Boxer's gig at Maaiky's birthday

TGIF.

I went to the Tango today with Daniel and bumped into Maaiky and Jer, the usual suspects. They mentioned that I would be receiving pics from our past Sunday gig. Here they are:


view from the audience


Gas


Me


Bart

Last weekend was Maaiky and Jer's birthday bash. We were invited to play there, and though we weren't ready to unveil our new band concept, we thought it would be awesome to play at Maaiky's (and it was). The party was an amazing Sunday evening barbecue at the anti-squat palace, casa Maaiky, Eliza, Shoert, and Eva. There was a tent, a barbecue in an old oil drum, a surplus of couches, and an audience of 30 some people. Everyone was surprisingly enthusiastic about our music, which gives me a good vibe for our coming band development.

All pictures from Vincent Basler

6/365: Singer/songwriter

Today was the singer/songwriter contest at the Cultural Center. After rushing to increase our set list from two to five songs in the last two days, I was pretty happy with our result. A lot of friends showed up to check out our performance, and though we did not win, there was a lot of enthusiasm. I viewed this band contest as a sort of experiment/debut, since it was the most serious thing we have played so far. I'm pretty excited about continuing to grow and improve as a band after yesterday!

Here are two drawings from Gas and me. We drew them while others were sound checking. Mine is of Robert Zwamborn performing.

Some videos

Some product demonstration videos recorded by Ronald with Robert, Jorn, and I for the AirDrums and AirGuitar developed by 1uptoys.

Spielwarenmesse adventures: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

White Stripes - Seven Nation Army



Nirvana - Smells like Teen Spirit





The Cure - Boys Don't Cry

Musical Things

1. Krashna Musika
It has been a busy, busy January. Last weekend was rehearsal weekend. I practiced from 10am - 10pm on Saturday, 10am-4pm Sunday, and 7-10pm Monday for my upcoming concert with Krashna Musika. I fell asleep a couple of times on Sunday while the soloist was singing only to wake up shortly when I had made a glaring mistake. I realized how much more I have to practice so I don't embarrass myself on stage. Thankfully, my new roommate Nikki (violinist and alum of Krashna Musika) lent me her music stand, and now I only need to find some opportunities to play when she won't be home to hear me practicing. You can hear me play next Thursday and Friday at 20:30 in the Maria van Jessekerk in Delft or Dr Anton Philipszaal in Den Haag. We are playing:

Brahms, Ein Deutches Requiem
Webern, Passacaglia, Opus 1
Schoenberg, Thema und Variationen, Opus 43B

I am pretty excited. I think the program is pretty good, and the Brahms sounds awesome with a choir, minus not really in tune winds and brass (they spent all their time practicing the other two pieces sadly, but who am I to talk?). You can book your tickets at: krashna@tudelft.nl, if you are interested in coming. I can't wait until the end of this concert season, because we will start playing Rachmaninoff's Symphony no. 2 and Mozart's Requiem. Eventually we will be going on tour in April traveling to Hamburg and Copenhagen.

2. Nodame Cantabile
Furthermore, during the last two days I was hooked on Nodame Cantabile, a Japanese drama. I can definitely blame it all on Ellen, who wrote a review of the show in her blog. I know it is pretty ridiculous to enjoy (only some, I swear) watching dramas (especially Asian ones), but I tend to be drawn to either high art or really low, low non-art. I justify my ridiculousness by saying it makes me a well rounded person (how do you think I got into college?). Anyways, this was definitely one of the better dramas in the spectrum because of several factors that are lacking in other dramas. I'll summarize shortly:

a. The girl wasn't totally retarded, her redeeming factor was that she was as much as a genius as the main dude. They both pushed each other to become better.
b. The drama was about an aspiring conductor and talented but unmotivated pianist, thus music!
c. The school scenes were convincing, people actually went to school and it was convincing that the were in fact studying to some end.
d. Good music, lots of engrossing performance snippets, though very known (Themes: Prokofiev, Romeo & Juliet; Brahms; Beethoven, 7th, Adagio for Strings, etc etc.
e. Convincing orchestra and piano playing (I usually hate how unconvincing music playing is in even blockbuster movies..i.e. most everything)
f. Consistent characters, interesting side characters who are also more than 2D. Instead of hating their side stories, I actually wanted to know more in some cases.
g. Like Ellen already said, convincing love story.

I also managed to infect my sister, Athena with the Nodame Cantabile fever. She took even shorter time to complete the drama (1 day).

3. Spelwarenmesse
Finally, I complete my musical post by saying that I will be visiting the Spielwarenmesse, Nuremberg Toy Fair for a week in February (6th-12th?) as a volunteer to demonstrate the AirGuitar and AirDrum for 1Up Toys. In the next week I will have to learn to play some songs, and in exchange I get 200E and an expenses paid trip to Nuremberg to the biggest toy fair in the world. What this also means is I will also have to print a ton of resumes, finish my portfolio, and maybe website before I go. Hopefully, I can get some leads on possible jobs or graduation projects!