Amy Kohn

Papershade, Amy Kohn's Blog

http://papershade.blogspot.com/

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Signorina to Signora

Exactly a year after Claudio "Finni" turned me upsidedown while babysitting and asked "do you want to married me?" we spontaneously decided where n' when: Italy (his folks don't fly), and soon -

3 Settembre, 6 months away.

From the moment I turned rightsideup, I knew where to find my dress: Vwidon in Chicago. Carla Hwang had designed my sister Liz's wedding dress 9 years earlier, and when it was my turn, the first one I stepped in was just it. The organza layers made me feel like a cloud. A Jewish cloud, with covered shoulders ready for the Catholic service with an ultra-hip priest who let me sing Free to Be You and Me on the altar.

The same art-deco livingroom floor that staged full-on choreography forced upon Liz to "When Doves Cry"...

...now held piles and piles of family photos. Finni and I would choose and use them to bring our Chicago and Busa families a little closer - connecting grandparents to nonni, great-grandparents to bisnonni.

My Grandpa Ned "All Dressed in Yellow":

and his love, Grandma Ruth "Here Comes the Bride":

We melted her wedding ring to make ours, thanks to Michael at Fitzgerald Jewelry in Brooklyn.

Chicago brought the first sparks of the explosive-wedding-to-come, at a celebratory dinner my godparents threw for us in their stunning home. Opening his-and-her robes a little too enthusiastically, the pink tissue skimmed a candle and burst into a crazy flame. Squeals from my Mom: "ooo! ooo! ooo!", and before I even registered what was going on, Finni somehow grabbed the fire like a football, barreling into godparents on the path to the kitchen sink.

Here he is guarding my wedding dress at the airport

Liz asked me what my wedding colors were (!), so I quickly found some at Pearl Paint back in NY, and commissioned my students to use them to compose pieces for our wedding.

My student Leo wrote:

Nature's Wedding Song

Apple trees bloom in a pretty way,

and it is Amy and Finni's wedding day!

Fish swim in a special way,

especially when it is Amy and Finni's special day!

Grass is usually very green,

like the most fun wedding you've ever seen!

The wind is very very strong

There's lots of love in this wedding song!

A visit to the Italian consulate for pre-wedding papers, and a "Parting Gift for the Tastebuds" on "clouds of chantilly" from our close friends...

...then Buon Viaggio! (first Finni with the dress, then me with my accordion a week after).

Arrived in Italy to a bunny (in Italy they call dust-bunnies: "cats!"),

two eggs,

and the same neighbor from last summer, our lovable "Gaudi of Dolo," Armando.

Now it was time to go through Finni's family photos:

(his Dad Mario being silly)

and start doing hardcore, I-can't-speak-Italian-but-I'm-going-to-attempt-to-plan-a-wedding-with-expressive-hand-motions wedding planning. Actually, if you want to learn Italian, I highly suggest planning a wedding. There's nothing like an ugly chair cover being forced upon you to make the words start flowin'.

The confetti lady (Italians traditionally hand out almond candies at the end of weddings) asked me if I was from Texas because of my wedding color palette. ?! What followed made the road from Signorina to Signora so much smoother:

2 intense months of loving, home-centered, tactile wedding prep. Finni's Mom Maria Teresa offered to sew the confetti bags herself from fabric we picked out,

while I tied the confetti in tulle.

Maria Teresa had once worked in a shoe factory, specializing in the tops of shoes and bows. She tied all of the bags with such care, taking nights and nights.

photo by Elisa Caldana

She also handmade me a silk shirt to wear at our big Feston' (party for all of Finni's friends the day after the wedding), to match the Miu Miu tutu of my dreams,

and kept my veil, wrap and bow laying crease-free on Finni's childhood twin bed.

Mario cut our chuppah from cloth made by hand on a loom by Claudio's Nonna Ina, and Bisnonna Angelica in the 1940's, and embroidered our names in Finni's favorite color.

Finni traced the outline first.

Once I found a red wooden kaleidoscope for Finni at a great store in Padova called DaFrom (which I think means "From From"). For placecards, we picked up a ton of them.

They reminded me of a ladybug birthing center we found.

We made up melodies for each person's name and attached them to the kaleidoscopes. Most of the guests were Italians (Finni has a big family), and their names are molto musical to start, so it was easy.

Right after we first met, I signed off an email with an xo. Finni said "what's an xo?" "A kiss and a hug!" We started making xo's for each other out of everything we could find, passing them across the ocean via photos and videos. So I relabeled some wine from the Cantina Sociale with xo's.

Then designed menus,

photo by Courtney Doyle

table numbers,

and programs
(the octopus drawing is from one of my favorite childhood books, Arm in Arm by Remy Charlip),

drew goodie bags for the kids,

photo by Courtney Doyle

and for the adults,

did the seating chart,

finished a cookbook for the American guests,

wrote some Eucharistic Music, eventually arranged for piano, guitar, flute and bassoon,

and arranged One Hand, One Heart from West Side Story for the processional. Finni had to take the role of musical assistant - because my Italian was so so-so, he single-handedly had to put together the choir + ensemble, at a time when practically everyone was far-off in Puglia etc. on their August-vacation (Agosto, non ti conosco!), while organizing venues, hotels, buses, flowers, bands, Biennale tickets and beer taps. We spent mornings and mornings in bureaucratic circles, from Questura to Prefettura, Prefettura to Questura, to be sure all our wedding papers were in order, and got tips from girlfriends on wedding aestheticians.

Of the hundreds of xo's we have,

I realized I never made one out of music. So whenever Finni stepped out of our little house, I'd switch on the keyboard and write a few measures of a secret "xo" song.

In the midst of all this, before the marriage, we got married. A small ceremony with the vice-mayor of Vigonza, who kept calling me not only by my middle name, Ruth, but by "Ruthie" which was her endearing nickname (I loved it, because the gold that would be uniting us was hers).

Isacco and Sanz were our witnesses.

After the small ceremony with my bursting "Si!"...

...a few bottles of Prosecco...

...a little shoe shopping...

...and some silly dancing at Sanz' place...

we jumped in the local pool! "Viva i sposi!"

All the while, my parents were packing for their trip to Italia for the big day, and making xo's via Skype:

This first Thanksgiving in Italy,

I'm grateful for this years' homemade, heartfelt, hard-workin' love from my bigger, USA-BUSA family.

Stay on the Road-to-Signora in my next Papershade,
where 3 American wedding guests visit the ER and a refrigerator sings!

photo by Elisa Caldana

p.s. My Plexi Lusso CD + International Music Video Project campaign in its final stage. Click here to see the cute video, and read about all the rewards. Be part of the miracle we need at this point to reach our goal in the next 19 days!!!

*WIth a minimal economic effort, you'll be an impresario on an enormous artistic creation, sustaining the unbelievably creative, unusual work of these artists and musicians from around the world, and lifting their work, and my music, to the next level.*

CAN YOU KICK ME?

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Tabs and Struts

A Prada-ad-inspired composing session today has the promise to alleviate a plethora of recent frustrating ones: hundreds of bursting piano figures recorded on my hard disk in ecstatic, almost high states of mind, but the inability to connect them into longer forms.

Maybe this is why I’ve found such pleasure and stability in fashion and in objects this fall and winter. The lines and completeness of things you can touch.

I grew up in a very minimalist apartment. My friends were always wondering where to sit. My parents instill in me an appreciation for clean design, and as less of it as possible!

My sister reminded me today of the one exception: this cloud, that hung below cloud-painted ceilings, above our tub.

My Mom would say “wash up as far as possible, and down as far as possible, but don’t forget POSSIBLE!”

I keep my apartment minimal, with a gray color reminiscent of my parent’s gray, inspired by the Pazzi Chapel in Florence,

and only my piano and a little white couch in the main room. Besides the bane of my existence: a wooden floor-to-ceiling bookshelf. I wish I could just peel it off the wall. I put all my Feng Shui books there to try to balance it out.

Actually, one of my Feng Shui books advised me to throw away all of the books that I don’t find myself reading anymore, to clear away the clutter. So I threw it away.

(That’s my newest Feng Shui joke. Of course the Feng Shui area of my shelf is the “Religious Readings” section to me, and I’d never throw them away.)

Here are shelves Finni made, using only one long piece of twine.

I’ve been drawn lately to fashion/object sites like The Sartorialist and Svpply, and movies like Objectified and The Life and Times of Yves Saint Laurent. My newest favorite book is by the design group Non-Format. It’s called Love Song.

On my wish list for the April 19 release date is the book on BarberOsgerby. I just discovered this London design team while obsessively searching for a bedroom lamp. Once I found the Tab, that was it. It doesn’t read bedroom (though it helps me read there). I feel such a connection with it: the electric color, and the lines which remind me of a standing lamp in my Dad’s study that’s still there. The Tab is the lamp version of me.

Here it is enjoying many spots in my apartment.

I had a similar love story with a wool suit I "invested in" from the store Otto this fall. But in this case, this suit is absolutely nothing like me. I haven’t even worn it yet, but I can’t wait for the right, sophisticated moment.

Annette, who owns Otto, and her husband Phil, have been lovely supporters of my music for years, as I’ve been of the store. Phil is a carpenter, and has made wonderful holiday signs for Otto. Walk by on Mother’s Day!

I’m proud to say that my engagement ring is from Otto as well! Finni bought it the day he turned me upside down to ask me to marry him in April. We were babysitting and I had just buttered some matzoh and suddenly I’m upside down and he put my hand on the ring. It’s an Amy-thyst. Amethysts are supposed to keep you from getting drunk.

I also have a family-born 2nd engagement ring as well: 5 small diamonds from both my Grandma Ruth and Great Grandma Yetta, which Hiroko and Michael Fitzgerald designed into a beautiful heirloom. Here's Yetta, on the left, with my Grandma Adeline, who sports red leather jackets at 90.

We celebrated her birthday in September in California.

Here she is with my Grandpa LeRoy, just engaged.

I only met my Grandma Ruth, who I hear was a very stylish lady, when she touched her Daughter’s belly. She died the January before I was born from smoking. Smoking is sacrilegious for me for this reason.

She met my Grandpa Ned in Canarsie Bay when they were kids. She asked him for a ride in a boat he built, one board at a time, with extra money saved from his milk truck job. He learned how to bend the boards using steam. She fixed his bathing suit that was ripped.

Here he is a few years after.

The fall brought many fashion events, starting with my High School Reunion in October. I had every outfit perfectly picked out until my Mom put the kabash on my funky choices and tidied me up.

A way too loud Chicago bar party that totaled my voice was made up for by joining in on a Grape Jam (my H.S. a cappella group) rehearsal,

and attending Bonnie Seebold’s Shakespeare class and Andy Kaplan's Modern Literature class. An assignment for The Scarlet Letter was to draw a gigantic letter as an emblem of our time and culture. R for Racism. S for Sexism. M for Materialism. :)

The jubilant wedding of Maria Sonevytsky and Franz Nicolay followed a few weekends after. I brought this black dress for the Friday night swing dancing lesson, but only got to wear it in my bathroom the night before, because we sadly arrived too late to dance.

I was so honored Maria and Franz asked me to write their processional. The melody was inspired by the Ukrainian music I’ve heard Maria sing, and the internal lines by the sounds of Italian birds. On a whim after the ceremony, me and my accordion helped lead the guests on a path outside to the reception hall. Somehow I did it in these shoes.

We were all surprised to see the brisk fall day had transformed into a sun-wash, and I know it happened when they kissed.

Our dapper green-suit-wearing wedding roomie Jonathan Wood Vincent invited me to play in a November music night he was curating at CultureFix,

where I wore my piano socks and an alligator tank Karen LeBlanc made as she joined in on saw in my accordion song about a cigarette-smoking orange.

This is a drawing my H.S. friend Courtney's daughter Hayden made of my future wedding. Notice Finni's fantastic pants and my dangly earrings!

December arrived, and I had fun compiling a holiday songbook for my students called keys n' trees, which featured 3 songs composed by them! The cover model is a stowable tree Finni made of wood, sporting last season's lights.

The overarching passion these months has been the preparation of my Plexi Lusso CD and International Video Commissioning Project. Its $-campaign will be launched at the start of March, and I am thrilled to introduce the incredible animators and video artists who are on board, from The Netherlands, Italy, Germany, here in Brooklyn, and beyond. The plan is to commission each of them to make a video for a song on my next album. I formed letters out of Fimo for the trailer, which is right now being made by one of the project artists, Luca Dipierro.

I love to dance, and hope one of them gets me doing some moves.

As part of collecting things for the project trailer, I transferred a few VHS tapes to DVD, and was happy to re-see this choreography from my Oberlin Senior Composition recital, which I wrote for conga and spacey mini-organ inspired by Satie’s chorales.

The Preface to Satie's chorales (with titles like Choral Inappétissant - Unappetizing Chorale) reads: "This publication embodies two arts, drawing and music. The drawing part consists of lines, witty lines; the musical part of plain black dots."

Tonight’s Grammys are super exciting because The Greatest Ears in Town: the Arif Mardin Story is nominated for Best Long Form Music Video. I’m in the last minutes of the film, in a clip during the credits, where Arif says some sweet things and you can see me smoking (it’s just the movies!). I am so happy for his son Joe, who Co-Directed the film (and who Co-Produced my last album I’m in Crinoline as well!). Joe lent me a Feng Shui game, where you have to separate cards to make the pieces.

Here’s a great shot of the great Arif, from our session for his album. An unforgettable day for me.

Driving alongside an Italian superstore, a few years back, there came rabbit in front of our car, hopping gently forward down the middle of the road. We slowed and followed him in a straight line, block after block. My wish for this Year of the Rabbit, and I already feel it, is for the bursts and hesitations of last year to mellow into engaged and rhythmic hops forward, like his.

And for that BarberOsgerby book!

I leave you with a fashion show.

Sunday, August 1, 2010

Sospesi

My one young and suspended pumpkin is starting to hold weight, and is close to touch the garden floor. Like the summer, with its swung thoughts that hope to be finding their places.

Party radio posing as an Italian spirit entered over the old walls of Padova into my set last night in the Giardini Sospesi (Suspended Gardens), and a plastic bottle of Acqua Panna served as a language key, helping me to explain my songs as neonate e vellutate (just born and velvety). After last summer's projections were stopped by rain, finally we were able to show Jill Auckenthaler's gorgeous paintings.

Debora Petrina joined me with harmonies and added scurrying musical lizard sounds with interesting toys, and Mirko Di Cataldo engineered and kindly embodied a marimba with his favorite guitar and a tremolo pedal.

Flip the year back in half, from summer night to insulated winter, which produced a base of piano/vox demos for my next album and an orchestration of my new song about aeroacrophobia, in the light of a wooden Christmas tree.

Bought an impulsive ticket 2 hours before the flight to surprise my Dad for his New Year's Eve birthday party in Chicago, where the ceiling was dripping with a floating balloon guessing game - each had a tag scribbled with a guest's anecdote about him, and how many years they've been friends!

Visited "the rocks" just before the party, where we used to go for walks on the water. And saw my Grandpa Ned for the last time, having a blast singing Auld Lang Syne from his wheelchair. His apartment across the alley was plastered with giant-sized lyrics to songs he liked to sing. His memorial service months later shocked our jaws open with an unexpected Navy 21-gun salute on a blocked-off downtown street. We could only hear it, from inside. The realization that it was for him took you over slowly, and it was profound.

Back in New York, February was growing wheeling trees, and my apartment was filled with rushing accordion notes of a new Valentine's song.

A drive to Canada gifted the most delicious cupcakes made by music camp friend Julia Seager-Scott,

and an exciting first rehearsal of her harp part in my orchestration.

As spring bent in,

gardens started to grow out of shoes,

and the Bushwick Book Club released my song Facing Their Way, which compares Roald Dahl as a child lying in his dormitory bed missing his parents (from "Boy") with James (and the Giant Peach) missing his parents who were eaten up by a rhinoceros.

I created wavy accordions for Roshi Nasehi's recording: an Iranian version of the traditional Turkish song "Sari Gellen" and curled my hair to serenade Mothers with french songs in a bistrot.

In June I arrived in Italy to a bowl of snails,

and dug into a riverbank to discover a plastic bottle with a gym membership inside.

Mid-month I celebrated the release of All My Friends Are Here, the final recording of Legendary Producer Arif Mardin. I'm "Amy Ice" in his film-noir song Dual Blues, and so honored to be a part of the eternal life of Arif's music, along with performers such as Chaka Khan, Carly Simon, Norah Jones, and my pals Raul Midon and Rob Schwimmer.

I found a handful of stars, and a green unicycle grew in the garden, packaged in sparkly vines.

Flowered teacups and plates marble my neighbor Armando's house, which he started covering when he was 17. Now he's 71.

Got painted with leaves for a night playing accordion in a production of Sogno di una notte di Mezza Estate, done by a community of recovering drug addicts, many only teenagers. It reminded me of when I was Puck for halloween, and my Mom painted my cheeks in gold.

The Community has a puzzle of flowers covering one wall.

Tons of ferociously creative rehearsals with drummer Jimmy Weinstein led to a sleepless recording session on a buttery Fazioli piano in Udine. So happy to initiate the new album. My longtime sax player and friend Peter Hess passed through Italy on a break from his Balkan Beat Box tour and lent a pricelessly helpful hand to the session.

2nd time in Berlin blossomed into one of the best, musically-releasing concerts of my life - the Concerts in the Box series at the Clavier-Cabinett piano shop.

The owner gave me a wooden hanger on the way out.

After downing some yogurt/poppyseed cake across the street, I accompanied singing drunks on accordion in a French bar. We passed right through last summer's magic square walking there.

Next day went to a blue peacocked island with directions on logs, where I climbed a ladder and saw a vine that seemed a person upsidedown.

A happy detour into Salzburg on the way home gave me one of the thrills of my life. I found myself unselfconsciously reenacting choreography from The Sound of Music in the actual Mirabell Gardens, covered in goosebumps from many Decembers watching it with my sister on Grandpa Ned's big bed.

There’s a Dwarf Garden there.

Now I'm eating just picked sugared pumpkin flowers fried in flour and beer. In Italy there's a saying "Agosto, non ti conosco" ("August, I don't know you"). It means - I'm on vacation in August so don't bug me. But to me, it's a prayer that this month will bring settled answers to wobbling questions - answers non conosco, yet.

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Keys

With the first lying snow, starting to record piano demos of my next album at home, using velcroed homemade Italian denim curtains in the windows. It's about refining subtleties - pressure on each note, speeds, emotion of sections. I'm getting to know each song more intimately - it's so valuable. The piano was just tuned and the songs are glowing.

Atune to my apartment too in a new way after 13+ years here, mic'ing it. Stove timer clicks stuck in "on" since the 90's, neighbors keys, brakes of the B69.

My one-minute piece Corset, about a girl being tied into one, had its New York premiere at Le Poisson Rouge in October. Pianist Guy Living ston commissioned the piece in exchange for a mini-bottle of whiskey. The video for my piece, directed by Nelleke Koop, was filmed twelve feet below sea level on a moving piano. The DVD, which features 60-second pieces by 60 composers with a video for each one, is called One Minute More.

(I'm very excited about my own International Video Commissioning Project for the next album, and already there are inventive animators and video artists on board from Italy, Austria, The Netherlands, the UK, Brooklyn and beyond.)

October also sprung a puppet show about a girl who cries magic orange teardrops into a watering can. We wrote it for at the PS 10 Harvest Festival and made wooden pumpkin patches and funny animals. The Orange Teardrops was later revised, adding swearwords and a medley of The Debutante Hour songs for their telethon at the Ukrainian National Home.

November brought beautiful guests from Spain, Italy and Argentina. Here they all are in the subway:

Monica is an English researcher, Gius is a drummer/trumpeter, and Paula's a great photographer who took this shot of me with rice cereal.

The month's grand memorial service for The Issue Project Room's Suzanne Fiol was a reminder of how deeply you can affect people with your strong vision. The Kenny Wollesen Band led us raucously from St. Ann's church to 3rd Ave - apartment buildings bobbing with heads, kids hanging from scaffolding smiling, Mardi Gras beads dropping. Suzanne-inspired music made me feel more connected to my regular streets than ever. Here's a video of me playing accordion that Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo stepped into.

Went to LA where I met this Black Jerusalem cricket,

this fish in Koreatown,

this pole,

and got to swing around with my light-filled niece and nephew.

LA was an intense family time, where I ended up crying in a toy store about life's paths.

I took refuge in nature.

My boyfriend's been taking photos of US bathrooms.

I've been baking piano cookies for my students. This season we've worked on Bartok, Bach, and Fire Burning.

Hiding out in my ultra-juiced apartment recording til 2010, and hoping to start it with the finishing of a few key musical projects, benched on my subconscious wanting to leave some free space.

Saturday, October 3, 2009

Beaming

Back to the Brooklyn engines: ritual morning 7-second Black Magic coffee grinding, my friend the school bus idling her motor 1 to 2 am, the treadmill ovaling under me, last turnings of the ceiling fan, and my lyric engine going too - tonight finished one inspired by a visit to a Mount Etna crater last summer in Sicily. Once you realized how pliable the hardened lava was, you could jump around in those coffee grounds with no fear! In the new song, the lavatongue takes me on a journey to the sea.

First full week back in NY was slightly more tea-infused, with the happy arrival of Roshi from London. Between the final summer sighting of the Atlantic and blue pedicures, we performed co-bills at Goodbye Blue Monday and Joe's Pub.

Roshi's voice soars effortlessly, and her songs are gorgeous and other-worldly. Her new album, Roshi Feat. Pars Radio The Sky and the Caspian Sea is launching October 19, and features her songs about pills and sheep, paces, and beautiful corners.

Goodbye Blue Monday was graciously hosted by The Debutante Hour, and it gave me the opportunity to return a postcard they had left in Padova of a semi-racy nun.

A concert can be an excuse to buy a dress. Here's me trying it on.

Our co-bills gave Roshi and I the chance to play each other's music. Besides a comedic mic-wobbling situation, the Joe's Pub show had a serenity and relaxed vibe to it. And the audience glowed with special artists and musicians...

...like Pianist Rob Schwimmer!!

After, we ate "A Slice of New York"

and Roshi ate hers from the top!

October's IBEAM show was cancelled in the moment because only one person came to it. Warming up on some song excerpts with Peter Hess was lovely though, and we all got to drink some Brooklyn beers instead. I feel like transitions are happening for everyone, where we're all, via disappointments and triumphs, reaching to a higher, more intense level of life. A big, fearless caffeinated mountain.

Friday, August 21, 2009

A Blog is like a Frog

My last summer day in Padova, my neighbor who passionately belted distorted arias from 7:30-8 each morning was suprisingly quiet - his silence another kind of song. I felt like a twig being carved out by a child in these days, to make a small boat for the ocean.

The summer ended with one of the most honest, gorgeous concerts in my life, under a grotto made by Padova's city walls. The venue, Giardini Sospesi (Suspended Garden) had me on a big stage, lit by the art of Jill Auckenthaler and the 3 or 4 Padova stars I got used to wishing on every night. The minute before I was supposed to walk onstage, the sky started to drip, and the crew started tearing everything off the stage. For a moment the sky paused, and we did too...until whoosh! Pioggia. Molto. It was decided to move the concert under the walls.

Descriptions of each song translated into Italian were folded on the keyboard, and once the white plastic chairs were rearranged to make an audience shape, I held the papers out to Luciano, the resident card trickster, who had given me a brown cloth star on a string at my last show. He picked my newest song, Mother, and I started the show on a serene note, singing about a tree in Sicily that whispers secrets.

Every song came out like the first time I wrote it, and the rain created a sweet camaraderie with the audience. 2 encores left me skipping under all the arched bricks.

At the Venice Biennale, I visited the Italian tadpoles outside the Brazilian neon exhibit that I wrote about 2 years ago in the song "Everyone's in Love." They've grown into frogs!

Saw a glass table there with the settings cut out, a basement garden, a room of woven elastic, and braided kissing Egyptians.

An appearance on Padova's Radio Coopertiva, with 2-hours of engaging musical and literary questions from Leonardo Zoppei.

I met the incredible Padovan drummer Jimmy Weinstein this summer, thanks to NY multi-reedist Matt Renzi. Jimmy's Chicago-born like me - I used to touch every indented circle on the kid-high facade of his relative's building 2 blocks away. 2 hours of rehearsal and we were set to go for our Cantieri D'Arte concert in Vigonza. Debora Petrina joined us for a few songs on the gorgeous outdoor stage at Castello de la Peraga, where Jimmy's wife used to explore as a little girl. Artist Elisabetta Benfatto approached me, and happy to say she'll be creating a video for Mother. My new album project includes a different artist making a video for each song.

After Debora's blue-haired electrifying set with 3/4 East Rodeo, I fell asleep with friend Isacco and the keyboard in the backseat.

Took a wrong turn into lower Switzerland after climbing in the Dolomites, which was a right turn in the end. My heart melted into the dainty area of Engadin, perched above the Swiss National Park. The first night camping, we were sent to the town of Sent, where we discovered an accordion/tuba band, and at night from our tent heard a Swiss men's choir singing traditional hymns (with a conductor!) in the camping Bratwurst restaurant.

Pastel concrete houses with painted designs surrounded each mini-town's washing fountains and sculptures, and artistic couples with barefoot children climbed cardboard piles for fun.

And hand-shaped mushrooms filled the caterpillared, story-filled forest below.

This tower in Northern Italy is 1/4 in the water. Nearby's the real Apple Store.

In Chicago, visiting my family, and circles are containers of Italian seasoning for my niece and nephew, made of pom-pom sparkles.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Magic Squares

Austria and Germany were made of magic squares. This one, part of the new Kaiser-Wilhelm Church, built to heal the old one halved in a 1943 bombing, was a slow-motion traffic light for us. 2 days later it marked the first stop on a treasure hunt for Finni's Father's long dead punk/metal loving cousin Franco: the green neoned ice-cream shop La Fontana steps below.

I was 16 going on 17, where the 54 winter hours I've spent watching the Sound of Music coalesced into a beautiful summer morning, waking up in the alps. "Soon a duet will become a trio!" Our first Austrian friend.

Our first day in Berlin began between the squares of the Holocaust Memorial - popped up like heaviness from nowhere - after a night reconnecting with Oberlin composer friend Jeremy Bernstein, who gorgeously ordered Thai in German. My stylish plastic nose bandage is courtesy of an Italian door post who I shared some words with the week before. The incident left me in the hospital with beautiful emotions rising like fog from my legs, and the desire to orchestrate my songs for the next album staring me down. I really felt like the body is nothing, and we are all connected. Later that night, I ate a fig from a winery tree and was so grateful nothing was broken.

Berlin is 1/2 a city from the past, 1/2 from the future, and 1/2 Williamsburg Brooklyn. I know that's 3 1/2s, but it's right for this almost imaginary city.

The Debutante Hour showed up breathless at the Down by the River Festival to the bright music of Crazy for Jane, who I was slowly recognizing from the hallways of my Chicago high school. Jeremy's sweetheart raved about a square for fashion finds, so after bathing in Debutante harmonies, we got on the U-Bahn and hopped through mini-rainfalls to find it. Long tired L-shaped trainrides back to Jeremy's, about-facing to trudge to a delectable white-leather lined nouveau German restaurant. It was in the same square!! Only a 10-minute walk!

An imperative spark our final morning to search for Franco. The neatly typed out address we had forgotten about in the 2-day Berlin whirlwind led us to the other side of the city, back to the glistening mosaic, and the soda-fountain below where Franco worked when he was last heard from in yearly postcards. The Italian owner emerged reluctantly from the hidden gelato depths to kindly tell us that Franco was alive and had a child, and worked at this pizza place - go there. The womanly voice on our Italian car navigator swung us through a grand tour of Berlin monuments and we pulled up. A jovial pizza maker told us "no, Franco works at the sister pizza parlor - go there." Back in the car like a movie, and I laughed "it'd be so funny if the restaurant was our magic square!" And at the last curve of the navigator, there we were. On the corner of the square at a pizza joint we had passed so many times without knowing. Rushed inside, and covered with tattoos there was Franco, ball of dough in hand.

Off to Wetzlar, where we met up with the Debutantes for saffron-lit paella before our sets at Cafe Vinyl, wettened by bacon-tasting beer and eyes still emotional from the morning. Fell asleep in a sunflower covered room in a house from 1650. Every room was different.

2 days of driving and a night of less-than-perfect-camping wiener-schnitzel brought us back to Padova, where the drum brushes were left behind at the Debutante's last minute No-Shoes recording session. They had to use little BluBrooms for our BluRadio show!

Finni as a zen zombie in The Debutante Hour Zombie video. I co-star as his pristine zombie wife.

My project with brilliant Italian Pianist/Singer Debora Petrina, NAKeD (NientAltroKeDonne, Nothing Else but Women) in Senigallia's Notte Bianca (White Night). The city was open all night, and we got to play a Yamaha grand at 2 am. Here's our kickass drummer, Cristina Atzori, who we picked up in Bologna on the way. Acclaimed contemporary dancer Nicoletta Cabassi of Parma graced the stage.

Wearing Debora's dress, I played my new song Lucertole, comparing lizard-embossed Italian floor tiles to a magic-square hand puzzle and facing an inner untrustworthiness, as she dropped marbles on the strings. A beautiful week. The bandage comes off Thursday.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Gardenias/Tubes

As New York starts to fade off my skin, the browning gardenias fall off my new Padova street’s walls, making extra room for me. And new pink flowers peek through my gate, like they’re trying to talk. At the end of the fence, the scent of two men stripping paint brings me right to the 19th floor window in Chicago's north side, as my Dad melted thick kitchen colors, prepping our apartment to become 1 and a half instead of just 1. I feel this expansion.

The week of London shows was a push - pushing sound past an inflammation in my voice, pushing keyboards through crowded Tubes (grazie Finni!). But the music got out, and here are some notes on the exhilarating Lustretour shows:

Scaledown at The King and Queen: Joined on saxophone by the incredible Andy Williamson and the 3 beers he kindly carried up the carpeted pub stairs (one from Edinburgh, an essence of the 2005 Fringe tour he brought me over for, where we first played together in the mirrored Spiegeltent). Transported in a set by Katie English (aka Isnaj Dui) on her handmade electric dulcimer.

Andy lives on a boat! Next day walked under a giant table and chairs at the Tate Modern then barbequed on the Thames boat where Andy lives, where I wore lettuce for a hat.

Sunday our gorgeously host Roshi (thank you Roshi!) had her birthday party on a riverboat. After being hypnotized w a gin and tonic to the beautiful music of Graham Dodwell (Dids, Gagarin), I played songs about signatures and orange-shaped heartache facing backwards over the rolling Thames water.

A cosy basement night in Electroacoustic Club's The Slaughtered Lamb. Blown away by exquisite guitar playing of Alan Lacroix.

Genuinely a highlight of the trip was Andy taking us to Steinway showroom to rehearse. It was like playing jewelry.

This musical devil in a red dress stopped to take it all in at a pub on the road.

After the release of playing on a real piano at Ray's

Jazz Shop, I snuck into the B's to buy a Kate Bush biography.

The famous 12 Bar where I got bonked on the head by my own keyboard during setup and wobbled through the first song on accordion. I had one of those cartoon headbumps for a few days, which made me feel animated. The super high stage puts you halfway between the balcony and the floor, so you get to look up and down while you play. A nice music writer took a picture of me with his stuffed ti