25/11/2005: today was a good day

Update: the broken Darius Milhaud link has been fixed

snow
Winter's first snow. How pretty. It snowed all day friday, and all night, and into saturday morning. I've never seen it snow so much in the four years I've been here. It was enough to discourage IVN and I from going to the Sounds to see Ben Sluijs's quartet after the Lenine concert.

lunch & midday classical
I had practically no money, so was condemned to wolf down the cafetaria's 0.15 euro asparagus soup that I hate. Thankfully, that was offset by a big, unexpected and amazingly delicious chunk of 0.55 euro frangipane. Thank the Belgian public sector for the ridiculously low prices.

After the quick lunch, I went to see classical pianist Thérèse Malengreau perform a programme of short early 20th century pieces at the Bibliothèque Royale before approximately 140 senior citizens and a handful of non-senior citizens. One piece I particularly liked was Darius Milhaud's "Trois Rag-Caprices, no. 2: Romance" from 1922 (listen to it), whose simple, warm chords reminded me of Jef Neve's "It's Gone."

at the FNAC

I initially went with to get the trio of new old concert recordings that everyone seems to consider essential: Dizzy Gillespie/Charlie Parker Town Hall, New York City, June 22, 1945; Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane At Carnegie Hall; John Coltrane One Down, One Up: Live at the Half Note. Fortunately/Unfortunately I also came across Andrew Hill's Andrew!!! at 9 euros and Jimi Hendrix's Band of Gypsys at 8, and couldn't pass them up. To cap it all off, Brad Mehldau Trio Day Is Done tugged irresistably at me: mid-priced and I hadn't bought anything of his later than Art of the Trio Vol.4. Oh wait, I bought the solo Live in Tokyo just a few weeks ago. Anyway, the change of drummer (Rossy out, Ballard in) has done the music a world of good.

Lenine

I never win anything. Until now: I won two tickets to this concert thanks to Vazy! (see sidebar). Granted, a lot was lost by not being able to understand the lyrics. Granted, the concert got better and better as Lenine moved from a fairly bland pop-rock template and rocked harder and popped less. Granted, there were lots of (pretty) Brazilians (girls) and Brasil-sympathisers, who eventually got up to dance on the sides (one bold soul even twice scrambled onto the stage to dance, after which two staff members blocked the steps leading to it). Still, I wasn't all that taken with the music. The Vinicius Cantuaria concert was infinitely more interesting and seductive. There was a song that juxtaposed "Dolores" and "dolares." I wonder what that was about.