Brief note on a busy week

Wow, what a great musical week I've had. (Unfortunately no photos to show for it.) Shows with
Tibet2Timbuk2 in the grand Main Auditorium of City Hall on Tuesday and outdoors at the Northey St Solstice Festival, plus 3 shows with American kirtan singer Dave Stringer in Byron and Gold Coast. On Wednesday I saw the wonderful Anoushka Shankar Project - Anoushka on sitar and the fantastic Tanmoy Bose on tabla were joined by South Indian bansuri/khanjira, cello and grand piano. Quite lovely.

I'm now counting down to my trip to Japan from August 21, and in the meantime Tenzin, Marcello and I will be putting a lot of spare days into recording a new T2T2 CD. I'm also planning a concert for my tabla students on August 9, which will be lots of fun so look out for that. I suspect I might wind up my Forest Wednesday sessions soon....

Rubaiyat of Omar Khaiyyam in Sandgate

Some photos from the performance of Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam by Noor in Sandgate on Saturday night. We've been rehearsing for several months now, and the show is coming along really nicely. I especially want to compliment reader Margi Brown Ash, who only joined us a month ago and brought something new to her recitation every rehearsal. It was very well received by the audience - an encore and standing ovation! We now plan to record a CD and do more shows later in the year.

Noor performing Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam at Sandgate Music By The Sea
L to R: Margi Brown Ash (text), Cieavash Arean (santoor, camanche, ney, vocals), Shen Flindell (tabla), Siroos Alavi (tar, oud, vocals), Donald Hall (chromatic harp)
(Photo by Istvan Repasi)

Margi and Cia

Shen and Siroos

A wonderful Rosey Party

We had one of the most wonderful parties ever at Rosecliffe St on Saturday night. We'd done the place up nicely with lots of candles and coloured lights, a nice fireplace on the front deck, some cruisy world/jazz/funk music playing and loads of beautiful curries and cakes on the table. A really interesting bunch of folks came including students from Korea, Japan and South America - all up around 100 people - but the highlight would have to be Wala, a drumming band from Ghana, who came along with Elliott and played a great set with lots of singing and dancing.





After all that excitement and a bit more cruisy music, there was a 3am mellow acoustic jam with flute, guitar and tabla plus Josie throwing in some African dance, followed by some deep ambient music til dawn for the folks who couldn't tear themselves away. A beautiful night - thanks to everyone who was part of it.