Monthly Archives: March 2025

NEW LIFE HOPE IN ART AND CULTURE

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Whenever there is crisis and chaos, art and culture are the something to hold on to.

Finding beauty amidst the average, the ordinary, finding strength in vulnerability simply

by laying down fundamentals that are known to all. Art and culture. Culture and art.

There a craftsmen and women who are just doing that on a daily basis, laying down

fundamentals that are know to all. Past, present, future, then and now.

THE NORDIC CONNECTION

Lately I have been fascinated by the strength and vulnerability of singer, composer, poet and sound explorer Sidsel Endresen.

Sidsel Endresen

Born in Norway, living in England for some time, then back to Norway. She’s such an amazing artist, she gives emotion a voice. With fellow musicians Jan Bang and Erik Honoré she makes these beautiful improvisations using skills so personal it”s hard to describe.They collaborate[d] with great artists like Are Henriksen, [the late master] Jon Hassell, David Sylvian. All doing what they’re good at, making collages for the heart the soul and the mind. Sidsel has got this wonderful sense of freedom, she dares to show emotion, be vulnerable. And so she is giving a lot of herself to everyone. Yes we’ll make it. Yes it will be allright. Finding beauty amidst the average, the ordinary, finding strength in vulnerability simply by laying down fundamentals that are known to all.

LISTen

jan bang
jan bang
endresen, bang, honoré
bang, honoré, Sylvian, endreden, henriksen
sylvian

Some albums are on Spotify, Bandcamp, Discogs or at your local Record Store [uncommon deities is also part of the 10 CD box ‘Do you know me now’ by david Sylvian]

Sidsel knows how to make an artistic statement to a popsong too. Giving emotion, life, to a mediocre song with a not too bad arrangement and instrumentation. The song is ” Shadows in the Rain ” written by Sting and played by Christof Lauer and Jens Thomas. Listen here : https://open.spotify.com/track/0gLa9BlHwks9ULdW9syT5L

Lately

I been reading T.S. Eliot Collected Poems 1909-1962 and I want to lay down some sentences that I think matter in these disturbed and noisy times.

” But the fountain sprang up and the bird sang down

Redeem the time, redeem the dream

The token of the word unheard, unspoken

Till the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew

And after this our exile “

T.S. Eliot “ASH WEDNESDAY” 1930

I dedicate this post to poet, musician and sound artist Annemarie Steinvoort

Louth Contemporary Music Society

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Sometimes, suddenly, I feel the urge to write about a moving moment, expressing myself in just a few condensed lines. That moving moment was triggered by ” A Place Between” the first of a series of albums by Louth Contemporary Music Society.

a place between

a Short History

Here is an excerpt from an article by Niall Crumlish which will give some you background information on the Louth Contemporary Music Society. To read the entire piece please go to: 2010/https://psychiatryandsongs.com/2021/04/09/music-is-a-gift-that-we-all-get-to-share-louth-contemporary-music-society-state-2010/

In 2006, one of the more remarkable stories in Irish music began when Dundalk residents Eamonn Quinn and his wife Gemma Murray had a baby and found that they couldn’t get up to the city for concerts as often as before. Rather than do what a couple in that situation might reasonably do – stay in and stock up on box sets – they decided that no-one was better qualified than they were to bring the world’s leading contemporary composers to their home town. (“I had no idea what I was doing,” says Eamonn.) Thus, with a DIY ethic fit for a punk movement or an Elvis movie, the Louth Contemporary Music Society, or LCMS, came into being.

New Compositions by Contemporary Composers

Last week I received the beautiful cd “Folks’ Music” an album with new compositions by contemporary composers: Cassandra Miller, Laurence Crane and Linda Catlin Smith. The three compositions on the album were commissioned by Éamonn Quinn of LCMS. If you are familiar [or maybe not so familiar] with contemporary ‘modern classical’ music you will find here some beautiful accessible music. .

A Place Between

Then by coincidence I heard a beautiful rendition of John Cage’s ” in a landscape ” by Michael McHale. It’s on the first album production of LCMS titled ” A Place Between “. There are several beautiful performances on the album, but the one that triggered me to write this post is, ” Good Night ” by Henryk Górecki. From the liner notes: Good Night [1990] is a requiem for the memory of Michael Veneer, the artistic director of the London Sinfonietta. Scored for soprano, alto flute, piano and three low-pitched gongs. It uses pedal points and subtle variations on highly coloured harmonies to create what is in effect a ritual in music. Only in the last movement does the soprano sing the words that the music has already been implying. The performances are really great and the resulting sounding music is beautifully touching. Listen to the album here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5EkBrxpjg4wELFGfu4d3ZH or buy the album here: https://louthcontemporarymusicsociety.bandcamp.com