The beginning!

[Ojzaioj]: I (Esbjörn), Pia Sara, Helena and Hedda (our pre-Olof Dan Nhi player) are back in Hanoi for a performance. Olof couldn't come because of a CD release with his band Alla Fagra. We will play at a concert on the Opera house on Sunday (11/1). We had our first practice yesterday, it was ok. We will only play three tunes and only one by ourselves on two of the tunes ten other Vietnamese musicians will play with us. Unfortunaly we wasn't allowed to play the tunes we wanted as the programme was already printed and it said: Pham tuyet - Nguyen tieu - Ho quang, Loi lo and "Folksongs from the three parts of Vietnam". I think it will be alright, I don't expect us to be the front figures in the concert. We are more an exotic touch to the show, the strange Swedes who play Vietnamese music.

After the concert I and Pia will stay in Hanoi for three months. We have some different projects to do and we will write more about them here when we have finished the concert. One of our projects is trying to learn some Vietnamese. It will be interesting to se if our musicians ears can pick up the strange vietnamese pronunciations!

Back to Hanoi and some youtube tips

The 11th of January 2009 the Vietnamese ensemble at the Malmö academy of music will participate at a concert at the opera house in Hanoi! It's a concert celbrating forty years of diplomatic relations between Vietnam and Sweden. If you are in Hanoi, you should come! After the concert Me and Pia, our singer, will stay in for another three months to really dig in to the music we have tried to play the last five years. Recently I have looked on a lot of vietnamese traditional music on youtube, unfortunately very much is crap, but I also found some favorites. Here is some of the nice videos:

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