So about that radio show...

KMFA's Ancient Voices has been going strong for over 12.5 years, and I am delighted to be able to continue producing it from lovely Lübeck, Germany! 

I'm not the only KMFA producer who produces a show from outside the studios on North Lamar in Austin, not by a long shot. Some of them even have professional-grade studios in their homes!

A professional-grade studio is hard to fit into a suitcase, so it was time to get creative.

These days are behind us! 

I do have professional tools: a YETI USB microphone, sound editing software, and a blazingly fast computer. 

What I lack is the right acoustic space to record in. Most rooms are way too live, and mics pick that up. It doesn't sound good. You need 'stuff' on the walls and the floors to absorb sound.

Lacking a professional studio with acoustic tiles and other soundproofing measures, a closet makes a nice 'dead' environment, with the added touch of a blanket covering you and your mic like a little tent.

My house doesn't have a closet.

So, I consulted KMFA's amazing Jeffrey Blair, sound engineer extraordinaire.

Make a pillow fort, he said.

Now I love a good pillow fort as much as the next gal, Jeffrey, but I'm trying to make radio here.

But then the gears started turning, and I came up with a pretty good 'sound cave'!

Sara in The Cave

Our house came furnished with two room dividers. I set those up around the dresser upstairs to form a little enclosure. Added bonus: I can stand up to produce my show! I hung comforters on the dividers, and placed pillows behind my mic and computer. Throw a blanket over the top and voila! A nice, warm sound, which passed the “Jeffrey hearing test"!

Before leaving Austin, I produced a whole bunch of shows in advance, to give myself a nice buffer to get used to the new set-up, and the new editing software. Thanks to Jeffrey's help, and that of Phil Pollack, KMFA's Technical Operations Manager, the process was smooth and intuitive.

My first show 'from the old country' is now right around the corner! 

Here's another fun fact: the idea for this show arose from the amazing musical sights and sounds we heard on KMFA's Trip to Italy last October, such as the Odhecaton, which we saw at Bologna's excellent music library/museum. It dates from 1501, and contains the first polyphonic music printed using movable type.

Sara meets The Odhecaton

So tune in January 11 & 12, 2015* for Music from Bologna on Ancient Voices!

Ancient Voices airs Sundays at 10 AM and Mondays at 9 PM on KMFA 89.5 FM in Austin, Texas. You can hear the show via our live stream at www.kmfa.org.

*We had a slight mishap 'back at the ranch', and a different show aired on the original air dates (Jan. 4 & 5). I apologize for the confusion.

Merry Christmas from Lübeck (and Flensburg!)

Early music is my great passion, but sometimes, for a radio host, it presents a challenge. For example, one of the things people love about Christmas is the music, and what's a big factor in that love? Familiarity. A lot of Christmas music from the middle ages and renaissance, though gorgeous and moving, just doesn't make people say, 'Ah, now that I've heard that, it's really Christmas!'. 

Of course, there are exceptions, like Lo, how a rose, Riu, Riu Chiu, and Ding dong merrily on high, which began life as a Renaissance dance! 

That's why I was so happy to find Praetorius' Mass for Christmas Morning, performed by the Gabrieli Consort and Players. It has everything: solemnity, jubilation, lots of dance-like bits, solo organ works, multi-choral writing, sackbuts, and above all, familiar tunes like 'How brightly shines the morning star' and 'In dulci jubilo'. That piece has been a fixture on the Ancient Voices Christmas show for years, combined with gorgeous but lesser-known Christmas gifts from the past. 

A couple of weeks ago, I got to hear it live in Flensburg, a town on an inlet of the Baltic Sea, quite near the Danish border. How near, you ask?

About five miles!

We took the train up there, and had a fun day out. It was brisk and windy, but we had wrapped up well, and didn't feel it too badly.

Before Praetorius, there was lunch!

Being vegetarians, Stretch and I are excluded from one of Germany's finest culinary traditions: Curry-wurst: sausages smothered in a spicy curry sauce, served with fries. But I found a restaurant which served a vegetarian variant, and we both discovered what the fuss was all about. Yum!

Yay, now we are really German!

Of course, you have to have beer with Curry-Wurst. I had the local brew, Flensburger, and Jim had Schneider-Weisse, because Schneider. ;-)

Then we had a nice walk by the harbor:

Hmm, St. Nicholas' ship, perhaps?

And up and down Flensburg's charming streets. It was very hilly there, which surprised me.

After tea in a tiny cafe with gothic vaults, it was time for Praetorius!

I had done some reading about Flensburg's Nikolaikirche beforehand, and was super-excited to hear this beauty, one of the most important Renaissance organs in northern Germany, which was commissioned by King Christian IV of Denmark.

I was delighted to see that Praetorius is enough of a draw to fill a church in Germany!

The performance was excellent: we heard great choral singing by the combined choirs of St. Nikolai, wonderful vocal soloists of the Himlische Cantorey, and the superb instrumentalists of Hamburger Ratsmusik, with my friend Simone Eckert playing gamba. 

Like in Praetorius' day, the congregation participated too! We got to sing along during a couple of hymn verses.

All in all, it was a splendid way to get into the Christmas spirit! 

Back in Lübeck, I finally rode in the Riesenrad!

It's astonishingly hard to get good pics from a ferris wheel, even before consuming Glühwein, but I managed a couple:

St. Jakobi

  

St. Marien

Yes, churches again! But hey, there are a lot of them around, they're very large, and make easy targets for photographers with freezing fingers in windy conditions. :-) 

And finally, a Christmas selfie from Flensburg! Merry Christmas from Stretch and Slim! 

  

Of Light, Warmth, and Christmas Markets

Hi again from Slim! Happy Advent, and happy December!

Here are a few wintry thoughts from the Queen of the Hansa. (Not ME, silly. That's one of Lübeck's nicknames.)

Anyway... Lübeck is quite far north. 

World map with arrow pointing to Germany
Lübeck is in northern Germany,
near the Baltic Sea

How far north? 53°, which puts it roughly at the same latitude as Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. This means, as we approach December 21, the days are short. Today, the sun rose at 8:11 AM, and will set at 4:00 PM. That's not a lot of light. Especially when you have just moved from sun-drenched Austin, Texas, which is at 30° latitude.

It's been interesting for me to note how the short days mess with your mind. For example, I have a pretty good internal clock, and can usually tell what time it is (with a small margin of error) without looking at my watch. Not anymore! I routinely have the feeling that it's about 9:30 PM, when in reality it's 5:30! Weird.

I know from the years I spent living in the Netherlands that I am prone to seasonal affective disorder, so Jim and I invested in a full-spectrum 'bright light' which has been shown to be effective in managing the 'winter blues'. 

The "Sanity Box"

We both try and use the light for 30-60 minutes each day. So far so good!

It has also finally gotten cold here, which means high temps in the low thirties, lows in the mid-twenties, and usually a mean little wind. We've been keeping nice and warm in our little house, which has central heating (don't laugh- my house in Amsterdam didn't!) and a lovely wood stove. 

In the meantime, Lübeck has turned into a Christmas wonderland! 

It's Christmas Market season, and streets and squares around town are populated by little wooden stalls which sell food and drink (Glühwein! Sausages! Poffertjes*!) and gift items, like handmade Lübeck mugs, beautiful wooden cutting boards, all kinds of decorations, etc. People come from all over to visit the Weihnachtsmärkte, so it really feels like a festival around here! 

*Poffertjes are delicious treats from the Netherlands that are like fat little pancakes, but better. They are steaming hot when you get them, slathered in butter and doused with powdered sugar. I was tickled to find them here in Germany!

I also found:

A special kind of spicy Dutch treat that is somewhere between cake and bread, with nuts all around the top and sides. Jim said it changed his life. :-)

Oh, and there's this, too:

Yes, I'm going to make Stretch take me for a ride. :-)

Das Marienwerkhaus, or "Buxtehude's House" as I call it, watching over the Christmas craziness. :-)

It's December, so it's ok to listen to Christmas music. Here's a gorgeous setting of In Dulci Jubilo by a Hamburg organist and composer whose music Buxtehude would certainly have known: Hieronymus Praetorius. 

[Note to self: try to get Stretch to start calling me the Queen of the Hansa.]