It was sunlight of a tired day, still pushing through the old windows. It was words, and a cello. It was a bird on the roof, suddenly emerging through spoken letters and taking flight in the room. It was poetry and incredible voice artistry, the most unusual sounds from a cello, and a quirky violin.
Live today. Tomorrow you can’t anymore.
(Halosenniemi, Tuusula, Finland; July 2015)
Red velvet, a huge crystal chandelier, and four kilograms of gold make worthy premises for tonight’s performance. How lovely it would be to sit up there on the first balcony when the first tunes for the Barber of Seville shoot into the air. But alas, it was not to be this time.
Upstairs was a gorgeous red room with high windows that was once used as the rehearsal room for the ballet. This time its walls heard the most soulful arias accompanied by a single piano. And this was no rehearsal but a lovely surprise. How lucky we were.
(Latvian National Opera, Riga, Latvia; January 2015)
When the September sun lay low over the wheat fields we drove into town for a moment of music. As the last light wandered across the window, the church filled with crisp snow falling, bears and wolves wandering in deep pine forests, Nordic mythical beings dancing, and always, always an ominous backdrop layered under a wistful allure.
Many composers painted feelings. Jean Sibelius covered the canvas with nature landscapes. Sitting in the church pew I wondered whether Sibelius was a painter or a composer. Perhaps he saw tones where painters saw colors. Perhaps he was the most skilled painter, able to do what canvas painters never could: a bear illustrated by sound will ultimately conjure an image of a live, moving bear in our minds.
While dusk overtook the sunset, the double basses unleashed the bear’s heavy walk in the woods, followed by the celloes that sketched a fox trotting over the grass. And then the creatures were gone, overtaken by the wind in the pine trees, and my contemplations of the sinister undertow and what the inner world of Sibelius must have contained.
(Loviisa, Finland; September 2014)
She only recently discovered them (“I’m slow to catch on” she admitted), and this experience junkie is always up for a good show and adventure. And so we chased 30 Seconds to Mars across the pond to Tallinn, Estonia. “Are you ready for a sing-along?” my sister asked. Yes, I was ready for some chanting of radio hits, but not this kind of sing-along. With mike or without mike. With band or with just a guitar. With fans on the stage and crazy giant balloon party in the audience.
Tonight was not a concert from the band to the fans and audience. It was a concert with the band and fans and audience and an inspired, happy frenzy among Estonians, Finns, Russians, Latvians, Lithuanians, and a few other united nations gathered in Saku Suurhall.
The strangest thing happens when dark, moody lyrics are transformed by the spirit of a few thousand souls into a glowing ball of elated energy. It is a source of primeval core strength we rarely tap into in our sophisticated times. And colorful balloons are never wrong.
(Saku Suurhall, Tallinn, Estonia; July 2014. Tour image courtesy of http://www.thirtysecondstomars.com)
It is the things we did not do that we regret the most. The words not said. The moments not stolen. The experiences we let pass. Oh, how I regret not experiencing the La Scala theater in spring a year ago. I vowed to go the next time I was in Milan, oh, probably 5 years from now. There it was, a missed opportunity to live today.
But life gives second chances. The essence of karma is to correct an erroneous action. Good or bad, makes no difference. The karma that kicked me this June was the chance to make up for lost time with La Scala.
There was gold, dazzle, and fluttering ladies in fluttering evening gowns. And the most unusual program: the Young man and Death, a drama in a dance showing us how death fools the loving even after we leave life. And there was Petit’s Pink Floyd Ballet, famous in the 70s and still fresh today. I accepted the second chance and discovered electric guitar solos mix wonderfully with geometrically coreographed ballet and laser lights, blended with crystals, velvet, and champagne.
Even the tiniest regrets, those small like grains of sand, can pile up to fill a beachful. Karma is our gentle friend if we let it be. No regrets, not even in Milan.
(Milan, Italy; June 2014)
One night a crowd gathered in a church made of peaches and cream. Shuffling through the doorway they sat down in silence, absorbing the rainbow of colors reflecting from the usually oh-so-dead-bleak statuettes. Suddenly there were four musicians on stage and lovely Philip Glass for strings, floating off the stage like swirly strips of silk. Then the colors changed to red and there was a beautiful creature in a pink evening gown and huge glittery silver jewelry, telling animated stories of Schönberg’s cabarets, followed up by the songs he wrote. Adults smiled. Children laughed. And we did not understand a word. Lithuanian is related to sanskrit, you see.
In the afterglow even a cup of woody, burnt acorn surrogate coffee tasted marvelous.
(Church of St. Catherine, Vilnius, Lithuania: April 2014)
We strolled down Bourbon street, lost in film noir scenery. Neon lights and shadows surrounded seedy bars, where night people searched for the spirit of life, or tried to forget the very same. Never-minding the shades of craze between the Dungeon and strip clubs, we slipped into the Preservation Hall to witness a bunch of age-grayed cool cats jam the night away.
And the desperation of living faded in the face of pure light and true joy of being alive. They say clichés are true. Oh! such a lovely cliché is jazz on Bourbon street!
(New Orleans, Louisiana, USA; December 2013)
One of the last days in July, when the night is thin, an a cappella quartet croons us goodbye as we push off, pick up our sweep oars, and row out onto the lake. We push through the blanket-soft air: creak-swish, creak-swish. Suddenly we hear the soft sound of a saxophone, playing a haunting tune like from David Lynch’s dreams. A man stands on a rock ledge a few inches above the water, channeling his heart through the brass. And there is no next nor memories inside the cloud of music softly blowing over the water, only now, for ever, for a minute.
(Our Festival, Tuusula, Finland; July 2013)
Why puff around in mighty silks and wigs when the age-old story of a woman who strayed rings a bigger bell of bittersweet when it plays out in a luxurious and provocative night club? Sometimes it is the message and not the word that matters, and so a courtisan today may be scantily clad in latex hotpants and heels, shaking her booty to Verdi’s timeless tune. And when Violetta is revealed to be withering away, the flash and neon glow is transformed into an ugly glare.
In the midst of the heartache and arias of the tormented I step outside into the soft summer night and soak in the heat of the sun-warmed stones. Gazing over the blue waters I vow never to forget that we are only as trapped as we feel. There is always a way out, although we never know exactly where it may lead us.
(Savonlinna Opera Festival, Savonlinna, Finland; July 2013)
This blue marble 