According to Richard Marcus, we all have our "Nigel Kennedy stories." He tells us that "supposedly there is a small potted tree in Toronto's Roy Thompson Hall that is now known as 'the pot that Nigel peed in.'" Yes, well. Probably the less said about that the better ! But we do have our individual experiences of Nigel. A concert we went to ? A brief encounter with him that stays in the memory ? Whatever, let's share. Send in your story, even if it's only a few sentences. You have a picture ? Send that too. Your chance to do Nigel Kennedy !
My primary interest in this concert
can be traced back to a great love of Krakow (one I believe Nigel Kennedy shares - which is partly echoed in the appearance of a Cracovia football shirt on an album cover of his - city rivals of Wisla Krakow) in particular and of the music of Kroke, who originated as musicians from that city and are embedded in both musical learning in the Krakow's academic institutions and also a deep empathy with the music, culture and traditions of the former Jewish district of Kazimierz (subject of Schindler's List).
Krakow and Nigel played Lodz in June but I was unable to get to that concert due to family matters. Returning to Poland, we found that they were due to play Lublin, Tarnow and Wroclaw. Having already visited Wroclaw and Tarnow I was hoping we could get tickets for Lublin but all that apparently were available were some additional seats to be placed alongside the existing seating. As Wroclaw, date wise, was too difficult, Tarnow was the option we elected for.
When we actually arrived at the Moscickiego Centrum Kultury, to collect our tickets for the 3rd December concert, we were told that although we had travelled some 220 miles for the concert, others had travelled from Gdansk (some 400 miles away).
Another aspect of the event, which for me was a new experience, was that it was held in conjunction with a photographic exhibition by Andrzej Dudzinski of "Antagony in New York" and a talk by a well known Polish writer Janusz Glowacki. The audience itself was quite a mix which probably goes with the event itself. Kroke, outside of Krakow, are not as well known, as their music deserves.
At this point I need to roll things back a little. For me I have a strong emotional as well as musical feel for the music that Nigel and Kroke produce together. Tarnow for me is particularly relevant and appropriate, in that the first people to be sent to the Nazi Concentration Camp at Oswiecim (Auschwitz) were Poles from Tarnow. This coupled with the bloody massacre of thousands of Jews in the streets of Tarnow - before the war over 40% of the city's population was Jewish (this of course was only a reflection of what was being wrought right across Poland by the Nazis) made this a very, very poignant and moving concert.
I apologise for the cliches but the music itself was beautiful, involving intellectually and emotionally. The play of the individual musicians was sublime and transported me to many different places. The rapport that Nigel clearly enjoys with the other members of the group was wonderful to watch , experience and be a part of. A truly unique experience.
Nigel's quirky style, humour, mannerisms and empathy with the music, stood only second to his abilty to extract divine music from his instrument.
He arrived with a can of zywiec (a Polish beer) and later went through a list of Polish vodkas (Wyborowa, Belvedere, Chopin). He rechristened himself Tomek Kennedy (the three original members of Kroke all being called Tomek) and played for at least two and half hours. I think if he could have he would have played all night.
It was one of, no, it was, the most involving and magical concert I have ever attended and it reminded me why, lest I forget it, live music is so important to our lives. It's the whole experience. The sounds, sights and interactions of everyone, venue included. A dance of beauty, through the soul of emotion.
Nigel Kennedy is one of the most interesting players of classical music.
His interpretation of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons is the best-selling classical CD of all time. He is recognized for his great talent, while at the same time his sometimes challenging opinions, different stage clothes and punk hair style also draw attention.
Nigel has already released an album of Jimi Hendrix songs, The Kennedy Experience, back in 1999. This CD proved that, despite what many people thought, Jimi Hendrix’s genius was extraordinarily akin to Nigel’s genius and the result was an exhilarating musical event in itself. When you add to that Nigel’s intense interaction with his listeners in the concert hall, you can understand why I was looking forward to the concert at the Babylon Club in Istanbul.
That Wednesday evening the spirit of Jimi Hendrix filled the club. If Hendrix could have heard it he would have been both proud and happy.
It was one of the most crowded nights at the Babylon. We went up the stairs and we could see the tables arranged near the stage, but we had to wait by the bar, the crowd in front of us pushing each other in their attempt to make some progress. Then we saw Nigel. There he was with a beer in his hand, trying to make his own way up to the stage. He noticed us and said, “Hello, how are you ?” My friend said to him, "By the way, I am from EMI, your record company." “It’s fucking lovely to see you here,” he replied.
The concert finally began at 9.55 pm. From the opening piece, “Fire,” it was obvious that this was going to be a great night. In the full fifteen minutes that it took them to play it, a warm interaction between the musicians and the audience was established. Nigel’s stage presence also had a profound influence on the sympathetic relationship between them. He told jokes and talked to the audience, beer in hand…….”What’s your name ? My favourite name ! This song is for you !”
After “Fire,” which nearly set the Babylon Club on fire, we got “Little Wing,” tender with a touch of melancholy in it. With this song, we have to highlight the role of Jarek Smietana, the Polish guitarist. He had a perfect night with his electric guitar solos, especially in “Purple Haze.” Everyone was fascinated by him.
When they got to “Third Stone from the Sun,” Nigel introduced another musician ……….“ Not good-looking, but a very good saxophonist !” he joked and Tomasz Grzezgorski came on stage. [ED: He is, of course, the saxophonist in the Nigel Kennedy Quintet.] Grzezgorski contributed a pure jazz solo to the song.
This was followed by “Drifting” and then an outstanding performance of “1983…….A Merman I Should Turn to Be.”
The evening culminated in ringing applause which brought the musicians back on stage to play something which surprised everybody……………an arrangement of one of Duke Ellington’s songs.
We had experienced 2.5 hours of uninterrupted performance. The admiration of the audience was obvious from the expressions on their faces.
And on Nigel’s face…………..pure happiness !
The musicians were Wojciech Karolak (Hammond organ), Adam Kowalewski (bass), Jarek Smietana (guitar), Krzysztof Dziedzic (drums), Nigel Kennedy (violin) and guest Tomasz Grzezgorski (saxophone.)
When he was just under two years old, Luca became obsessed with the violin.
We were living in London and had taken him to the WOMAD Festival, a three-day world music extravaganza on the outskirts of the city where among other acts we saw electric blues from Mali, a folk-singer-cellist from Ireland, and a children’s chorus from Tanzania that we were enjoying until we realized that the lyrics were in praise of the mine company that had funded their CD. (“Oh, Golden Pride mining company/We thank you for our social development/Without you we would have no schools, no roads, no hope for the future!”)
Luca’s thunderbolt moment came with Nigel Kennedy and Kroke, a hypnotic and danceable melding of electric classical violin and Polish klezmer music with hints of North African and gypsy rhythms. Luca couldn’t see over the heads of the people in front of us and only caught glimpses of the stage. At one point I looked down at him and he was swaying with his eyes closed and his hands clasped in front of him.
We bought the band’s CD, East Meets East, at the festival, and on the way back home to London, we listened to it in the car, not one or two times, but over and over through traffic on the awful M4 motorway. We crawled past Heathrow Airport and some of the dullest, grayest landscape anywhere in the world, a dreariness from which Luca, rocking in his car seat, was transported. When he pretended to play along with the music on an imaginary violin, Jim and shared a look. Where was this coming from?
For the next eight months we heard Nigel Kennedy and Kroke’s East Meets East at least six times every day. Luca would demand it first thing in the morning (he awoke in those days at five AM), and then several more times before lunch. He listened to it again after napping and before dinner. If we went somewhere in the car, we had to bring the CD with us. As he became more familiar with the intricacies of the music, he began to play air violin in time with every note on the CD, a trick that once moved his Hungarian babysitter to tears. If we were in a bookstore and he happened to spot a photograph of a violin, he would begin to shout and point: “Violin! Violin!”
The fact that my mother who died ten years before Luca was born had been a Juilliard-trained violinist added a supernatural spin to the whole thing. If you believed such things were possible you might think that her spirit were somehow coming back to pay us a visit. (That Luca and my mother share a birthday might send a further shiver down your spine.) For about a year after my mother’s death, I had frequent dreams of spotting her on the street somewhere as she was getting on a bus or driving by in a car, always leaving me again. In the dreams, just like in life, she was supposed to be dead, and yet here she was getting on the bus and waving to me. Maybe this violin obsession of Luca’s was another little wave from my mother from the Great Beyond. After all, he had seen hundreds of instruments that weekend at WOMAD, and much more kid-friendly and eye-catching performances than Nigel Kennedy’s. So why the violin?
..... here is what happened when I met Nigel Kennedy in Berlin a couple of weeks ago...
It's the last day of the World Athletics Championship; the entire area around the Brandenburg Gate has been cordoned off and transformed into a festive centre with a small but significant domed stage for the musicians, surrounded by marquees selling beer, sausages etc.
Sunset has started and the sky beyond the floodlit Brandenburg Gate is changing from turquoise to lavender to orange-o-purple at a phenomenal rate. The atmosphere rawks. It's hard to believe that the first time I saw this space it was 1990 and it was occupied by one of those desultory grey post-East Germany markets where people were selling off old Soviet medals, furry hats with earflaps and Russian dolls of Gorbachev.
Terri ushers us to a side tent that's ‘backstage' - and there's the man himself, happily tucking into a platter of sushi. He's real! Mohican hair, black shirt, electric fiddle lurking. "Hey, Monshta!" he greets us, with a clunk of a fist on ours. "Great to see ya!" Everyone else is speaking Polish: he's recruited his band from his home-from-home in Krakow.
As we're VIPs :-) we're admitted to a pen at the front right corner of the stage, which is otherwise inhabited by photographers, cameramen and musicians' girlfriends. The curtain raiser is a sombre local string ensemble playing a gloomy set of Tchaikovsky variations, followed by an oriental girl violinist in a white dress screeching through Zigeunerweisen and the Meditation from Thais. Germany, Alice suggests, hasn't quite got it with popular culture... From backstage, smoke drifts out over the musicians' heads. "Have they got dry ice?" I ask. The reply: "It's probably just Nigel..."
Now it's night, on comes Nigel at last with his quintet and up goes the volume. Alice thinks it's a bit quiet compared to her usual gigs. I've brought my earplugs, but decide not to use them - it's loud, but the upper end of what I can take. Apparently there are regulations about gig volume in Berlin: papers must be signed... They launch into an extended extemporisation on what sounds like ‘Veni, veni, Emanuel' but has been transformed by Nige into a number called ‘Father and Son' that reflects in some way his relationship with his own son, who is 13 and named Sark (apparently after the Scottish island, as opposed to Cutty). The lad's middle name is Amadeus.
Sunset over Brandenburg Gate................and up goes the volume
(Courtesy standpoint.com)
I'm soon mesmerised. It's not just that the group has a sound unlike any other I've heard - violin, drums, bass, clarinet and a funny-looking keyboard contraption that I'm reliably informed is a Hammond organ. I watch Nige's violin playing and wonder who he reminds me of. Where else have I seen a technique so secure, a bow arm so laser-sItraight, fingering so precise and assured? There's a rapt concentration about him whether he's making sounds like Heifetz or Hendrix - and he does a lot of the latter, heaven knows how, since the violin is still a violin even if it is plugged into an amp... Physically, he doesn't emote or throw himself about; under the Mohican, beyond the beer bottle, he just oozes music. Hmm...got it: Nathan Milstein. Gulp.
Then he hauls violinist Kathy Gowers out from backstage, gives her a five-stringed electric fiddle and gets her to play two Bartok duos with him - this has been arranged at just a few hours' notice, since Kathy had happened to turn up in Berlin that day and popped along to say hi... "This absolutely wasn't meant to be in the programme," Terri remarks, but she's smiling. She can't help loving it either.
There's something incongruously cute about Nigel. A lot of great musicians never quite grow up; it's the enthusiasm, the living in the moment, the ‘now' quality of music-making that focuses everything, like a magnifying glass trapping rays of sun to set things on fire. Most of us lose that thrill of being alive, but the best musicians don't. It keeps them childlike even if they're 52, as, quite unbelievably, he is.
He works the crowd: "You're a beautiful audience! What's your name, my baby...? Simone? That's my favourite name... It's f***ing awesome up here - I've got a better view than you have! Berlin - nummer eins!" Then he announces he's going to take a bow now, in case they decide they don't like him later, and that it is a ‘Shakespearean' bow. It entails galloping from the back of the stage to the front flapping his hands madly, then galloping back again. Terri shakes her head indulgently, Alice and Graham crack up laughing - "What a nutcase!" - and I wonder how exactly I'm going to get any sense out of this guy in the interview.
Working the crowd..........it's fucking awesome up here !
(Courtesy miasta.gazeta.pl)
10.15 pm
The gig is over and we slope backstage, where Nigel is greeting friends and hugging the band. The backstage facilities in this tent are better than many concert halls, complete with catering that includes healthy salads and fruit, plus a fridge full of assorted noxious bottles. Nigel picks neat vodka in a tall tumbler and I feel extremely tame with my nice little glass of white wine.
But in the dressing-room tent, there's no monkey business when we sit down to talk. He doesn't mince his words as he tells me exactly what he thinks of the Four Seasons, globalisation's effect in Poland, his favourite fiddlers, his own music, the situation in Israel/Palestine - he's refusing to play in the former - and much more. I give him a copy of Hungarian Dances, since it's all about classical versus Gypsy fiddlers - we hear he has a Gypsy project in the pipeline...but the reason he's thrilled with it is that Karina/Mimi/Pinwoman on the front cover is (drumroll) wearing Aston Villa colours.
We emerge to find our friends ensconced in the catering tent. Everyone lingers until the organisers want to take down the marquees, upon which Nigel promptly invites us all back to his hotel room to continue the party.
A few minutes later we're all in Nigel's suite and I am glad my room is not next door or directly below since the Berlin regulations about volume evidently don't apply in here. Somehow I end up with a bottle of beer in one hand and a glass of champagne in the other, and while the musicians let their hair down (Nigel's stays entirely upright, but that's just the gel) Graham and I try to find a quieter bit of room in which to have a friendly authors' grumble about the state of the publishing industry. Somebody heads for the window and targets passers-by many floors below with tiddly-wink beer-bottle tops. This is one of the party's milder pastimes. Later Alice and Graham take what's become the dance floor and display hot moves. Terri keeps an eagle eye on other things - "I don't want a bill for furniture!" - but as another champagne cork goes flying, she decides it's time to turn in.
Eventually wilt and conk out in own room at 2 am, wondering how Graham and Alice are going to manage their long cycle home.
6 am King of hangovers. Nurofen. Sleep.
Monday, 10 am Terri and I head back to the airport. Outside the hotel, the bicycles have gone: my friends must have got back by hoo k or by crook ( later, Graham tells me they nearly cycled totally the wrong way down Friedrichstrasse...).
At Tegel we find the check-in queue dominated by (another drumroll) the entire British Athletics Team with all its gear, heading home. They are all on our plane! I wonder if I'm hallucinating.
3 pm Arrive home and crash. Blimey, guv. That was some trip.
(This originally appeared in Jessica Duchene's blog in Standpoint magazine.......click to read a fuller version there. My thanks to both for permission to reprint. You can also read Jessica's interview with Nigel in The Independent.........click HERE.)
Nigel Kennedy sent to the Tower for crimes against hairdressing?
After a leisurely two hundred odd mile drive down to London, followed by a couple of excursions across Tower Bridge courtesy of a Sat Nav with an allergy to built up areas we finally arrived at the venue at 7 pm. With the concert due to start at 7:30 we were dismayed to find a long snaking line of people waiting to get in and long queues at the ticket collection booth. Clearly the demand had exceeded the organisers' expectations. After waiting to exchange our tickets for new seating assignments we were then told when we reached the head of the queue not to bother and just go straight in. Hopefully the performance would have fewer false starts.
On entering the grounds of the Tower of London we picked our way through the sponsors' tents (Continental Airlines and BMW), food and champers bars and entered the outdoor auditorium just in time to see His Hairness take the stage. With the seating and stage set up in what was a moat in Tudor times it was fortunate that rain was not forecast. Resplendent in his normal erect plumage, a fairly sensible dinner jacket and, as we were to find out later, boots from Poland, Nigel proceeded to introduce the band with a fair amount of humorous banter.
.....sensitivity and passion.....and a fairly sensible dinner jacket !.....
(Courtesy gettyimages.com)
As darkness fell, the performance started with a couple of Bach pieces which were played with the usual aplomb by Kennedy and a Philharmonia Orchestra clearly at home with the material. With the audience well warmed against the plummeting temperatures he then proceeded to switch to electric violin and introduce a number of Duke Ellington pieces. Often working from a score and clearly less familiar with the works,the ensemble nevertheless acquitted themselves well and the music was delivered with sensitivity and passion. Mr Kennedy was clearly enjoying the challenge so much that the programme was changed, on the fly, to extend the Ellington set before reverting to Bach.
The evening continued in this alternating fashion, punctuated by horns of the everlasting London rush hour traffic passing just a short distance away. Further insult was added by frequent overflights from Heathrow, perhaps Continental could have "pulled a few strings".
All in all, a very enjoyable evening with excellent performances from NK and the orchestra. Particular highlights were the excellent Jazz Vibraphone player [Orphy Robinson] along with NK duets with the cello and oboe players. On the downside NK could do with updating his "common man" patois, no one uses "monster" these days and a more sparing use of the "F" word would have gone down better with this audience of all ages. I guess that you can excuse a few flaws in order to experience talent of this magnitude - Nigel Kennedy, Great Orchestra, Great Music, Magnificent setting and a Scottish folk dance for encore!
What more could you ask for?
(This piece was written especially for us by Adam. My heartfelt thanks to him for sharing.)
NOTE: The performers were Nigel and the Philharmonia Orchestra, together with an ensemble made up of Nigel, Tomasz Grzegorski (sax), Adam Kowalewski (bass), Krzysztof Dziedzic (drums), Doug Boyle (guitar), and Orphy Robinson (vibraphone/marimba)
