{"id":57,"date":"2011-12-24T17:21:02","date_gmt":"2011-12-24T16:21:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.simms.ch\/?p=57"},"modified":"2020-12-21T16:26:35","modified_gmt":"2020-12-21T15:26:35","slug":"this-musical-autumn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/simms.ch\/?p=57","title":{"rendered":"This musical autumn"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s been an unusually musical end to the year for me, at least in terms of going to concerts.\u00a0 I rather got out of the habit for a few years as a result of wretched time planning and an unwillingness (read inability) to stand up for a whole evening, but circumstances combined this autumn to present me with several opportunities that I couldn’t resist.<\/p>\n

First up was the astonishing French counter-tenor Philippe Jaroussky<\/em><\/strong> who arrived, with his usual period ensemble, to play a sold-out, can’t squeeze anybody else in, concert in a tiny church high in the Jura on the border between France and Switzerland.\u00a0 Not necessarily where you’d expect to see a man who usually performs in serious concert halls around the globe, but he was clearly happy to be there and the audience was certainly delighted to see him.\u00a0 What a voice.<\/p>\n

Next up were quirky Quebec gypsy jazz stylists The Lost Fingers<\/em><\/strong>, who played a gig in the tiny Haute-Savoie town of Faverges.\u00a0 I only found out about the concert three days beforehand, but tickets were reserved and the torrential rain braved on what was a filthy October night.\u00a0 It was well worth it, as they entertained the two hundred lucky spectators with a run through material from all three of their albums to date, punctuating things with hilarious introductions and displaying quite breath-taking dexterity and musicality as they took classics from the 1980s and since and gave them their peculiar jazz slant.\u00a0 It’s good to be able to report that they are a great bunch, too, cheerfully signing autographs and posing for photos and chatting to all and sundry after the show.\u00a0 I’m looking forward to the next time they’re in the area, and also to seeing whether they do manage to attack something seriously heavy – and I did discuss some ideas with Byron – on their next album.<\/p>\n

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Then things took a seriously heavy turn with the visit of Swedish metal legends Opeth<\/em><\/strong> to Lausanne.\u00a0 It was clear that it wasn’t going to be like their traditional concerts, as the latest album Heritage<\/em> is distinctly proggy throughout and they’d warned that it would be clean vocals only, but they didn’t disappoint.\u00a0 They were monstrously heavy, even in the acoustic sections, and were clearly in a very good mood on-stage, swapping banter with the crowd and teasing the Swiss for being, well, Swiss.\u00a0 In particular Fredrik played a blinder in spite of repeated tuning problems.\u00a0 I should also pick out support band Pain Of Salvation<\/em><\/strong> for a bit of praise, as they were excellent too.\u00a0 Not often I enjoy a support band’s show as much as that.<\/p>\n

And finally, for the moment, it was the visit of Belgian art-rockers dEUS<\/em><\/strong> to a small club in Neuch\u00e2tel.\u00a0 Conditions were dreadful getting there, which seems to be a common factor in my gig going, but it was worth it.\u00a0 It was a different ambience to Opeth, as Tom Barman isn’t one for lengthy introductions to songs, but it was a fantastic gig, with the whole band on form and all the classics rolled out for our enjoyment.\u00a0 The highlight, much as I anticipated, was the closing Little Arithmetics<\/em> ending in a howl of feedback and merging into the monumental Bad Timing<\/em>, still their finest moment and quite astonishingly powerful live.\u00a0 The motorway was closed on the way home and I had to weave through countless tiny villages in the pouring rain before getting back onto the motorway not far short of Lausanne, but I didn’t care.\u00a0 It had been a great evening.<\/p>\n

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Keep You Close<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Bad Timing<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s been an unusually musical end to the year for me, at least in terms of going to concerts.\u00a0 I rather got out of the habit for a few years as a result of wretched time planning and an unwillingness (read inability) to stand up for a whole evening, but circumstances combined this autumn to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/simms.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/simms.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/simms.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simms.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simms.ch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/simms.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":240,"href":"https:\/\/simms.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57\/revisions\/240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/simms.ch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simms.ch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simms.ch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}