Midsummer musings: Taking command of one's voice
We spent midsummer in the traditional way at my parents' summer cottage at the seaside, on the island of Kemiö. Four generations were represented, from the children of mine and my brother's to my grandmother. A hectic and satisfying holiday, with my family learning to manage with the more relaxed time resource, which has been available since the completion of Outi's thesis.
As the picture intends to show, summertime in Finland is a fragile and lyrical time; time to spend time with the family and friends and connect with "the national identity" by observing time-honored traditions (drinking beer, barbecuing sausages and jumping into the lake fresh from the sauna).
I tested a recipe of barbecued lamb chops which worked well: soak the meat in red wine, fresh rosemary and thyme overnight, season with salt and pepper and barbecue it. Works wonders with good red wine, salad and new potations. The dish found relative favor with the audience and I decided to use the recipe at a gentlemen's reception to be held at our place next week (I also had 3 liters of cognac).
After spending the night, we relocated to a friend's midsummer reception in Hanko, the southern tip of Finland. It is a windswept, ruggedly pittoresque small town, and the guests included a few of my old friends from my days as a student union president. The host, Kristian, is maybe the best amateur jazz sax player I know. Indeed, he is the spitting image of the sax player Zoot from the Muppet Show, an incarnation of sax player cool (Kristian has better hair, though).
As I was pushing Iivari in his carriage on the windswept Hanko coastline to put him to sleep, the landscape covered with sand, rock, small, windswept pines, and the sea, I listened to a couple of Steely Dan songs from my iPod: the epic Aja, and a live version of Reeling in the Years. Both songs are characterized by a guitar solo, followed by a sax solo, with both guitarists being totally humiliated by the sax player. In Aja, Wayne Shorter's majestic tone and phrasing just make everybody else stop and gape. He just glides through the abstract rhythm and difficult chords, in my view totally embarrassing the previous guitar solo. In Reeling in the Years, Chris Potter takes an idea from Walter Becker's hesitant solo, playing with them like a killer whale would play with a clumsy seal pup (prior to digesting it), and moving on like a monster.
Kristian also has this sax player confident in his phrasing, which I have always admired. We were able to play a couple of jazz standards (Coltrane's Mr. Pc and Rollins's St. Thomas) at our shared friends' wedding and I can just hope that my solos did not sound as ackward in comparison to Kristians as those poor guitarists.
A final picture of the midsummer mood on the seaside...
We spent midsummer in the traditional way at my parents' summer cottage at the seaside, on the island of Kemiö. Four generations were represented, from the children of mine and my brother's to my grandmother. A hectic and satisfying holiday, with my family learning to manage with the more relaxed time resource, which has been available since the completion of Outi's thesis.As the picture intends to show, summertime in Finland is a fragile and lyrical time; time to spend time with the family and friends and connect with "the national identity" by observing time-honored traditions (drinking beer, barbecuing sausages and jumping into the lake fresh from the sauna).
I tested a recipe of barbecued lamb chops which worked well: soak the meat in red wine, fresh rosemary and thyme overnight, season with salt and pepper and barbecue it. Works wonders with good red wine, salad and new potations. The dish found relative favor with the audience and I decided to use the recipe at a gentlemen's reception to be held at our place next week (I also had 3 liters of cognac).
After spending the night, we relocated to a friend's midsummer reception in Hanko, the southern tip of Finland. It is a windswept, ruggedly pittoresque small town, and the guests included a few of my old friends from my days as a student union president. The host, Kristian, is maybe the best amateur jazz sax player I know. Indeed, he is the spitting image of the sax player Zoot from the Muppet Show, an incarnation of sax player cool (Kristian has better hair, though).As I was pushing Iivari in his carriage on the windswept Hanko coastline to put him to sleep, the landscape covered with sand, rock, small, windswept pines, and the sea, I listened to a couple of Steely Dan songs from my iPod: the epic Aja, and a live version of Reeling in the Years. Both songs are characterized by a guitar solo, followed by a sax solo, with both guitarists being totally humiliated by the sax player. In Aja, Wayne Shorter's majestic tone and phrasing just make everybody else stop and gape. He just glides through the abstract rhythm and difficult chords, in my view totally embarrassing the previous guitar solo. In Reeling in the Years, Chris Potter takes an idea from Walter Becker's hesitant solo, playing with them like a killer whale would play with a clumsy seal pup (prior to digesting it), and moving on like a monster.Kristian also has this sax player confident in his phrasing, which I have always admired. We were able to play a couple of jazz standards (Coltrane's Mr. Pc and Rollins's St. Thomas) at our shared friends' wedding and I can just hope that my solos did not sound as ackward in comparison to Kristians as those poor guitarists.A final picture of the midsummer mood on the seaside...
posted by Saku Mantere at 4:25 PM
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