Bi-Monthly editorial
	November and December 2006 [2007-01-07] I wish you all a 2007 full of joy, peace good health and love. NOVEMBER The month of November began on a positive note: a political change in the USA. I do hope that the new Democratic Congress will be able to make a difference in some of the many difficult situations in the world and in particular help find a solution for the tragedy that is now Iraq for the Iraqi people and for the future of peace in the world. In early November I traveled to Spain with the Magnus Lindgren Quartet. We are now working on a program of Blues and songs of Billie Holiday. I wanted to get to the earlier roots of jazz, the blues. I have sung Negro Spirituals since I was a small child in my father’s church in rural Arkansas so I have carried the true roots of jazz in me since then. We began in Las Palmas and on the day of the concert I was able to go for an early morning walk on the beach. It was quiet and nearly deserted as there were few tourists and it was warm but not too hot. We went to Burgos, a lovely town with a beautiful cathedral and then to Barcelona, one of my favorite places on earth where we performed in the exquisite, legendary opera house, the Liceu. The Liceu has been newly restored after a terrible fire that nearly gutted it some years ago. It is an enormous privilege to be able to communicate with so many different people in so many different places in the world through the powerful language of music. It’s about the liquids stupid The security checks differ from airport to airport. The difference in the training of the personnel makes one schizophrenic. Some get angry when you do not know that you should take off your shoes and others get angry when you do take of your shoes. I have been barked at in Oslo when I was in the end of a line of about a hundred persons because I had not taken off my coat and belt soon enough while I was still at least 10 minutes away from the control. An encounter with some of the staff at the new Madrid airport terminal 4 was a frightening example of the incompetence I see too often. I wasted 20 minutes with a badly trained and arrogant security person who insisted that I must have a prescription for a non-prescription, homeopathic drug that was in pill form and not even liquid. She obviously did not read the new EU security rules and I had a copy with me. It states that liquid medicines which exceed the amount allowed must have an accompanying prescription in order to be accepted. In any case I find that these new laws are not a solution to the problem. We put hand lotion, toothpaste, mascara and lip gloss in plastic bags that are not even checked for their content. The worst is that I feel less and less safe because of the inefficiency of these security checks. In order to be really safe all commercial air travel should be suspended until the GWOT (Global War On Terror) has been won. This would make it difficult for me to work as I would have to find alternate ways to get to my concerts but it would help reduce global warming which risks being more dangerous and destructive for our planet and human life than terrorism. You might say that then the terrorists would have won but haven’t they already? However I am in favor of a high tax on air travel and more investment in trains and other means of mass transportation that are kinder to our planet. Noise Pollution Have you noticed that there is music everywhere we go? I often flee shops that inflict their musical taste on me immediately after entering. I sometimes endure if there is something that I must have but I do not linger to look around or buy something else I have particular aversion to this at Christmastime. In restaurants, in elevators and on planes we are being assaulted with some arbitrary and banal musical taste. In most places, restaurants and shops we can leave, but airlines hold us captive to this aggression. Iberia is the worst offender, they play the music from the time you enter the plane until at least ten minutes into flight, so loud that you cannot think or speak to the person sitting next to you without it interfering with your conversation. If I want to concentrate on my music, that is impossible. They begin again at the descent until disembarking from the plane. On this last tour in Spain I wanted to scream so many times. As a matter of fact on a flight from Barcelona to Bilbao I had asked the stewardess to lower the volume of the music which she did but one of her colleagues turned it up again after 5 minutes. There was a long line for take-off and we had to wait about 30 minutes with the same two songs playing over and over and I could not take it any longer so I began to sing as loud as I could. After some minutes I called the stewardess and I asked her to turn off the music as I was going crazy. This worked. Wouldn’t silence be more democratic since we all have different tastes in music? My choice is always no music at all. Who decides that 200 persons should listen to the same horrible two songs over and over so early in the morning? If one were asked to choose when purchasing an airline ticket there would be so many different requests that they would have to decide to play nothing. If this annoys you too, please complain. So we can put a stop to this aggression. The danger is not only that it is an annoyance but that it kills our sensibility to hear music as other than noise. Recording for Arte Verum: see below. At the end of the month I participated in a Christmastime jazz tour with Magnus Lindgren and Mattias Algotsson in Sweden. We performed in Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö and Linköping. It was my first jazz tour in Sweden and we had a great time. There were other Swedish artists participating as well. DECEMBER December was a quiet month. I started out with the world premiere of Fyra Kärlekssånger, poems of Niklas Rådström composed by the Swedish composer Johan Hammerth with the Jönköping Sinfonietta Orchestra and conductor Jan Stigmer. The first performance of a new composition is always an adventure. I had had the score of this piece since September but would only hear the actual accompaniment during the first orchestral rehearsal. I had spoken to Johan Hammerth from time to time as I was learning the piece. After having learned most of it I went to him and sang bits of it for him and he was very flexible and open. I had asked if I could change the range of some passages that I thought were too high and were tiring when I sang them. So we left this open. However when I rehearsed with the orchestra these passages were not difficult at all .Knowing that he was willing to change in case they proved not be good for me probably helped me to relax about it or I had sung them into my muscles and they were no longer tiring. I greatly enjoyed singing these beautiful love poems as well as the work with the conductor and orchestra. We may record the piece at a later date. Arte Verum: more recording see below! FAMILY TIME I always look forward to preparing for Christmastime with my family. Even though the children are grown up I continue the same traditions that we had when they were smaller. I decorate the house from the first advent and make a menu for every day that they are home in advance of their arrival. I spend a lot of time in the kitchen and I look forward to this every year. All of this is fun and tiring at the same time. I try to keep the emphasis on the blessing of being together and reflecting on the meaning of “peace on earth and goodwill toward all humankind”. This quite similar to the first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “All human beings are created equal in dignity and rights and are endowed with reason and conscience and should behave toward one another in a spirit of brotherhood” This is not so easy when there is so much emphasis everywhere on senseless consumption at this time of the year. But I think we manage. 2006 ended with the execution of Saddam Hussein. The trial and swift execution of this tyrant is painfully frustrating for those of us who support the International Court of Justice and believe that justice is necessary for peace and reconciliation and vengeance is a tool for perpetuating the conflict and pain. We are truly disappointed at the lost opportunity to establish the truth surrounding his crimes against Iranians, the Kurds of Halabja and the Shia who rose up against the dictator at the USA ‘s request in 1991 and who were betrayed. We have missed another opportunity to learn the vital lessons that could enable us once and for all the get serious about preventing future genocides from happening. And all the while we watch with indifference as the victims in Darfur are forgotten and abandoned. ARTE VERUM The first release of Spanish Songs on my own label Arte Verum has been very positively received in the countries where it has been released, France Japan, Spain, Benelux countries as well as by family and friends. Of course I will be very happy if the sales are good but the most important thing for me is that my work exists and is available. We will be adding many other countries for future release in 2007. November Love Derwinger and I began a recording of melodies of Francis Poulenc composed to poems of Louise de Villmorin, Jean Moréas, Maurice Carême, and Louis Aragon. I have been performing some of these pieces for more than 20 years and putting them together in one CD is a real pleasure. We were at our favorite recording hall at the Royal Academy Hall, Nybrokajan in Stockholm. We will complete this in the fall of 2007. December I performed several concerts during La Folle Journée in Nantes in France in 2006 of Handel arias from Guilio Cesare and Semele and arias from Dido and Aeneas and other songs of Purcell with Drottningholm’s Baroque Ensemble and we have begun to record this repertoire. This recording will be completed in Feb. 2007. I am enjoying so much a return to this repertoire after so many years.
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