Another Sunday

A little tired today after Halloween weekend and some late nights. There has been an Indie Band residency here at the Banff Centre for the past couple of weeks. So there have been some new faces and new noises around. The visual arts residency also ended this weekend, so there has been lots of parties going on. Personally I´ve really done some technical piano work this week. I´ve been playing Dohnanyi studies for hours and hours. And this seems to be really working! Things are opening up more and more and my muscles, especially in my left hand are in the process of understanding how I want them to work. I´ve also picked up singing this week! For those of you who know me from Trondheim, you know I´ve been a closet-singer for a while now. When you work so much with singers as I have for the past years, you pick up a lot of things related to technique. I remember accompanying my first big masterclass at Olavsfestdagene in 2006 with Susanna Eken. After 7 days or something with singing and technique I thought to myself: Damn, how difficult can it be! So I started trying on my own.

I´ve also realized that practicing meditation can have a tremendous impact on singing (and everything else as I`ve probably said a few times now). Physically speaking, meditation adds a lot of awareness to you. So you get aware of your body and the inside of the body. So what I realized this week was that my singing technique and voice has developed simply by internalizing technique from this years Eken masterclass (without actually trying it)+ practicing a combined physical and mental meditation technique. Suddenly I have access to chambers inside my system I haven´t had access to before. My inner space has simply expanded. So that´s pretty cool. I´ve also started a work-out routine in my studio. So things are coming along here.

I´ll actually go to LA for a few days on Wednesday! I´m attending 3 meditation programs at the Vedic temple in Montclair with the Indian spiritual teacher Paramahamsa Nithyananda. This is the same guy I saw in Phoenix in March. I think that will be amazing. I feel that expansion is happening pretty fast here in Banff, it´s a good place for it. So to do 3 intense programs over 4 days could potentially be a big energy boost.

I´ve also started working on US tours for 2010. I´ve sent hundred of proposals to the Mid-West and East-Coast and I´ve already got a few tentative bookings. So now it´s all about raising enough money to record a new CD here at the Banff Centre + getting established in Palm Springs somehow in April. And the dream of India summer of 2010 is still very much alive! I´m actually pretty sure that the April-May and early June tour will pay for that. The program in India is announced to start on June 20th, so the timing is perfect.