Najwa Nimri @ Be open Festival + Miquel Barceló @ Caixaforum: Humanimals

Najwa Nimri onstage^ (with her signature golden mike)
.. and "backstage"

Great set with many drops of improvisation and new takes on her songs, specially her itunes exclusive "Te brillan los ojos". Najwa's latest cd "El último primate" is a brave bet in every way, just miles beyond the usual.
I recorded a bit but sound was too loud for my camera.
Other acts in the festival included Anni B Sweet.


Fiat B Open festival, Madrid 10/04/10

Then the parallelism Najwa/ Miquel Barceló. A few weeks after the show I visited Miquel 's exhibit at Caixaforum, illustrated by this distant (said) self portrait as ... a primate, one of his most recent known works.

His exhibit covers a wide period of time, but it seems that as of late he, as Najwa, is somehow -stamp an "edited" here, there was my usual hence and forth about, this time, the old human/animal thing, concept, metaphor, solitude, cruelty, strength, deception, civilization...ending up with the made up humanimal thing ...I'll spare everyone-.
Curiously, in her "Como un animal" video Najwa holds a gorilla just like the one Miquel painted.

Tomorrow's the last day to visit Barceló's exhibit -I believe-, and tomorrow his huge sculpture of an "equilibrist" elephant, placed in front of the Caixaforum building, will be removed from its present location. Though it looked perfect there.

And talking about art in Spanish, I saw a great movie recently (finally!!): "El secreto de sus ojos" ("The secret in their eyes"). Some animals in it too.

Theoretical Girl @ Sala Siroco, Madrid

Setlist:
I was surprised she didn't play any song from the new album she's recording, in fact she opted for repeating part of the setlist for the encore (she let the audience choose).

Unfortunately the sound in the venue wasn't half as good as would have been desired, and her opting for the company of a canned itunes band instead of an acoustic set, took away quite a bit too (for me, not a fan of that). But her talent, beautiful voice and possibilities were there.
Amy sporting a very rock'n'roll simbol with her hand:

Hope she doesn't mind my posting this bit of sheet music of her song "Good timing" that I was happily surprised to find on the floor near the stage (I'll clear up that I don't usually pick up stuff from the floor... but I'm powerfully attracted to music staff lines). It sounds really pretty on the piano (such a nice melody, the lyrics not my thing though ;), and I hope she doesn't mind sharing (though I'd understand that she would, then I'd just remove it). And I won't go on again about how underrated by music industry itself sheet music is and how many people are interested in it but actually...yep, it'd be great if artists would share these. And I mean the real thing, not some bad lame adaptation as it's most often the case. Even as promo, in the same fashion as free tracks...Just an idea.

Audience:

Theoretical Girl @ Sala Siroco, Madrid7th May
Tags:Theoretical Girl Sala Siroco, Theoretical Girl setlist

Angela Von Neumann

This is just a small portion of the impressive detail she achived in her work. Some time ago I googled her and was surprised to find so little: even though some of her works hang on the walls in museums, one single painting's image was available online (and not one that -to me- did her any justice).
I researched her again more recently. Sadly one of the few additions was the news of her death this January. This is my little tribute to this great painter and kind person. "Flor azul"(65 x 54 cm) was painted by her sometime before the 90's.

Ane Brun at the Moby Dick Club, Madrid

Here's the setlist:

Only change is she didn't play Gillian.

Supporting act was Linnea Olsson (who was later the only one onstage with Ane, playing cello), who did a nice sampler of 3 songs, one of them instrumental. I've uploaded a bit of that one, "The ocean", on youtube here.

A few more pics:

Also uploaded a few vids on youtube of the two new covers she did ("Alfonsina y el mar" -in Spanish, her favourite song- and "It's alright baby's coming back", this last one for Amnesty International, they asked her for a cover of an 80's or 90's song) and also the beautiful "The fall" sounding more beautiful than ever before. They're all in my youtube profile. As usual the best clip is the one that got less hits. Story of my life and by extension of this blog!.

Videos say it all, great concert. And when it ended she stood by the merch table with Linnea. I asked Ane about her next album, she said most probably it wouldn't be out until at least next year, as she's been busy -and now, with the Peter Gabriel thing, even more. She has fully finished two songs so far, and she didn't know if it would be in the same line as the previous one or not- or she prefered to keep it a secret!. It's a big contrast, her songs, with how open and friendly she is.

The edition of the Changing of seasons cd (only one on sale that night) had a French version of the Koop island blues with an almost unrecognizable Ane. Most chic song, had not heard it before ("et mon coeur se souvient des formes de ton corps", different better lyrics than the English version)

I do not want to say again I'll hardly blog anymore because you never know (like the last time I did a week or so into my non-blogger status a very cool NY marketing agency offered to send me their music news and also interview chances to new acts, etc. , -which had not happened the whole time I'd been blogging!) so decided to go on for a bit more. I've only done maybe 2 or 3 small posts on the people they manage because most of it is not something that fits well here -some are very cool though-. They're really lovely people, thanks for keeping me in the loop on some stuff).

So I'd say nothing, which is easier in case I change my mind, but I believe some people (very very few) come back to this blog now and then for fresh posts so I should. BIG thanks to them, whoever they are. May post when I go to a specially good concert or so. Have to focus on the grown up life now, ugg!! ...changing of seasons :)

I'd rather sneak this in Ane's post than on the last one, less self-important, lol.

Tags: Ane Brun setlist, Ane Brun Madrid, Moby Dick club, Linnea Olsson Madrid