Yesterday I went to Jean Michel Jarre's world tour making a stop in Oslo. I hadn't seen Jarre live for some 15 years, so I was excited to see what he would bring to the country this time around.
All in all, the concert was pretty good. He played a lot of golden oldies, as well as a bit of new stuff I didn't immediately recognize. He mostly focused on the Oxygene series, but also played some other well known stuff like Rendez-Vous and Magnetic Fields.
His stage show was also quite entertaining, with awesome white lasers and strange LED-displays with alien heads looking ominously at the audience. Compared to the stage show 15 years ago, this current one wins, hands down.
So far it seems this concert is a perfect experience and that there was nothing wrong with it, but there was.
At times Jarre played his pieces... weirdly. A few of the weirdnesses might be artistic creativity, but most of them sounded like he was in error and had forgotten what the next note was. A few of them even sounded like software errors causing the samples to be stuck in a loop. Jarre is 60 years old. Maybe his age is starting to show?
The stage direction could also have used more lasers (you can never have enough lasers), and some in-door pyrotechnics would have been very welcome. In his defense, he did use his laser harp (seen in the main photo of this blog entry), which is almost a valid excuse to not have any stuff on the stage at all.
All in all I was very happy with the concert, with the material he performed, how it all looked, and I'm extremely happy he did two encores. On a scale from 1 to 10, with 10 being the best, I'm giving this concert a 7.
It could have been much better without minor glitches and a better stage show, but that shouldn't hinder you from seeing this concert if you get the chance.

The photos are taken with my Nokia E71, and are therefore not of good quality, but they suit their purpose. For photos taken with a mobile phone I'm actually quite happy with the results.

I've started taking lessons to learn a new subsection of my music skills. I've started playing the cello! After some 20 years of playing the euphonium it was about time to pick up some new skills. I've always admired string instruments, and during the last year or two I've admired the cello more and more, up to the point of wanting to learn how to play it myself. During the last months I've come to the conclusion that a cello is really the string equivalent to a euphonium. After all, whenever we play classical pieces in my orchestra, the cello parts are always given to the euphonium. That's when I figured out I wanted to learn how to play the cello.
I started taking lessons a few weeks ago and are still at the stage where I'm playing scales and trying to strike the correct strings, but I'm noticing progress.
Stay tuned for international tour dates with Yo-Yo Ma!

A bonus shout out to my mom. Happy birthday!!! :D

Photo by Anthony Thomas

It seems congratulations are in order again. This year to Russia for pulling the longest straw in the Eurovision Song Contest. The song wasn't really that great, but the ice skater skating around the performers, apparently on some foldable space age plastic really made the stage direction work. Norway ended up in 5th place, and at least we beat the Swedes, who didn't even manage to get in the top 10 :P
Do videnja Serbia, and Zdravstvuite Russia. See you there on May 16th 2009

Last night a group from my orchestra, and I, went to Rockefeller Music Hall in Oslo to attend the annual Christmas concert from the group Penthouse Playboys. The concert was extremely entertaining. Those guys really know how to put on a show. They played lots of covers ranging from Wham's "Last Christmas", golden oldies, to even older Swedish popular songs.
Their guest artist, Tone Damli Aaberge (Norwegian Idol finalist, elected one of Norway's most sexiest women by several magazines, and still only 19 years old, but burning hot) joined in on some of the songs, as well as a couple of solo numbers.
All in all the concert was very successful, but the real fun didn't start until after the concert.