Aligning our sights - what Indonesians taught me, part I

I have now been in Indonesia for about 4 months. There's so many new impressions and things that I've seen, learned and experienced that I'm starting to forget them. Some is bad, some is good, some are ugly so I thought that I would write them down.
The first thing is some sort of alignment that is repeated almost everyday. In almost all workplaces that I've seen or heard about. Like a routine checkup on what is important here. I've actually experienced that before, in a very different setting.

In this post I'm planning to tell you a couple of short stories and episodes, to then try to see what this could look like in my "normal", more western culture. I hope it will be interesting and useful.

Saturday of brass band, presenting and fun

I am on my way home after presenting at two concerts with Windcorp Brass Band. Exhausted but very happy.

It all went down quite well. The band was in excellent form and played well throughout the evening and their rendition of The Cossack will stay in my mind forever. Also the thing surrounding the concert was, as always, good.

My own part in the whole thing went well, even though I had missed the fact that the concert didn’t had a intermission. Quite embarrassing when I told the audience that a break was coming up, just to then call them back in their seats. Well, well – it became a joke and was quickly forgotten.

I love doing this! If there was a way to make a living presenting concerts I would take it immediately.

Thank you WindCorp Brass Band, Alex, Swedbank and all my friends in Gothenburg for an excellent day.

Music and photos from Vasa Band

Just because of the current flow in the band I found the energy to create a video of from our performance in Örebro in september. This is also my first YouTube-upload ever.

Vasa Band does it again

As I wrote before we are very blessed right now in the Vasa Band. It seems like we really are used by the Lord and that the music we play is filled with his presence.

And the best part of it that it feels just right and like what we always wanted and has done.

Here is a recording of a concert (beware 45 mb!) we did Sunday night with Andreas Kratz conducting.

As always; I am so proud and happy to be a part of this great band and to be a Salvation Army bandsman. I have played with some great bands – but this is the greatest feeling, if nothing else.

Thank you guys – let’s continue on this path. And thank you Andreas Kratz for making us great!

Vasa Band and Saturday night success

This weekend the band I play in, the Vasa Band, had an opportunity to play at the Salvation Army regional congress in Örebro. We were invited to play in the musical festival at Saturday.

When we learned about this a few of us started to think in how we could make something new and different. And so we borrowed ideas from some great bands and put together a short program with music from our latest CD – Priority.

It was very well received and we really made a big impact. But what felt very good was many people felt the presence of God and his message to them as we played. This is always our greatest hope and longing. And this Saturday it was very obvious.

Feels really good to continue on that road with my fellow bandsmen/women.

I’ll try to upload some photos from the evening later

What I am watching

Ok – the updates on this blog has been way under par for a while. That’s because I am not working right now.

I’ve noticed that when you have a lot of things to do it’s easy to get the little things done in a jiffy but when you do nothing it’s hard to start to even the small things… Strange but true.

OK – here are some things that I watch and enjoy right now.

Shaun the sheep – on SvtPlay.  Great fun for both me and Albert.

A complete live concert with Black Dyke Band (part 1 and 2). The playing has some minor blemishes but overall it’s great as usual, especially the Immortal-piece at the end!

Anything with Fodens on YouTube. Check out their run through Paganini variations (part 1 and 2).

And the rest of the time I enjoy the company and lazy days with Elin and Albert. And yeah, I do Salvation Army work. Preparing for a camp this summer amongst other things.

Hard to get started, Salvation Army and brass banding

I have some real trouble get going with my normal flow after Ethiopia.

This week I will play and do the presentations at a concert with Solna Brass. And there has been a lot of stuff with the Salvation Army and the band.

I’ll try to get to it in the next week.

By the way, the Vasa Band got a good review of the CD Priority. In Brass Band World. Here is a picture of it:

The review was next to the review of A Breathless Alleluia of Black Dyke Band… Something to be compered to!

My light and song

In a few weeks the Vasa Band will do a music festival at the corps. I will play an euphonium solo and was looking for something that isn’t played were often.

For a long time, several years actually, I have had the solo part for My Light and Song (FS 228) in my “collection”, but never dared try to it.

I have actually never heard it played (actually Patrik Randefalk did play it with the Vasa Band in the 90th-ies) or recorded.

I’ll try to post a recording here… after 25 march.

[UPDATED]

This is so sick! This book contains all music (kinda) that is available for euphonium. And who has recorded it! Including a reference to recordings by my father.

And My Light and Song is recorded. By a mr John Butler.

The internet is amazing…

In control IV – Håkan Björkman

OK – here is one of the nicest and probably best trombone players in the world showing of his amazing technique.

Follow this link to a short clip from SVT where a couple of musicians competes in playing the Flight of the Bumble Bee. In Swedish… The whole program can be found here.

Amazingly Håkan plays the piece 20 beats faster than for example the violinist… And very clean.

Thanks for the lesson Håkan!

Norwegian Championships – the aftermath

OK – my guess wasn’t completely off (got the first right, didn’t I). Oslo brass band chocked by coming second on the first year in the championship section. Since I have played with a few of the bandsmen (and women) in that band I was really proud. Well done – Tone, Mattias and Clare!

Also Eikanger has my favorite euphonium player – Patrik Randefalk – and he and the rest of the band was marvelous, especially on the Extreme Makeover.

But the thing that impressed me most was that the whole thing was taped for Norwegian television. And you can see every performance afterwards here.

Norwegian Brass Band Championships – live

Right now you can follow the Norwegian Championships in Brass Band live on nrk.no. Here is the link: http://www1.nrk.no/nett-tv/distrikt/hordaland/verdi/89482.

Here is the order of play.

My tip for the whole thing is:
1- Eikanger Bjorsvik (Go Patrik!) – Draw #3
2 – Stavanger – Draw #9
3 – Manger – Draw #1 (I missed that)

Dark horse - Oslo Brass Band

2008 - another great year

To sum up 2008 is not very hard for me - it starts and ends with Abbe (Albert). He was almost a part of our lives at the start of 2008 since he took up considerable space in Elin's belly. :)

He went from:

to:

In work I don't think I ever learned so much in one year (TFS, SOA, MSBuild, WCF, Oracle just to mention a few things I have touched during the year). But it come to a cost - where I also lost my ability to leave work at work when I go home.
I'll try to improve that next year - which won't be hard since I will be home with Abbe for about six months.

With the Vasa Band it was also a great year with the recording and release of our CD Priority and a tour of the western parts of Sweden. On top of that we did two great Christmas concerts in the begriming of December. It is a great band with focus on Jesus and bringing a message through our music. I just love to play with the band - in many regards the best band I've ever played with.

For the Salvation Army part of "me" - my corps has rebuilt and move out and back again into our new, wonderful hall. A great feat for a corps that just consists of people doing stuff on their spare time. But it also took it's toll - it was quite hard work at times...

So that was a great 2008 - let's do 2009 even better.

Christmas times - hectic times

A very hectic time is closing into an end... the day after tomorrow will be the first day in ten days that I've been free after work. Phew! To much!

But fun stuff too:

• We did two concerts with my Salvation Army Corps and they were both great. The Vasa Band and Vasa Gospel holds these concerts each year. This year at our newly renovated corps. I was in the planning group as well as doing the presentations during the concert. Very fun!
• This weekend was another highlight since I (once again) was presenter for the Lucia-concerts of the Windcorp Brass Band. This year I even got the opportunity to play with them due to a late change in the parts.
  Also the guest soloist was Richard Marshall of the Black Dyke Band, which is a bit like a football player that get to meet David Beckham! A great thrill for me. What a great guy and what a marvelous player!

Swedish Brass Band Championships 2008 - the aftermath

The Swedish brass band movement has a new champion... The king is dead - long live the king!

Stockholm Brass Band is the new Swedish Brass band champions. And that's a real chocker for most of us. WindCorp Brass Band has been leagues before Stockholm when I've heard them but somehow the managed to nick the title from WindCorp.

Don't get me wrong - Stockholm is a great band with some truly amazing players (like Håkan Björkman for example). But WindCorp has loads of experience from many, many brass band competitions - something that there is not an abundance of in Stockholm.

My congratulations to Stockholm! Well deserved! And very impressive since the preparations has been surrounded with a lot sickness and problems to get a full band to rehearsals.

Swedish Brass Band Championships 2008

OK - it's so late for this. They have probably started soon. But here is my predictions for the Swedish Brass Band championships:

The winner is almost obvious - Windcorp Brass band is the best band in Sweden now and for a long time ahead. They play so well and have loads of experience to go with it. They will win. Probably with a big margin as well.

Number two should be Stockholm Brass Band. They have the best line-up, but it consists of mostly professionals. And rehearsing for two weeks straight without pay is not the highest priority. Also it has been some sickness disturbing the preparations.

Solna Brass will most likely take the third place. But they are a dark horse to nick Stockholm at the first one. They meet every week and rehears very serious. They could do it.

So here is the probable order:

1. First: Windcorp Brass band
2. Second: Stockholm Brass Band
3. Third: Solna Brass

VasaBand - full speed ahead

The band I am playing in - the Vasa band - is right now in a great form, great spirit and on full speed ahead;

• Last Sunday we did a concert in Sundbyberg - first for the season. It went very well and was good received.
• Our website - www.vasaband.se (or www.vasaband.com) - is soon to be launched. It looks great I think. Great work Samuel!
• We are in the last preparations for our new CD - Priority
• On Wednesday the 8 October 19.30 there will be a release party on Centrumkåren, Drottningatan 66
• Two days later we will be heading out on a tour to promote the CD. The tour will take us to Lidköping, Göteborg and Jönköping.
• The season will end with a Christmas concert.

Lot's of stuff but I love every minute of it. I wouldn't want to do this with no others!

Let's go!

In control III - trombonists

This is not for the faint hearted, but well worth seeing.

Its a clip from a recording session of the film music to the movie Hellboy. And the sounds these dudes produces are just ... well scary.

For any non-brass players I can tell you that to produce one of those "bursts" is hard. Really hard. To do 15 or so in a row is just amazing.



And now for something completely different. The best trombone player (not counting the bass trombone dudes above) in my opinion is Håkan Björkman. Here is a clip of him doing a cadenza of the Leopold Mozart's Alto-trombone concerto. Very different - but still amazing.

Yeah - this is also something that shouldn't be possible to accomplish. I have heared it live at the Stockholm Opera once.

Multi-gifted - Glyn Williams

I can't keep this clip from you - it's golden. The clip shows one of my favorite band, the Fodens Richardsons band, in their best party-mode. The "main" soloist is an excellent euphonium player named Glyn Williams, but here he tries out some other instruments also.

The new grandfathers clock

Brass band videos, anyone?

Found this page http://www.themusicpage.com/ that streams a lot of different contests and performances from brass brand all over the world - seems to be a bit a heavy on the down-under side but a lot of great stuff can be found there.

For example recordings from the English Nationals that took place this weekend, with Grimethorpe as the winning band.

Weekend over - let's rest

This weekend was one of the hectic I've been through in a long time. But in retrospective also one of the most exciting and rewarding.

Going backwards;

• Yesterday night we played a musical service at the Temple in Stockholm. Quite a good turnout with people - and many of the performances were the best during the complete rehearsal period.
• Before that - photo session with the Vasa Band for our CD - Priority. That was very fun and I hope and think that the pictures will be nice
• During the afternoon we went to Abbes first children birthday party. Viola turned 1 year!
• The Sunday started with our prayer group being in charge of the Sunday morning meeting. Abbes has got a small cold so I wasn't present for the whole meeting but it felt alright until I left.
• The Saturday was entirely devoted for the Stockholm Marathon. As I wrote earlier the Salvation Army of Sweden was human-sponsor for this event and did a collection for water tanks in schools in Kenya. This was big success (haven't heard anything about the amount yet) with loads and loads of people listening to us and helping us in our cause.
  
  During the day several Salvationist were running to promote the charity and best of them were Martin Musembe who ended up as #8 - very impressive.
  
  For me the day started off horrendously with large amount of stress for leaving my uniform and other stuff all over town! Also I was quite tired after "rocking the boat" at Odenplan for six and half hours straight...
  In the end these were small matters - it was a great day!