DC's Diary
( Monthly report...)
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DC's Diary ( Monthly report...) |
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11 November 2007 |
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I will be playing in Athens again on 18th and 19th January
2008. This time Hugh Hopper will also be guesting with Chris Stassinopoulos
and the Explorers at the Rodeo Club. I look forward to it. I've been very impressed by a recording of a Greek fiddle tune called Dance Maleviziotis. The tune is in Db and the instrument has been detuned a semitone so that it sounds a bit like a viola speedy, gutsy playing. Remembrance day. As well as the obvious, it reminds me of Poppies from Memos from Purgatory. We took publicity photos in Kensal Rise cemetery (where my grandfather was buried) with us all wearing the flowers as button holes. |
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4 November 2007 |
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| Just listened to a live recording of King Crimson from Kassell
on April Fools day 1974. Amazingly confident band playing at their best.
I was really surprised at how exciting this was and how adventurous we
were at playing with the music. In places the attitude is really quite
cocky as we constantly try new ways of approaching the same tunes, phrases,
feels etc. There’s a little gem of a guitar/violin improv tucked
like an in-breath between Starless and Easy Money. Not a hint of a Lark’s
tongue anywhere in this set. The tape runs out on Fracture – a brilliant set from a great band with an abrupt ending. |
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3 July 2007 |
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| The 2nd part of the David Cross band gig in Rome will be on TV this week! | ||
The set list is : http://www.myspace.com/indieromatv
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These are the dates and times (Italian time)
3rd july 23:55 In the UK the time will be one hour earlier. |
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17 June 2007 |
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The Union Chapel is a wonderful place to play.
The few concerts that I’ve seen there have always left me with something
special and I really felt there was a unique atmosphere as we were preparing
to perform on Friday. Yumi Hara Cawkwell is a great collaborator for me
to work with and she demonstrated incredible energy and concentration.
We did some recording (with Paul Waller) earlier in the week in which
we created three pieces for violin, voice, keyboard and found sounds and
so I was confident that something interesting was on the cards. The set list was: Organ Violin Duo 1 Voice solo Cicadas Violin solo Organ Violin Duo 2 There were some technical challenges to playing with the organ (a first for me). I could see a video relay of Yumi projected on to a screen to my right – but a lot of the time I was facing away (and I also tend to play with my eyes closed some of the time) so I had to listen very carefully and be more cautious about tempi and pace of notes (also because of the natural reverb in the Chapel). ‘Cicadas’ was based on a recording of Japanese cicadas with voice and violin improvising over the top. Yumi is an inspiring musician with great creativity and empathy and she made it possible to achieve some really exciting moments in a wide-ranging set. The audience were very friendly and seemed to up for anything that we ventured. I was struck by the polarities of the occasion; ancient/modern, male/female, east/west. I’ll be interested to see if the music reflects these when I get a chance to listen to the recording…
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The church organ brought back some sense of my childhood: listening to my father playing the organ in a variety of settings, learning from him how to use the foot pedals and the organ stops. My son was born in the year he died and I have always felt that he was close to me. We meet up in dreams from time to time and always seem to have something new to chat about. Happy ‘Father’s day’ to all of you (fathers or otherwise)!
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29 April 2007 |
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I don’t know why I wore a white wig at the end of the gig in Camden a year ago, but I’m thankful to my friend, Patrick, who dropped his photos into my office at London Met this week for reminding me….. I’ll be playing at the Union Chapel in Islington on Friday 15th June in a collaboration with Yumi Hara Cawkwell. Yumi is a composer, performer and DJ (http://www.myspace.com/yumiharacawkwell). She’ll be playing the organ – an instrument that was a powerful musical voice throughout my childhood.
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1 March 2007 |
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Just been listening to ‘Rokus Tonalis’ an album by Russian musician Jim Aviva. He describes it as ‘Progressive rock with the elements of avantgard, art, symphonic’ and ‘Making the synthesis of my own musical vision and Paul Hindemith’. This is an interesting idea. The music is strongest when it is reflective and when it is uncompromisingly modernist. Aviva has taken ‘progressive rock’ to be a style (rather than an attitude) and used it’s elements with great authenticity. Unfortunately this makes many of the rock sections sound dated and clichéd.
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25 February 2007 |
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| I was very saddened and shocked to hear that Ian Wallace
died on Thursday. I would like to offer my sympathy to his family and
friends. He was part of the team before my period with KC so he helped
form the creature whose body we assumed in 1972.
I remember very clearly my own shock and fear (for myself and my family) when I was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer in 2001. Luckily, my tumour was caught early and the cancer had not spread. Even so, I know that waiting through the12 hour operation was Chiemi’s longest day. I can imagine the pain that those close to Ian must be feeling and I am so sorry that his life has been cut short.
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23 February 2007 |
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| Sometimes, when you meet up with a friend you haven't seen in a long while, you can just pick up the threads of a previous conversation straight away and it feels like no time has passed at all. That's how I felt, playing at the Birra Stationne in Rome last night, except that it was a whole club full of men and women who were the friends. | ||
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| Passion and humour are the constant companions of this incarnation of the DC band and it thrills me to share the stage with them; when that is added to an astonishingly generous, spontaneous commitment by an audience then the result is utterly magical. To everyone who had a hand in making it work - Grazias! Review |
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