I attended the premiere of Gabriela's The Black Spider in Zurich tonight.

I composed the music and I must say I prefer performing live to merely being a composer. There is something odd about just having the music on a disc and hearing it from a few speakers scattered around a dark hall.

I really don't know how it went. I think it sounded and looked good, but I have been so involved with it lately that I don't have the objectivity to say either way.

In any case I will be posting a video on YouTube in the next few days.

"Myth it seems came first and the priests of the ancients projected these myths out to the sky and ordered the sky in accordance with stories to which the myths themselves related. Once you perceive that in fact this was the case, it becomes apparent that all the religions of antiquity as well as of the present day have this astronomical structure to them. The Cosmos is a grand symbol of the things that the religious stories actually represent, and actually try to tell us. Therefore, we can say that the Sabaean truths are veiled in the myriad physical symbols around us."

Right now I'm rewarding myself for the Volta tour by enjoying Robert Zoller's course in Medieval Astrology, from which the above quotation is to be found. At the same time I'm listening to the glorious countertenor, Andreas Scholl.

I love it!

I'm really happy about yesterday's concert. For me personally it was the right closure, a much happier end to the Volta tour than a mere show like any other on a festival in a foreign country.

Björk's father wrote some lovely words about it, for those of you who speak Icelandic, go to his site.

Here is tonight's setlist:

1. Overture - Brass
2. Pneumonia - Björk & Brass
3. Anchor song - Björk & Brass
4. Cover me - Björk & Me
5. My juvenile - Björk & Me
6. Immature - Björk, Brass & Me
7. Dull flame - Björk, Brass & Me
8. Vökuró - Björk, Choir & Me
9. Sonnets/Unrealities - Björk & Choir
10. Mouth's Cradle - Björk, Choir & Mark Bell
11. Oceania - Björk, Brass, Choir & Me
12. Who Is It - Björk, Choir, Mark Bell & Me
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13. It's Oh So Quiet - Björk, Brass & Me

What an extraordinary song is Mouth's Cradle by Björk.

Also, I heard Ghostigital's latest album this morning. I listened to it while reading a newspaper. It was entirely appropriate, because this time they play ambient music.

It is excellent.

When I heard Ghostigital first I thought they were cannibals in a tuxedo.

On the present album they show a different face. Now they are humble philosophers travelling first class on a supersonic jet, meditating away.

Decent ambient music is not easy to create. Usually one just hears a simple phrase being repeated again and again ad nauseam, with futile attempts to hide the monotony.

The trip Ghostigital takes you on is far more interesting. Granted, not much happens in the music (at least not in the classical sense), the tonal material doesn't really DEVELOP.  Instead, the music paints a kind of a 3D sculpture, and its constant movement makes it come alive. The perspective is always changing and what does repeat itself  makes a delightful hearing because the phrases and motives are so enchanting.

The next time I take a really long bath with candles and incense, preferably in a large bathtub, I will have Ghostigital soap my back!

It is funny how things go.

In the party after Björk's concert in Almeria, she told me that she wanted to give a tiny little concert in Hallgrímskirkja in Reykjavík (Iceland's largest church), which has a marvellous Klais organ. She wanted to perform a few songs with the brass and she thought it would be a good idea to perform Cover Me as well. The show would be filmed and some of it included in the upcoming DVD.

It was not to be. That is, not in Hallgrímskirkja. Björk moved the concert to Langholtskirkja, a much smaller venue but with a very nice Baroque organ.

Although the venue is smaller, everything else has expanded. It seems that some ten or twelve songs are on the setlist and an entire choir (Schola Cantorum) will take a very active part in the concert.

We will even have Mr. Mark Bell there.

And a harpsichord!

Dare I hope that My Juvenile will finally see its first public performance?

It turned out that the Björk / Volta tour wasn't quite finished. The very end is next Tuesday in Langholtskirkja in Reykjavík. A much smaller venture than usual, but it will be filmed! And we will perform some songs that we as a group have never done before.

Ha!

This is an excerpt - an extreme one! - from a composition by me, that will be premiered in Zurich on September 13. It is a part of a play by Gabriela Friðriksdóttir, with the divine Erna Ómarsdóttir playing one of the leading parts. The play is based on The Black Spider by Jeremias Gotthelf.
  

I posted this on YouTube yesterday. It is from our concert in Osaka.