Winter Concert

Yesterday we got our first real taste of winter. Sure, it's been snowing off and on for the past month, but it's always melted. Yesterday we got a couple inches of snow during the day, and a few more at night, this time it's really staying. Walking in the snow is good for balance!

Here's a photo of the charming path we get to slide up and down between the school and the student apartments (also a photo of where I live). My room is on the second floor, on the far side of the kitchen which is the part that sticks out in the middle of the building.


Of course, there was some snow on the ground when we had the fire drill:


Monday morning, sunrise from the hotel:



Here is Anna warming up for the concert:

It seems to help her play torader!

Our concert when reasonably well. No huge mistakes. The rough spots from rehearsal went better then expected. The audience was all friends and classmates (and teachers) so they were very encouraging.

Afterward we danced and played the night away. Eventually we moved the party up to the student apartments where we had a slight change of genre. We played fiddles, banjo, spoons, and, definitely not least, the egg shaker until the very wee hours of the morning. Everyone was invited to the party, because you can hear the noise we make throughout the building!

Update, continued.

After the fire drill on Wednesday, we had an evening concert with Nobody's Jig. Their performance was overshadowed by the best night I've had dancing here in Rauland. I danced and danced and danced and didn't play my fiddle at all! This week, we have a rotation for who is playing for dancing, so no one gets stuck playing all night and everyone gets a chance to dance.

Over the weekend I worked and worked and worked, and then I partied. Let's start with the working. Friday night the hotel had a 9 person Irish band from Stavanger (I think). Every room in the hotel was booked. The entire town was at the party. They drank us almost dry. The hotel had purchased several pony kegs of Guinness - they were gone before the evening was over. The guests also drank almost all of the regular beer we had. It was the party of the season!

Saturday was much, much calmer in the bar and the restaurant. There wasn't any live music. Just some very drunk Lithuanian carpenters, a handful of hotel guests, and a few locals. On the way home that evening, we found one of the locals attempting to walk home. I would guess that it's about 15km from the hotel to where we dropped him off. His buddies had disappeared and he was determined to make his way home. For a drunk hitch-hiker, he was a pretty entertaining guy.

And then there was Sunday. I started the day (around noon) by working at the dentist office. Around five we met up and headed back to the hotel for the staff party. Free drinks and food, games, a scavenger hunt, one short speech, and dancing. It was a great party. I spent most of my evening talking with a nice Swedish guy, who is a friend of one of the cooks. That is the time I wasn't dancing, chasing around in the snow and the dark looking for the clues we were supposed to find, or dancing some more.

Anja and I had planned to head back to town (either get a ride or take a taxi), but with a little incentive in the form of free lodging in the hotel and friendly conversation, we managed to spend the night. Naturally, we made it to school on time; before the instructor in fact!

We spent Monday learning tunes from Leiv Solberg. Today we worked on our concert program. Wish us luck tomorrow! We've got a big day and night ahead of us.

Whoah! Where has the time gone?

Ok, so I've been a little busy. Let's see, since I last wrote I had a few more days in Kristiansand. I had my (very successful) shopping excursion. I bought winter boots, several work shirts, and hand cream. My last night in Kristiansand I got to attend a birthday party. The birthday girl was 92, she is the mother of the relative I was visiting (her husband was related to me).

Then I was off to Linköping and the Linköping Folkmusik Festival. If you are ever considering a Fall trip to Scandinavia, this is a phenomenal festival. Let me say that again. It was outstanding! Fantastic concerts, three dance floors with great music, and workshops during the day. It was really unbelievable how much they packed into that weekend. For me the highlights were Vegar and Patrick (like Anna and Ingrid, they don't use their last names; they just have an award winning CD or two to show for it), Frikar (OMG wow), and did I mention - THREE DANCE FLOORS!! Nätt og Jämt gets an honorable mention on the highlights list, especially since they played one of the dance stages. I recommend going with a group of friends that dance, or totally alone. I had a pretty good time getting dance partners when I was alone, but it's always more fun to dance with your dance-buddies.

I don't recommend driving to Linköping. At least not from Rauland. It took us 11 hours to get there and longer on the way home. At least we got to sing the whole way there and back!

Upon returning home, we cast ourselves back into the extremely busy rehearsal and class schedule. Our first concert is tomorrow and we hadn't really started rehearsing before then.

I, of course, also have two jobs to occupy my free time. This has a number of benefits. One of them being that I'm too busy working to spend money (or energy) partying. The other is that I'm earning money at the same time I'm not spending it! Two weekends ago, the hotel had a group of 140 members of a single's club as guests. I'll let you use your imagination regarding their behavior.

That Saturday, I started helping in the bar after dinner. I don't mean pour drinks or taking orders; I mean collecting the empty glasses and washing them, chilling them (we don't have enough glasses for them to cool to room temperature before they are needed again), and putting them back out so the bartenders can pour more drinks. This works out fine because I get a ride home from the head bartender. At 4:30am

Last week was mostly more of the same: Rehearsals, classes, cleaning at the dentist's. The highlight came mid-week with the fire drill. I'm used to fire drills where the alarm rings and everyone files out into the parking lot waits for the signal and returns to class. In the corporate setting we file out, get a latte and come back. In Rauland, we sat through a twenty minute presentation covering how quickly a room can succumb to fire and the various uses of all different types of fire extinguishers. Then we filed out into the parking lot (without an alarm). The instructor, clad in fire fighting gear, set out several hand held fire extinguishers, poured a few liters of gasoline into the large square metal container he had placed in the middle of the parking lot (at a safe distance from everything), and lit it. Then we got to practice putting out a pretty ferocious fire. Every time someone put it out, he'd light it again, until everyone had had a chance to practice putting out the fire. That's a fire drill.

More soon - I've got to check the laundry and get ready for tomorrow's concert!

On the road again

Yesterday I left Rauland for a few days travel during our fall break. Right now, I'm visiting family in Kristiansand. In order to get here, I rode with a friend to Drammen and then took the train. This is not the most indirect way to get to Kristiansand, but it certainly wasn't the shortest way! It was, however, cheap! The most exciting part of the train ride was that I managed to get some reading done while on the train - usually this makes me motion-sick. Maybe I'm growing out of the motion-sickness!

Gunnar and Magnhild met me at the train station and we headed back to their house. We had dinner followed by watching the news. I sort of wish I were still hiding in my news-free bubble in Rauland! In between newscasts (Gunnar watches them all) we looked at wedding photos from a couple years ago when Håkon (the oldest son) and Mari got married. It was a beautiful summer wedding in Finland.

Today's plan was supposed to include going into town to go shopping. I got a late start and decided shopping could wait for tomorrow - I would rather practice today! I do need winter clothes though. And shoes. And work shirts. This trip to the city was rather well timed!

Snow!

I realize that I'm going to have to get more descriptive with my titles. Last night it snowed it town. Here are some exciting photos from around 10:30 when I dragged myself out of bed.


From the kitchen:
From the dentists' office:

From the dentists' office looking at the Studentheim where I live:
This afternoon when the sun came out (again from the kitchen):

Tips from Music School

Use a microfiber cloth to clean your fiddle! It picks up rosin like magic!

Tvaddehæg

No one in my class seems to know what tvaddehæg means. It is a local word that seems to represent the weekend market that is happening in Rauland right now. There are booths outside with everything from traditional silver to pea soup to elgsnæks (that's moose jerkey). The invited the students from the university to come play, so of course we were there too!

Stine and I were the first brave souls to arrive. In case you didn't read the last post, it is really cold around here. Almost too cold to play outside. The organizer found us a mildly sheltered spot next to a couple of very friendly llamas. We played for about half an hour until our fingers were about to fall off. During that half hour we talked with some locals, were interviewed by the local newspaper, and received a variety of looks from the townspeople.

Snow

There is snow on the mountaintops now. It is important to mention that I am not particularly far from the mountaintops. I expect we'll get snow here soon! And the autumn colors on the trees are just phenomenal right now!

On the way to town:
From my window:
From my kitchen window:
From my kitchen window in the morning:

The frame

When we teach Norwegian dancing in Seattle (and other places I'm sure) we often talk about the range of accepable expression in a particular dance as being the 'frame.' Each dancer is encouraged to find their own style within that frame. This is what keeps the tradition alive and prevents stagnation.

Here in Rauland one of my two favorite questions is 'what is folk music?' We are all pretty sure we know it when we hear it, but everyone has a canvas of a different size and shape. Some are more conservative and feel that only pure traditional music belongs in the folk music category. Others are a more open and accept anything that includes traditional instruments or is inspired by traditional music. Our textbook includes community control in the mix of what is folk music.

On Saturday night at the Norwegian Folk Music Awards in Oslo, all possible combinations of folk music were presented. As I listened to Valkyrien Allstars play after they recieved the prize for the folk musicians of the year, I felt my personal frame stretch. Perhaps it was because I'd never heard them sound so good live before (the whole festival was plagued with less than fantastic sound). They weren't just playing rock music on hardanger fiddles; they were really playing hardingfele in a traditional style, but arranged for a 2008 rock audience. If you haven't heard them, I recommend it. And while you listen, listen for the folk music roots at the heart of it all.