Monday 30 March 2009

on the train from Odense to Copenhagen airport
It’s 8 o’clock, I’m on a comfortable and quiet train headed through a sunny spring morning. Tini’s already taken Pamela and DG to the airport for their 5am checkin, and Alison and Matt are getting a later train with the Tiger Lillies to their London flight.

Rather than the expected Euro-English, many Danes have got unexpected regional accents when they speak English, depending on where they learned or practised it. So the ever-resourceful and keen Jeppe Broni at the theatre has an Essex boy accent from Harlow (and, he says, a limited vocabulary as a result), Anna’s accent was from her days as an au pair in Milton Keynes, and the receptionist at the hotel this morning switched from Danish instantly into perfect Dublin. Fantastic.

It’s probably best to tell the story of the last few days in pictures, the first five from Claus Buehler’s phone. He meticulously documents every microphone placement and mixing desk, but takes plenty of other shots too.  Meanwhile the friendly Danish efficiency all around us even extended to our hotel and the concert hall being in the same building.  Hang on a sec, this train’s 6 minutes late already and we’ve only got as far as Nyborg … that can't be right.

Hawaiian rehearsal at the Theaterhuset

Alison pleased about something

view from the top of "the orbo"

me with Klop organ and a remarkable Italian harpsichord made by Mathias Kramer for Lars Ulrik Mortensen,
which has 2 8' stops and a 16' on the same bridge, for one-handed continuo.
It's clearly late in the day as the bar of Toblerone on the organ has been opened.
We settled on sixth-comma meantone tuning in the end as the B flats were too far from the piano ones.

guest appearance by Mick Hucknall, no hang on, it's Tomas

soundcheck/rehearsal in the Koncerthus at last

Tomas took this one of us failing to be 20-second sculptures

and this of us in general post-gig exhaustion, in a picturesque bit of old Odense
L-R: Pamela, DMcG, Alison, Matt, DG

DG as a little-known 19th-century Austro-Hungarian composer:
'When I'm not composing my latest symphony, I like to relax with an Odense Classic.
Its malty taste helps me channel my soul's inner grief.'

sound supervisor Claus Buehler where I found him on a park bench after the gig