imagine Paradise’ and, in the organisers’ words, moves “between hope and the imagination, between utopia and reality, between the beautiful and the horrific.”

As part of the festival, earlier this week I heard a mesmerising recital by cellist Steven Isserlis, with Denes Varjon on piano. Entitled Russian Utopia, the programme included Shostakovich’s Sonata for cello and piano in D minor and Scriabin’s Sonata for solo piano No. 5. The performances were exciting and energetic, be it Varjon playing the Scriabin with such panache that he literally jumped from the keyboard as he played the last chord or Isserlis emphasising the cheeky, almost sarcastic, moments of the Shostakovich with a wry smile of his own towards the audience. The engagement with the audience was maintained to the end, with final bows not only being taken by both players, but Isserlis also amusingly allowing his cello to take its own little bow.

This coming Sunday, the Brussels Philharmonic and the Flemish Radio Choir conducted by Sir Neville Mariner will be performing Britten’s War Requiem. The work, composed in 1962 to commemorate the bombing of Coventry by the German Luftwaffe 20 years earlier, has a score and text that “transcend historical circumstance and offer one of the most universal and poignant anti-war manifestos in the history of music,” according to the programme. Needless to say, this Sunday is the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks in the U.S.

Between now and the end of the festival on September 16, there’s at least one concert every day. Highlights range from the Akademie fuer alte Musik Berlin to Roger Norrington conducting the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. If you want something a little bit different though, then take a look at the final night’s line-up when a Brussels nightclub (Club Mirano) will open its doors to music from Bach to Glass played by DJs. The festival said it wanted to take "an adventurous approach" to classical music; no one could accuse it of failing to achieve that.

Antwerp’s MAS museum: making waves

2011-08-28T19:29:00.001+02:00

Photograph by Jeroen Verrecht

Nothing quite prepared me for the ‘wow’ factor of the new MAS – Museum aan de Stroom (Musuem on the River) – in Antwerp. I’d seen plenty of photos and thought the stacked-tower design with its contrasting blocks of red sandstone and glass looked great, but the pictures didn’t convey any sense of what it would be like to be inside the 10-storey building.

As you go up the escalator from floor to floor, you feel how every level is twisted 90 degrees to form a giant spiral. Each time you go up a storey, you’re treated to one stunning view after another through the ultra-modern, wavy glass. When you get to the top, there’s a real treat in store: an open-air rooftop with a 360-degree panorama of the surrounding port and the city itself (an experience that can, incidentally, be enjoyed for free without an entrance ticket to the museum). There are even portholes in the glass safety barriers so that you can take the perfect photograph.

The museum has been built in Antwerp’s old harbour area and is supposed to herald a new era of development in this part of the city. I have to admit that before I visited the idea of ‘an area under development’ had made me think I’d be heading to a desolate part of town, probably in the middle of nowhere, where one stunning building would stand all on its own. In fact, the area is just a 10-minute walk from the city’s historic centre and the proximity to the water not only ties in with the maritime theme but also looks and feels good.

But what about the actual exhibits in the museum? All the publicity before the opening in May this year had gone on and on about how the museum would tell the story of Antwerp and its place in the world, but I couldn’t quite grasp what that really meant and what would actually be in the museum. My expectations dropped further when I learned that it would bring together former collections of the Ethnographic Museum, National Shipping Museum and Folklore Museum. I had images of a mish-mash of dull pieces that no longer had homes.

Far from it, it turned out. The sculptures from different religions, the scale models of old sailing ships and the oil paintings of Antwerp have instead all been given a new lease of life in this new environment. The curators have grouped the objects by theme (four themes over five floors) and included audio and video to help bring the exhibits to life and put them in context. Next to old musical instruments there are buttons to press that make the sound of the bells or the flute you’re looking at; old paintings of Antwerp’s port hang from walls made of wooden crate strips to evoke the port atmosphere; the floor dedicated to the ‘World Port’ theme has the history of the maritime world running on a screen the length of the room; and as you leave the port-themed storey, you are encouraged to write a message and pop it in a bottle.

With a total of 460,000 items on display – and that’s not even taking into account the temporary exhibitions – you’re unlikely to get round the whole museum in one visit, but you can certainly pop your head into each floor and then focus on a couple of the themes in more detail. One downside for non-Dutch speakers is that a lot of the information is only in Dutch, but the introductory boards to each floor are in English as well as the national languages of Belgium. To get a taster, you can take an online tour at http://livetour.mas.be/uk/ . But don’t forget that photos and videos just don’t convey the wow factor. For that, you have to pay a visit in person.

Pina: All About Dance

2011-06-08T16:01:00.000+02:00

Pina, the 3D film by Wim Wenders for the late choreographer Pina Bausch, is all about dance. Nothing surprising there, you might say. But the film really is about the visual beauty and physicality of dance and movement, not an intellectual reflection on dance. It is about the dance works created by Pina Bausch, not Pina Bausch the person.

Going into the cinema I had anticipated hearing a lot of the choreographer's own voice and listening to insights from dancers who had worked with the German choreographer. Don't get me wrong, the film includes archive footage of Bausch, but she doesn't say much in these clips, and it incorporates interviews with dancers who worked with Bausch at Tanztheater Wuppertal, but their comments reveal little.

Instead it really is the dance productions that take centre stage. Extracts from four of Bausch's works - Kontakthof, Le Sacre du printemps, Café Müller and Vollmond - dominate the film. Each is mesmerising and beautiful, enhanced by the 3D experience. For the film's 3D Supervisor François Garnier, using 3D was ideal because dance is, by its very nature, movement in space. "3D has all the space, all the action, and all the movement to offer. The sense of physical sensation is much more powerful than any intellectual reflection," Garnier says on the Pina website.

The dance is left to speak for itself, creating a rich visual and sensory experience full of colour, movement and beauty. Viewers are left to make their own interpretations, rather than be guided by any voiceover or strong verbal narrative. The picture of Bausch that emerged for me was of a woman who expressed herself through gestures and movements, not lengthy discussions and debates. Her words to the dancers were few and far between, but the words she did utter were exactly what was needed to motivate, encourage and inspire them.

The dancers are filmed both on stage and in outdoor locations in and around the German town of Wuppertal, which was Bausch's home and creative centre for 35 years until her sudden death in June 2009. As Tanztheater Wuppertal's long-time costume designer, Marion Cito, says, "I sometimes cannot believe that Pina Bausch is no longer here...One senses, however, that she lives on in her works." That is perhaps why it is so apt that it is the works that are at the centre of the film.

Toni Morrison gives Desdemona the voice Shakespeare never did

2011-05-27T16:42:00.000+02:00

Last night I saw one of the first performances of the new theatre production ‘Desdemona’, directed by Peter Sellars with words by Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison and music by award-winning Malian singer-songwriter Rokia Traoré.

My overall impressions of the production, which gives a voice to Desdemona, the wife of Othello in Shakespeare’s play, were simplicity, beauty, radiance and power. Not just the words, but also the music, the staging, the lighting, everything.

To give you a taster, here are the production's opening words:

My name is Desdemona. The word, Desdemona, means misery. It means ill fated. It means doomed. Perhaps my parents believed or imagined or knew my fortune at the moment of my birth. Perhaps being born a girl gave them all they needed to know of what my life would be like. That it would be subject to the whims of my elders and the control of men. Certainly that was the standard, no, the obligation of females in Venice in the fifteenth century. Men made the rules; women followed them. A step away was doom, indeed, and misery without relief. My parents, keenly aware and approving of that system, could anticipate the future of a girl child accurately.
They were wrong. They knew the system, but they did not know me.
I am not the meaning of a name I did not choose.

Desdemona is at the KVS theatre in Brussels until Sunday May 29. It will go on to be performed worldwide, including at the Barbican as part of the London 2012 festival during the Olympic Games. To read my published article about the genesis of the show and how it ended up being performed in Brussels, click here.

Kunstenfestivaldesarts: Mexican theatre tackles guerrilla warfare

2011-05-15T22:04:00.001+02:00

We may only be halfway through Kunstenfestivaldesarts, an annual arts festival that takes place across Brussels, but I’m pretty sure I saw one of its overall highlights this last week: the Mexican documentary theatre piece El Rumor Del Incendio (The Sound Of Fire).

The play explores a period of Mexican history, the guerrilla movements that sprang up in the country during the 1960s and 1970s and the subsequent deaths, political prisoners and forced disappearances. The subject is approached through the life of one former guerrilla: historian and teacher Margarita Urias Hermosillo.

The three actors, all in their mid-twenties, bring the period to life in an intelligent and thought-provoking way. They incorporate into their performance archive audiovisual footage, old tapes being played on cassette recorder and documents and film clips projected onto a screen, all of which remind us that this theatre production is based on real events.

It’s not simply a history lesson though. There is a strong narrative that is brought out by strong performances from the actors, particularly Luisa Pardo playing the role of Margarita Urias Hermosillo. There’s also a playful element as they use toy soldiers and a children’s train set to re-enact historical scenes. And moments of brilliant production, for example when a lit match is thrown towards a large screen projecting an image of a forest that at that moment switches to an image of a forest bursting into flames.

The play’s relevance to today is also highlighted as the actors ask questions such as: can a critical look at the past change the future?; what battles were fought before we were born?; how can we build a better country?; are there other systems for running things?; and why is it so difficult to criticise the present system?

While acknowledging the differences between then and now, the theatre group says in its notes about the play that they feel as if they live in a country where people have become insensitive to inequality and are incapable of shaping political projects bearing hope. “We feel straitjacketed faced with the very widespread opinion that the world is shut for good and only one system of political, social and cultural organisation now exists. A system which proves moreover to be very difficult to criticise, even though we are brought face to face with its enormous flaws and its terrible drawbacks in our everyday lives,” the group writes.

The project, which comprises this documentary theatre piece as well as a blog and a book, is not a call to take up arms. Rather it is what the theatre group calls “an attempt to restore the idea of utopia and the possibility of creating new thinking, making it possible for us to imagine fairer worlds.”

The Brussels shows are the first time that the theatre group, ‘Lagartijas tiradas al sol’ (‘Lizards stretching in the sun’), has performed in Europe. It won’t be the actors' last though. A list of other cities where they will be performing this year can be found on the theatre group’s website.

Vengerov to Make Comeback in Brussels: Relationship With Violin Back On

2011-04-20T11:39:00.000+02:00

Maxim Vengerov broke off his relationship with his violin three years ago. “I needed these three years to put down the violin, to rest a little bit, to cool down,” Vengerov said in a recent interview with Radio Télévision Belge Francophone (RTBF). Now he’s decided it’s time to resume the love affair, and he’s chosen the Bozar in Brussels as the place to make that comeback on May 2.

Vengerov has spent the last three years concentrating on conducting. “If I would combine it with my violin playing, violin playing would be very jealous,” the Russian told RTBF. “I am incredibly happy that the time came again that I can rejoice with my beautiful violin.”

The music chosen to relaunch his performing career is the cycle of three violin sonatas by Johannes Brahms. “The cycle...is in itself perfection,” according to Vengerov, who will only play during the first half of the concert.

The concert's context is a new Musica Mundi project to develop a school for musical excellence, for which Vengerov is acting as an ambassador. Consequently, the second half will be performed by Musica Mundi Young Talents and the Belorussian Youth Orchestra, conducted by Vladimir Perlin.

However, the concert will not be a one-off for Vengerov, who told RTBF that he planned to do a tour with the Brahms sonatas and then take Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sheherazade on tour worldwide, combining violin-playing and conducting.

And what about the violin’s jealousy of the conducting, the interviewer asked. “Now it’s all in harmony,” he laughed. Having experienced the violin concertos from the orchestral side, Vengerov feels he has a more complete experience of the works.

“Having this wonderful three-year rest from the violin, I feel reborn,” Vengerov said in the RTBF interview. “When people ask me, Maxim, who do you think now is the most promising young violinist in the world, I say I think it’s me! ... For me, every note that I play now is a revelation, a new thing.”

Mikrokosmos - Rosas at the Kaaitheater

2011-04-07T11:09:00.001+02:00

Dance and music have to be two of my favourite artistic disciplines. Make that contemporary dance and a string quartet playing live and it doesn’t get much better. Last night I was treated to such a combination with the performance of Mikrokosmos.

Mikrokosmos is one of choreographer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker’s early works (created in 1987) and is a performance that starts with a couple dancing to music for two pianos by Bartok and concludes with four women dancing to Bartok’s String Quartet No. 4. The striking rhythms and energy of both the music and the dance complement each other perfectly, making the overall performance one fizzing with excitement, and with several cheeky touches thrown in for good measure

The creation is part of Early Works, a project made up of four pieces choreographed by De Keersmaeker in the 1980s and being shown at Brussels’ Kaaitheater over a three-week period. Early Works will next be shown at Sadler’s Wells, from 10-16 April.

Having the music played live is simply wonderful. It is no longer the background sound to which the dancers move but an integral part of the work, with the musicians on stage, their entries and exits choreographed, and the dancers including them as part of the piece, either by dancing right up to them or by looking across at them as part of their choreographed movement. The Bartok string quartet was played by the UK’s Duke Quartet, which has been working with De Keersmaeker and her Rosas dance company for many years.

For more about string music and dance, click here to read my article ‘All The Right Moves’ for The Strad magazine. The interview with De Keersmaeker below (nothing to do with me) is also worth listening to.

Where did all the music come from?

2011-02-28T12:46:00.001+01:00

Weeks can go by when there isn’t a single classical music concert that really grabs my attention. Then suddenly there are so many that difficult choices have to be made. March is going to be one of those months. There are top orchestras, big names, great music, and sometimes a combination of all three, on offer.

The choice at the Bozar in Brussels this week includes the world-renowned Budapest Festival Orchestra, which is acting as a cultural flagship during Hungary’s EU presidency. For a different Hungarian flavour, there’s also an evening of Liszt’s music and words focusing on his musical settings of poets as well as his own writing.

Another name to jump out of the March offerings is Russian violinist Vadim Repin, who in 1989 became the youngest-ever winner of the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels. He’s playing Sibelius’s violin concerto this Friday and then Grieg, Elgar and Franck sonatas later in the month.

Always keen to hear chamber music, I noticed that there are two well-known quartets playing in Belgium this month: the Pavel Haas quartet in Ghent and the Hagen Quartett in Brussels.

And this selection doesn’t even include the Bozar gala concerts, whose programmes always have big musical names. The March concert boasts Antonio Pappano conducting the Orchestra dell' Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 and Boris Berezovsky playing Liszt’s concerto for piano and orchestra No. 1. The only downside to this series is the number of “VIPs” who are there as much for the networking as the music (cue more chatter, coughing and mobile phones than usual).

While the Bozar is the venue for a large proportion of the classical music concerts in Brussels, there are of course other places and a good selection can be found here. That said, when there’s a bumper crop of offerings like there is in March, the incentive to go hunting elsewhere is limited.

Only When I Dance: Rio Teenagers Pursue Their Dreams

2011-02-23T23:35:00.000+01:00

Only when I dance is a documentary that follows two teenagers from rough, working class areas of Rio de Janiero striving to attain their dream of becoming professional ballet dancers - unsurprisingly it has been dubbed the Brazilian Billy Elliot. I enjoyed Billy Elliot; I loved Only when I dance.

The key to the film’s appeal lies in its two stars, 18 year-old Irlan Santos da Silva and 17 year-old Isabela Coracy. Director Beadie Finzi chose to follow these two dancers not because she could somehow tell where their lives were going to lead, but because of their personalities.

Speaking in Brussels yesterday evening, Finzi explained how she was immediately drawn to these two particular dancers and could tell from their body language that it was going to work well. True, Finzi knew these two had a lot of potential to succeed in the world of dance, but so did other students. She chose Irlan and Isabela because she could sense their magnetism and warmth - worthwhile characteristics not just for the film, but also because Finzi and her crew were going to spend a year, on and off, with the two dancers and their families, filming the ups and downs of their lives.

Both dancers attended the Centro de Dança Rio, a school set up by former Brazilian ballerina Mariza Estrella in order to give the next generation a chance to succeed in a city where too many young people succumb to the easy temptation of drugs and crime. Mariza acts as the link between the poor neighbourhoods of Rio and the bright lights of New York and other western cities where the young dancers dream of working.

On the one hand the stories of Irlan, who lived with his family in Rio de Janiero’s most violent favela, the Complexo do Alemão, and Isabela, from a poor neighbourhood on the outskirts of Rio, are a million miles away from those of us watching the film yesterday in Brussels. That was part of the documentary’s appeal, an insight into another world, another way of living.

Yet for all the differences, the story had universal appeal because it was a tale of two children striving to realise their dreams and their parents doing everything within their means to help them. The human emotions, real warmth and sense of truth in the film were what made it. It was impossible not to be moved by the film. And because it was a film about real people and real lives, it was all the more compelling.

Of course a documentary chooses to include only certain elements of the characters’ lives and leave out others, to follow one particular narrative more closely and leave another undeveloped. These are the essential choices made during production in order to condense the real lives of two families filmed over a year into a work lasting less than an hour and a half. I accept that a documentary uses techniques that you find in a fictional film, but for me there’s something about the truth and the reality of a documentary that I find irresistible and inspiring. Only when I dance certainly fell into that category.

The Brussels screening of Only when I dance was organised by the United Nations Regional Information Centre for Western Europe.

Hungarian National Orchestra Takes on Liszt and Bartok Under Kocsis’s Baton

2011-01-25T23:18:00.000+01:00

Hungarian music, art and culture seem to be everywhere you look in Brussels at the moment as arts organisers make the most of Hungary chairing the EU presidency for the first half of 2011.

My first taste of the classical music offerings will be tomorrow evening (Jan. 26) with the Hungarian National Orchestra playing Liszt’s Hungarian Coronation Mass and Bartok’s Concerto for orchestra. Speaking at a press conference in Brussels today, conductor Zoltan Kocsis said that he had chosen these two particular Hungarian composers because Liszt is generally considered a Romantic composer and Bartok a radical modernist. And yet, to Kocsis’s mind, the opposite is almost the case as Liszt broke new ground and Bartok’s music includes many “classical phenomenons”.

Kocsis went on to describe the inventive and fantastic way in which Liszt brought Hungarian rhythm and religious music together in the Coronation Mass and how, in general, Liszt is a much more important composer than he is often given credit for. “Liszt is definitely a first-rate composer,” Kocsis said.

As for Bartok’s Concerto for orchestra, Kocsis highlighted two interesting features in the five-movement symphony, firstly the play between pairs and later trios of instruments, and then the homesickness of Bartok’s exile in the US evoked in the third and later movements. “You can hear how he desired to back to Hungary, which he wasn’t able to do,” Kocsis said.

An inspiring introduction by the conductor. Can’t wait to hear his orchestra.

Kicking off 2011 with Chinese Culture

2011-01-09T12:54:00.001+01:00

Happy New Year.

2011 got off to a great start as I was on tour in China with the Bruocsella Symphony Orchestra. As well as performing concerts in Shanghai and towns in the surrounding provinces (Yixing, Jiaxing, Nanjing and Suzhou), we also had plenty of time for sightseeing.

The cultural highlights for me were the Suzhou Museum (built by architect I. M. Pei), the Shanghai Museum and Shanghai’s Moganshan Arts District. The buildings were amazing in themselves and the exhibits/artworks had me spellbound, in particular the bronzes, ceramics and jade carvings.

I hope to have an article or two published in the coming months based on my trip – as soon as that hope becomes reality, I’ll post the links on this blog. In the meantime, you can always read published articles about my trip to China last year by clicking here (The Independent) and here (The Bulletin).

Here’s wishing you a year full of inspiring cultural discoveries.

EU Prize for Literature: reaching out for more readers

2010-11-22T17:36:00.002+01:00

I have to admit that it’s a slightly odd feeling to look down a list of literary prize-winners and not recognise a single author, but in this case that’s kind of the point.

The prize I’m talking about is the European Union Prize for Literature, the 2010 winners of which received their awards just a few days ago. The aim of the competition is to throw the spotlight on new and emerging authors and to increase awareness of writers outside their home country. This year’s winners come from 11 countries including Denmark, Romania and Slovenia.

The idea of multiple winners is to ensure, in good old EU style, that during a three-year period there will be one winner from each of the 35 countries taking part*. Twelve nations participated in 2009, 11 this year and the remaining 12 will do so next year. It’s a European project: no one expected it to be straightforward.

But for all its cumbersome rules, not to mention the number of other literary prizes that already exist, I think this one probably does have a place. The EU is a region with 23 official languages, three different alphabets and about 60 regional and minority languages. If this competition allows an author to reach a wider readership, be translated into a more widely spoken language and be read beyond the book’s home base, then it gets a thumbs-up from me. Opening one’s eyes to different cultures and different perspectives has to be something to be encouraged.

As the EU’s Culture Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou says, “Each of us has only one life, but literature opens up many different lives to us, and access to the work of foreign authors opens up entirely new worlds.”

* The participating countries are the 27 that form the EU, the 3 EEA countries Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein, the EU candidate countries Turkey, Croatia, and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, as well as Serbia and Montenegro.

Cafe de los maestros: Bozar transformed for tango spectacle

2010-10-20T17:32:00.001+02:00

Last night the Bozar’s concert hall, renowned as a top classical music venue, transformed itself into Buenos Aires of the 1940s and 1950s for the final stop of the Cafe de los maestros tango orchestra’s European tour.

Tango legends, who first performed in the music’s heyday in Buenos Aires more than a half century ago, took to the stage and proved that those in their seventies, eighties or even nineties still have the energy to put on a dazzling show. Then again, these were the same musicians who starred in Gustavo Santaolalla’s 2008 documentary film ‘Café de los Maestros.’ Film, international travel, concert tours – who said life slows down at a certain age?

Never before have I seen or heard so much joy during a performance in the Bozar concert hall. The showmanship of one of the pianists, who finished his pieces with flamboyant flourishes and winked at the audience as if to share a joke, caused the house to burst out with laughter. World champion tango dancers Daniel Nacucchio and Cristina Sosa added a ‘wow’ effect, as they impressed with their passionate dancing and daring kicks. And as soloist Juan Carlos Godoy shuffled onto stage, he had won over the audience’s hearts before he even started to sing.

The orchestral numbers were interspersed with songs by Godoy and Nina Miranda, the only female musician in the group, as well as solos to show off the bandoneón, guitar and double bass. The violin was showcased by the leader of the ensemble, Fernando Suárez Pas, who used to play in Astor Piazzolla’s New Tango Quintet.

As an Argentinian sitting next to me in the Bozar last night said, part of the wonder of the live performance was seeing these tango musicians playing the music of their youth for what might be one of the last times. An inspiring evening. Now, where was the number for that tango dance course again?

Concertgebouworkest gets top marks; audience falls to bottom of class

2010-09-20T21:43:00.000+02:00

The Concertgebouworkest played its opening concert as orchestra-in-residence at the Bozar in Brussels on Friday. The music was fabulous. If only the same could have been said of the audience.

As Bernard Haitink brought his baton down on the final chord of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7, some smart alec shouted out ‘bravo’ the instant the chord was struck and completely ruined the atmosphere. Instead of being able to savour the last note resonating around the concert hall and maybe even a fraction of silence to take everything in, the moment was spoiled by someone seeming to play a game of ‘who can shout first and loudest?’

Haitink had already expressed his displeasure with the audience when between the second and third movements there had been so much coughing and talking that the Dutchman used his baton to ask for silence. And when he didn’t immediately get it, he simply put his baton down and refused to start the third movement until he had the requisite silence. When the audience (well, one of its members at any rate) interrupted the ending too, I got the distinct impression from the tightening of his shoulders, his look to the ground and only the briefest of bows towards the audience that he wasn’t too impressed either. Just my impression, and possibly coloured by own reaction, but that’s the message that came across to me.

But enough of audience etiquette (or the lack of it). I must include a note about the music too. The highlight of the concert for me was Beethoven’s piano concerto No. 3, played by Till Fellner. I hadn’t expected it to be, not knowing the concerto or the pianist, but I was completely blown away. It was like listening to a fascinating conversation between the soloist and the orchestra and between the different sections of the orchestra. I was being told a story in the most beautiful tones, colours and dynamics and found myself physically moved by the music. The Bruckner also had wonderful moments from the opening of magical strings to a mighty cymbal clash, not to mention all the fantastic lines for the cellos and French horns. But it didn’t move me in the same way as the Beethoven. That said, that may well have been down to some audience members’ behaviour.

The Concertgebouworkest’s residency at the Bozar is for three seasons. The next concert is on April 8 with a programme of Messiaen’s Les offrandes oubliées, Franck’s Symphony in D and Dutilleux’s Tout un monde lointain. After that, there will be more concerts in the 2011-12 and 2012-13 seasons. Let’s hope the audience doesn’t let the performance down next time.

'Passage to Asia' sparks trip down memory lane

2010-07-25T20:57:00.001+02:00

‘A Passage to Asia’ is one of the summer exhibition offerings at the Center for Fine Arts in Brussels, and one definitely worth seeing. I’ll lay my cards on the table from the start and admit that I have a soft spot for Asian decorative arts. I used to work in Singapore and while I was there travelled around the region as much as possible: the Angkor Wat temples in Cambodia and the Buddhist temple of Borobudur in Central Java count among my favourite trips, the Museum of Islamic Art in Kuala Lumpur and the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore among my favourite museums.

So as you can imagine, my visit to ‘A Passage to Asia’ was a bit of a trip down memory lane as well as a visual treat. There was also plenty new to learn. I fully recommend getting the audioguide (available in English) as it is full of interesting facts and anecdotes: I learnt that the English word ‘chintz’ derives from the Hindi word ‘chint’ meaning a dotted or painted cloth, that the Mongolian artist Zanabazar has been referred to as the ‘Michelangelo of Asia,’ and that Mary, mother of Jesus, was adopted into the pantheon of Hindu gods as Hindus became acquainted with Christianity in the 15th century.

In fact it is this cultural exchange that forms a common thread through the show, which runs until October to coincide with the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) hosted by Belgium that month. With more than 300 objects on loan from museums across Asia, the exhibition aims to highlight 2,500 years of exchanges between Asia and Europe. It is perhaps unsurprising that early on the project was nicknamed “mission impossible.” While acknowledging that such a vast subject matter cannot be dealt with in depth, the curators Jan Van Alphen and Kenson Kwok are happy to say that “mission impossible” has become reality.

The variety of artefacts on display - ranging from ancient maps to religious manuscripts, travelogues to textiles, bronze drums to ceramic vases - means that the visitor’s curiosity is constantly piqued and, if you’re anything like me, you’ll end up spending hours in the exhibition taking just one more look at this or that Korean ceramic, Indian textile or Balinese drum.

One fascinating theme within the exhibition is ‘Hellenism in Asia,’ where the influence of Alexander the Great’s conquests in Asia is highlighted. A second-century standing Buddha from India illustrates this fusion of Greco and Buddhist forms: on the one hand the Buddha has traditional long earlobes and his hair is piled up in a knot on his head, and on the other the figure wears a toga that shows the contours of the human body and is reminiscent of Greek sculptures.

The last section of the show is dedicated to cargoes recovered from shipwrecks, and includes many ceramics still intact centuries later. As the museum explains, the ships’ cargoes acted as ballast, causing the vessels to fall almost directly to the seabed and resulting in minimal damage to the goods. I can’t claim to have ever stumbled upon any archaeological treasures while scuba diving in Asia, but this part of the exhibition did bring to mind many an enjoyable diving trip in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. A wonderful exhibition, wonderful memories.

Inspired by writers

2010-06-24T11:46:00.000+02:00

I love hearing authors speak about their works, listening to them explain where their inspiration came from, why they chose to approach the subject matter in the way they did and how many pages they discarded along the way. I don’t even need to have read any of the author’s works; what particularly fascinates me is their approach to the creative process and gaining an insight into what makes them tick.

During the last year, Booker Prize winners Ben Okri and A.S. Byatt, as well as Herta Mueller and Gao Xingjian, both winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature, have been among the authors I have heard in Brussels.

So what sticks in my mind? In the case of Mueller, it is the way that writing and research have allowed her to understand what she never understood as a child growing up in totalitarian Romania. It was only later in life that Mueller realised the significance of small details such as the way her mother had peeled a potato with as fine a skin as possible or had taken pleasure in eating; for a woman who had been deported to a work camp, it was important not to waste food and to show that she wasn’t starving.

Mueller said her mother never talked about her experience in the camp and would simply say “I don’t know” when asked questions about it; her daughter wasn’t sure if the memories had been suppressed or if words simply couldn’t express the experience. In her 2009 book Atemschaukel (Everything I Possess I Carry With Me), Mueller explores such memories through the experiences of her late friend Oskar Pastior, who was a similar age to her mother and endured five years in detention.

As for Byatt, what inspired me was her curiosity and her desire to unearth as much as she could about people, objects, events, whatever it may be. Her research for her most recent novel, The Children’s Book, included learning more about the lives of children’s books’ writers, accumulating “heaps of books” about pottery and ceramics, and pursuing her love of decorative arts museums such as the V&A in London.

It was also fascinating to hear her explain how she feels a “deep anxiety” about stealing real lives for literary purposes; what she finds herself doing instead is mixing up so many people that she creates a new person, a bit like a “jigsaw.” Nor does she like to make direct use of events that happen in real life. What she prefers is being alert to repeated patterns, the same thing happening at least twice, because at that moment she realises she has stumbled upon a phenomenon that can be worked into her writing.

If you want to keep an eye out for future authors speaking in Brussels, the best place to look is the Passa Porta website. As for the next author to pass through town, it’s Turkey’s Elif Shafak tomorrow, June 25. Details are on this link. To read an earlier blog entry about Amitav Ghosh, click here.

Vuil & Glass: powerful performance

2010-05-05T17:52:00.001+02:00

One of the advantages of living in Brussels is how close it is to other European countries, or put more cynically by some, how easy it is to leave the country.

This week I took advantage of this oft-cited fact and, straight after work, drove with a couple of friends to Eindhoven in the Netherlands to see ‘Vuil & Glass,’ a dance performance choreographed to music by Philip Glass arranged for cello octet - a powerful combination that had me mesmerised from beginning to end. It was by far the best dance performance I’ve seen since Nederlands Dans Theater came to Brussels a couple of years ago.

The eight cellists that make up Cello Octet Amsterdam sat side by side high up on a scaffolding on the stage, the seven dancers (there are usually eight, but one was unfortunately injured) moved around the whole stage, including around and under the scaffolding. The modern music and dance complemented each other perfectly.

The first time ‘Vuil & Glas’ was performed a few years ago its venue was a waste disposal station (hence ‘vuil’ – waste – in the title). The revival has been adapted for the theatre, but as the dance company, Conny Janssen Danst, says itself on its website: “Complete with new dancers, new choreography, new costumes, and a new composition – but still with eight cellists, a pile of mattresses, and the hypnotizing, pulsating music of Philip Glass.”

In short, it was 75 minutes of pure joy listening to and watching the musicians and dancers, who performed solos and duets interwoven with composition and choreography for the full ensemble. A double thumbs up from me.

Chopin and birthdays

2010-04-20T23:30:00.000+02:00

I often tire of hearing that it’s one hundred, or however many hundred, years since the birth or death of this or that composer. Inevitably, these anniversaries serve as excuses for series after series of concerts or related events all focussed on that particular composer, which is all well and good, except that my reaction is often to get fed up with all the publicity before I’ve actually made it to a single performance.

This year is the 200^th anniversary of the birth of Chopin and needless to say I haven’t actually been to a concert of Chopin music this year although there have been plenty to choose from in Brussels.

I simply find myself bombarded with choice and it all sounds so “samey” on paper. Instead I find myself being drawn toward the concert that’s on the bottom of a small leaflet or a footnote in a magazine, relishing the exciting new discovery. Fine, but there’s no reason why a well-publicised concert of a well-known composer who just happens to be having a posthumous birthday celebrated can’t be equally exciting.

And maybe after this weekend I’ll give the anniversary concerts more time of day. Why? Well, a stroke of luck really. Oblivious to my feelings about such anniversaries, a friend chose to take me to the small exhibition on Chopin that is currently showing at the British Library. And I loved it.

Headsets allowed me to listen to historic recordings of Chopin performances from the British Library Sound Archive and display cabinets were filled with original Chopin manuscripts, letters and even his death mask. The walls were full of information about Chopin’s life, from his early days in Poland to exile in France and his stay in Britain.

What did I learn? Well, Chopin didn’t like to perform in front of an audience, and gave only 30 concerts during his lifetime, he had tiny hands (as seen from a plaster cast of his left hand) and he apparently had an affair with the novelist George Sand that ended most dramatically (though we’re not told how) - and of course that I shouldn’t be as dismissive of events related to a composer’s anniversary.

Hidden gems: little-known art museums around Belgium

2010-03-24T18:46:00.000+01:00

A word of explanation is probably in order as to why my blog has been so quiet for the last few weeks. The main reason is that I’ve been busy writing about the arts for magazines and newspapers, including a weekly column in Brussels Unlimited, and as a result have had little time left to update this blog.

So I thought I’d share with you a series of articles that I’ve written this month on little-known museums around Belgium.

· The Gust De Smet museum, Deurle (Sint-Martens-Latem)

The spotlight is thrown on the Flemish Expressionist Gust De Smet, the golden years of the Sint-Martens-Latem art colony and the museum dedicated to his life and work.

http://www.flanderstoday.eu/content/inner-circle

· The Autrique House, Brussels

The story of the adventure undertaken by an artist and a write to restore this Victor Horta house and open it to the public.

http://www.flanderstoday.eu/content/rebuilding-horta

· The Roger Raveel museum, Machelen- aan-de Leie

A trip to the museum that was specially built for Roger Raveel, who - now aged 88 - is arguably one of the most important Belgian artists since World War II.

http://www.flanderstoday.eu/content/never-ending-illusions

· Geo De Vlamynck’s artist studio, Brussels

A peek into the studio of the late Geo De Vlamynck, a champion of the decorative arts, who not only painted but also made frescoes, mosaics and stained glass.

http://www.flanderstoday.eu/content/traces-life

Collegium Vocale Gent and Saint Barbara

2010-02-10T21:10:00.000+01:00

©Michel Garnier

“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”

This quotation by the British novelist Aldous Huxley was placed on the first page of the programme accompanying a concert of Renaissance vocal music that I heard this week. More apt words would be hard to find.

It was the first time I had heard Philippe Herreweghe’s Collegium Vocale Gent, not least because whenever I’ve tried in the past to hear the ensemble they have either been touring or their concerts sold out. This week’s setting was the Eglise des Minimes in Brussels, the theme ‘Musica per Santa Barbara,’ the music a sheer joy to listen to.

Saint Barbara was the patron saint of Mantua, and in the 16^th century the Italian city’s duke had a basilica built in her honour. The Basilica di Santa Barbara attracted many composers including the Italian Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina and the Fleming Giaches de Wert. It was their compositions along with those of Claudio Monteverdi (a pupil of Wert) that made up the evening’s one-hour programme of 16^th and 17^th century motets and mass excerpts.

The voices of the 14 unaccompanied singers, directed by Herreweghe himself, filled the church, no matter whether it was a quiet, mournful sound to accompany words of sorrow and misery or a rich, powerful tone as the joys of life were celebrated. The singing was pure, precise and simply beautiful.

My favourite piece was probably Wert’s motet “Vox in Rama audita est” (A voice was heard in Ramah), which opened with a wonderful bass voice that made my stomach feel tight such was the intensity, the tension building up further as the tenors, altos and sopranos joined in one by one. At times, the notes were so close together that the pain and anguish being sung about were almost palpable.

This was music that did indeed come very close to expressing the inexpressible.

The same programme will be sung in their Belgium home town of Ghent on Feb. 11 and then in Rouen, France on Feb. 12. A full calendar is available here.

Chinese culture: all fired up

2010-02-04T22:31:00.002+01:00

©Palace Museum

I don’t know why I waited until the last possible week to see the exhibition 'Son of Heaven,' part of the Europalia China extravaganza that has been happening in Brussels during the last few months, but I did. Then again, I did go and see it twice that week!

My delayed visit may have had something to do with the fact that there were so many cultural offerings during the Europalia China festival that there was almost too much choice. And of course that time-old trap of saying to myself: ‘Oh it’s on for months, I’ll have plenty of time to see it’.

An added impetus to see it in January though was that I had just come back from a two-week orchestral tour to China, my first trip to the country, and was all fired up about everything to do with Chinese culture.

“Son of Heaven,” whose title refers to China’s rulers, didn’t disappoint. The exhibits included portraits of emperors on silk wall hangings, bronze ritual vessels, a jade shroud, and silk dragon robes once worn by the rulers. There were even a couple of terracotta warriors – admittedly not quite as impressive as the (almost) complete terracotta army I had seen in their Chinese home of Xi’an just a few weeks earlier, but you could view the ones in Brussels much closer up and could more easily see traces of their original colours.

The Brussels exhibition covered 5,000 years of Chinese culture and so was just a taster of the country’s imperial wealth during that time. Nonetheless the exhibits, many of which were on display for the first time outside of China, were simply exquisite. I couldn’t resist going back a second time, and if I hadn’t left it so late I may well have gone back again.

Cultural ideas for Belgium in December

2009-12-06T14:42:00.009+01:00

In case you want a cultural escape from the Christmas shopping, I thought I’d share a few ideas of exhibitions, music theatre and dance happening in Belgium at the moment and about which I’ve recently written articles.

Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker has put together this year’s December Dance festival in Bruges. There’s at least one contemporary dance performance showing each day, and the programme includes choreography by William Forsythe, Trisha Brown and Jérôme Bel. (December Dance - Bruges - Until Dec. 13).

Interview with De Keersmaeker on the Bruges festival: http://www.flanderstoday.eu/content/twelve-days-dance

The photography exhibition Controverses is, as its name suggests, all about controversial images. The headline-grabbing one is that of a naked, 10 year-old Brooke Shields – yes, the one that was removed from the Tate Modern in London after a visit by the Metropolitan police’s obscenity squad. Most of the photos on display caused an outcry of one sort or another, a few changed history. (Controverses – Botanique, Brussels – Extended until Jan. 3).

More about Brooke Shields, the Kissing Nun and other photos: http://www.flanderstoday.eu/content/scandals-and-other-policymakers

The latest creation by the Antwerp-based company Muziektheater Transparant is A New Requiem. Taking Mozart’s Requiem as its inspiration, the work includes a contemporary literary, musical and artistic response to the old music. The work is a classic example of the company’s music theatre, which as its name suggests combines words and music. Tip: make sure your Dutch is up to scratch or else you might find it difficult to follow the spoken text, though you can still enjoy the song and music. (A New Requiem – Across Belgium and the Netherlands - Until April 5, 2010).

Interview with Muziektheater Transparant director Guy Coolen: http://www.flanderstoday.eu/content/song-mad-director

I have to admit that I hadn’t heard of the Hungarian artist Lajos Vajda before I researched this article, but it turns out I’m not the only one as the Antwerp exhibition is the first-ever retrospective of his work in western Europe. Most of his works – paintings, drawings, collages, photomontages - are from the 1930s and influences of Paul Klee, Marc Chagall and Max Ernst can all be found. (In the Footsteps of Bartok: Lajos Vajda and Hungarian Surrealism - KMSKA, Antwerp - until January 17.)

A taster of what the exhibition has to offer: http://www.flanderstoday.eu/content/ordering-chaos

(Copyright for pictures, from top to bottom: ©Herman Sorgeloos; ©Oliviero-Toscani; Drawn by Roger Raveel; ©Panther and Lily, 1930-33, PMMI Ferenczy Museum, Szentendre)

Happy 1st Birthday, Slice of Life!

2009-11-10T21:59:00.002+01:00

“Slice of Life” has been up and running for a year. It was my first (and, so far, only) blog and so I had no idea how long it would last and whether anyone other than me (and possibly a few encouraging friends) would read it.

A year on and I can say that far more people have visited it than I thought would be the case. While just over 7,000 hits in a year (and no, this does not include my clicks on the site!) may not rank it among the world’s most popular blogs, I consider those 600+ hits a month to be a respectable number.

What I find even more interesting though is the geographical spread of the people visiting my blog. One of the tools of the site’s hit counter is a map showing me which parts of the world the visitors live in. I’m always amazed to see a little marker on say the Democratic Republic of Congo, a South Pacific island, the Philippines, Bangladesh or Iran. As I don’t know anyone in any of those places, the site’s reach is definitely beyond my immediate circle of friends and colleagues!

A year ago I wrote: “The aim of my blog is to attract readers, in my current home city of Brussels and abroad, with an interest in culture in the broadest sense of the word.” Well, that aim certainly seems to have been achieved.

A year on and I’m also doing a lot more arts writing professionally. I continue to get a complete kick out of it and am sometimes surprised that I’m paid to do something I love so much.

Still, the (unpaid!) blog will certainly continue as it’s fun to have another outlet to write about culture and, when I’m lucky, hear about others’ reactions, experiences and ideas.

Keep reading, enjoying and exploring!

Karabits sets Brussels stage alive with Shostakovich symphony

2009-10-25T17:47:00.003+01:00

Kirill Karabits seemed to put every last drop of energy into conducting the final chords of Shostakovich’s sixth symphony, ending with a 180-degree turn to face the audience and revealing a smile that you sensed had been on his face throughout the work.

For me, the symphony was the highlight of last Friday’s concert (October 23), performed by the Orchestre National de Lille at the Bozar concert hall in Brussels. From the rich intensity of the lower strings in the opening largo through to the timpani acrobatics at the close, I was totally drawn in.

One of the least performed of Shostakovich’s 15 symphonies, the sixth is unusually made up of just three movements. The first movement lasts more than half the total duration and is followed by an allegro and a presto, which musicologist David Fanning has described as “a spectral scherzo” and “a manic gallop.”

Karabits, who studied conducting in his native Kiev and is now in his early 30s, was a guest conductor with the Orchestre National de Lille. His main position is as principal conductor of England’s Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, where he has just started a four-year tenure. Given the number of engagements he seems to have lined up elsewhere as guest conductor, I’m optimistic that I’ll get another chance to see him conduct.

The rest of Friday’s concert was a contemporary piece, entitled Wailing, by Chinese composer Lu Wang, who was in Brussels to hear the performance, and Rachmaninov’s third piano concerto. The Chinese piece did little for me, and the concerto had brilliant moments – in fact the pianist Nikolai Demidenko was cheered back on stage for two encores - but the orchestra didn’t seem as at ease with this work as with the symphony. Luckily for me, my favourite part came last and so I left the concert hall with that uplifting feeling that comes when you have been transported away by music.

Mozaik Artistik: Brightening up Brussels

2009-10-08T17:42:00.002+02:00

Mosaic paving stones have sprung up all over Schaerbeek, the 1030 postcode area of Brussels where I live. In front of almost 100 homes in the area, one paving stone has been replaced by a colourful square of ceramic or glass pieces indicating that the house is part of “Art 1030 – Mozaik Artistik”.

The idea behind this event is that for two consecutive weekends these buildings, be they private homes, workshops or small museums, open their doors and allow the general public a glimpse of the lives and works of local painters, sculptors and other artists. Some of the spaces are workshops crammed with pots of paint and wooden frames, others are living rooms temporarily transformed into mini galleries.

Last weekend I discovered the museum of spontaneous art, the workshop of the late Geo de Vlamynck, known in Belgium for a large mosaic he designed for the Neptunium swimming pool, and a private home where several artists were displaying their wares, which included photography, jewellery and stone sculptures. This weekend I might visit the house on my street where I first saw one of the mosaic street tiles and wondered why it was there.

A full list of the places taking part in “Art 1030 – Mozaik Artistik” is in the catalogue, available online (click here) or as a hard copy at one of the centres organising the event, such as the Maison des Arts/Huis der Kunsten (Chaussée de Haecht 147 Haachtsesteenweg). One of the participating artists is Ingrid Schreyers, who created the mosaic tiles and who takes personalised orders if you fancy brightening up the street in front of your own home.

Emerging from Words and Music

2009-10-01T18:43:00.001+02:00

The final essay is almost complete, the finishing line in sight. For the last eight months I have been studying ‘Words and Music’ at the Open University and a whole new world has opened up to me. I’ve discovered German lieder, had the opportunity to study the importance of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde and explored how John Milton used the biblical story of Samson and Delilah for his dramatic poem Samson Agonistes, which in turn was adapted by George Frideric Handel for his oratorio Samson.

Having both a literary and musical background, for me the joy of this course was its interdisciplinary nature, the opportunity to analyse how text and music work together and how they enhance or detract from each other. My favourite components of the course were those dealing with classical music, but the module covered everything from South Asian art songs to Broadway musicals. There were even short sections on The Beatles, rap artists (I can now recognise a couple of Eminem songs!) and Sicilian storytellers.

The course allowed me to look in more depth at some areas that I was already familiar with and discover others that were completely new to me. I reacquainted myself with literary theory, explored new ideas in musical theory, brushed up on reading texts critically and learnt how to listen more closely to music using a score. In short, I was reminded what a great intellectual stimulus academic study is and what a joy it is to be learning more about a topic that you’re passionate about.

So as I do my final checks before sending off my last essay, on Virginia Woolf’s short story The String Quartet and Franz Schubert’s Death and the Maiden string quartet, my mind is already wondering what to study next. A Masters in Music is one possibility. Decision time is mid-December, so I still have a few more weeks to think it over.

In the meantime, I hope to find more time to write about my “cultural excursions,” which have recently included a performance of Shakespeare’s Macbeth by the UK-based Cheek by Jowl theatre company - a world premiere in the Belgian town of Namur no less! - and a concert of New Orleans music by the Fondy Riverside Bullet Band. Macbeth has inspired composers to write music on the play’s subject, and the New Orleans music inspired a text about war, loss and celebration that was combined with the music for their recent performance: the links between words and music seem to be everywhere!

Gilbert and George come to Brussels

2009-09-10T11:19:00.004+02:00

Gilbert and George are probably the most recognised artists in Britain, the interviewer suggests, pointing out that there wouldn’t be many a London cabbie who didn’t know who they were. “Very sweet, isn’t it,” says George deadpan, pausing for dramatic effect and then adding “For one reason or another”.

The gags and the lines just keep coming. Sometimes it’s one half of the duo doing the talking, sometimes they do a quick back and forth and sometimes they speak simultaneously and then burst out laughing. Listening to Gilbert and George talk about their art and their life is an absolute delight.

Smartly dressed in light brown suits and tan leather shoes (they are keen to point out that they don’t always dress the same, just similarly), the pair, now in their 60s, give an impression of formality and correctness. So when George embarks on a tale or two in his plummy English accent, and then rounds it off with coarse language or innuendo, the comic effect is brilliant.

The two work seamlessly together, the one almost merging into the other as they finish off each other’s sentences and constantly talk in the first person plural. On their work: “We don’t see it as work, we can say what we want, it’s an enormous freedom and privilege”. On their daily walks around London: “We walk all the time, you are feeling it non-stop, what is going on. We always go towards ideas that interest us.” On their evening ritual of eating the same dish at the same Turkish restaurant: “We don’t waste our brains reading menus”.

George, born in England, and Gilbert, born in Italy, met in 1967 at St. Martin’s School of Art where they were both studying sculpture. “We just drifted together,” George says. “We were alone”, too “freakish” to become art teachers, adds Gilbert. And so from their home in the East End of London, the duo began creating their “art for all”. And more than 40 years later, they still live in the East End and they are still creating.

A selection of their latest work, the Jack Freak Pictures, opens today (and runs until Oct. 31) at the Baronian Francey gallery in Brussels, one of seven European galleries showing different selections of the series. The entire collection, made up of 153 new artworks and created with the help of just one assistant (“he’s only allowed to scan!” Gilbert emphasises), will be exhibited at the Bozar in Brussels in the autumn of 2010.

Gilbert and George were interviewed by Michael Bracewell at a public event at the Bozar on Sept. 8 2009.

Knokke Biennale and Contemporary Art

2009-08-13T14:21:00.003+02:00

I wrote in a recent article “If contemporary art is your scene, then the Knokke Biennale should be in your diary.” To be honest though, I’m not really sure that it’s my scene. Of course it depends on how you define contemporary art, but when I walked into Hoet Bekaert’s summer gallery in Knokke - grandly/ironically called the Knokke Biennale – my immediate reaction was “is this it?”

A replica of a matchbox, a donkey’s head that had been used as a stage prop, a photograph resting on two drums of cat food, pieces of carbon copy paper with phrases such as “This looks like something I’ve seen before” mounted on light boxes...you get the picture.

Once the ideas behind the works had been explained, I started to appreciate them more. There is definitely a part of me that seeks to understand and analyse, wanting context and background. And I like to think that I have a relatively open mind. But had I seen these works anywhere but in a gallery, would I really have given them a second glance?

As I was shown round the small garage-like space, I still had a lingering doubt that I was perhaps being taken in by one big joke. After all, the whole Knokke Biennale idea had been done tongue-in-cheek (and brilliantly so), so maybe this was just one more element.

But no, these were works by well-known names on the contemporary art circuit: the donkey’s head was by Thai artist Surasi Kusolwong, who has exhibited at London's Tate Modern; and the work using cat food drums was by Amanda Ross-Ho, with whom the Hoet Bekaert gallery will be going to London’s Frieze Art Fair this year.

Gallery co-founder Jan Hoet Junior was keen to dispel the assumption of many that contemporary art is something that anyone can do. For me though that wasn’t the source of my doubts. It was rather the fact that when I viewed the works, I didn’t feel anything (other than perhaps bewilderment). I want colours or shapes or textures to prompt some instinctive response, to have aesthetic appeal - is that too old-fashioned a thought? or am I just missing the point?

The Return of Ulysses: ballet, the absurd and dancing in flippers

2009-07-06T15:26:00.004+02:00

The Royal Ballet of Flanders has gone on its summer holidays. But before they disappeared I caught the company’s final performance of the 2008-2009 season in Bruges, Belgium, and spoke to the ballet company’s artistic director Kathryn Bennetts.

The Return of Ulysses was the dance performance with which the Antwerp-based ballet company chose to round off their season and the one that it’s taking to the Edinburgh International Festival this August.

The choreography is a combination of classical and contemporary dance; the music switches between Henry Purcell and songs from the 1950s and 1960s such as those of Doris Day; and the costumes are all black for the protagonist Penelope and her many suitors, and a gold skirt suit for the goddess Athena and flippers, goggles and a tutu for Poseidon. It’s a performance of contrasts, one of “light and shade,” as Bennetts put it.

The story of the return of Ulysses is related from his wife Penelope’s perspective. It has been 20 years since Ulysses left to fight in the Trojan wars and in those intervening years of seemingly endless waiting Penelope has fought off many suitors – to various degrees of success, in the eyes of the choreographer Christian Spuck, it would seem. Penelope is subjected to a fair amount of aggressive male behaviour on stage but the suitors’ competitiveness and jealousy of each other means that Penelope is ultimately the one with her pride left intact.

Bennetts sums up the narrative as “an absurd story”, pointing to the absurdity of Penelope waiting for her husband for so many years and then not even recognising him once he finally does return home. The choreographer wants “to express the absurdity of things: the absurdity of the suitors' struggle for power, the absurdity of the gods who do not heed the laments of humans, the absurdity of Penelope endlessly waiting and the sardonic irony of her failing to recognize Ulysses,” as the Royal Ballet of Flanders says on its website. Unsurprisingly perhaps comparisons have been drawn with Samuel Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’.

Bennetts dedicated the performance in Bruges to Pina Bausch, the German choreographer who had died just a few days earlier.

To read more about this performance and another Flemish company going to the Edinburgh Festival, click here.

Which Famous Person Takes Your Fancy? Get a Plaster Cast Made in Brussels!

2009-06-26T18:03:00.003+02:00

Tucked away in the corner of a courtyard in the Cinquantenaire park in Brussels is a workshop where a handful of volunteers are chiselling, smoothing and perfecting all sorts of plaster casts. Whether you want a bust of Beethoven, the head of Voltaire or your very own copy of Michelangelo’s David, you can put in an order.

The plaster-casting workshop, which belongs to the Royal Museums of Art and History, was set up during the 19th century and holds around 4,000 moulds of sculptures dating from prehistoric times to the 18th century. They were originally made during a time when it wasn’t as easy and affordable to travel as it is today, and so craftsmen went to see the famous artworks of other countries, made moulds based on the originals and then produced plaster casts that could be viewed by a wider public in Brussels.

The moulds are now piled on top of each other on shelves from floor to ceiling row after row. Some of the moulds are broken, as are many of the original plaster casts. One of the volunteers explained to me that the damage happened in the 1930s when the moulds and casts were moved by prisoners from the main exhibition space to their current location.

Admittedly the hours aren’t too convenient for a visit (9.30am-noon and 1.30pm to 4pm Tuesday-Friday), but if you’re in the area and have a spare half-hour or so, it’s definitely worth popping in. The entrance is filled with replica statues and busts, which lead through to the storage rooms and the actual workshop. There’s also a small room with catalogues of their moulds in case you’re tempted to place an order.

Bruocsella Orchestra Takes on Symphonic Works with a Twist

2009-06-18T10:47:00.004+02:00

Liszt’s “symphonic poem” Les Préludes and Debussy’s “symphonic sketches” La Mer will be the two orchestral highlights of the Bruocsella Symphony Orchestra’s summer concert in Brussels this weekend (June 21).

If the prospect of an orchestra alone isn’t enough of a draw, then the two solo works on the programme should be. Alain Baudhuin is playing Weber’s clarinet concerto no. 1 and cellist Benjamin Glorieux is performing Respighi's Adagio con variazioni – they both studied at the music conservatory in Brussels and really are worth coming to hear.

You can read more about the concert in this article in Flanders Today and on the orchestra’s web site. Maybe see you on Sunday!

(Photo credit: Alexandre Istratov)

Judging the Queen Elisabeth Violin Competition

2009-06-02T21:31:00.002+02:00

It goes without saying that the finalists in the Queen Elisabeth International Violin Competition had their work cut out, having to perform a concert comprising a sonata, a newly composed, unpublished work that they had just one week to study and then a concerto. And all that after the various, rigorous requirements of the semi-final, the first round and the qualifying rounds.

But what about the jury’s task? I’m not sure that was much easier to be honest. For the finals, they listened to and judged 12 performances spread out over six consecutive evenings. How on earth the jury manages to first select the finalists and then rank them is beyond me, especially when so much about music and its interpretation is subjective. One finalist produces a seductive sonata, the next a show-stopping concerto and the only work that is truly comparable is the unpublished work (this year Agens by Cho Eun-Hwa).

Yet they did choose a winner: Ray Chen, the Taiwanese-born Australian who at 20 was this year’s youngest finalist and certainly the finalist with the cheekiest smile! That smile seemed to reflect how at ease he was, not only with his own solo part, but also with the orchestra accompanying him and performing in front of a packed Bozar hall.

Chen’s was unfortunately not one of the finals I was able to watch live, but I did listen to it via the competition’s video on demand service, where all the finals and semi-finals are available until September 15. The video may not replicate the atmosphere in the hall that evening, but it is wonderful to be able to hear and watch him. It’s a lesson in how to play in a relaxed manner, as he even manages to flash a smile the conductor’s way in the middle of his cadenza in the Tchaikovsky concerto!

In fact he seemed to enjoy the entire performance, which the audience greeted with a standing ovation. And his reward was 1st prize, 20,000 euros, numerous concerts, a CD recording and the loan of a Stradivarius violin for three years, in short what may turn out to be the key to launching a solo career. Second prize went to Belgium’s Lorenzo Gatto (whose final I was lucky enough to see live) and third place to Moldavia’s Ilian Garnet.

Young Jean Lee Tackles Black Identity

2009-05-22T11:44:00.004+02:00

Playwright and director Young Jean Lee said of audiences’ reactions to her latest play “The Shipment”: “Whether they loved it or hated it, they were still thinking about it long after the show was over. I feel really happy about that response.”

I saw the play earlier this week during its run at the Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels and it’s true, I can’t stop thinking about it. The play deals with “black American identity politics” and is performed by an all-black cast. The audience is confronted with stereotypes and clichés of black identity, which are sometimes uncomfortable, sometimes funny, always thought-provoking.

“When starting a play, I ask myself, ‘What's the last play in the world I would ever want to write?’ Then I force myself to write it. I do this because I've found that the best way to make theater that unsettles and challenges my audience is to do things that make me uncomfortable”, Lee says on her website.

“The Shipment” is divided into two parts, the first being a bombardment of stereotypical black images. A young, black man tells his grandmother of his dream to be a rap star; he is then enticed into the world of drug dealing by a friend; he ends up in jail where he meets a record manager who turns him into a star. There’s music, there’s dance, there are hip-hop and rap rhythms, there’s street lingo and strong language. It’s fast-paced and funny.

About half-way through the 90-minute play, the tempo suddenly drops as the house lights go up and three of the actors take centre stage to sing a powerful a capella song (the lyrics are from Dark Center of the Universe by Modest Mouse). I can still hear the rhythms, words and harmonies. As Lee said in an interview with the festival organisers, “the audience is laughing at these stereotypes, and suddenly they see the performers as people, not stereotypes, and the performers are looking at them”. It acts as a transition to the starkly contrasting, naturalistic setting of the second part of the show.

The play is not about making white people feel bad about being white, but it is about raising questions about black identity and subverting stereotypes. It makes us, the audience, question our own attitudes towards and preconceived ideas of race, ask why we associate certain images with black people and others with white people, and wonder whether we all have some ingrained racism in us.

The show, which has so far been performed in New York and Brussels, is doing a worldwide tour. Click here to see where the play will be showing.

Queen Elisabeth violin competition – waiting for the finals

2009-05-14T15:02:00.003+02:00

I might be wrong, but I don’t think I heard this year’s winner of the Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition in Brussels last night.

There's no denying there was drama, as one of the violinists broke a string as she was tuning up in between pieces, and there was also charm, as another semi-finalist added a cheeky smile to win over at least the audience (who knows if that kind of thing has an effect on the jury). There were also painful facial expressions and hunched shoulders at times, neither of which looked conducive to making a beautiful musical sound.

Don’t misunderstand me, these young musicians have an enviable ability. But I’m not convinced I heard the violinist who will join the ranks of David Oistrakh and Vadim Repin, previous winners of the competition. After all, this is one of the world’s top violin competitions, aimed at musicians aged between 17 and 27 who have completed their training and are ready to start an international career. Expectations are high.

If I had to pick one of the four violinists performing yesterday to go through to the final, I’d go for Moldavia’s Ilian Garnet. His performance was the only one, for me at least, that added an extra bit of magic and went beyond technical perfection.

Only on Saturday night though will we know for sure which of the 24 semi-finalists will stay in the competition. And then the 12 lucky finalists will be whisked off to the Queen Elisabeth College of Music where they will live a rather isolated week until their final performance.

Bring on the finals!

Enjoy Poverty: Renzo Martens

2009-05-03T16:00:00.003+02:00

The lasting image in Renzo Martens’ documentary-style film, set in the Congo, is a neon sign saying “ENJOY please POVERTY” that he sets up in a remote Congolese village. As the Dutch artist starts the portable generator and the letters light up, the children look on in delight, and the parents are happy that a little joy has been brought into their children’s lives. It is quite clearly the event of their year, if not their lifetime.

But the message it carries is a stark one: be resigned to your life of poverty and don’t believe in the hope offered by western charity workers, you have been poor for decades and in reality this probably won’t change, be satisfied with your lot, enjoy your poverty.

This uneasy pairing of, on the one hand, seeming to want to better the Congolese people’s lives and, on the other, concluding that there is no hope of a better life for them runs throughout the film. It makes uncomfortable viewing as you wonder what Martens’ true intentions are.

The film seems to mock the way the western world exploits the poverty in Africa: the white journalists and photographers seeking the worst atrocities so they can sell their ‘story’ to the western media, the United Nations peacekeepers keeping designated areas safe so that overseas companies can fly in and out to search for gold, the western palm oil and cocoa plantation owner whose local workers don’t earn enough to feed their children, and the NGOs who drive around in jeeps and plaster their logos on everything to increase visibility and help secure more funding.

Martens travels around the Congo describing this situation to the Congolese people, telling them how their poverty is a resource that the west exploits to make money, little of which is returned to those in need, and to make themselves feel good. But isn’t Martens complicit in this too?

At one point, Martens sets up a makeshift classroom where he puts basic calculations up on a board to illustrate to local men how photographing malnourished children and raped women and selling these photos to foreign media would bring them more money than taking pictures of weddings and celebrations. They set out to put the theory into practice.

You sit there squirming, as these men are encouraged to point their cameras into the faces of their own suffering people and get a ‘good’ picture that will sell well. Martens and the men go to a hospital to see if the (white) Médecins sans Frontières representative would allow them to take pictures and if he’d be interested in buying their photos. The answer is no, the reason first being that it would be inappropriate, and then, when Martens points out that western photographers are permitted to do so, the reason is because the locals’ work isn’t professional enough.

Martens tells the men bluntly that their plan won’t work, they won’t be able to sell their photos and that they should go back to selling happy, wedding pictures for a pittance. You feel like Martens has used them for his own personal experiment, and then abandoned them once he has made his point and obtained his documentary material. They had put their trust in him and are left disappointed, exploited even.

It’s a contradictory film, which initially made me question the point of my monthly contributions to Médecins sans Frontières and by the end had me questioning what Martens really hoped to achieve with his documentary.

The film is showing at the KVS in Brussels until May 10 as part of the Kunstenfestivaldesarts.

Intoxicated by words and music

2009-04-24T18:18:00.001+02:00

Baudelaire’s Fleurs du mal was a set text at university and appealingly so with its themes of drunkenness, intoxication, love, beauty, ennui and anguish. A decade or so later and the collection crossed my path again as I saw an amazing performance directed by Frédéric Dussenne at the Théâtre Marni in Brussels.

I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect as I entered the theatre for “Baudelaire: music and poetry”. As it turned out, I was treated to a spectacle that combined drama, theatre, dance and music. The words were almost entirely taken from the Fleurs du Mal collection (the one exception was a prose poem by Baudelaire that was set to music by Benoît Mernier) and either sung by the soprano Sophie Karthäuser or spoken by the actor Angelo Bison.

Bison’s delivery was particularly powerful. He turned what could have been a straight poetry recital into a truly theatrical performance. The stage had little on it: on the left was the pianist David Lively at his grand piano with the soprano in front of him, on the right the actor dressed in black with a single chair as a prop. When the poems spoke of beauty and love, Bison looked imploringly at the soprano, when the poems raised questions, he turned to the audience. At times he was calm, at others he stormed into the audience or off the stage in a fit of rage or anger or desperation. He was totally in command of the audience’s reactions, orchestrating whether we watched in silence, allowed ourselves a little chuckle when asked what we should get drunk on, or made our skins crawl as he spat out the words of Une charogne (carrion). I was captivated.

The rhythm and metre of the poetry were brilliantly accentuated by Bison and at times it was as if he was almost singing. It was a natural transition between his poems and those sung by Karthäuser such as Harmonie du soir (Evening’s harmony) or La mort des amants (The death of lovers), both set to music by Claude Debussy. As well as the piano, song and spoken word, dance was also woven into the performance with a male dancer representing for example ‘evening’ and ‘the devil’.

According to the director, Baudelaire was “a musician of spoken French”. Well, that certainly came across in last night’s performance. Wonderful stuff.

Digital Words and Images

2009-04-21T12:40:00.002+02:00

I took a peek at the World Digital Library, which was launched today, and found all sorts of curiosities.

As I’m currently studying the opera Carmen as part of a university course, I was interested to find an 1872 manuscript, handwritten by Bizet, of the ‘Havanaise’ from his opera Carmen as well as a short film dating from 1898-1899 by the Lumière brothers of a traditional bullfight in Seville, Spain.

I also stumbled upon a more amusing item: a letter to President Dwight D. Eisenhower, signed by three girls identifying themselves as “Elvis Presley Lovers,” begging the president not to allow Elvis’s sideburns to be cut off after he was conscripted into the army in 1958!

The digital library is an initiative between the Library of Congress, Unesco and 32 partner institutions. It’s a web site containing digitised books, journals, manuscripts, maps, motion pictures, prints, photographs and sound recordings from libraries and archives around the world. It’s free to browse, easy to search (by country, date, topic, type of item or institution) and you can share discoveries with others by any number of social networking tools (some of which I’d heard of, some I hadn’t).

You don’t get the same kick out of seeing digital versions of these cultural materials as you do from seeing the original. However, maybe you otherwise wouldn’t get to see the original at all – the site has items from national libraries ranging from Iraq, Brazil and China to Russia, Israel and Serbia -- or maybe this site may prompt a visit to one of the libraries or institutes.

One discovery I made for example was a beautiful illuminated page in Javanese script from a chronicle of a Javanese court in Yogyakarta. Since my travels to Java and other Indonesian islands, I do have a soft spot for Indonesian culture. And this particular item is at an institute in Leiden (Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies), which really isn’t that far at all from my current home town of Brussels.

Go and explore and see what you find at www.wdl.org!

A whole new world just waiting to be discovered

2009-04-12T21:23:00.003+02:00

I’ve been converted. No, I haven’t had a religious epiphany, but more of a literary one. I have discovered the short story genre.

“Runaway”, a collection of short stories by Alice Munro, had been sitting untouched on my bookshelf for several months. I can’t recall exactly why I bought the book; it was just one of those chance purchases. The cover caught my attention, it had interesting comments by critics on the back and I liked what I read on the first page or so.

I came home, put it on my bookshelf in the pile of “books to read” and then forgot about it. Until last week that is. And now I can’t put it down. It has been a while since I’ve read a book where I am so absorbed by the characters and the writing that although you know you should really put the light out and go to sleep, you tell yourself that another few pages won’t do any harm and you simply keep on reading.

I just hadn’t expected this from short stories because, by their very nature, you’re not with the characters for many pages. This particular collection differs perhaps in that one character returns in three stories, albeit at completely different stages of her life i.e. in one she’s a young woman, another a mother and another a grandparent. But other stories are totally distinct.

What’s most compelling is the way the episodes are distilled down to their very essence, not a word is wasted. I feel like I am simultaneously being told a story, in the most straightforward sense, and gaining an insight into human behaviour and the human condition. And all this in so few words. The experience is intense and a joy.

Surely in this age where everyone claims to have so little free time, this is the era when the short story should come into its own. I haven’t seen any sales figures for short stories to know what the trend is and how it fares against the novel or poetry, but anecdotal evidence tells me that it is an unpopular genre and a hard sell. It shouldn’t be, it really shouldn’t. Or is Alice Munro one of the few brilliant short story writers out there?

Have you discovered a great short-story writer? If so, please share! I want to read more.

The freedom to write

2009-04-04T11:50:00.004+02:00

Every now and again I’m reminded of how lucky I am to be able to write what I want, more or less, about whatever interests me. That unfortunately isn’t the case for everyone across the globe.

I recently heard four writers speak in Brussels about their personal experiences in their native countries of Syria, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan and Serbia and why they have sought refuge in other nations.

Syrian poet Faraj Bayrakdar explained how we was sentenced to 15 years in prison for, as he put it, being against the Ba’ath principles of Freedom, Unity and Socialism. The irony of being put in prison for opposing freedom was not lost on him. As he said though, “the freedom within us is larger than the prison that holds us”.

After being released in 2000, he travelled regularly to Europe and always returned trouble-free to his homeland. The situation changed, however, while he was in Sweden. He heard how many writers and journalists had been arrested for signing the so-called Damascus Declaration, which called for Lebanon and Syria to set up embassies in each other’s countries. His friends back home warned him not to return as he would either be arrested or “an incident” would be arranged. “For the first in my life I felt that my life was in danger”, he said.

He still lives in Stockholm, writing poetry and speaking out in favour of freedom: the freedom of expression and the freedom to be silent.

Zimbabwe’s Chenjerai Hove read out two of his poems, written in English, about the death of Ken Saro-Wiwa, a writer and activist who was executed by the Nigerian government in 1995. Hove made the point that freedom after expression is just as crucial as being allowed to express oneself. As the authorities told him, there’s no problem in having the books published. The difficulties come afterwards, Hove said, giving as one example that the state might buy all his books and then throw them into a lake.

Afghanistan’s Kamran Mir Hazar said he had been detained several times in what he termed an “Afghan guantanamo” for writing articles about war crimes and corruption by high-ranking officials on his website kabulpress.org.

Dejan Anastasijevic, the first Serbian journalist to testify against Slobodan Milosevic at the Tribunal in The Hague, also spoke about Afghanistan. During the war in Afghanistan, the Arabic-language news network Al-Jazeera was blown up in the name of the “war on terror”, and there was no protest from journalists, Anastasijevic said. He warned of how the independence of journalists is being eroded and how the current financial crisis “will be used by enemies of the freedom of expression as a cover”, how the publications that survive will no longer be independent but be run by governments or banks.

“The fight for freedom is never over”, Anastasijevic said.

The writers were speaking at events organised by the Brussels international literature house Passa Porta, together with Shahrazad - Stories for Life, a place where writers persecuted and silenced in their own homelands can tell their stories, and PEN, a worldwide authors' association that stands up for free speech and opposes any form of censorship.

Lisbon's colours by day and night

2009-03-23T11:56:00.005+01:00

As we sat on the tram’s wooden benches, looking out at the colourful tiled façades lit up in the March sunshine, a young woman dressed in a cotton print dress and straw hat burst into poem. The carriage fell silent to listen. I could only recognise the odd word, but was fascinated by the sounds and rhythm of the Portuguese language.

The short descent down the steep, narrow street from Lisbon’s Barrio Alto to Praça dos Restauradores allowed time for just three poems to be recited by her and her friends, who sat on the window ledges at each end of the carriage. It was a lovely gesture to mark World Poetry Day (March 21).

This linguistic surprise was one of several highlights during my long weekend in the Portuguese capital. Another was the country’s fado music, which literally means “fate”. It took a while for us to find a fado club we were happy with, finally plumping for a small, basement one in the Alfama district. Most of the audience had clearly made an entire evening of it, dining, drinking and listening. We went in for a nightcap and an hour or so of the beautiful, doleful music.

Two old men played guitars – one a simple, rhythmic line on a Spanish guitar, the other a more intricate part on a 12-string guitarra. To this accompaniment, a voice sang its words of love, sorrow and yearning. A set of about 15 minutes by one singer was followed by a break of a similar length to allow time for chatter and drinks, and then another singer would take to the floor. The three performers stood in the middle of the room, with the low, vaulted brick ceiling above and the audience seated at tables all around.

The minor key, the melancholic voice, the traditional black dress and shawl of the female singer, together they created a sombre, dark mood, far removed from the bright colours of the daytime and yet just as much a part of the Portuguese culture.

Expand those literary horizons!

2009-03-18T11:19:00.006+01:00

A note for your literary diary: 26-29 March, Passa Porta Festival, Brussels.

Over the four days, the literary side of Brussels will come to life with debates, discussions and tours by writers from across the globe. Much of the programme is in French and Dutch, but there’s also plenty to choose from in other languages including English. Turkey’s Elif Shafak, Hungary’s Péter Nádas and the UK’s Alan Hollinghurst will be among the authors taking part.

I caught up with Passa Porta’s director, Sigrid Bousset, to learn more about this year’s festival and where the original idea for such a festival came from. You can read my article, published today in Flanders Today, by clicking here.

Museums open until 1am - if you can get in

2009-03-09T14:13:00.003+01:00

More than 10,000 people spent last Saturday night visiting a Brussels museum as part of “Museum Night Fever”. The sheer popularity, however, meant that my experience was more traipsing around town from one queue to another rather than actual museum visiting.

Still, I did make it into the Cinquantenaire museum (part of the Royal Museums of Art and History) and discovered its Roman mosaic collection from Apamea in Syria. That in itself made the evening worthwhile. The centrepiece of this wing is a beautiful 5th century floor mosaic depicting hunting scenes. Along one side of the room is an impressive reconstruction of part of Apamea’s colonnaded street, which ran almost 2 kilometres on a north-south axis through the city. The museum’s collection also included mosaics dated from the year 392 from Apamea’s synagogue.

If you were looking for dance classes rather than Roman mosaics, then the place to be was the quirky “Continental Superstar” space, which I visited earlier in the year (click here to read the post). The disco lights were spinning and the bar was open. It still didn’t quite work for me though.

In total, 14 museums opened their doors on Saturday between 7pm and 1am. The Museum of Musical Instruments’ party sounded good and was certainly popular but the organisers told us that we probably wouldn’t get to the front of the queue before it finished.

Next tip: the Robert Capa photography exhibition at the Jewish Museum. Unfortunately the museum decided there were too many visitors that evening and so they were closing the doors early. Luckily though it’s just around the corner from the Sablon area and so we rounded off the evening with a nightcap in a local bar. Not quite the museum extravaganza I had anticipated but it had its highlights all the same.

German culture strikes chords and discord

2009-02-25T14:55:00.005+01:00

My February seems to have been dominated by German culture, and I didn’t even make it to Carnival! Instead I heard the Berlin-based Artemis quartet, went to a literary evening whose focus was the author W.G. Sebald (1944-2001) and enjoyed my first live performance of the Berliner Philharmoniker. Each of the evenings included a discovery, sometimes to my liking and sometimes not, and something familiar.

The Sebald event was part of an exchange between Passa Porta, the international house of literature in Brussels, and the Literaturhaus Stuttgart. Having lived near Stuttgart for a year, a period when I started to read contemporary German-language authors, nostalgia may well have been one reason for me deciding to go along.

Much of the evening was devoted to a discussion between a journalist who had interviewed Sebald, a German literature professor from the Free University of Brussels and a Flemish writer. The three guests interrupted their discussion by playing parts of interviews recorded with Sebald and reading extracts from some of his books.

I was interested by the ideas that seemed to motivate Sebald’s writing: knowing where he came from; his history; memory; remembering the past; exploring what the truth is with regards to the past. And yet, despite this, the evening didn’t make me want to go and read Sebald. I was fascinated by the ideas and the literary criticism, but what little I heard of the actual works simply didn’t resonate enough with me.

My experience of listening to the Artemis quartet was similar in one respect. Their latest Brussels concert included Quartet no. 1 by Jörg Widmann, a contemporary German composer who is supported by the Artemis quartet.

The cellist preceded the performance with a word or two about the work, which was extremely helpful. For example, he talked of how the beginning of the piece, which has the instruments making hesitant starts and scratching sounds on the strings, was inspired by the difficulty of filling a blank page, the difficulty of starting to compose a piece. Had it not been explained, I could imagine having exchanged a few quizzical looks. The piece had some beautiful sounds and made me listen attentively to try and make sense of it, but I certainly wasn’t immediately converted into a Widmann fan. It was the Artemis’s performance of two Schubert quartets (no.s 9 and 15) that captivated me.

The novelty in the Berliner Philharmoniker’s concert was Messiaen’s Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum, which I’d only ever heard on a CD and to be honest had never managed to listen to it all the way through without getting distracted. In this case, I was in for a pleasant surprise as the live performance was totally different. The largest metal gong, taller than the musician striking it, reverberated impressively around the hall, and in fact needed a second percussionist to help stop its sound, such was its power. All the percussion was exciting to watch and listen, be it the clashing cymbals, tubular bells or the rows of hanging gongs.

Although I was impressed by the Messiaen, especially given that the composer isn’t one I’d usually choose, it was Bruckner’s symphony no. 9 in the second half that made the concert for me. I perhaps paid even more attention than usual to the strings given that they didn’t have a part in the Messiaen. Wow, what a sound. I can still here the amazing pizzicato at the start of the second movement!

I don’t want to have to wait a few years for the orchestra to return to Brussels, so I think there’s nothing for it but to book a trip to Berlin and hear them in their home concert hall, the Philharmonie. And maybe catch the Artemis quartet in their home city too. Oh and why not discover the Literaturhaus Berlin while I’m at it. Ok the seeds of an idea have been planted!

Big films on a small scale

2009-02-16T17:30:00.003+01:00

I finally discovered what claims to be the smallest cinema in Brussels: the Styx in the Ixelles area. Don’t ask me how it has taken me eight years of living in Belgium to make it there!

I felt like I was going back in time as everything about the cinema is on a smaller scale than we’re generally used to these days, including the entrance price at just 5 euros.

It seems to operate in a slightly haphazard and laid-back way, but quaintly so. For example, the cash desk, squeezed into the corner of the entrance area, was only staffed a few minutes before the film started. But then again, there weren’t exactly hordes of people to deal with. My friend and I were the only ones waiting to watch the 9pm showing of The Changeling, and merely two film-goers came out of the early evening film.

The room would have seated about 40 people, but the only other person to turn up was the projectionist who gave us a little wave as he set the reels in motion and bade us goodnight as we left.

I was a little disappointed that the piano, randomly placed in the corner of the room, wasn't played. I suppose it’s there to accompany the occasional showing of a silent film, but it wouldn’t have been out of place to have struck up a few chords before the film started!

The Styx, which is partnered with Actor’s Studio in the city centre, has just two screens, curiously numbered 2 and 3. It tends to show both arthouse films and more mainstream movies that have stopped running in the larger cinemas.

If you want to see what’s on at the moment, click on www.styx.cinenews.be. And to find the cinema, the address is 72 Rue de l'Arbre Benit, a stone’s throw from Place Boniface and Avenue Louise.

How much is this artwork worth to you?

2009-02-02T12:33:00.003+01:00

A week’s stay in the south of France, an exhibition space in Berlin, a kiss, a smile, a therapy session – these were just some of the offers scribbled on post-it notes and stuck on the wall around the artworks on show at the Bozar in Brussels this weekend.

The idea behind Truc Troc, as the event is known (in French “truc” means “thing” and “troc” means “exchange, barter”), is that contemporary artists get the opportunity to exhibit their art and the public is invited to offer something in exchange for the work. It really makes you think about how much you’d give to be the owner of a particular piece.

The paintings, installations and photographs were on display Saturday and Sunday. The artists will now be looking at the bids and deciding which, if any, appeals and is a good deal for them.

There were four works that I would love to have in my apartment and for which I made an offer. I’ll let you know if I hear back!

St. Petersburg's wintry allure

2009-01-29T18:20:00.008+01:00

I got back this week from my first trip to St. Petersburg and I certainly hope it won’t be my last one. What a city!

I just loved the facades of the buildings lining the city’s rivers and canals – blues, pinks, browns, greens and beiges. The coloured fronts, along with the white snow covering the ground, brightened up what otherwise could have been rather gloomy, grey January days.

It’s an easy city to explore on foot and so I made the most of that. And when it got too cold, there was always a cafe to hand for a pot of tea (I hadn’t realised what big tea-drinkers Russians are. I thought they generally just went for the harder stuff!) or a bowl of soup, a meat pie or a stuffed pancake. Of course, there was plenty of culture to enjoy too.

The Hermitage was amazing – I spent an entire day there and still barely touched the surface of what was to be seen. The Russian Museum was of a more manageable size and yet because there were so many new artists for me to discover, once again I felt that I didn’t really do it justice. That said, it more than piqued my interest to learn more about Russian art and I’ll be on the lookout for Russian exhibitions closer to home. I particularly liked the work of Natalya Goncharova (1881-1962), who painted both Winter (at the top of this blog post) and Four Envangelists (below).

On the musical front, I went to the Mariinskiy Theatre and saw Tchaikovsky’s Pikovaya Dama (Queen of Spades). I thought it was a brilliant production and the tenor playing the lead role of Herman, Vladimir Galuzin, was particularly impressive. Being in the Mariinskiy was a great experience in itself and then to be seeing a Russian opera set in St. Petersburg just topped it off perfectly.

An afternoon concert in the St. Petersburg Philharmonia was another highlight. The Philharmonia has an amazing history, with a seemingly endless list of famous 19th century musicians who performed here and great Russian composers who premiered their works here. The best-known example perhaps is Shostakovitch’s “Leningrad Symphony,” which was written during the Blockade of the city in World War II, and broadcast from the Philharmonia in August 1942.

Unfortunately there wasn’t any Russian music on while I was there. Instead I was treated to a programme of Mozart and Haydn, with a mesmerising performance of Haydn’s cello concerto in D major by Lithuania’s Vytautas Sondeckis.

I could say so much more about each of the above aspects of my trip and maybe I will in a future blog post. For now though, I think I’ll put on one of the CDs I bought and have another look at my photos!

Amitav Ghosh on Opium, Migration and Cross-Dressing

2009-01-18T18:24:00.004+01:00

If you live in Brussels, love books and haven’t yet discovered Passa Porta, all I can say is you’re in for a treat. Describing itself as Brussels’ international house of literature, it’s a multilingual bookshop, a venue for literary events and a temporary residence for writers and translators all rolled into one.

Amitav Ghosh, whose novel Sea of Poppies has recently been translated into Dutch, was Passa Porta’s guest this morning. Speaking for an hour to an audience of approximately 100 people, Ghosh touched on the inspiration for the book, the historical research he undertook before putting pen to paper and his relationship with language.

Ghosh first saw the migration of Indian workers as a potential theme for his latest book while he was writing The Glass Palace, which is set in Burma and India. The theme became “completely absorbing for me,” he said.

In Sea of Poppies, the author focuses on the departure of a boat in the 1830s, just before the Opium wars, taking indentured workers from India to Mauritius. This period of history isn’t well known in India and yet about 20 million people were “torn out of the sacred geography of India,” according to Ghosh.

To learn more, one of his research trips was to the Mahatma Gandhi Institute in Mauritius, which has preserved these people’s emigration certificates and other documents listing their caste, religion, height and other personal details.

Ghosh, his crop of white hair standing out from his all-black attire, came across as a serious and extremely well educated man who also had a great sense of humour and often broke out into chuckles. He switched back and forth between the serious and the amusing, one moment discussing the historical background to his novel, the next explaining how cross-dressing was a common part of ship life or how inventive the English creole language can be in obscenities.

It was a great way to spend a Sunday morning and I’m looking forward to future Passa Porta events.

Fairground Attraction

2009-01-12T14:58:00.009+01:00

Belgium is renowned for its quirkiness and “Continental Superstar” is a perfect example. Situated in the Cinquantenaire museum (part of the Royal Museums of Art and History), Continental Superstar is a dance hall filled with fairground organs and other mechanical musical instruments.

The space is filled with bright and gaudily coloured instruments and statues, plenty of kitsch and mechanical music. In the far corner of the room there is a bar, but no staff, or potential customers for that matter, to be seen. I was left unsure as to whether I was in a dance hall, an exhibition room or just a temporary storage space.

According to the museum, around 1900 Antwerp developed alongside Paris as an important production centre for mechanical organs used in dance halls, cafes and at fairs. As the industry declined, replaced by jukeboxes, radios and gramophones, a Brussels man called Joseph Ghysels resolved to save and restore many of the organs.

It is his collection of street and fairground organs, barrel pianos and other instruments, bought in 2007 by Flemish minister for Culture Bert Anciaux, that are on show at the Cinquantenaire museum.

The name Continental Superstar was the title of a 1970s recording of what the museum calls the “world-famous star” of the Ghysels collection, a dance organ made by Theophiel Mortier in 1923. As far as the museum is concerned the title could also apply to Ghysels himself for preserving this quirky piece of Belgian patrimony.

Continental Superstar is on show until March 8, 2009.

Photo: Dansorgel Mortier 1905-1911 (Royal Museums of Art and History)

Heat, red bricks and too little music

2009-01-05T22:51:00.004+01:00

Well I’m back in Brussels after my whirlwind tour around England. As well as family and friends, port and mince pies, there were also a couple of cultural highlights.

Art:
I saw the Rothko exhibition at the Tate Modern in London. It was brilliant. I left with a completely different appreciation for colours – some were so warm that heat seemed to actually be emitted from the canvas and others made you realise how individual any one particular colour is. I couldn’t believe how long could be spent looking at such deceptively simple works.

Architecture:
As you probably know, the Eurostar now arrives at St. Pancras station in London. While I’m not a fan of that from the point of view of my personal travel convenience, I am a big fan of the building itself. The Victorian architecture, and in particular the red brickwork, is just great. And I hadn’t realised until I made my first trip into Leeds this time that this northern city centre boasts some of the same Victorian brickwork.

Music:
Unfortunately my trip was somewhat devoid of music, though there was plenty of Radio 4 to be had, which is also very important. I think for this category, I’ll have to cheat and say the original music manuscripts on display in the British Library’s gallery of treasures.

And on that note, here’s to cultural discoveries, however small or large, in 2009.

Catching up with Gotan Project

2008-12-24T23:49:00.003+01:00

Not quite sure how it took me more than a week to get around to writing a post about Gotan Project's recent concert at the Halles de Schaerbeek in Brussels, but if you're going to fall behind with updating a blog, the build-up to Christmas seems as good an excuse as any.

I only heard my first Gotan Project album this summer, but I immediately loved the group's sound – tango with an electronica twist. Given that the music can be moody and atmospheric, I wasn't sure what to expect from a live performance. I was both surprised and impressed.

The visuals were almost as important as the music. In many ways it was a show more than just a concert. The group opened their performance behind a gauze screen the height and breadth of the stage onto which images and film were projected. Just as I was beginning to think that the music would feel more live and more direct if the screen wasn't there, the screen disappeared and the group took centre stage - vocalist, bandoneonist, string quartet, pianist, guitarist and two DJs/programmers, all dressed in white.

The visuals continued with images projected onto a screen at the back of the stage, and a couple danced tango to a few songs, but for the most part the musicians were now in the spotlight. The audience was more than warmed up and the show really took off. Including the couple of encores, the audience was treated to about 2 hours of fabulous music. A most memorable concert.

No score, no encore, just Rattle

2008-12-16T22:13:00.002+01:00

I can only imagine what it must be like to play in an orchestra with Simon Rattle conducting, but having seen him live last week I’m guessing it would be intense, fun and a bit nerve-wrecking in case you didn’t achieve the musical colour he wanted.

The music he elicited from the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment was magical; it seemed to directly convey Rattle’s charisma and passion. He didn’t use a score for the Berlioz overture or the two Schumann symphonies on the programme, and this seemed to give him more immediacy with the orchestra. There was quite literally no barrier between him and the musicians.

He almost danced around his little podium as he reached out and gestured to whichever instrument or section whose sound he wanted to bring out. I laughed and smiled and was completely absorbed.

The orchestra, whose trademark is playing on period instruments, doesn’t have a permanent music director and so always works with guest conductors such as Rattle.

It was my first time watching him conduct live and I found it simply brilliant. I can’t wait to see Rattle conduct the Berlin Philharmonic in Brussels in February. Maybe he’ll give the audience an encore this time.

(For those of you who like Desert Island Discs, here is the link to his castaway choices. His chosen luxury was an Italian coffee machine and grinder!)

Following Folon around Belgium

2008-12-11T17:59:00.010+01:00

I have to admit to not having heard of Jean-Michel Folon until a few years ago when my employer at the time moved into new Brussels premises and named each of the three conference rooms after “well-known Belgians”. They came up with Rubens, Horta and Folon.

Since then I’ve noticed various Folon artworks around the city, including a 165 m2 oil on canvas at Montgomery metro station, which I saw again recently and prompted me to write this post. On the Grand Sablon in Brussels, a bronze statue of a bird towers more than 4 metres high and at Brussels airport there’s a bronze statue of a person with a propeller on top (the centre of which forms the face).

2008 was in fact the “Year of Folon” in Belgium. That said, there doesn’t appear to be any particular reason for the choice of year (Folon was born in 1934 and died in 2005); the Tourism Office simply seemed to decide to dedicate resources toward promoting the artist and his work.

Whatever the year, I can thoroughly recommend a trip to the Folon Foundation, located in the grounds of the castle of La Hulpe, about a 20-minute drive out of Brussels. You can find there illustrations and magazine covers that Folon created for the likes of The New Yorker and Time, his posters for exhibitions and festivals, watercolours, engravings next to the original copperplates, stained glass, bronze statues, the list goes on.

The foundation was inaugurated in 2000 by Folon himself and its mission is to unite and conserve a heritage: the 500 artworks donated by Jean-Michel Folon.

I’d like the next stop on my Folon discovery trail to be a little church in Wallonia, which has several stained glass windows by the Belgian artist. And you?

Photos: © Thierry Renauld (Fondation Folon)

Carnegie Hall and YouTube Join Forces

2008-12-02T14:29:00.003+01:00

This almost sounds too weird to be true, but definitely worth sharing. YouTube is creating what it calls “the world’s first collaborative online orchestra,” the YouTube Symphony Orchestra.

It’s open to professionals and amateurs from all over the world, no matter what your instrument is. The audition is done by submitting, yes you guessed it, a YouTube video performance. Not of any work though, but of a new piece written for the occasion by the Chinese composer Tan Dun, who wrote the score for the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

According to the website, help is provided to learn the music, rehearse with the conductor and upload your part for a collaborative video. There will then be a popular vote to choose the best players for a performance at Carnegie Hall in New York in April.

Get practising!

“London as a modern-day Babylon”

2008-11-27T21:29:00.004+01:00

Commenting on a comment piece - and then in turn inviting your comments - is perhaps taking things too far, but Madeleine Bunting’s piece on the Babylon myth in Wednesday’s Guardian caught my attention on several levels.

She tells us that the Babylon myths came about on the one hand from the Old Testament, which led to western cultures’ pessimistic associations with the idea, and on the other hand from Greek historians, who lauded the Babylonians’ engineering achievements. I like this opposition of ideas.

Similarly, she highlights a contrast between the Tower of Babel in the Bible representing a multiplicity of languages as a curse and the Qur’an where a verse says God gave many languages in order for human beings to enrich, not confuse, their understanding of each other.

And the thread running through the commentary is the British Museum’s exhibition, Babylon: Myth and Reality (runs until March 15, 2009) and the political debate about London as a modern-day Babylon, “a place of violence and social fragmentation.”

History, languages, ideas, cultures – and all captured in less than 1,000 words. Here’s the link to the article .

(Credit for image: Cornelisz Anthonisz. (Theunissen), The collapse of the Tower of Babel, 1547, Etching © SMB, Kupferstichkabinett, Photo: Volker-H. Schneider)

Flemish film beats James Bond

2008-11-25T11:30:00.002+01:00

Loft is a new Flemish thriller that is having rather a lot of success here in Belgium, even getting larger audiences in Flanders than the latest James Bond film Quantum of Solace.

It’s the cinema equivalent of an intelligent page-turner, and I loved it. You’re completely absorbed by the film, it’s enjoyable, there’s great dialogue, the characters are interesting and you’re constantly trying to figure what makes them tick.

The film centres around five male friends, all married, who rent a loft where they can entertain their lovers in private. All’s well in their little world until one morning a dead woman is found in their loft.

It's essentially a “whodunnit” and as the action twists and turns we get more insight into the five men’s characters and discover how their lives are intertwined, for better or for worse.

The music, composed by Germany’s Wolfram de Marco, is performed by the London Metropolitan Orchestra and is suitably dark and atmospheric. The script was written by Bart de Pauw and the film directed by Erik Van Looy.

As far as I’m aware it has only been released in Flanders and Brussels so far. Hopefully it will be distributed further afield in the not too distant future. In the meantime there are trailers on the official website.

String quartets: putting a smile on my face

2008-11-21T11:06:00.003+01:00

The Jerusalem string quartet and the Daedalus string quartet have both passed through Brussels in the last couple of weeks. Their performances contrasted sharply and got me thinking a little as to why.

The programme itself naturally plays a role and the better I know a work, the more I can enjoy it. However, given there were three works played at each concert and in each case I only really knew one of them – Smetana’s quartet no. 1 played by the Jerusalem quartet and Sibelius’s "Voces intimae" by the Daedalus quartet – then that doesn’t explain my different reactions.

Nor can it be put down to the venue or acoustic as both performances were at the Brussels conservatory. Nor the individual players’ abilities as at their level it isn’t a matter of notes or technique.

The difference was that the Jerusalem quartet had something special, that little extra, which prompted physical responses in me the listener. Their music made me smile, almost laugh, as they surprised me with how they played a passage, gave me goose bumps as they created a special atmosphere and made me close my eyes to listen to a quiet conversation between the four string voices.

The Brahms clarinet quintet was also a delight and was as if four string-playing brothers had invited a close clarinettist cousin to join them on stage: they had different personalities and yet together most definitely formed a rich whole.

In contrast, I just didn’t discover the Daedalus quartet’s personality. I didn’t get the sense that it was one family with a homogenous sound and quality. Mind you, at one point in their programme, that was clearly not their aim. In the second movement - entitled “Arguments” - of Ives’s quartet no. 2, the second violin made his point by standing up and stamping his foot. The audience simply looked bewildered.

Interestingly, the Daedalus quartet switched first and second violinists between the works. Somehow that just enhanced the feeling that the players hadn’t yet defined their roles in the quartet.

It’s always enjoyable to listen to live performances, but if I get a little extra, a little magic, then it quite literally puts a smile on my face.

Exploring Mozart with friends

2008-11-17T12:28:00.004+01:00

I spent this weekend playing chamber music with friends as part of “Tutti Cambristi 2008” – what a wonderful experience. I played the violin all weekend, learnt lots and had a lot of fun with people whose company I enjoy. Perfect!

The weekend was organised by the chamber music association I Cambristi and held at the Brussels conservatory. It's basically an opportunity for chamber groups, be they trios, nonets or anything in between, to study a work with a coach and then have the opportunity to perform it.

We formed a string quintet (2 violins, 2 violas and cello) and chose to play Mozart’s string quintet in G minor K516. Our coach was fantastic, suggesting ways to achieve a different sound, commenting on the overall balance between the instruments and generally acting as an inspiring outside observer/listener.

Unfortunately other commitments mean we won’t be able to perform a movement at next Sunday’s mini-concert. Whether we perform the quintet at one of the I Cambristi’s regular soirées remains to be seen. If you're interested in finding out more about I Cambristi, do visit the website and/or come along to the Christmas musical get-together on December 11.

For those who want to hear what the Mozart quintet sounds like, here's the Salomon Quartet (plus extra viola of course) playing the first movement:

Binoche turns Brussels opera into cinema

2008-11-12T16:06:00.004+01:00

La Monnaie opera house turned itself into a cinema for the first time on Monday evening, with a showing of Mauvais Sang, a film from 1986 starring Juliette Binoche. Before the film started, the French actress came on stage to give a half-hour interview about her work and life.

The main reason for her being in Brussels this week is a dance performance that she’s giving with Akram Khan, In-I. I didn’t know that Binoche was also a dancer. Apparently she isn’t, or at least wasn’t until last year. “You have to discover new things, push yourself,” Binoche told the audience. And that was one of the reasons why she accepted the opportunity to work with Khan.

It’s not only Binoche the dancer who is in the Brussels spotlight. The cinematheque is holding a retrospective of her films this month. Given that retrospectives are more often for the dead or those whose heyday is over, Binoche assured the audience that her acting career wasn’t over.

She did acknowledge, however, that on several occasions she had considered giving up acting and once went to her teacher to ask for a lesson in how to teach acting, thinking that could be an alternative career. She was met with the words “No way! Not yet.”

“Sometimes the desire to do something isn’t there any more. But you just have to be patient. It comes back,” Binoche said.

As for the film Mauvais Sang. I unfortunately felt like I was in a film studies class at university thinking I’m sure I’m supposed to find this intellectual and ground-breaking, but I don’t. Highlights: the aerial shots of three of the characters parachuting down to ground; the lines delivered by a sinister American female character who (intentionally) spoke French with an amusing Anglophone accent. Lowlights: the clever camera shots substituting for what it lacked in plot and character depth; too many occasions when I found myself simply thinking “what?”

Museums by night

2008-11-06T14:53:00.007+01:00

Lots of Brussels museums are taking part in Nocturnes 08 and staying open late on Thursday evenings until the end of the year.

There's a choice of well-known museums such as the Museum of Musical Instruments, lesser-known ones including the Toy Museum (children and adults are allowed to play!) and the Schaerbeek Museum of Beer, and places you’ve heard of but weren’t sure if they were open to the public e.g. the Royal Library of Belgium.

If you want to visit a popular one, reserve early. I just tried to join the guided tour at the René Magritte museum in Jette this evening only to be told it was already sold out.

Information and schedules are on: http://nocturnes.brusselsmuseums.be

Oceania-mania: skulls and statues

2008-11-03T16:35:00.003+01:00

Oceania is all the rage in Brussels at the moment. The Cinquantenaire museum (part of the Royal Museums of Art and History) has just opened its Mercator gallery, full of objects from Oceania - statues, jewellery, headdresses, weapons, tools, textiles, even skulls! And the ING Cultural Centre’s current exhibition is Oceania - Ritual Signs, Authority Symbols.

The centrepiece of the Mercator gallery is Pou Hakanononga, a 3-meter high stone statue from Easter Island. The statue was brought back on the Mercator, the ship that took the Franco-Belgian expedition of 1934-1935 to the island. A gift from the Chilean government to Belgium, it is one of only two complete Easter Island figures to be kept in Europe, according to the museum.

Other items to catch my attention were: 19th century Fijian textiles, known as tapa and made from tree bark; the tattooed faces of human heads that were “war trophies”; a ceremonial kava bowl from West Polynesia (kava is a plant whose root is used to make a drink known for relaxing muscles and inducing dreams); ivory and whalebone ear ornaments (ear-rings would not be the right term, given their size!) from the Marquesas Islands; and a headdress from the Austral Islands made of coconut fibres, tree bark, human hair, duck and albatross feathers (see photo).

One downside to the exhibition was the difficulty in finding where it started (signposts were few and far between...), but once there it was a fascinating journey through the islands of Polynesia and Micronesia. Oh and I learnt that the word tabu originates from Polynesian culture...

Life through Leibovitz's lens

2008-11-01T13:35:00.001+01:00

The documentary film “Annie Leibovitz: life through a lens” (showing at Flagey, Brussels, and coinciding with an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London) was 80 minutes of sheer enjoyment. Directed by her sister Barbara, the film captured her passion for photography, people and life.

The film bursts with energy: interviews with people Leibovitz has photographed, archive footage of her days at the Rolling Stone magazine, images of some of her most famous pictures.

We see the Queen being photographed at Buckingham Palace (yes, the shoot that caused the BBC to do some explaining after their editing made it look as if the queen had stormed out), Whoopi Goldberg telling us how the photo of her emerging from a bathtub full of milk had cats following her around for weeks and Yoko Ono talking about the picture that Leibovitz took of her and John Lennon just hours before the former Beatle was shot dead.

Leibovitz is seen from her own perspective as well as that of colleagues, family members, friends and people she has photographed. You get a real sense of what makes Leibovitz the photographer tick.

Welcome!

2008-10-31T17:51:00.001+01:00

Relatively new to the world of blogs, I hope this one will become a place to read about “all things cultural” that have grabbed my attention - concerts, films, dance performances, whatever crosses my path.

The aim of my blog is to attract readers, in my current home city of Brussels and abroad, with an interest in culture in the broadest sense of the word. Hopefully your curiosity will be piqued and you’ll discover something new, either directly or indirectly.

I love that feeling of learning about one thing, which prompts you to go off in search of another and then by chance you discover something else entirely.

Read, enjoy and explore!