I made absolutely no secret of how crushed I was, Internets, when I missed Le Vent du Nord’s Oregon show this past November. And I was quite disappointed as well when the symphony show in Vancouver was cancelled.
But tonight, I am thrilled to report that the show at Hermann’s Jazz Club in Victoria, BC, completely and utterly made up for both of these things. It was short but tight, and a truly intimate little show. And OMG YOU GUYS, Dara and I managed to snag a table right smack in front of the stage!
Clickie for the in-depth show report goodness!
Continue reading “Le Vent du Nord at Hermann's Jazz Club, Victoria BC, 4/6/2013”
Le Vent du Nord Plan B is GO
Because I am damn well going to see some Le Vent du Nord SOMEWHERE this coming weekend, I have now enacted Plan B: going to the Victoria show on Saturday night!
Advantages to this plan:
- Dara is coming with me so I’ll have oodles more fun anyway
- Dara and I have never been to Victoria and we’ve kept meaning to go, so this is an excellent excuse
- We can go up on the ferry and come home on Kenmore Air–not quite practically to our front door, sadly, but Lake Union is still a lot closer to Kenmore than SeaTac so it’s all good
- Seeing Le Vent at a jazz club as opposed to a symphony venue means WOO audience participation baby!
- And hopefully also PICTURES, because there will still be the obligatory show report!
So let’s see if THIS plan gets to go through. Susan the Awesome is sending me her tickets, of which there are four–so I’ll have two spares. Hopefully I can find them a home!
No Le Vent du Nord symphony show after all :(
Y’know, there’s NEVER a good time to find out that your current favorite band has just had the show you were aiming for cancelled out from under them. But “while you are at a science fiction convention trying to a) promote your work and b) assist with the music programming and c) HAVE FUN” is particularly suboptimal.
Because yeah, I’ve found out today that the Le Vent du Nord symphony show has been cancelled. :( This is not quite as devastating to me as having missed the show in Oregon–at least in this case, “the entire show is not happening”, as opposed to “the show is happening but I’m MISSING IT because my car conked out”. But.
I’ve had to cancel my Amtrak train reservations now, because that was after all the entire point of the trip. I’m now scrambling to see if I can arrange plan B: attending the show they’re having in Victoria on 4/6 instead.
Susan the Awesome will not be able to come out from Ontario at all, on the grounds that she HAD been going to attend both shows, but if the cornerstone show has been cancelled, she can no longer justify the expense especially given that the band will be having a show much closer to her a week later. But I’m working with her to see if I can take her tickets off her hands.
I’m hoping to use one and perhaps two of them if Dara wants to join me for a weekend trip to Victoria. Which would mean that Susan would have two tickets left. So if anybody in the Pacific Northwest reading this thinks they might like those other two tickets, talk to me ASAP to make arrangements. I’d REALLY like to see the tickets get into the hands of fellow fans of Le Vent du Nord!
But DAMMIT. I was really hoping for symphonic goodness. Mope.
Imminent Anna sightings!
For Seattle-area locals, hey, I’m going to be at Norwescon! Not in a professional writer-type capacity, but I WILL be there, and I’ll be easily found providing assistance to Dara during the music concerts! And just in case anybody wants one, I will also be bringing my few remaining print copies of Faerie Blood. And I’ll have some special CDs as well with ebook copies on ’em, offered at a special price for con attendees! Look for me if you want either of these things, or both!
And NEXT week, of course, I will be happily boinging up to Vancouver to see Le Vent du Nord perform with the Vancouver Metropolitan Orchestra! This time, I am taking the TRAIN. Because I am NOT trusting our car to be driven any farther than the distance necessary to get to and from work. And if the train should encounter any difficulties, you may rest assured that I am FULLY PREPARED to fight my way through any zombie apocalypses that may overwhelm the tracks. Because nothing, I repeat, NOTHING is going to stand between me and seeing a show which is going to look and sound a LOT like this:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-aoShC8EW4&w=420&h=315]
You may also rest assured, O Internets, that I am sternly reminding myself that no, it is NOT socially acceptable for me to shove the VMO’s piccolo player into a closet so I can steal their seat. No matter HOW much I want to see whatever sheet music they’ll be using for the evening! Likewise I will be sternly reminding myself that as this is a symphony venue, it will NOT be really acceptable to jump out of my seat and start dancing or singing the response lines at the top of my lungs, no matter HOW great the urge.
(Though I’m tellin’ ya, Internets, with inspiration like this, this is going to be a hard, hard test of my fangirly willpower!)
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YwzFzrqnQY&w=560&h=315]
And at this show I’ll be seeing Susan, who, as I have expressed on previous posts, IS made entirely of awesomeness. And I’ll be staying with Geri, who is ALSO made of awesomeness. And I’ll be seeing fellow GBS fangirls Kate and Angela, with whom I have every hope of carrying out shenanigans the day after the show. Possibly also hijinx, and maybe even mischief!
Any of the rest of you who are also in Vancouver, if you want to meet up, let me know! I’ll be in Vancouver from the afternoon of April 4th through the evening of the 6th. I still have time free on Saturday for possible brunch or lunch!
Hey look, I made a MUSIC!
Internets, I cannot tell you how much I needed to forget dealing with computers for a couple of hours, and go play me some music with the local Quebec session crowd. We had a pretty tiny group tonight, and things were relaxed and groovy–all the better for a newbie player like myself to try to figure out how to play along with unfamiliar tunes, while not making too much of a nuisance of herself in the corner.
This time, however, I had the distinct pleasure of being able to ask for specific tunes. Namely, the ones Alexandre of Genticorum had taught me! (6/8 d’Andre Alain, and Gigue du Père Mathias!) I wasn’t able to play through them perfectly at speed, but I got within range of it–and it’s worth noting that a couple of passes through where I had to drop out was because I had to get my breath back, not because I’d forgotten what I was doing. Such is the peril of being the only flute player in a room full of fiddlers and accordion players!
I also asked about playing Ciel d’Automne, a.k.a. Autumn Sky, which has the distinction of being the first Quebec tune I fell in love with ever. This is because it’s the loveliest instrumental on the La Bottine Souriante album Rock and Reel (as it was called when it was released in the States), and to this day, stands out for me as one of my favorite slower tunes. I was particularly happy recently to learn that OH HEY it was written by André Brunet–so no wonder I like it–and so naturally I was determined to learn it. Bonus points to me for figuring out that I could practically whistle the whole thing from memory, which helped a lot in figuring out how to play it.
And I’m here to tell you, when you’re a session newbie facing a room full of musicians WAY more familiar with the material than you are, and the phrase “you’ll have to teach it to us” gets winged at you, that’s SCARY. Maybe only slightly less scary than “HEY ANNA! Get up and play this for us, will you?” However, that scary was leavened with a generous dose of AWESOME. Particularly when I was able to point people at thesession.org’s writeup of the tune!
Also notable: recognizing Réjean Brunet’s “Maison de Glacé” and being able to jump in on it, even though I had title server failure and only confirmed later that OH RIGHT I actually knew that tune.
(Yes, folks, I’m apparently slurping up All The Slow Tunes By the Brunets. There are worse ways to be spending my musical time. ;D )
So that was three whole tunes I was able to more or less play along with. And there was a fourth tune I recognized by ear once they hit the B part; I’d heard the session group play that one before. I could even sorta kinda pick up on the B part, though the A part was harder for me to parse. I asked about that one and was informed it was called Hommage à Edmond Parizeau. Not long after that, another fun-sounding one called Reel Ti-Mé was played–though I have to stop myself from thinking of that one as Reel Timmain. Which is what I get for being an Elfquest fan!
And now I have two more identified tunes to add to the list of Things Played in Local Session. I have homework to do!
Many many thanks to the Legers for giving me a ride home, and to our hostess Pascale, who gave me guidance on how to get to her place by bus (even though I had to leave work late and THEN had bus fail that wound up getting me there half an hour late)! A lovely little evening of music all around!
A milestone achievement
Out of general curiosity I looked at the total number of tracks in my iTunes library tonight so that I could do some quick numbers.
I have a total of 8,473 individual tracks in my library. In most cases these are in fact songs, although some of the things I have in MP3 form are actually audio drama. This number does not however include audiobooks or PDFs that are also in my iTunes library.
Of this number, a total of 974 tracks are by Quebecois performers. This means, O Internets, that roughly 11% of my iTunes collection is now Francophone! To put this in perspective for you, only 677 of my iTunes tracks are by Elvis!
Quebecois music now outnumbers Elvis Presley in my music collection.
Elvis. Aron. Presley. Y’know, that guy whose music I grew up listening to and back to whom I can trace pretty much every single thing that makes me swoon about music EVER.
Some amusing sub-stats–a breakdown of track counts by my top groups:
- La Bottine Souriante: 167 items
- Le Vent du Nord: 92 items
- La Volée d’Castors: 91 items
- Les Charbonniers de l’Enfer: 81 items
- Genticorum: 45 items
- Galant, Tu Perds Ton Temps: 43 items
- De Temps Antan: 25 items
(Those last few counts are going to get boosted soon, too! Galant, Tu Perds Ton Temps AND De Temps Antan are working on new albums. I hear rumors Genticorum has one on the way, too!)
I can only now conclude that Quebec must have passed a provincial resolution of some sort, perhaps La Loi du Colonisation des Playlists d’Anna Avec La Musique Traditionnelle. Either that or it’s a genre-wide conspiracy for every trad musician within a hundred-klick radius of Montreal to send me the following musical message:
“Bonjour, Anna! Nous entendrons que t’aime la musique traditionnelle. Nous avons des bouzoukis. Et des violons. Et la très, très belle podorythmie! Et avons-nous mentionné des bouzoukis? Nous avons des CDs pour toi. Tu peux apprendre un peu français, oui? Tu apprends le français, nous vendrons des CDs! Victoire pour tout le monde!”
I have to admit, they’re making one hell of a pitch. ;D Well done, entire province of Quebec. Well done, VRAIMENT.
Quebecois tunes now in my sights
One of the big intimidating things for me as a newbie to Quebec tunes is that there are so! goddamn! many! of them–a problem equally applicable to Irish/Celtic tunes in general, but I’m growing to appreciate the sheer number of tunes available to an interested student!
And thanks to being pointed recently at this beautiful repository of tunes goodness and a few other fine links as well, I’ve now happily ID’d an initial lineup of tunes I can focus on. These are ones that I have confirmed recordings for, mostly–a LOT of La Bottine Souriante, but also some Genticorum, some De Temps Antan, and even Le Vent du Nord!
These tunes are:
- Gigue a Trois–this is a Le Vent du Nord tune, by M. Demers! \0/
- Gigue André Alain–a.k.a. 6/8 de André Alain, this is the first of the two that Alexandre of Genticorum taught me! Including it here for completeness
- Gigue du Diamante Bleu–Alexandre mentioned this one when he was trying to remember what Gigue du Père Mathias was called. So clearly I must investigate whether it’s similar!
- Gigue du Père Mathias–And this is the other one that Alexandre taught me! This one’s fun! Also including for completeness since I’ve played with this one already.
- Hommage à Philippe Bruneau–La Bottine recorded this one! But I’ve found two different PDFs of this, and they appear to be two different tunes. I need to determine which one is actually the one that La Bottine recorded.
- Jigue/Gigue de Salon–on the grounds that Pascale Gemme of Genticorum wrote it! Don’t have a recording, I think, unless it’s uncredited in one of the instrumental sets on the Genticorum albums.
- Le brandy–La Bottine recorded this one, and if the mighty La Bottine recorded it, it requires my undivided attention.
- Le Chat Noir–This has Andre Brunet and Éric Beaudry’s names on it on the Montreal Session site, to wit, category Highly Relevant to My Interests!
- Le pommeau 1–Alexandre wrote this one! Genticorum recorded it on La Bibournoise.
- Le reel des menteries–Written by Normand Miron, who I know of course from the Charbonniers. I have a couple different recordings which should have this tune in them.
- Les Patins de Pauline–By Andre Marchand, recorded by La Bottine Souriante recorded on Chic & Swell. And, well, you don’t get more venerable than M. Marchand, I think…
- Nuit sauvage–… unless perhaps you are Michel Bordeleau! Again, recorded by La Bottine!
- Reel au relenti–By the aforementioned M. Brunet! No recording, but for M. Brunet, I make an exception.
- Reel de Caribou–We’ve played this in session! Though I need to determine which of the conflicting PDFs I have is more like what we’ve played.
- Reel de la tuque bleue–Recorded by Les Frères Labri.
- Reel de Siamois–Again, Andre Marchand! Recording on Le Bruit Court dans la ville.
- Reel des vieux garçons–Must check this against the same recording as Reel de Siamois; same as first tune on that recording?
- Sheepskin and Beeswax–BEST LA BOTTINE EVER! \0/ This gets played in our session crowd, and it was played when Genticorum was here last year, and oh gods this one is awesome. Recorded on La Mistrine as well as the opening “Ouverture” track on La Bottine’s live album En spectacle.
- The Woodchopper’s Reel–I think this is in our session repertoire!
- Valse Bernadette–Another La Bottine, on Tout comme au jour de l’an.
- Valse d’hiver–Yet another La Bottine, on La traversée de l’Atlantique.
- Violon guérisseur–Genticorum! \0/ This is on the most excellent Nagez Rameurs.
- Reel du Pendu–The last of the La Bottines I’m targeting! Again, conflicting PDFs, must match up against my recordings!
This, I think, should keep me happily occupied for months. SO EXCITING! And hopefully also stomp-inducing, because oh my yes I’m going to see if I can get footwork going on these things while I’m playing!
Some shinies from Memoire et Racines!
Collecting these all in one place so I can refer back to them later!
Y’all remember how I was gushing about getting to go to Memoire et Racines last summer, right? Well, I’ve had the delight of finding several videos from the show–a couple from a performance that Dara and I actually saw, and a few more of a performance we didn’t.
Videos behind the fold!
Continue reading “Some shinies from Memoire et Racines!”
Demandez, et vous irez recevrez!
As y’all know, O Internets, I am a big raving fangirl for Quebecois trad music. I am also NOT a native French speaker. And one of the points of vexation of being a fangirl for a genre of music sung in a language I do not properly speak (YET!) is that I desperately, desperately want to sing along with these eminently catchy ditties. Quebec trad is hugely singable–that’s one of the big things I love about it–and participatory as well. The vast majority of the songs are set up in a call-and-response structure, so you can’t help but sing along with them. At least, if you’re me!
But I can’t in fact properly sing along with a lot of the songs yet, because I can’t make head or tail of song lyrics just by listening, not yet. So it helps immensely for me to see written-out lyrics for songs I’m interested in. If I see the words, my brain is better able to understand them as words while I’m listening to the songs. I’ve set lyrics on a lot of the songs in my collection in iTunes, just so that when I listen to them on my phone during my commute, I can look at the lyrics on the screen while I’m listening.
Which means of course that I have to have the lyrics at hand to begin with.
Now, Le Vent du Nord is very, very good about posting not only French lyrics for their songs on their their Bandcamp site (go! GO LISTEN! RIGHT NOW!), but English translations as well. Actual understanding of French, I find, is optional when enjoying Quebec trad–but because I am in fact me, my language geekery is engaged. I can’t properly appreciate this music if I don’t understand the words. Plus I just love languages; I mean, I’m a writer. Words are what I do.
But not all of the bands I’m following have lyrics so readily available. In which case I need to start consulting liner notes of the albums I have physical copies for–such as all of the albums by Genticorum, about whom I have enthused before, and who are arguably now my second favorite Quebec band. <3 Last night I was transcribing lyrics of a few of their songs out of the liner notes for their album Le galarneau, only to discover that aw, crapweasels, a couple of the lines in “Les parties de Grégoire” were not actually included in the notes!
AUGH, I said. Now, with all this listening I’ve been doing to Quebec music, my ear is improving. But I’m still not to the point yet of being able to pick out more than a word or two at a time in unfamiliar lyrics. I recognized “boire” at the end of one line in question, but damned if I could make out the rest, aside from being half-sure that the first word in that line was either “tant” or “quand”.
Google Fu failed me. So it was time to invoke drastic measures: asking the band!
However, this was very easy as I follow all three of the Genticorum boys on Facebook, and one of them even supported my Faerie Blood Kickstarter, and so he very quickly filled me on the line I was missing: “T’en iras-tu sans boire?” Which means, “Will you leave without drinking?”
Language geekery engaged as I realized that “t’en” sounded a lot like “tant” to my ear–and moreover, it took me a few minutes to realize that this sentence had an unfamiliar verb construction in it! “Iras”, I realized, was the future tense, second person informal for “aller”. But there’s that sneaky “t’en” in there too. So I looked up “en aller” on french.about.com and was immediately rewarded with this super-helpful page describing the five verbs in French that mean “to leave”.
Four of these were already familiar to me, since I’d gotten them as vocabulary words in SuperMemo. But I’d been having trouble distinguishing between them, in no small part because SuperMemo gives all its spoken definitions in French, and I hadn’t managed to distinguish the various examples by ear yet. But I hadn’t gotten “s’en aller”! So this page was a huge boon to helping these verbs all suddenly make sense to me.
In conclusion: Quebecois trad music, fun and linguistically educational!
Also, go buy Genticorum’s latest record. Because they’re all excellent musicians and awesome people. Tell them I sent you!
AND OH HEY! For bonus giggles, this YouTube video over here shows a different band performing the same song. This has four additional verses at the beginning that Genticorum’s recorded version lacks, but you can definitely hear the “t’en iras-tu sans boire?” line in there!
Because it is my birthday and EVERYTHING is awesome
When you do not have the words to properly express your relief at awesome medical news, screw words, go straight to KITCHEN PARTY IN YOUR HEAD! This is exactly how the inside of my head sounds like right now, people–my dream concert of ALL the awesome Quebecois and Newfoundland boys!
De Temps Antan!
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44BlsiQKwnw?list=PL9B03D939A9D3AE1B&w=560&h=315]
And more behind the fold!
Continue reading “Because it is my birthday and EVERYTHING is awesome”