Concert Series! My first open to the public show in Bhutan!

There's so much to catch up...today seems to be blogging day.

Last weekend I had my first open to the public concert here in Bhutan. It's the first concert in a series of concerts that the radio station I have my show with is organizing. There's a real lack of venues for live shows, or live shows for that matter her in Bhutan. In fact, I heard from someone the other day that the word "concert" doesn't exist in Dzonghka (the native language here).

So, every month we'll have an afternoon concert, at the radio station garden, for a small fee, with proceeds going to strengthen the radio station financially. We'd like it to be more of an informal kind of event, a concert as well as a social gathering, and most importantly an opportunity for the performer and audience to interact. The concerts should have explanations and be interactive with the audience. Coffee, tea and delicious home made cake were served to the approx. 50 people who showed up.

It was a remarkable, and somewhat unexpected turnout for the first event of its kind, and I was so happy to see already so many familiar faces. It gave me the great feeling that after only two months here I've developed a community of friends both international and Bhutanese. I feel it was a very successful first event. I played mostly my original compositions, but kind of had a theme of talking about jazz and improvisation, as well as speaking about my own background and path in music. A recurring theme was the way in which improvisation allows you to take any kind of raw musical material and mold it, arrange on the spot, into something different. To demonstrate this I played a Chopin nocturne "Straight" and then played several variations on it, which were improvised. I played some a piece of Abdullah Ibrahim and then segwayed into an original composition that is inspired by Ibrahim and is a kind of tribute to him. I performed several of my compositions which have a more an "Israeli folk song" bend to them, performed an arrangement of mine of the fantastic Alison Harris (california singer/songwriter and friend) "Western Wind" as well as my arrangement of Beethoven's 7th slow movement. I had a great time in this more interactive mode, and wondered why I didn't do more of this in the US!!!

Future concerts will likely involve collaborations with local musicians!!!! I can't wait!

Here are a few pictures from the garden before the concert. I know my friends took photos during, but I haven't seen them yet...

Love,

Noam