Sky of blue and sea of green

 

Two weeks ago I had my first experience of sailing. Friends from the Choeur Varenne had organized a sailing week end in Britanny. I joined a party of ten living on board a sailing boat. I did enjoy the sailing but as this blog is devoted to food and music, I will delve on those aspects of this trip. As all the crew members were part of the choir, when bad weather struck we whiled it away singing or listening to the piece of our next programme.

It is very tight on board so every thing is optimized to save space, including the kitchen and dining tables. When in sailing mode under strong wind the boat can tilt to up to 45°, so all objects have to be secured in cupboards, store rooms or inside the two deep sinks. Otherwise, things just fly off the shelves and break on the floor. We came back to port with one plate broken on our first day because newcomers like me were not aware of the shifting horizontality on board. One of us had left a plate on the kitchen table.

I was delighted to notice that I did not get seasick. I could actually widstand the to-and-fro tilting while reading, sleeping and even preparing food inside the cabin. I have also learned how to get organized to prepare complete meals for ten using only two hot plates, a small oven and a very small and unstable working space. One must pay particular attention to one's fingers when cutting food on board a boat that is sailing.

The trip organizer had prepared a detailed menu for all the meals of our four days on the boat but our crew quickly decided we would not follow the menu to the letter, prefering to be inventive with the ingredients available in the store rooms and refrigerator. There was a generous provision of Muscadet white wine, which did not seem to tempt diners, so I used a lot of it for sauces to accompany the meats. The crew also made a particular effort to arrange the fruits available into fresh fruit salads rather than opening the tinned fruit salads. For our last dessert on board, I fried the leftover bananas in salted butter caramel. Our captain was particularly grateful to have a chef to prepare the food so that meals could be ready very soon after the boat had been moored. I must admit that I enjoyed more being in control at the stoves than clumsily trying to help out during manoeuvres in the ports.

I have mentioned space was tight on board. Our dining table was also the bed I shared with another crew member. The table feet could be removed and two planks set on which to lay the table. Cushions then completed the transformation of the dining table into a large bed.

Yellow submarine
The Beatles, 1962-1966, EMI

I drink with jam and bread

I am on holiday in Hong Kong until tomorrow to see my brother Arnaud and his wife Nancy. They treat me to delicious local foods at every meal.

However, as they were both working today, I went to enjoy afternoon tea alone at the Peninsula Hotel in Kowloon. It allowed me to rest from my day of shopping over good tea, a selection of sandwiches, cakes and delicious scones.

Do-Re-Mi
Rodgers and Hammerstein, The sound of music, RCA

Sing a song

I have gone on tour with the chamber choir Les Métaboles to the French Flanders region for three days at the end of April. We were giving an olfactory concert there. The concert was "olfactory" because we had come with a perfume artist who had created four perfumes to be smelt with the music we were singing. The perfumes had been crafted with the four seasons in mind, as the sequence of seasons also transpired from the music of our programme.

However, the highlight of the tour for me was the educational concert we gave to several classes of kindergarden and early primary school children in the small town of Bourbourg. Though the audience was extremely young, I found that the children were very attentive to the music, listening to the words and reacting to the cues we had asked them to search for in it. The children also witnessed the olfactory side of the concert as they each received a sample of Autumn. The choir then sang a piece which was supposed to go well with this scent but we did not get any applause... The children were visibly too engrossed in their perfume sample to pay attention to the music as well.

The singers and perfumer mingled with the children after the concert. The children even sang a few songs in return as they are being coached by Rémi Aguirre, a professional singer who sings with us in the choir. The whole tour was organized by the association Des voix en Flandres, which promotes choral music for people of all ages in the rural areas of the region. We were hosted by the association's members, enjoying the food they had prepared for us, and staying in their homes.

The tour ended with a banquet of traditional food from the North of France.



Sing
The Carpenters, Gold: greatest hits, A&M

... is the colour

My local biocoop organic shop has put another strangely coloured cauliflower on sale. The top of the vegetable was very dark purple, nearly black, but the flesh inside and stalks were white.

I made another soup and, being colour blind, I must admit I am baffled by its colour.
Can anyone name the colour of this cauliflower soup?

Green is the colour
Pink Floyd, More (original film soundtrack), EMI UK

Allons, enfants !

After the Pink Floyd concert last January, Les Métaboles have been invited to participate in another professional recording, this time of the French national anthem, as orchestrated by Hector Berlioz in the 19th century.

So this afternoon I took all my patriotic feelings with me into the large recording studio with the chamber orchestra Les Siècles playing on romantic period instruments and a large choir. I found it quite exalting to sing my own country's national anthem in a professional setting. It is often decried as violent and bellicose, but it is still our national anthem. Berlioz has set the sixth verse as a moving a cappella section for men before the whole orchestra, tenor solo and choir join in again for the final refrain. On several instances I even found it difficult to concentrate on my singing as I was overwhelmed by the music we were singing and the words calling upon our Dear Liberty.

If the musical experience was very rich, the lunch that was provided to us was frugal: patriots are fed by their ideals... One ham-or-chicken and lettuce sandwich, a bottle of water, a slice of chocolate cake, an apple or mandarin. Staying on the patriotic side, I must admit the baguette bread of our sandwiches was excellent: crispy outside, soft and fluffy inside and with lots of healthy grains.

Rather than recommending another recording of the piece, I prefer to wait for our own recording to be published so that the young professional musicians and singers can earn part of their living from it. Instead, I suggest you listen to an iconoclastic but now classical reggae version.

Aux armes et caetera
Serge Gainsbourg, Aux armes et caetera, Mercury records

Rapateeka dôdô tah!

I have been involved in a very stimulating musical experience with Les Métaboles. We have given a concert produced by the Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra which involved its brass section, a cello solist from the orchestra and our choir. This orchestra is one of the best orchestras in France so there was enormous pressure on us to deliver a satisfactory vocal performance. We could sense the high stakes as our musical director Léo Warinsky was very tense during all the rehearsals with the orchestra. We did our best to act professional.

Indeed, judging by the grey or white hair of most of the instrumentists involved, these ten gentlemen and one lady were not only among the best musicians in France, but they had been so for quite some time already.

I was extremely impressed by the clockwork precision of the brass section in playing a rythmical section that looked incredibly difficult on the musical score.

One of the composers of the piece we were giving was present and playing the piano. More pressure...

However, Ron Geesin turned out to be a charming Scotsman. He was always encouraging us, providing advice to the conductor on how the piece should sound. He was seemingly thrilled that his composition should be played and sung by such outstanding performers.

The concert was held at the Théâtre du Châtelet in central Paris. It was very impressive to be on stage in this huge italian-style musical theatre currently specializing in large-scale classical concerts and musicals productions. The concert was sold-out: over 2 000 people in the audience. Pressure, pressure, pressure...

The contemporary piece started with a synthetic and eery background. The brass instruments came in one after the other, adding tension to the musical atmosphere. Enigmatic cymbal and percussion interventions here and there. The texture of the brass became increasingly complex and dense, a climax was close...

And then the rock band crashed in! Banging drums, thumping electric bass guitar, mesmerizing keyboards, overwhelming electric guitar! We were giving "Atom heart mother" by the Pink Floyd, which Ron Geesin had first orchestrated in 1970 and extended in 2008. It is one of two examination pieces for the musical option of the 2012 French end-of-secondary-school baccalaureat exam. Our audience was composed of final-year secondary school students. The piece finishes with all instruments, rock band and choir giving their biggest sound for the final chord. The crowd went wild and we got a fullhouse standing ovation!

Despite the rock-and-roll nature of the piece, working with the Radio France Philharmonic gave this production an extremely professional turn. We had rehearsed our choir part separately before joining the orchestra. In all, we only had around three hours of rehearsal with the instrumentists in very brief sessions. We had very little opportunity to meet and socialize with the instrumentists, the conductor or composer. In a sense, I did miss the many opportunities for friendly interactions with professionals of the long rehearsal sessions I had known singing for Bangkok Opera. But it fealt great working again with professional musicians, and such outstanding ones too.

The production is due to be broadcast on national radio and national television so I hope this production will lead to other similar projects for Les Métaboles.
Atom heart mother
Pink Floyd, Atom heart mother, EMI

I'm not hungry no more

I think I have developed a certain reputation for enjoying food, preferably of good quality and in wholesome quantities.

However, this week I experienced the unpleasant feeling of not wanting to eat. My parents and I went up to the northern tip of Chile in the Andean village of Putre, altitude: 3 500 m. The weather was typical of what is called the "Bolivian winter": cold temperatures, rain and drizzle all day, all night.
Weather conditions were inhospitable and the feeling of uncomfort was made much worse by the thin air and low level of oxygen. Result: altitude sickness for my mother and me. Head throbbing, heart running wild, sleepless nights, falling asleep all day, feeling sick once in a while. Luckily we had no physical effort to make as we toured the region in a vehicle.

The only way to escape the rain was to move further up to the altiplano above 4 500 m where the sun would shine in the mornings, but of course, it made the altitude sickness worse.

We even went very high up to see the Andean volcanic peaks.













It felt strange and unpleasant to arrive at meal times and not want to eat at all, sometimes having to force myself to eat just a bit.

Luckily, by the third day my body had started to get used to the lack of oxygen and my appetite came back as the altitude sickness subsided. And then the weather cleared and the views were stunning!
Losing my appetite
Floetry

5 250 m photo: Pheck Yin Cadilhon