our transfer to the north island started somewhat hectically:
we were woken up 15 minutes before the ferry was supposed to depart, had to leave behind a wonderful breakfast that was prepared for us by the friendly hosts of forget me not b&b, and rushed over to the ferry area -- where we waited in line for just as long as the breakfast might have taken...
the ferry took us through part of the marlborough sounds, turned back south, and continued on its s-shaped route to wellington [G].

we spent most of the day in wellington itself, and then drove to palmerston for the night.

[view photos: picton to wellington]
 

our next stop was taupo, right in the center of new zealand’s north island [G]. a lot of people say that lake taupo (the giant volcanic crater lake) is best viewed from above... so of course we wanted to see for ourselves. :-)

there was only one question i had to ask before booking our skydive with freefall:

me: if my parachute doesn’t inflate, will i get my money back?
ticketing lady: don’t worry - you’re paying afterwards.

from her reaction, i’d guess that she gets that question about 15 times a day...

i didn’t tell my family about it until i got home, then just told them i wanted to show them something, and played the video. the looks on their faces were priceless!

[view photos: skydive in taupo]
 
[more...]

last weekend, we performed j.s. bach’s "christmas oratorio" in innsbruck and telfs, and i’m still constantly humming parts of it to myself.

this is one of the greatest pieces of music i’ve had the chance to take part in.
following joseph haydn’s "the creation" and carl orff’s "carmina burana", the "christmas oratorio" marks another personal highlight of 2006.

in some spots though, it seems like there were problems with the wording:

herrscher des himmels erhöre das lallen ("answer the babbling"?)
lass dir die matten gesänge gefallen ("enjoy the dull/faint/sick/weary chants"?)
ich will dir leben hier, dir will ich abfahren ("i want to rack you out"?)

big thanks to bruderherz tom for taking some photos!

yesterday, the international mozart foundation has launched a website called digital mozart edition, which apparently contains 95% off all musical compositions of wolfgang amadeus mozart.
there are more than 600 (preserved) compositions, or about 26.000 pages of sheet music, 24.000 of which are already online.
by 2009, they’re planning to have everything online (including digitalized lyrics and fulltext-search), and in 2010 they’ll start digitalizing the sheet music itself, making it possible, for example, to extract just the trumpet part of an entire symphony.

i think it’s even more impressive that they’re not trying to make money by selling subscriptions etc. instead, it’s all freely available to anybody.

i just finished uploading some photos of recent concert tours with the choir.

the first one (in the end of october) led us to eisenstadt [G] provincial capital of burgenland and the city where joseph haydn lived/worked between 1760 and 1790.
there were concerts in eisenstadt’s haydn-church, heiligenkreuz collegiate church, st. martin and pinkafeld.
i joined in a day late, so i went there by train, and had a few hours of layover in vienna [G] before my next train would get me to eisenstadt.

on the second tour (last weekend) we visited steyr [G], kirchberg, stockerau, and lilienfeld.

i used to think innsbruck is a fairly small city. now that i’ve seen more cities in the eastern parts of austria, it turns out i was wrong (at least, in the austrian scale).

something funny: our ...food providers on all the different locations didn’t know what we were getting elsewhere. the result: we ended up having wiener schnitzel three times in a row.
on the way back to tirol, we were making jokes about having schnitzel for dinner, and i wasn’t really surprised when i heard "are you hungry? we saved you some schnitzel from lunch!" when i arrived at home.
i really didn’t even mind. :-)

[view photos: vienna layover]
[view photos: concert tour to eisenstadt]
[view photos: concert tour to steyr]

grammofox is a relatively young austrian band with a unique repertoire: they’ve specialised in german songs from the 1920s.
song titles (and rough translations) include "mein papagei frisst keine harten eier" (my parrot doesn’t eat bioled eggs), "wo sind deine haare, august?" (where are your hairs, august?) and "die braut vom alexander, die geht so auseinander" (alexander’s bride keeps getting bigger)...

there are a few sound samples on their website, and they said a CD is in production as well.

there are a few dates coming up which (the austrian/innsbruckian part of) you might be interested in:

october 23, i’ll be showing some photos of my round-the-world-trip (from earlier this year). i’s a public blattform presentation, so it’s going to be a little more biological than usual...

november 29, the choir will perform carmina burana by carl orff in innsbruck

december 9 and 10, we will also perform j.s. bach’s christmas oratorio BWV 248 in telfs.

it took a rehearsal weekend and full-time-hearing the carmina for me to start to actually like it. by now, i can say i’m enjoying it.
contrary, i just loved the bach-coloraturas from the beginning, and i’m really looking forward to take part in that concert.

new photos are online!

first of all, some more bat photos: it’s the first time i’ve ..."hosted" a noctule bat (nyctalus noctula)- a good opportunity to take photos of the second largest bat species in austria...
apart from that, albuin (a well-travelled parti-coloured bat, vespertilio murinus) is a photogenic bat, too.

[view photos: noctule and parti-coloured bats]

and then, there’s a whole bunch of photos of people, that didn’t really fit anywhere else...
includes photos of our ensemble on good friday, my little brother in action, artist friends and their work, bear hunters, and today’s and yesterday’s ulfissimo choir rehearsals in baumkirchen.
i also made a short video when we rehearsed an arrangement of "mercy" by joe zawinul, which i think doesn’t sound too bad...

[view photos: random people photos]