Sunday invite to the bar: Wert der Grenze/Wat is de Grens Waard?

[K9 Kai Niggemann]

The two filmscreenings/concerts on sunday went really well. It was very nice to meet Romain in person at Het Vestzak Theater in Enschede and to have a few words -- of course there was much too much going on to sit down with a drink and really talk, but I'd like to do that sometime in the future.

It was a very exciting run up to the concerts: I had a bit of a problem finding a trombonist from Münster, I only met Gunnar Weiper, a guy who plays in three different ska and Jazz bands on thursday. I went through the score with him and I noticed that if you mute notes in Logic's pianoroll editor, they still show up in the score..;) Other than that using Kontakt4 to write trombone was quite sufficient, a fact that was a big relief to me.

The violin was played by Julia Philippens from Amsterdam. She is a really good violinist, I understand she is fairly well known in Jazz and classical/contemporary circles. She performed in Amsterdam (at Paradiso) on saturday night, jumped in a car with her boyfriend as a driver afterwards and arrived in Münster at 2 in the morning. We accompanied her boyfriend on his dinner (Döner near the trainstation) and went over the score in the Döner place, clarifying why my bars didn't add up (I was making loops that go against the 4/4 beat of the drums on the film's soundtrack).

We then went to sleep, got up only five hours later to go to the theater, set up and soundcheck in time for the 11 AM matinee show. 

In the first show something happened to the film (we were playing from a laptop, the DVD had shown some other glitches during the rehearsals). The film froze for about 1 second, very rhythmically, in the final part, generating an awesome opportunity for the two player's improvisations. un/fortunately this didn't happen again at night in Enschede...

We then had a quick talk, breakfast, drove to Enschede, set up there, had late (at 5:30) lunch and headed back to the theater for soundcheck. We performed at 7:30 (in time, this time) and things went smoother there. We had a much smaller screen, the musicians had more light and the audience had a much clearer view of the entire setup -- everyone who saw both shows said they liked and understood the concept much better the second time.

The content of the film was a series of improvisations: Jort Bonne, a filmmaker from Enschede and I were set up together to create something (anything) that uses the Euregio (the region left and right of the border) and the border as a topic. 

We decided to have two actors, Diet Gerrit from Enschede and Ekkehard Freye from Münster meet for the first time in front of the camera. It was an eerie meeting because they were both extremely nervous, unsure whether or not the other was acting and if they knew something the other didn't...

Then there were a few scenes where the on screen actors interacted with and directed the musicians, probably the funniest being the part where thy hold out musical notes, cut out from black cardboard over a set of music lines, asking the violinist and the trombonist to follow what they show.

Now we will see how we go on. Maybe if they give us more money we will add another layer of interaction and improvisation by remixing the material or something...

We filmed everything (the performances too) and recorded audio from Münster, but my H4n failed me in Enschede, it just turned itself off after five minutes, forgetting anything that had been recorded until then, in spite of fresh batteries... Something wrong about the mixer's outputs going into the +48 enabled (forgot to turn that off) inputs maybe? 

Again thanks to Romain for coming! It was great to meet you, and again sorry I had so little time after the show!

Let's see how this goes on..!

Kai