Interesting night! All I knew was that jazz was happening at the prestigious Philharmonia Hall, courtesy of the Azerbaijan-German Society and thanks to the Minister of Culture who granted the use of the Hall as it was the pianist’s birthday.
They love their speeches here. A German man spoke with an Azeri woman interpreter interpreter and after that he gave his speech in English. Then after they were clapped off another little Moulin Rouge man came with wringing hands and spoke for another 15 minutes in Azeri. Who knows what he said but when he finished I think people were clapping to get him off. Thirty minutes seems a bit much for speeches at the start of the night. I guess they don’t give them at the end as people would walk out.
During this time a cameraman was going around shining bright lights in people’s eyes, presumably to splice our concentration into the playing that came later. Talk about intrusive! There were TV crew everywhere and there was serious lighting setup for this event – obviously a significant event for someone.
A female soprano and male jazz pianist performed an interesting selection of classics by German Brahms, Schubert and Mahler. She appeared to give a very polished, accomplished, straight classical version but his playing was heavily influenced by jazz, which Baku delights in and has some reputation for. Around October I saw another German jazz group sponsored by the same Society in another part of the town, which I enjoyed more as it was more dynamic and energetic.
While in Dubuque years ago we went to a concert where the female singer had a degree in projecting rapture from the stage. Tonight’s singer took her rapture to another level whilst the pianist did his thing, by striking poses at different points around the piano, armed stretched on the piano, head leant on various angles hands then wrapping around herself in different positions to break the boredom every minute or so, sometimes looking towards the pianist, sometimes looking sidestage.
Anyway, it was good for another experience. Tomorrow night, ANZAC night, downstairs with the Aussies on campus, of which there are quite a few.
I was proud of my students today. They brainstormed this creative paragraph on the data projector, to describe being bored in a library, as part of our unit on communicating our emotions called Deal With It. (The Principal is resisting the next unit being called Get A Life.) They voted to situate it in a library. On completion they were itching to show the paragraph to our school librarian for a laugh as the one in this story is not at all attractive. Well done P8s!
This library was the one that most cool school kids flee from. There were horribly dusty shelves. When people sneezed, dust exploded into people’s faces. Everything was old, especially the librarian. She was wrinkled like a tortoise and had warts like a witch. Her hair was as white as mist. Specks of dandruff fell from her hair and mingled with the dust. The books on the shelves looked like they came from the Roman Empire because if you touched the pages they disintegrated at the edges. They were also just for adults. The writing was microscopic and seemed to be in ancient gibberish. It looked as if the books hadn’t been checked out for ages because no-one could understand them. The only sound was the silence pulsing through the bookshelves. Strangely, everywhere there was a carpet of torn pages lying everywhere, like wounded people in a hospital during a war. There were spider webs on the pages on the floor. Some of the pages looked as if they had been eaten by termites and vomited back out. The library looked like a gigantic toilet for mice.
February 2nd, 2009 by Leigh Newton in Baku · 2 Comments
Thinking of exporting my blog so that I don’t lose the stories and photos.
Sadly it looks like the pictures don’t get exported along with the text. This is good for a quick export but the pictures are the soul of the blog. Mmm. Quandary! I took some photos of wintry suburban Baku yesterday as well. Guess I could blog here and post photos on Facebook.
I’ve been off air again as the server says I have a nill balance. Strange considering that I signed up last week for a month and 1.5Gb. I did listen to the tennis yesterday for a while – about one set only. The IT guy at school got me back online but I haven’t learnt what the issue was yet. Tomorrow all will become clear.
I’m back treading the bitumen in the morning again. It’s cold and dark but not icy. My lungs are almost back to normal, apart from the odd bit of hacking every now and again.
A close coffee shop is having music Sat nights and I’m thinking of signing up with a secondary teacher from TISA. She lives in this gigantic building so rehearsals should be easy. It’s sometime in February – just a few weeks.
Having finished that major assignment during the week I’ve a weekend almost to myself. Yesterday I spent hours assimilating Spanish sentence structure while reading bilingual children’s books. It’s a great way of understanding new words linked to pictures and seeing the words used with verbs and sentence structure. I’ll have to change them over tomorrow when back at school.
Today I’ve spent hours putting up family photos, prints and wall hangings to make the apartment look a little more friendly. It now has a welcoming feel and I now have a family obvious for the world to see.
It’s a foggy day in Baku. We even had some rain overnight and drizzle today. Meanwhile Victoria burns. I hadn’t been out since Friday night so just had a long walk exploring this part of the world. Photos to come soon, once I’ve paid some money to Edublogs so that I can load more photos.
Better work on enrolling in the next subject for the M.Ed.
After being off line for way too long I’m back to report that I’ve been in four apartments in the last few months here in Baku. (It’s a long story) I’m now in an US style gigantic condominium called Wellington Heights, which is around 8 mins closer to school in walking time. I haven’t walked to school since catching a cold last year but I’m almost ready to go again, just as soon as this cough in the cold air subsides.
We’re now into our third week of school with seven weeks to go until the March break. The plan is to meet up with Tanya in Phuket, Thailand, and have two weeks of doing not much but having my teeth repaired. The only thing that would be better would be if my whole family were there as well, especially little grand-daughter Keeley. In the mean time there’s a parent-teacher night or two to think about.
