Fri 20 Apr – Frida Hyvönen
I actually was planning on attending yesterday's concert, that is April the 19th, but it turned out that my showing up at seven PM, half an hour before the performance, had just not been quite early enough to actually get a ticket (what was I expecting - they were practically free - and all the more popular for it). I did luckily get a ticket for the next (and last) performance.
So, on the 20th, there I was standing in the impatient line of French, Swedish and various other fans talking about the upcoming presidential elections and other things I couldn't understand (probably Paris) in the courtyard of the Hotel de Marle, where the Swedish Cultural Center is located, at the heart of the Marais. It was a beautiful Friday evening, and the little garden opposite the Center looked very tempting, in all its flowering and setting sun glory.
How suitable that it should be a Friday...sounds almost like Frida. Frida's day. I grabbed a seat in the third row in the tiny room that served as a "concert studio"; there must have been about 75 seats, not more (correct me if I'm wrong). All the seats were taken but one, which was the one next to me - I reserved it for my imaginary friend, Edward. He was there in spirit. So, Frida Hyvönen showed up at about 7:45 in a pretty, simple black dress, with artistically messed up hair and a great, half shy half wild smile in her eyes and on her mouth. She brought two apples (one red and one green), a bottle of water, a digital camera, and a notepad on which she had some lyrics, to a song about Paris that she wrote the night before.
Most of the songs we heard during this unfortunately rather short (it was over by nine), though overwhelming performance, came from Frida's first album, Until Death Comes. I especially appreciated her interpretation of "I Drive my Friend" (song about true love...Frida knows what it is!), "You Never Got me Right", and "The Modern", which Frida said was a song about the importance of language, and the necessity to keep inventing "new words with precise definitions" so that we can understand each other better. She also performed one song from the F.H.G.Y:M.F.T.D.P.P. album (okay, don't blame me for that title - just call it "Pudel" for short). It was a musical - dance show that she put up with a Danish choreographer. The song was called "Cricket" and it was really enchanting. We sat there, bemused, in our little Parisian getaway, imagining Frida somewhere in Sweden, performing a song about crickets getting sick, accompanied by four dancers and five real life, blazing white, detergent bleached poodles (doing what exactly? we didn't get to hear!).
Every now and then she would munch into one of the two apples, and she observed the interesting acoustic harmony of camera shutters and her teeth crunching the apple. At one point she poured some of the water in her bottle over her head because she felt it was really hot inside...and the water dripped on the back of her dress and on the stool and the floor.
One last song about an old woman Frida had met in the north of Sweden put the audience into a quiet, peaceful state of gratitude for all we had heard.
After the concert Frida gave me the honor of signing my copy of her album...and I was such a dumb little fan that I forgot to take my pen back from her. I hope she uses it well!
PS> The song about Paris goes something like "Paris, Paris, be kind to me; I don't speak French, but I want to make friends...take me to your bed, or hit me with a baguette...on the head..." Please complete!
We also heard a song about Madrid, and Frida mentioned that most of her songs were about cities, as she's been traveling much recently. So, perhaps some day soon there'll be an album on which all these city-songs will be brought together! I think it would be terrific, but mind you, I didn't hear any such thing from anyone but my dumb imagination, so don't spread it as news.
I actually was planning on attending yesterday's concert, that is April the 19th, but it turned out that my showing up at seven PM, half an hour before the performance, had just not been quite early enough to actually get a ticket (what was I expecting - they were practically free - and all the more popular for it). I did luckily get a ticket for the next (and last) performance.
So, on the 20th, there I was standing in the impatient line of French, Swedish and various other fans talking about the upcoming presidential elections and other things I couldn't understand (probably Paris) in the courtyard of the Hotel de Marle, where the Swedish Cultural Center is located, at the heart of the Marais. It was a beautiful Friday evening, and the little garden opposite the Center looked very tempting, in all its flowering and setting sun glory.
How suitable that it should be a Friday...sounds almost like Frida. Frida's day. I grabbed a seat in the third row in the tiny room that served as a "concert studio"; there must have been about 75 seats, not more (correct me if I'm wrong). All the seats were taken but one, which was the one next to me - I reserved it for my imaginary friend, Edward. He was there in spirit. So, Frida Hyvönen showed up at about 7:45 in a pretty, simple black dress, with artistically messed up hair and a great, half shy half wild smile in her eyes and on her mouth. She brought two apples (one red and one green), a bottle of water, a digital camera, and a notepad on which she had some lyrics, to a song about Paris that she wrote the night before.
Most of the songs we heard during this unfortunately rather short (it was over by nine), though overwhelming performance, came from Frida's first album, Until Death Comes. I especially appreciated her interpretation of "I Drive my Friend" (song about true love...Frida knows what it is!), "You Never Got me Right", and "The Modern", which Frida said was a song about the importance of language, and the necessity to keep inventing "new words with precise definitions" so that we can understand each other better. She also performed one song from the F.H.G.Y:M.F.T.D.P.P. album (okay, don't blame me for that title - just call it "Pudel" for short). It was a musical - dance show that she put up with a Danish choreographer. The song was called "Cricket" and it was really enchanting. We sat there, bemused, in our little Parisian getaway, imagining Frida somewhere in Sweden, performing a song about crickets getting sick, accompanied by four dancers and five real life, blazing white, detergent bleached poodles (doing what exactly? we didn't get to hear!).
Every now and then she would munch into one of the two apples, and she observed the interesting acoustic harmony of camera shutters and her teeth crunching the apple. At one point she poured some of the water in her bottle over her head because she felt it was really hot inside...and the water dripped on the back of her dress and on the stool and the floor.
One last song about an old woman Frida had met in the north of Sweden put the audience into a quiet, peaceful state of gratitude for all we had heard.
After the concert Frida gave me the honor of signing my copy of her album...and I was such a dumb little fan that I forgot to take my pen back from her. I hope she uses it well!
PS> The song about Paris goes something like "Paris, Paris, be kind to me; I don't speak French, but I want to make friends...take me to your bed, or hit me with a baguette...on the head..." Please complete!
We also heard a song about Madrid, and Frida mentioned that most of her songs were about cities, as she's been traveling much recently. So, perhaps some day soon there'll be an album on which all these city-songs will be brought together! I think it would be terrific, but mind you, I didn't hear any such thing from anyone but my dumb imagination, so don't spread it as news.
