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Le Vent du Nord Symphonique album review!

Here’s another thing I’m going to do a whole separate post about from this week’s Vancouver goodness: while I was up there, I made a very specific point of ducking into the HMV in downtown Vancouver, my current only source for Quebecois music when I go up there. And much to my pleasure, they had the one remaining Le Vent du Nord album I didn’t have yet: Symphonique, which is Le Vent du Nord pretty much doing a full concert backed up by the Quebec Symphony Orchestra! As both a newly minted LVN fangirl and a piccolo player who still has very fond memories of her high school days in concert band and wind ensemble, it’s my beholden duty to do a proper review post of this album.

I have only minor quibbles with it, and they mostly have to do with the mixing of the LVN instruments vs. those of the orchestra behind them. As a casual listener it’s not clear to me what the musical intent here is: whether LVN should be seamlessly blending with the orchestra, or whether you should still be able to distinguish, oh, say, Olivier Demers’ violin vs. the violin section in the orchestra. It’s easier with Nicolas Boulerice on the hurdy gurdy, since the sound is so distinctive. But I frequently lost M. Demers’ violin against the rest of them, as well as his footwork. In some places as well, such as in “Rosette”, the boys’ vocals were a bit overwhelmed by the orchestra.

And I’ll say right out that although I adore “Cre-mardi”, and while the orchestra did perfectly decent punctuation to the rhythm of the song, it just didn’t sound nearly as awesome as when it’s done as a proper crowd-rousing foot-stomper–like in this video right over here! That song right there is very specifically why I want to see LVN live, since it’s so far their liveliest, audience-participation-iest song, and I am quite prepared to hey-up-a-diddle-um-day-da right back at ’em. 😉

But really, these are fairly minor quibbles. On several of these tracks, the orchestra actually blends quite beautifully with the band. The instrumentals in particular are awesome: “L’heure bleue”, and “Petit reve III”. On those tracks, they achieve the exact right balance between the band’s instruments and the orchestra’s. “Elise” and “Les amants du Saint-Laurent” work well as examples of tracks where the orchestra enhances the overall flavor of the song, and where they don’t overwhelm the band’s vocals.

Also, I have to give the album mad props just for being the only current recorded version of Simon Beaudry singing “Vive l’amour”, since the studio version of this song was done before he joined the band. And on LVN’s previous live album, Mesdames et messieurs, they brought back the original guy who sang lead on that track for that performance!

And while we’re on the topic of M. Beaudry, his other major song on this album is “Lanlaire”, which as y’all know I’m already strongly partial to. So I made a point of listening more closer to this song than several of the others–and I do quite like the drum strikes in the background on the second verse. Well done back there, timpani player! And since I’m trying to commit M. Demers’ nameless bridge/outro bit to memory, I also noted that the orchestra did not fully accompany him on those parts, but they did echo him on several passages nicely. There’s some nice swooping from the strings back there, too.

Someone–either M. Demers or else a soloist from the violin section, it’s not clear to me which since it’s not called out in the liner notes, and I don’t know the original studio version well enough to say for certain yet–has a nice bit in the middle of the second to the last track: “Octobre 1837”. In the bridge in the middle, the performer does some tricky-sounding descending syncopation with his fiddle on top of the rest of the instruments, and gets some well-deserved applause right in the middle of the song after that. Well done there, whoever you were!

M. Boulerice fares the best out of the band in the overall mix, I think. His voice is more powerful than M. Beaudry’s, so he stands out better against the orchestra–and for that matter, so does his hurdy gurdy. (Also: as a former symphonic band student, I have to just giggle my head off at the mental image of the first chair of the hurdy gurdy section. But really, do you need more than one? XD )

Checking the liner notes on the album, I see that Airat Ichmouratov was apparently doing the conducting of the orchestra, and I see a total of 23 violin players, 8 viola players, 8 cellists, 5 double basses, two flutes (woo! flute section represent! And one of them’s a piccolo player! / ), two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, two trombones, one low trombone, one tuba, one timpani, two people on general percussion, and one harpist. So that’s 67 people, a pretty good-sized orchestra! I am now definitely curious about whether they’ve got some recordings of their own, and I may need to seek them out.

All in all I’m very pleased to have found a copy of this album and I’d definitely recommend it to anyone interested in the band. In several ways I actually like this performance better than the other live album, just because the orchestral angle is of more musical interest to me–though if LVN ever do a rowdier live album, I’ll be much more interested in that!

October 3, 2011 by Angela Korra'ti

Books

The Man I Got a Lot of Books at V-CON book roundup post!

Back from V-CON, and a full post on that will be forthcoming, but before I do that here’s a quick roundup of books recently acquired!

Picked up electronically:

Lord and Lady Spy, by Shana Galen. Historical romance. Nabbed this because of Smart Bitch Sarah alerting the Bitchery that it was on sale for .99 for the Nook, and I figured what the hell, I’m willing to spend 99 cents on this. It’s a historical romance version of the “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” spy scenario, and it sounds like fun!

Picked up in print, separately from V-CON:

Ganymede, by Cherie Priest. The next book in her Clockwork Century series, for GREAT ZOMBIE STEAMPUNK JUSTICE. ‘Nuff said!

Picked up in print, at V-CON:

Matriarch, by Karen Traviss. SF. This is Book 4 in her Wess’Har series, which I happened to grab because I saw it in a free books pile in the con suite. Woo!
Heroes Die Young, by T.M. Hunter. Bought from the nice ladies at the Champagne Books table, who even told me that if I liked this book, I could email her and say “Hey I got this at V-CON, can I have the ebook?”, and she’d let me have it! How awesome is that? As for what the book’s actually about, it’s a short space-opera type thing, with a hero in the mold of Han Solo. Which, as y’all should know by now, is very, very relevant to my interests!
The Bloodlight Chronicles: Reconciliation, by Steve Stanton. SF technothriller, bought from the SF Canada table (they appear to be a Canadian analog of SFWA). This is about an alien virus that vastly prolongs life, and a man desperately searching for its source so that he may grant eternal life to his son, who doesn’t have the virus.
Dance of Knives, by Donna McMahon. Also bought from the SF Canada table, and this one’s an SF novel about a futuristic Vancouver controlled by tongs and gangs. I was intrigued to note that this one was previously published by Tor, and the author has since gotten her rights back (due to low sales numbers) and has self-pubbed it and the sequel.
Forbidden Cargo, by Rebecca K. Rowe. SF, picked up from the EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing table. This one’s about the creator of a virtual system that allows instant access to all of humanity’s knowledge uncovering a plot to prove the existence of an illegally engineered race.
And last but definitely not least, Dirk Danger Loves Life, by Chris Rothe. Bought from the nice gentleman at the Atomic Fez Publishing table, because a) I’d heard of this book, b) Atomic Fez is an AWESOME name for a publishing company, and c) the book’s a comedy, and I’m down with the funny right now. I can’t do better than the blurb in telling you what it’s about: “a not-so-typical coming of age story involving scuba gear, terrible poetry, a fish eulogy, a walrus, pop music, terrible puns, marijuana, a fake attorney, homelessness, death, and far, far too much pornography”.

202 for the year!

October 3, 2011 by Angela Korra'ti

Site Updates

Trying an experiment

I’ve been thinking for some time that it’s a little weird that most of my blog posts are on my personal blog, annathepiper.org, while angelakorrati.com remains fairly inactive. Two reasons why this is weird:

If somebody casually visits angelakorrati.com, they may miss my far more frequent posts on annathepiper.org, and therefore miss more of what I’m generally like online, and
The vast majority of writer blogs I’m familiar with don’t differentiate between just writing-related posts and personal ones.

So I’m trying an experiment. I’ve found a plugin that lets me syndicate posts off of one blog into another, so I’ll be using it to try to roll posts from annathepiper.org onto angelakorrati.com.

Note: if you are reading me via Livejournal or Dreamwidth, you are already seeing my direct mirrored copies of the posts on both blogs. This new plugin should NOT echo over onto LJ or Dreamwidth, if I understand it correctly. It’s ONLY for people directly reading on angelakorrati.com.

So if you happen to actually be reading angelakorrati.com directly via RSS, and you’re also reading annathepiper.org, you might try dropping the latter to avoid duplication of posts.

Let me know if you see any problems, people. If this works out I’ll leave it be. Otherwise I’m going to consider just merging the blogs, since I’m finding it also just slightly weird to be splitting up my posting efforts anyway.

October 3, 2011 by Angela Korra'ti

Music

Starting to feel like a proper piccolo player again

When I play piccolo in session, I typically hang out in my lower octave–which, for those of you who are musically inclined, is notated at starting at D above middle C on the staff, i.e., the D just below the bottom of the staff. BUT: that’s actually an octave up from a flute playing the same octave, because a piccolo’s pitched an octave up from a standard concert C flute. So if I’m hitting what’s written out as a D above middle C, I’m actually hitting a D that’s an octave up from that.

Because it’s been so long since I regularly played piccolo, I’ve been staying in that octave for a couple of reasons. One, I haven’t yet regained my old ability to not get louder if I get higher–and a piccolo playing higher notes is pretty damned high. Two, my embouchure also hasn’t been steady enough to not only hit those notes, but hit them cleanly and purely, which is vital on the piccolo. I hit a higher note wrong, you will be able to tell. And the last thing I want to do in session is be the person hitting the obvious high, squeaky notes. *^_^*;;

But this is starting to change. Thanks to regularly going to session–and, more importantly, regularly practicing at home every few days–I’m starting to get my proper piccolo embouchure back. We finished up last night with “Da Slockit Light”, which gets up into what’s written out as my middle octave (which is the third octave on a flute). I was quite happy to get some good notes out up in the neighborhood of G and A! I did notice I was slightly flatter in that octave than I am in the lower one, though. Not sure yet whether this is because I still need to improve that embouchure or if my piccolo needs some tuneup work, or both.

Meanwhile, a fiddle player I hadn’t met yet (I don’t know if she’s new to the Renton session or if she just hadn’t been there when I’ve been before) gave me an awesome pointer. I told her I was learning several tunes off of sheet music since that’s where my background is, and I’m not as solid learning things by ear. She recommended I record myself playing various tunes I’m interested in, reading off of sheet music if need be, and then work on learning the tunes just by listening to myself play. Which sounds like an awesome idea, and I’m going to have to try that!

Note also: “Da Slockit Light” is a gorgeous little tune, and I’m going to have to learn it properly. It’s also got a bit of “aww” with its origin. It was written by Tom Anderson, and according to that Wikipedia page, “Slockit” means “extinguished”, and the title is a reference to people moving away from the area where he grew up.

Also noted from last night’s session: “Dunmore Lasses”, “Out on the Ocean”, and “Kid on the Mountain” are my latest additions to TunePal. Once I get a better handle on more of the tunes in Matt’s PDF, I’m going to start burning through the TunePal set as well!

September 29, 2011 by Angela Korra'ti

Comics

New reboot Trek comics

Throughout most of my life, I haven’t been a huge comics reader. There have been notable exceptions to this–Elfquest of course being the biggest. I paid a bit of attention to The X-Men and Excalibur when I was in Kentucky. More recently, I’ve bought the Dark Horse Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 graphic novels, and their various Firefly and Serenity stories. And I’ve gotten at least the first of the graphic novel adaptations of jimbutcher‘s Storm Front.

But that’s been about it, really. There are a few reasons for this: one, I’ve got plenty of novels I want to read, and have very little mental bandwidth left over to seek out comics as well. Two, I’m finicky about my subject matter. Three, I’m finicky about the art; Wendy Pini set a REALLY high bar for me with Elfquest, and even now, that’s hard to beat. Four, I’ve got very little interest in physical copies of comics these days, for much the same reasons I’ve got less interest in print copies of books: i.e., I do most of my reading on my daily commute, and any paper copy of something I’m carrying around is likely to get beaten up by being carried in my backpack.

That said? I’m actually tempted by IDW’s new line of Star Trek stories that take plotlines from the original series and adapt them using the reboot versions of the characters. Yes, I know–the reboot Trek flick was very silly. But I really rather liked it all the same, despite its spectacularly goofy science. And I’m intrigued by the idea of what this line of comics might do with the plotlines; I was always a TOS girl, when it comes to Trek.

And since IDW does have various free versions of their apps, I could even buy this comic digitally if I so chose. I’ve seen that the Dark Horse comics I’ve picked up digitally are beautiful on the iPad, and that nicely solves the problems of space and abuse of physical copies.

I may have to get this. I’m still pondering; IDW’s app has a bit of a preview up for issue #1 of this line, and it does look tempting!

September 26, 2011 by Angela Korra'ti

Quebecois Music

Most awesome fiddle player of the week

Y’all remember I was gushing over “Lanlaire” by Le Vent du Nord, right, and in particular over this video of it?

That vid was super-handy in letting me figure out a few things about the song. As I’d posted before, I was able to follow the melody on my piccolo and from there figured out what key it was in. Seeing Simon Beaudry’s guitar in the vid let me figure out what set of chords he was using–i.e., that he’s got to be using D minor chords if he’s capoed on 5. (Me, I punted to E minor chords capoed on 3, which are a lot easier for me; D minor is still giving me issues if I try to play chords at any given speed.)

What I could not figure out from the video, however, is what fiddle player Olivier Demers is playing on the bridge and on the outro; he’s playing too fast for me to follow. I tried letting TunePal on my iPad listen to the recording, and it had no idea what the tune was–which is not terribly surprising, since TunePal, helpful though it is, is fairly scattershot about how well it picks up on stuff.

Turns out though that there’s a reason it had no idea what that tune was.

See, I sorta kinda emailed M. Demers and asked him about the tune. *^_^*;; The LVN boys have email links on their bio pages on their site, so I looked at Olivier’s page on Saturday, went .oO (what the hell) to myself, and clickied! Told the gentleman I was a newbie session player and a new LVN fan, and asked if he could identify the tune for me so I could maybe look it up online and learn it. (Because it’s either that or I try to transcribe it, and then learn it that way, which’ll take me a lot longer. Because I can’t play by ear well enough to try to pick out a tune without the intermediate step of transcribing it out first.)

He emailed me back! And said he actually wrote the tune himself for the song! And said he’d send me the sheet music later since he didn’t have it on that computer!

I’ve heard from a couple different directions now (hiya, scrunchions!) that the LVN boys are sweethearts, and this is clear proof. Olivier Demers for me is now this week’s most awesome fiddle player! I’m going to be fangirlishly squeeing about this all week, so y’all be warned. And then I’m going to see if I actually can transcribe the tune, because it’ll be an amusing exercise, if sheet music actually shows up in my inbox, to compare against it and see if I can get it right!

*squee!*

September 26, 2011 by Angela Korra'ti

Drollerie Press, Faerie Blood

The state of Drollerie Press (and Faerie Blood)

This has started getting talked about in a few public places, so I’m going to go ahead and address it here. Long story short, Drollerie Press is in a slow state of collapse, pretty much due to the ongoing serious health issues our senior editor, serasempre, is suffering. All indications are that this is an honorable collapse, mind you–and as someone who’s suffered her own health problems in the recent past, I can certainly attest that it’s tough to get through day to day things if your health is rocky, never mind running a publishing company.

There are rumors that Drollerie may be sold, but at this time they are only rumors. I have however taken the step of asking for the return of my rights to Faerie Blood. I don’t have a confirmed date as to when this will happen, given that it (like all other outstanding things that editor Deena needs to take care of) is dependent upon her ability to get to it. But given that this is now in the queue, if you want Faerie Blood, you should go ahead and get it from the site of your choice. Drollerie’s own site is your best bet as that’s the source most likely to get me any payment for it.

Or, if you are so inclined, I have a small number of CD copies of Faerie Blood still available. If you’re local to me, you can have one for $5. If you’re not local, you can have one for $7.

What I will do with the book once I have it back remains to be seen. Much will depend upon whether Drollerie is in fact sold (in which case the possibility exists that new management may be interested in keeping it), or on whether I can find a home for it where the book hasn’t already been queried. I have received Good Advice that one way to go about that may well be to finish Book 2 and query them together. We’ll see.

Bone Walker remains the most likely means through which I could query Faerie Blood anywhere else, since that’ll wind up being a full novel. The current novella-length pieces I’m thinking about for the Warder universe (the Oscar story, the Elizabeth/Ross story, the Millicent origin story) will also have to be considered.