Thursday

Yesterday’s sunset:

The sun looked like a meteor streaking from left to right.

Drove to Albuquerque to do an interview and play three songs at radio station KUNM in support of the concert at the Lensic next week. BTW, we will bring lots of “classic” merchandise and posters that evening. We won’t sell the merch, but will ask for donations to the school we are doing the benefit for. I think the evening should be spectacular: beautiful venue, great sound, great band (((looking forward to hearing Michael and Robby together!!! You also know them both, Stephen, what do you think?))), lots of historic merchandise AND after the concert a party for those people who scored the special tickets (((those tickets are sold out, but I am told there are some mid-range tickets available!))). Here is a photo I took at the radio station:

The interview will run around 19:30 on Saturday evening and I am told that it will be available in their web archive afterwards. The program is called Ears to the Ground. And Here is the streaming page if you want to listen on Saturday.

Yes, no, maybe so?
Then again there is this info – I don’t remember where I found it:

Consider that many pop/rock concerts hit around and above 120db!

I like San Francisco humor!

Today the 14th European Cycle Messenger Championships start in Berlin.

Wednesday

Times Square Plan’s Challenge – Lose the Cars, Keep the Grit – NYTimes.com
Well, I’m happy to report that, a day after the stretch of Broadway between 42nd and 47th Streets was closed to cars, the soul of Times Square remains intact. The neon still sparkles. Tourists still wander around bewildered. The whiff of last night’s junk food still hangs in the air.

Love the photo!

I know how to listen to music. I know how to open a bottle of champagne or enjoy a bottle of wine… but, I don’t know a lot about scents. Most of what I know is probably from the book Perfume.

With her permission I am posting this, written by Y., and would like to encourage her to write about scents and calligraphy (check out her Flickr) because I want to learn more about those subjects.

Last night to celebrate an occasion, I opened a new bottle of perfume. Just writing that sounds extravagant, doesn’t it? Never having the nature of a person who needs expensive things, a bottle of pure perfume is certainly special. Carefully breaking the wax seal and the silk cord that fastens around the opening of the perfume bottle is such a ritual, along with taking the time to take in the scent from the stopper. The scent that greets you upon opening the bottle is so much nicer than any atomizer can provide.

The stopper is the key. There is such a difference in the experience of placing a scent on the pulse point rather than spraying. Applying a scent with a stopper and rushing do not mix well. The idea of an atomizer was to make a fragrance convenient, portable, lighter, preserve the fragrance and most importantly, making it less expensive so that it would become more popular. Sometimes a light spritz of a scent is nice and ideal, but not for a classic fragrance. It almost sounds like a good wine, doesn’t it? In an eau de toilette or in an eau de parfum form, essential oils used in a scent are diluted and can translate into a harsher scent. You would think that a pure perfume is stronger, when actually it is softer, longer lasting and you use much less. Swayed by retail trends, maybe we eventually forget what the real essence is like.

Later in the evening a guest mentioned how much he dislikes fragrances. Out comes the perfume bottle that I opened that day. I asked him to close his eyes and removed the stopper from the perfume bottle in order to move it lightly in front of him. His eyes still closed, I detect in the beginning a serious look and then, a smile that told me how different that experience was. It was great. He did not have to say anything.

Scent is such subtle way to communicate. Unspoken. Do you think there is a possibility that a whole generation of of mine/ours (?) will never know the mysteries of scent presented in a very intimate fashion?

Well, she didn’t need to be encouraged much, because here is her new journal.

Today was one of those days that ran away… and is still running. I also ran, back and forth to different appointments, but was able to do some work in the studio.

And last, but not least! An alternate Ottmar Liebert, apparently a Christian Rapper from Uganda, was found on MySpace :-)

Nº 191

The Italian magazine New Age and New Sounds has a four-page spread on The Scent of Light in issue Nº 191, and track #5 on the CD that accompanies every issue is Streetlight.

Tuesday

Back in 2004 I wrote about hearing Ahmed Dickinson Cardenas play during the guitar festival in Tijuna. In 2006 he sent me a lovely live recording of guitar music, his own arrangements and adaptations of music Ñico Rojas had written for piano. Today I received this email from Ahmed:

Cuban guitarist Ahmed Dickinson Cardenas received two prizes at Cubadisco 2009, the most important award of Cuban Music Record Industry. His album debut paying homage to the late Ñico Rojas was awarded in the Best Instrumental Soloist & Best Instrumental Album categories. Cubadisco International Fair, founded in 1997 and organized by the Cuban Music Institute, is the most integrating event of the Cuban Music Industry and it constitutes a preferential space to expose the main achievements of Cuban Music. The winners of its 13th edition were announced in Havana on May 16, 2009.

Congratulations Ahmed!
His web site can be found here. More about Ñico Rojas here. Music samples here.

Found the album Plays Ñico Rojas on amazon!! Downloading now.

Morning Walk:



You can find these photos, and more than 10,000 others, on my Flickr. As a member of Ottmar-Friends you can download full-sized Jpegs of most of them. Read more about how to do that here.

And, here is something I noticed on Flickr. Not the kind of place I would frequent – this being more my kind of place – but interesting.


Woo Bar in W Hotel in Seoul, Korea.

Cubadisco 2009

Back in 2004 I wrote about hearing Ahmed Dickinson Cardenas play during the guitar festival in Tijuna. In 2006 he sent me a lovely live recording of guitar music, his own arrangements and adaptations of music Ñico Rojas had written for piano. Today I received this email from Ahmed:

Cuban guitarist Ahmed Dickinson Cardenas received two prizes at Cubadisco 2009, the most important award of Cuban Music Record Industry. His album debut paying homage to the late Ñico Rojas was awarded in the Best Instrumental Soloist & Best Instrumental Album categories. Cubadisco International Fair, founded in 1997 and organized by the Cuban Music Institute, is the most integrating event of the Cuban Music Industry and it constitutes a preferential space to expose the main achievements of Cuban Music. The winners of its 13th edition were announced in Havana on May 16, 2009.

Congratulations Ahmed! His web site can be found here.

Found the album on amazon:
Plays Ñico Rojas
Downloading now!