“Magic Lutes” in concert at TFF Rudolstadt 09

As you might now, I was at Germanys biggest folkmusic festival TFF Rudolstadt this summer as a part of the “Magic Lute” project. We were a whole bunch of musicians from around the world who had four days to put a 2 hour show together. We had a GREAT time and did two very successful concerts at the festival. (I blogged about the whole trip in swedish at Umea2014)

It seems the festival will release the whole concert as a live CD for purchase, so I can’t put all tunes up here but here are a few of them:

This is my favorite track from the concert. Everyone is playing, led by Géza Fábri (playing the hungarian lute kobza) and Tünde Ivanovics (vocals). I love the opening tune which almost sounds like an irish ballad (but it is very hungerian).

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Here’s one of my contributions, an original tune by Pettersson & Fredriksson called “Fjärilen”. It’s in the style of a traditional swedish dance, but it has something of a hippie-esque feeling to it. It starts of with Katsia Prakopchyk playing the melody on barock mandolin.
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“Of ice and fire” is a composition by Taiwanese pipa-player Zhong YuFeng (who I also played a great duet with during the concert). She claims that it’s in a traditional chinese war-music style, but to me it’s pure 70s hard rock riffing. It got pretty caotic and lenghty but oh so cool (and it gets better and better towards the end)! (I play the base-y stuff on the mandora)
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Tünde Ivanovics (SER/HUN), vocals
Géza Fábri (HUN), kobza
Zhong YuFeng (TWN), pi’pa, moon guitar
Naziha Azzouz (ALG), vocals
Adel Salameh (PAL), ’ud
Dimitris Varelopoulos (GRE), laouto
Katsia Prakopchyk (BLR), baroque mandoline
Daniel Fredriksson (SWE), mandora
Michael Metzler (DEU), percussion
Wolfgang Meiering (DEU) mandola, percussion

Hat hat in the church

Here’s a video of a performance from the Magic Lutes concert in the church in Rudolstadt, recorded from backstage. The tune is Michael Metzlers “Hat hat”. Also, a collage of the photos from the week!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMEbuXjPjyo

Från Collage

Holmöns Visfestival 2009

Summertime means lots of festivals! I had a splendid, even though a bit rainy, weekend on the beautiful island Holmön outside my hometown Umeå. We were there the whole family, lived at a hostel by an old lighthouse and hung at the song-festival (visfestivalen.nu). We heard some great bands: Lars Demian was awesome as always, and the young duo Kreti & Pleti was great with their brilliantly sarcastic tunes. Most of all I was happy to finally get to see Glesbygden live – we played a show with them once, but I never saw them from the other side of the stage. They are absolutely fantastic!

I took photos and videos:

Glesbygdn
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSK4Hn9wf7o
Lars Demian
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwkllslolNU
Kapten Kid (+my son trying to stay awake)
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEUX3vtgIkk
Kreti & Pleti
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j54E4f8q1KQ
(If you are the artist and don’t want me sharing these videos, let me know and I’ll remove them)

Rudolstadt on Youtube

Here’s a nice video collage from TFF Rudolstadt. I’m in there, in a short clip right at the very end (around 8.50) from the Magic Lutes show. It’s hard to get a grip on the music from those few seconds, but we seem to have fun! =)

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuUzb–r7_Y

Back on earth

Back from an amazing week in Germany at the TFF Rudolstadt world music festival. I got to know many extremely talented musicians and had three concerts – all very crowded and enjoyed by the audience. I’ll post different thoughts, images and videos about this successful project later on!