Just wanted to share some great experiences from this weekend.
Last thursday at 8.30pm I got a call from a friend: "I'm doing the soundcheck for this Breton band 'Spoum' at the moment. Great flute playing. Have to come. Concert starts in one hour." So I got on my bike (as in bicycle
) and cycled across Copenhagen.Boy, am I glad I did. Really great concert!
The band is called Spoum. 4 guys playing trad. breton music on Flute/pipes, Fiddle/bombarde, guitar, percussion. The flute playing was just awesome, both on the fast and the slow tunes.
They taught the audience the steps to some breton dances and we danced in a circle around the Biniou Koz (Breton pipes) and Bombarde (ouch, my ears!) Great fun.
Last saturday they did a workshop in another town, different instruments in different rooms.
I was in the flute workshop with the band's flute/pipe player Yann Cariou. My wife joined the dance workshop.
The workshop was fun and very relaxed, with the media being mostly the music, though Yann managed very well explaing in english with some french words in between.
We learned 3 Breton tunes: 2 An Dro and a tune callen Ton Plinn - aparently tune names are rare around brittany.
Yann played a keyless flute by Michael Grinter. I had a chance to try it out briefly in the break: very nice instrument! I was particularly impressed with how responsive it was.
At the end all the classes joined up to play tunes for the dancers.
This was a great experience, and I really hope to get an opportuninty to do this with irish music as well. There's an interplay between the dancers and musicians which is very inpiring.
All and all a rich, music packed weekend.
Jeroen
