Still writing...

Still working on new material. I’m very happy writing with Mark, he has brought this truly joyous sense of groove to the songs and I feel he is bringing out a different side of me. There are even a couple of songs that if I heard them by someone else, I would be quite envious. (Oops! Am I allowed to say that? I guess it’s ok to throw the occasional flower at yourself !) Who knows what will happen ? When you actually end up recording an album, you can be so easily distracted by non-musical choices and have a sudden lack of faith. My aim is just to keep this freshness & enthusiasm through the whole process. Lots of love tt

Lecuona Cuban boys

My wake up song at the moment is Lecuona Cuban Boys ‘Hindu’. It reminds me of Lotte Lenya singing ‘Alabama’ in that it fills me with nostalgia for the giddy & slightly debauched life I have yet to live ! I hope you enjoy it, the sound quality is not great but I think that sort of adds to it :) Lots of love tt

Interesting ….

Sometimes I enjoy attending an event where I don’t know what to expect. I decided to try the ‘This is Tuesday‘ experimental music evening at King’s Place: link. The performance from the Melissa Phelps ensemble was a revelation. The ensemble consists of eight cellos creating a truly wonderful, warm, human and sensual sound. I was also impressed by how open the audience is. One of the other pieces, the composer enthusiastically explained, was based on sampling the note that you get from holding down a string on a guitar and plucking the string on the left fret side of the held down chord as oppose to plucking over the more usual sound hole. This was then processed & edited according to a mathematical formula involving prime numbers.The live guitarist then responds to the sample according to another mathematical formula. It sounded like some one eating with chopsticks and a few random chords played on electric guitar (of course, it isn’t random because of all the elaborate sums involved!). I’m ashamed to admit this. Believe me, I tried everything: mediation, self-hypnosis, counting the audience, pretending the music was from another planet but I was bored! The audience, however, kept with it. I don’t know if they actually enjoyed it but I didn’t see anyone giggling or yawning. Quite refreshing when we are supposed to be living in an age where no one can focus their attention on anything for longer than three minutes. Perhaps contemporary music is the Way. I too can become a little Zen Buddha instead of the fidgety five year old that I usually am by not judging everything that I hear! Anyway, I do recommend these evenings,it’s a treat to hear live music in such an informal atmosphere even if some of the music is not what I would usually choose to listen to :) Lots of love, Tanita

Ramon !

Ramon my brother came by this week to sing on one of the new songs. He has a completely different voice to me, it is really powerful (perhaps, this is because he is an actor). So basically I get him to sing the really hard bits on the song which I can't sing ;) I sing in French on this song, which is funny and I hope you will like it as much as I liked doing it. Perhaps, I've been listening to too much Serge Gainsbourg and watching too many Isabelle Huppert movies ! Love tt

Elisabeth Leonskaja

Wednesday evening Mark and I went to the Wigmore Hall to hear Elisabeth Leonskaja. Playing Beethoven’s late piano sonatas. One of the most magical concerts I’ve ever heard was Leonskaja’s Schubert recital at the same venue. So I was really looking forward to this. She did not disappoint especially in the last sonata Op.111. I’m uncomfortable writing about music that moves me, it feels intimate and a little silly. When I hear a great performance my feelings are so contradictory: a great stillness and order, but then this super alertness to every change and variation even in the texture of sound and this beautiful fragility because the spell can so easily be broken. Maybe what I'm trying to say is that great music makes us feel everything. Lots of love, Tanita.