Music music music

It's Arts Festival time!Arts Festival Hong Kong

Where else but Hong Kong can we enjoy a week of varied music like this:

Last Saturday night we went to the Concert Hall to hear Cafe de los maestros - musicians and singers from Argentina's golden age of tango.  They are billed as Argentina's answer to the Buena Vista Social Club.  The singers were 85 and 87 years old!  The male singer can still belt out a great tune, but it took him quite a while to shuffle to the centre of the stage (my mother would've been yelling at him to pick up his feet).  The audience was young and local, and they gave the group a standing ovation.

Wednesday evening was Klezmer night at the Jewish Community Centre.  The buffet dinner was billed as "shtetl food" - I never knew that our ancestors in Poland ate Middle-Eastern salads and poached salmon!  Ha! and my grandmother told me that chicken soup with knaidels and roast chicken were shtetl food.   It was a good place to meet some new people, including an interesting couple from Tung Chung (a suburb near the airport) who had just returned from a five-day cruise to Vietnam.  It's the same cruise that we're hoping to take with mom and dad in October.  They gave it a thumbs up!  The klezmer music was performed by Yale and Elizabeth Strom - fiddler and singer.  Unfortunately, they concentrated on the gloomier aspects of klezmer, so we weren't inclined to get up and groove to the music.

On Friday evening we went to the convention centre to hear The Platters.  Please note that I said "hear" rather than "see" the group - we were in a room that resembled an airplane hangar, and had bought the cheap seats, very far from the stage.  The sound was surprisingly terrific and they sang all of their hits as well as a lot of Motown classics.  There's only one original member who's still alive (barely) - he hobbled on stage after half an hour, sat down and lip synched with the group.  He looked like Richard Pryor in his last years.  Many of the mainly older, Chinese audience were familiar with the music.

The next night we heard the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra perform Mozart and Haydn at the City Hall Concert Hall.  After the first movement of the Haydn symphony, I whispered to Jeff that they sounded squeaky.  No sooner had I said that, when the conductor paused and had the musicians re-tune their instruments!  (They hadn't tuned up before they began ... hmm ...).  We were underwhelmed by the performance.  Not world class.

This week is Literary Festival week.  Dale is very happy!  The highlight so far was a discussion featuring Alexander McCall Smith and Louis de Bernieres about "the language of words and the language of music".  LdB is an accomplished musician.  He plays classical guitar, mandolin (of course!), and flute.  AMS plays bassoon (badly, according to him).  Both talked about the use of music and musicians in their novels.  Jeff and I had met AMS when he first hit the big time, about 10 years ago.  He was much humbler in those days.  I wish he'd write something serious - he's a professor of medical ethics and has been on international bioethics committees.  Perhaps his lightweight books balance his more cerebral work.  LdB wanted to be another Bob Dylan.  He is now writing a lot of poetry, as well as working on a new novel.

Other news:
The camera has been fixed (however, the two photos in this blog are from Jeff's BlackBerry)!  The AC in our apartment has been fixed!  The oven has been fixed (but it's a convection oven, and the shepherd's pie didn't crust up enough)!  The hot water has been fixed in the second bathroom! (We are now truly ready for visitors)
Dale watched The Wizard of Oz on t.v. last week.  ASN (All sports network) is carrying the entire NCAA basketball tournament beginning with the play-in game on Tuesday night.  We are going to move the trundle bed into the living room so that we can watch all weekend (Eastern time!).

The weather is always a hot (or not so hot) topic of discussion here.  We've had a few weeks of 26 degree temperatures with lots of humidity.  The other day the weather "plunged" to 17 with showers.  I find it strange to live in a place where the weather report is like this:  (we certainly don't have words like monsoon in our weather forecasts in North America!)

Local Weather Forecast

Updated at 11:45 HKT

An intense replenishment of the northeast monsoon will reach the south China coast tonight, bringing cold weather to the region. Weather forecast for this afternoon and tonight Misty with rain patches. Becoming cold tonight. Fresh easterly winds, and winds will strengthen from the north tonight. Outlook : Cold in the next couple of days. Rain patches tomorrow, and becomingfine midweek this week.