Monthly editorial
	Summer of 2006 [2006-09-04] Hope that you have had a good summer. Spain was often on my itinerary during these past summer months. The month of June found me there for recitals with Love Derwinger in Tarrasa near Barcelona and in Valencia, a concert to highlight World Refugee Day. Every year on 20 June, World Refugee Day, we remember the millions of refugees that are under the care of the UNHCR. This year’s theme is “hope”. The refugees never give up hope for a chance to live with dignity and in peace. The people of the city of Valencia have for many years been very supportive of the work of the UNHCR on behalf of refugees all over the world. In between these two concerts I was in Barcelona for a weekend with my family during the Moto Grand Prix motorcycle race in Barcelona. My husband has been into motorcycles since he was a teenager and has passed on some of his passion to all of us. It does get very noisy so earplugs are a necessity to protect your hearing. Political and historical coincident: It also happened to be the same weekend that the Catalonia people voted yes to be a ”nation” within Spain. 6 June is the Swedish National Day and I was invited to sing in the Swedish Television’s concert, broadcast live before the royal family and other guests in Stockholm. Midsommar in Sweden with family and friends is right up there with Christmas as a family must-be-together time and I was in Sweden doing just that at the end of June. On our jazz tour (with Magnus Lindgren Quartet) which began in Luxembourg we had really bad luck with traveling by plane. I must say that airports and air travel had become the most unpleasant part of my work even before 11Sept but now it is horrible. The airport in Copenhagen had problems for nearly a month with delays and lost baggage and this is of course where we stared out our tour by passing through the Copenhagen airport. On arrival in Luxembourg, none of our luggage was on the plane, as a matter of fact there was very little baggage that had made the plane at all. My advice to others is: Do not fly unless you have to. I am looking for alternative means of travel when possible. I had a terrible earache on the flight and went straight to see a doctor who assured me that I did not have an ear infection but that I had abused the use of earplugs for too long without having a professional cleaning out my ears. Now I hear so much better. The concert was outside in a beautiful setting, it was much warmer than for our previous concert there but the audience was just as enthusiastic. From Luxembourg we traveled to St Petersburg. I have a long history and love affair with the wonderful old Philharmonic Hall in St Petersburg and have sung many concerts there with wonderful memories. I was last there in January during the festival of Yuri Temerikanov, performing Alexander Blok songs by Shostakovich with piano trio, 2006 is not only Mozart year but also a Shostakovich year. This time, however was my first jazz concert in Russia so I was curious to see how the audience would accept me as a jazz musician. They did indeed and we were thrilled to bring the music of the Blues to this public. Moscow was also a good concert. The view from the window of my hotel room looked like a picture postcard of the Kremlin but it was indeed real. I have not been to Moscow for some time and I hardly recognized it. July: From Moscow we went to Byblos in Lebanon: This was my third visit since the end of the last war and the atmosphere of hope for the future of a rebuilt Lebanon was so apparent. No one could have imagined that in less than a week’s time the destruction and suffering would be so tragic and unimaginable. As an optimistic person I try to find some hope in every adverse situation. Dare I hope that out of this suffering that a true, just solution to the problem of the Middle East might come? Do we have another choice? Yes, but it is unthinkable! More jazz in Spain, Murcia and Saint Feliu and on to Sardinia, Italy we arrived in the airport in Cagliari in the south of the island, were driven to Tortoli for the concert and from Tortoli to Olbia for our departure which means that we drove from one end of the island to the other. What a beautiful place, rugged and wild. In between Spain and Italy I went to Jyväskylä in Finland to sing Berlioz’ Les Nuits d’été with a young Finnish conductor, Jan Söderblom with whom I have performed chamber music (he is a violinist) before he became a conductor. It was a great collaboration and I always enjoy the Finnish public’s openess and enthusiasm. It could seem to be a bit schizophrenic to change from Billie’s Blues to La spectre de la rose and “Ma belle amie est morte” but it is not such a big stretch. It all the blues but the style is different. It is similar to changing from one language to another. Recitals in France: Arles, La Beaume and Aix les Bains, all outdoor concerts. The conditions of outdoor summer concerts can be very difficult especially since there is often no natural acoustic to speak of, no way to control the noises of nature and people around the venue, problems trying to rehearse in peace and quiet, no real dressing rooms or access to the stage. In La Beaume I had to walk through the audience to get to the stage and change behind a small wall on the stage just before the concert. The setting was spectacular. The stage was placed over the water with a very high cliff as backdrop. In spite of being out in the open the quality of the audience’s attention was as high as any that one would find in a concert hall. In spite of all the problems it was indeed a magical evening for us and the audience. On our way toward Switzerland we made a stop in Aix-les-Bains for the final recital of the season. Verbier: It was great to get up to the mountains because it had been incredibly hot, I love the mountains and I slept so much better than I had in the south of France. The first concert in Verbier was with one of my favorite colleagues, Jose Van Dam. Jose sang the role of Figaro to my first Susanna in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro in Berlin in 1978 and he was one of the most generous artists with whom I have worked. I know more than a half a century has passed but it seems like only yesterday to me. We shared a Mozart concert with the pianist Emmanuel Ax. We each sang concert and opera arias and ended the first half of the concert with the Zerlina/Don Giovanni duet. It was fun. It is so gratifying to be able to perform not only with talent but also the benefit of more than thirty years of experience of living with and for and the music. ARTE VERUM news! I signed many CD’s during the festival of the first release on my own label “Spanish Songs” with Love Derwinger. I was invited to participate in the Carte Blanche of Leif Ove Andnses, we performed Mahler’s Rückert Lieder and he gave an unforgettable performance of Mussorsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition”. On the final concert that I sang in Verbier was Schubert’s “Miriam’s Siegesgesang “ for choir, sop and piano. I did not know this work before and was happy to add another Schubert piece to my repertoire. I try to hear as many concerts as I can when I at a festival like Verbier. I really enjoyed some great concerts in the church of Verbier. Two of the 11:00 concerts in particular were outstanding, two Swedish artists, trumpeter Hakan Hardengerger who gave a wonderful program of contemporary music for trumpet and percussion and clarinetist Martin with a fascinating recital. Last concert before vacation: back to Blues and Billie in Veszprem in Hungary. Had to use different data on my hard disk, my brain, it worked. After the 7th of August: On vacation with my family. Meeting friends, long walks in the forest, outings on the boat with friends and family, BBQ at the dock, cray fish party, cleaning out cupboards and soon time to look at what’s ahead: first concerts in Sept in Brussels and Poland, world premiere in Sweden in December. I received the scores today... While our attention was on the tragedy in the Middle East the situation in Darfür has become more desperate than we could imagine possible. How long are we going to accept this? Best regards, Barbara Hendricks
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