Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova in Prague
In an earlier post, I had talked about how much I wanted to
see Glen Hansard perform while I was in Europe...
But the Prague performance with Marketa Irglova appeared to be sold
out.
I talked with a colleague about my dilemma, and she advised me she had been seeing the Frames play since she was 15 years old and if I had a chance to see him perform in an intimate environment, I had to do it. He was incredible.
On Noëlle's advice, I found an email address on the Frames' website and sent a begging email:
"Hello!
My name is popemark. I usually live in Austin, TX. There is a radio station in Austin, KGSR, that played a song from Once and I fell in love with it!! I bought The Swell Season off of iTunes Store and can not stop listening to it!
So, here's my dilemma. I am working in Ireland this fall. I am scheduled to fly home to Texas 27 October, so will miss the Frames playing in Dublin. But I will be back in Ireland in November when Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova will play Stubb's.
I really really really want to see Glen and Marketa play! I can make it to Prague this weekend, but the concert is sold out. Is there any any any way I can get tickets to this event? (I have also talked to colleagues here at [company name] who have seen Glen and Marketa play and attest to the beauty of the event.)
Please let me know if there's any hope!
Thank you,
popemark"
Response after the jump...
I talked with a colleague about my dilemma, and she advised me she had been seeing the Frames play since she was 15 years old and if I had a chance to see him perform in an intimate environment, I had to do it. He was incredible.
On Noëlle's advice, I found an email address on the Frames' website and sent a begging email:
"Hello!
My name is popemark. I usually live in Austin, TX. There is a radio station in Austin, KGSR, that played a song from Once and I fell in love with it!! I bought The Swell Season off of iTunes Store and can not stop listening to it!
So, here's my dilemma. I am working in Ireland this fall. I am scheduled to fly home to Texas 27 October, so will miss the Frames playing in Dublin. But I will be back in Ireland in November when Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova will play Stubb's.
I really really really want to see Glen and Marketa play! I can make it to Prague this weekend, but the concert is sold out. Is there any any any way I can get tickets to this event? (I have also talked to colleagues here at [company name] who have seen Glen and Marketa play and attest to the beauty of the event.)
Please let me know if there's any hope!
Thank you,
popemark"
Response after the jump...
Sweet Claire wrote
back:
"hey mark
ill ask [name] who is booking the gig if he can squeeze you in...
cx"
The Czech booking agent wrote me back:
"Hi Mark,
gig is sold out, but in case you will travel to Prague just because of it I will do my best to place you to a seat which will probably appear free just before the beginning. In case of emergeny into my seat.
So come and let me know before of that. my czech phone number is [edited]
All the best
[name], who cooperates on G+M movier premiere in CR"
So, I was off... I couldn't find a flight out of Cork Friday night that would allow me to fulfill my work duties that day, so I booked for Saturday. I landed at about 7:30, busted through customs, got a taxi, and rushed off to the Elite Hotel. The Elite was something less than my esteem of Elite, but it was charming. My room was on the top floor, and the dimensions of the walls and ceiling were definitely engineered by an acid-tripping dwarf. Everything was rounded and about three feet shorter than would be required to accommodate a grown human. I kept expecting Frodo and Samwise to break out in song in the hallway. One other interesting tidbit. When I came in to check in, there were only two people in the lobby, the desk clerk and the bellhop. We went through all the formalities, and then the desk clerk asked me if this was my first time to Prague? I responded yes... He says to me, if there is anything I can do to make your stay more enjoyable, just call him and he slides a business card over to me. I thank him and put it in my pocket, imagining it to be a hotel card with his name on it, as assistant under-manager or something. When I go up to my room, however, I take it out and look at it... It is a card with charmingly error-prone English grammar offering me female companionship. "Discrete." Sweet.
I run off to the Lucerna theater, with its gorgeously absurd horse statue hanging upside down in the lobby...
The Czech booking agent is there to meet me (I had called him when I was a block away), and he rushes me in to the theater and to my front row seat. I had missed one song. I took my seat and joined the crowd in their hushed anticipation of the next haunting song Glen and Marketa would play.
One thing that I noted immediately was that Glen had worn through the wood by the sound hole with his energetic strumming. In about three different places! His recording did not prepare me for how strong his voice is. He could start off a song with a tentative, quiet, introspective verse, and as the passion builds, his voice gets stronger and stronger until it fills the entire theater like the pounding surf against the cliffs of Moher.
Marketa, also, surprised me. On the recordings I had, she appeared to be a quiet, young singer, still perhaps in the process of finding her voice. But in concert, she was confident and quirky. I could enjoy a show just with her voice and piano. She was obviously at home playing to her community, and chitchatting with the audience in Czech between songs.
One song that had me on the edge of my seat was "Hallelujah," by Jeff Buckley. There was a band from Paris that had followed Glen and Marketa to Prague from Paris; apparently Glen and Marketa saw them earlier in the week and fell in love. So the French band came up and played Hallelujah with them. It was transcendent.
Another high point of the show was when Glen introduced a song by saying Van Morrison was the greatest living songwriter from Ireland, and it is a privilege to play his songs; then he commenced "Into the Mystic," arguably my favorite Van Morrison song... It was reverential, but perhaps even more soulful than when Van performs it...
He also had a song he played, Star Star, that he said he wrote one night in a field drunk... He quoted Oscar Wilde, "We're all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." He talked about the point when you're drinking (Czechs know this, he claimed, looking knowingly into the audience, and they confirmed it with loud hoots), when it all makes sense, when poetry waxes in your heart. But then you go past it, and it's gone. The point, I think, is to write while that point is still there...
Anyhow, Swell Season and Once shows have been announced for US cities and dates in November (2007). These will be concerts with Glen and Marketa, and if you can see them, you must! This was a magical night for me.
Due to the fact I haven't been able to go home this week, as I had planned, I am now hoping to fly home on Nov 14 and see them perform at Stubb's Nov 15. Go!!!
(I will have to write more about Prague in another blog entry later today...)
UPDATE: After looking a little more, I realized that "Hallelujah" was penned by Leonard Cohen, but the version Glen and Marketa performed was very close in style to Jeff Buckley's recording of it.
"hey mark
ill ask [name] who is booking the gig if he can squeeze you in...
cx"
The Czech booking agent wrote me back:
"Hi Mark,
gig is sold out, but in case you will travel to Prague just because of it I will do my best to place you to a seat which will probably appear free just before the beginning. In case of emergeny into my seat.
So come and let me know before of that. my czech phone number is [edited]
All the best
[name], who cooperates on G+M movier premiere in CR"
So, I was off... I couldn't find a flight out of Cork Friday night that would allow me to fulfill my work duties that day, so I booked for Saturday. I landed at about 7:30, busted through customs, got a taxi, and rushed off to the Elite Hotel. The Elite was something less than my esteem of Elite, but it was charming. My room was on the top floor, and the dimensions of the walls and ceiling were definitely engineered by an acid-tripping dwarf. Everything was rounded and about three feet shorter than would be required to accommodate a grown human. I kept expecting Frodo and Samwise to break out in song in the hallway. One other interesting tidbit. When I came in to check in, there were only two people in the lobby, the desk clerk and the bellhop. We went through all the formalities, and then the desk clerk asked me if this was my first time to Prague? I responded yes... He says to me, if there is anything I can do to make your stay more enjoyable, just call him and he slides a business card over to me. I thank him and put it in my pocket, imagining it to be a hotel card with his name on it, as assistant under-manager or something. When I go up to my room, however, I take it out and look at it... It is a card with charmingly error-prone English grammar offering me female companionship. "Discrete." Sweet.
I run off to the Lucerna theater, with its gorgeously absurd horse statue hanging upside down in the lobby...
The Czech booking agent is there to meet me (I had called him when I was a block away), and he rushes me in to the theater and to my front row seat. I had missed one song. I took my seat and joined the crowd in their hushed anticipation of the next haunting song Glen and Marketa would play.
One thing that I noted immediately was that Glen had worn through the wood by the sound hole with his energetic strumming. In about three different places! His recording did not prepare me for how strong his voice is. He could start off a song with a tentative, quiet, introspective verse, and as the passion builds, his voice gets stronger and stronger until it fills the entire theater like the pounding surf against the cliffs of Moher.
Marketa, also, surprised me. On the recordings I had, she appeared to be a quiet, young singer, still perhaps in the process of finding her voice. But in concert, she was confident and quirky. I could enjoy a show just with her voice and piano. She was obviously at home playing to her community, and chitchatting with the audience in Czech between songs.
One song that had me on the edge of my seat was "Hallelujah," by Jeff Buckley. There was a band from Paris that had followed Glen and Marketa to Prague from Paris; apparently Glen and Marketa saw them earlier in the week and fell in love. So the French band came up and played Hallelujah with them. It was transcendent.
Another high point of the show was when Glen introduced a song by saying Van Morrison was the greatest living songwriter from Ireland, and it is a privilege to play his songs; then he commenced "Into the Mystic," arguably my favorite Van Morrison song... It was reverential, but perhaps even more soulful than when Van performs it...
He also had a song he played, Star Star, that he said he wrote one night in a field drunk... He quoted Oscar Wilde, "We're all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." He talked about the point when you're drinking (Czechs know this, he claimed, looking knowingly into the audience, and they confirmed it with loud hoots), when it all makes sense, when poetry waxes in your heart. But then you go past it, and it's gone. The point, I think, is to write while that point is still there...
Anyhow, Swell Season and Once shows have been announced for US cities and dates in November (2007). These will be concerts with Glen and Marketa, and if you can see them, you must! This was a magical night for me.
Due to the fact I haven't been able to go home this week, as I had planned, I am now hoping to fly home on Nov 14 and see them perform at Stubb's Nov 15. Go!!!
(I will have to write more about Prague in another blog entry later today...)
UPDATE: After looking a little more, I realized that "Hallelujah" was penned by Leonard Cohen, but the version Glen and Marketa performed was very close in style to Jeff Buckley's recording of it.
Posted: Mon - October 29, 2007 at 08:23 AM
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Published On: Nov 04, 2007 11:46 PM
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Published On: Nov 04, 2007 11:46 PM