Vladia in Praha, Czech Republic

I woke up three hours after my sleep, to make it to the Nuremberg station on time, but miss my train because I had to go pee and didn't foresee my bad time management. I caught the next train that unfortunately demanded 4 changeovers before I get to Prague, but figured "how hard can it be?" to hop from one train to another, with only 3 minutes of changeover time between each...
Germany had definitely softened me. The high speed ICE trains, soundless and fast as bullets, they'd always have a display of the next station, along with a beautiful female voice announcing one minute in advance what station would be coming up. When I got to the town of Ceska, I realized I was no longer in Germany.

Reminants of the communist era still linger in the countryside. The train stations in the small villages, some of the rural people that ride the trains, never mind the trains themselves! Dinosaurs made out of strong metal with nicotene stained windows that rattle back and forth on the tracks between small villages, the old trains hope one day to see the urban sprawl of magestic Praha but will never get a chance due to their decrepidness...

Once on the train cart, I was approached by three men dressed in some uniform...a cross between an army uniform and a police uniform. One of them shouted some words at me. Guessing he wanted my boarding pass, I pulled it out. He became angrier and shouted words...eventually I figured he was shouting the same word but in several languages. After the slavic languages and whatever else inaudible muttering, he got to what sounded like german...then italian or spanish and that's when I understood: Passportza!

I pulled out my passport and all three seemed surprised to see it was Canadian. They inspected it for a good 5 minutes, asking questions and debating amoungst themselves before the leader said it was legit, and after that they were the nicest men to me in the world. Thank god I wasn't whatever they thought I was...

As for my stay in Praha, it was wonderful!

Germany

I arrived from my German tour yesterday. It went very well, and the weather along with it. Let's just say that Europe may be feeling much more the effects of Global warming than we are here at this moment, in Canada.

I started off in Koeln. The show was on March 8th, International Women's Day. It was a quartet, with Albrecht Maurer and I on violin, Christian Eckert on contrebass and Achim Kramer on drums. We played free jazz. And what exactly that was...can be somewhat summed up eloquently by Albrecht Maurer. He described our goal that evening as this: if acknowledging that the genres (or styles of music ie. jazz, classical, world etc) played are like islands in an ocean, then the water in between those islands is a pool of sound that can shift, morph, be under the influence of an island or not...etc. And we were to touch upon these islands, and most importantly...explore the waters in between them.

Needless to say that the evening went very well. There's a review in german at www.suelz-koeln.de

From free jazz, I went to funk. From an art gallery, I went to the closing weekend of a bar 45 mins away from Koeln. The team was a group of young men and I. Michael Flossdorf in keyboards, Jan Wendeler on bass, Andreas Hammer on sax, Steffen Hoff on drums, Lars on guitar & me on violin. Man did these guys know how to groove. We played some Herbie Hancock, Prince and more at the Stellwerk Hoffnungsthal.

I spent a few days off in Koeln with Michael before I hopped into a car with a Turkish German guy by the name of Kiwi (no joke) and zipped off to Fuerth (right next to Nuremberg) to play the Klezmer Festival with Geoff Berner. Kiwi and I had a blast. Turns out his girlfriend lives in Nuremberg, so I got them on the guest list and we played a great show on Friday night. Fuerth is celebrating it's 1000th year anniversary (1007-2007) so they went ahead and celebrated with an extra bang by holding the Fuerth International Klezmer Festival this year (although it is usually a biennial event). The line-up during this weeklong festival is exemplary, from the Klezmatics to Dobranotch, to the Budapest Klezmer Band...they had everything klezmer from all corners of the world! We played at the Kulturforum, had three encores, they brought us whiskey on stage, and it was great to play with Geoff and Wayne again. We stayed up late drinking, and I was sad to part with them at 4 am saturday morning so that I could get three hours of rest before my trip to Praha to visit Vladia...

February 2007

Where do I start...well, February has been a blast. This month has been contrary to everything I whined about last year. I feel blessed...Cheers to the month of February!
I got my first myspace booking through a couple by the name of Frank and Stephanie, who hold sexy and classy theme parties. Frank contacted me on a Friday night, and Saturday evening I was improvising on top of DJ Luke Native's house tracks. I didn't have a chance to stick it out too long because I was on my way to a house party, but feel free to check out Monde Osé's myspace page: www.myspace.com/mondeose.

The next weekend, I shared the stage with Andrea Revel at the Wawa Show, an event masterminded by cabaret-pop-noir artist Amanda Mabro. It was a great evening, and you can read up more about it @ thewawashow.com.

Next on the agenda was Geoff Berner's sweeping into town. I had the chance to play at Casa Popolo and Wakefield's Blacksheep Inn as well. I met Bob Wiseman officially (after all we met two years ago when I was touring Ontario with both Geoff and Kris Demeanor...but none of us really remembers) and after being in their presence for merely two-three days, I feel inspired to write music and lyrics again. In March, Wayne Adams and I will be supporting Geoff at the Fuerth International Klezmer Festival in Germany. I am absolutely looking forward to playing with them.

While in Germany, I will have the opportunity to collaborate with another great improviser, violinist Albrecht Maurer. After throwing back and forth ideas about what we should do, we concluded the following:
„Die Idee zwei Violinen und eine Rhythmusgruppe zu einem Quartett zusammen zu stellen ist in der Aktuellen Musik nicht häufig anzutreffen. Doch was der Jazzdrummer Joe Baron mit 2 Gitarristen in der Frontline jüngst im Stadtgarten kreierte, überzeugte und insperierte mich spontan zu dieser ähnlichen Besetzung. Mit Brigitte Dajczer treffe ich erstmals eine Kanadische Geigerin, die mit polnischen Roots und einer Menge weltmusikalischen Wissen zusammen mit uns auf Entdeckungsreise geht“. Albrecht Maurer
„I really like the idea of placing two violins on either side of a drummer.
This opens up a space for dialogue between both violins, while the drums can shift to whichever focus/direction that presents itself. Since it is my
first time in Germany, and I am initially being flown out for only one show
(a Klezmer Music Festival in Furth), I'm looking to meet new musicians and hopefully open up the futureto new possibilities.“ Brigitte Dajczer

O.k....there's still more to soliloquy about, but I'll tastefully do that in the next entry.

January 21st, 2007

So yes, this is the first entry for the year! O.K...it's oddly marked by a way too dramatic picture of yours truly, and may seem a little dull to have been titled the date mentioned above...but let's say all of this is only to grab your attention after my hiatus of over three weeks from blogger land. Besides that, this entry doesn't differ from any other than the fact that it is bitterly cold outside, and we're all in survival mode at this moment. Yes, I have to wear tights underneath my pants and socks, and an extra pair of socks on top of the socks so that I don't feel the cold ground through my cheap Aldo boots of (three years ago) with only 1 centimeter thick rubber soles. But nobody would know anyways, because I take good care of them and I look fashionable. Yesterday, before strutting into Café Noir, I had to choose between my short waistline down coat which was much warmer than my long classic cut wool jacket. (Thank God I had a choice! Last year I didn't.) I went for the down, and my friend Peter kindly reminded me (as I grabbed my coffee) that it would be wise of me to cover my "derrière" as to protect it from the cold. Apparently, your ass and your private organs are as vital as your liver or heart, so keep them as warm as your torso, friends! (deep down, I knew that).

Then there's the instrument issue. After rehearsal this evening, I miscalculated my bus ticket situation and had to walk home with my violin in the cold. Now usually, a 15 min walk is child's play however, I was more worried about the cold's effect on my violin than I was on my legs (the knees were beginning to feel a little bit too stiff for bending). I still haven't opened the case to see if all is o.k.... but I'll trust that it is. So that's it for today, and the sumarry is this: As artists, we're all in survival mode. It's the post-holiday financial slump for everybody. Gigs are at a low, the already tight belt is being tightened a little more and if any of us are smart, we're practicing like fiends, networking on myspace, teaching music, art dance, anything! to pay the bills, going to any show or event we can do some good schmoozing at, and booking shows for the somewhat near future.
P.S. I'm looking forward to turning this entity into a real bonnified web site. So if anybody out there wants to save themselves from reading my blog entries, and charge me as little as possible for their valuable time...please email me. I need to get a real professional web page done...

Hi!
Salut!

Je vous souhaîtes tous les meilleures vacances du temps des Fêtes, et une bonne nouvelle année qui vous emportera tout ce que vous voulez de la saison 2007!

I wish you all a wonderful holiday season, and I hope the new year will bring you everything that you wish for in 2007!

Peace and love,
Brigitte ;)

Calgary: The City of Winners & Losers

***Photo courtesy of Contemporary Aboriginal Artist: Terrance Houle (myspace.com/terrancehoule)***

I'm back "home" for Christmas. Yes, I'm in Calgary...the city of only two type of folk: WINNERS and LOSERS. Cowboys and Indians. Do it yourself-ers and lazy ol' bums.

I arrived on Thursday, and immediately filled up that weekend with two Theatre Junction shows hosted by Peter Moller (Calgary) and Dave Clark (Toronto). Sunday evening was the 10th anniversary show of the Rembetika Hipsters. We played the Engineered Air Theatre @ the Epcor Centre for Performing Arts. It was a beautiful evening.

To continue feeling like a WINNER, I am now doing lots of competitive swimming with my Actuarial Analyst sister, Elisabeth Dajczer (B,SC-Math & B.SC-Phys.) and her Masters Club. Just got back from swimming and cannot stop thinking about the workout...

4 x 100 meters freestyle (I wonder if being a winner in Montreal translates itself to naturally being a winner in Calgary)

4 x 75 meters kick (If some creative people in Montreal are dependent on welfare, would they be classified as losers in Calgary, even though they're signed to a record label? What if they're not on welfare, and they're not signed to a label?)

16 x 25 meters IM (Why doesn't anybody in Calgary know who Didier Lockwood is?)

Well, I am enjoying soaking in the winner attitude, and at this very moment...I am seriously considering getting a business degree to give me an edge over my competitors. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Happy Holidays!

Andrea Revel @ The Green Room

Andrea Revel is hosting her residency tonight. This event happens one Monday a month and features her amazing song writing talents along with special guests from a variety of backgrounds. Last month, I had the chance to accompany her. Here's a couple of pictures from that evening.

This month, she's got Sage Renolds on the bass and Joellen Housego on the violin. Jade will be starting off the evening. I know it's a little late to be annoucing this, but there will be more monday nights in the new year, along with twelve more months. So if your curiosity is peaked, check out Andrea Revel's web site: www.andrearevel.com and her myspace site: www.myspace.com/andrearevel
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