It was fun!

For those of you brave enough to read on, before you do let me publicly thank Daniel Schell and Claudia Wester for all of the work and effort they put into to organising the event. And next years event is back at Neufchateau from June 28 to July 5, 1997, so put it in your diaries.

Regards,
Carl  (Second year running)

Neufchateau: The Event

For several years now there has been a European seminar focused on the Chapman Stick® and this year the event was held in the Belgium Ardennes in a village by the name of Neufchateau. The seminar, as has been the case for the last couple of years, was held in conjunction with a Summer Academy for music and dance, thus immersing the Stick player into a varied and lively mix of musical and dance forms. This year proved to have the largest attendance for the Academy and the Seminar de Tape to date.

With some eighteen attendees from the USA, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, France, Finland and England the group reflected a diverse cultural and skill mix. The instructors for this year were Daniel Schell (who also organised the seminar), Frank Jolliffe and Kuno Wagner, the group being broken down into three streams from beginner to advanced.

The average day consisted of three formal classes in the morning, master classes and harmony class in the afternoon and, for the more intrepid, movement and dance for musicians in the evening. The evenings also featured one or more concerts in the concert hall and more impromptu events in the bar. Oh yeah! And the beer. There just never seemed enough time to practise!!!

For the formal classes, there could not have been a more varied mix. Daniel taught reading and focused on the classical and folk side of the musical repertoire. Kuno, on the other hand, focused on looking at the instrument as a single entity, teaching two handed techniques on what is usually regarded as one side of the instrument. Satriani seemed to figure in Kuno's classes, as did certain elements of the Crafty Guitar school, notably soundscapes. As to Frank, well, Frank focused on explaining and teaching technique and ability via jazz and blues tunes, as well as tunes he had composed himself.

As diverse as the formal classes were, the master classes tended to be even more so. One day Kuno walked through the signal processing side of his set-up and on others we would be talking about the compositions of Daniel and Frank. Elements of baroque music also cropped up as well as the usual bunch of rhythm classes.

The evening concerts were also diverse, reflecting the eclectic mix of the classes running under the auspices of the academy. Monday night was tapping night and, suffice to say, the Stick and Warr players showed the capabilities of the instruments off to an appreciative if bemused audience. Thierry Bedoucha, Kuno Wagner, Frank Jolliffe and Daniel Schell all contributed to the evenings fun. However, as has proven to be a regular feature of these events, the mix was not too hot.

Later on, though, things really started to swing in the bar. Thierry had joined forces with some Latin percussionists and a Latin/jazz trumpet player and started to lay down some very cool sounds. Half way through the set, Thierry handed his Stick over to Frank Jolliffe and, to my ears at any rate, the music that flowed from the band continued to be simply amazing. It was certainly some of the best improvised jazz I had heard in a long time and the audience was knocked out by the whole event.

And really that was how the week progressed. The music was fun and varied with different ad hoc bands being formed to play traditional and popular music. One example that stays in my mind was Thierry (who is kind of the bass and Stick player in residence) joining together with a percussionist, a drummer (Antoine Cirri who did sterling work for all of the week), a bass player and two accordion players for what I can only describe as tradition accordion music with a rock feel. Thierry, using the newly named Kuno Chords and scales, played everything but the bass line. Amazing. Stick players also featured in the Indian music scene as well.

As is traditional, there was an end of week student concert. However, given the large number of classes each class was limited to just four minutes. This posed a problem for us as the advanced guys had been practising a tango, the intermediate group Daniel Schell's Stick Suite 5 and the beginner's group (badly misnamed, methinks, given the talent in the group) a piece by Bert Lams called "Asturias". In the end we decided that Asturias would be performed, and well performed it was at the concert.

The concert did show, however, a strange phenomena in the space time continuum, especially with the Indian Dance class. Somehow, they must have succeeded in coexisting simultaneously in normal space-time and in an alternative continuum where 26 minutes of normal time occupies 4 minutes in the alternative universe. Amazing! Must be something to do with the incense they had inhaled.

So was it worthwhile? The unanimous opinion was a definitive yes. However, it was noted that the accommodation (made prison look good), food (if that was what it was) and the weather (a little inclement) were not as good as one would have liked. Indeed, when the shape of the next seminar was discussed and the idea of paying more for professional master classes and concerts was proposed, the counter proposal for paying more for a real cook was greeted with some enthusiasm!

So, in the finest tradition, let me end with a list of good and bad points from the seminar. Before I do, however, I would just like to quote a new Stick player, Michael Byers of California, on his impressions of the seminar. He noted that "there was no attitude shown by the instructors or the participants". Michael also felt that "everybody was helpful and the instructors always tried to answer questions, however stupid they seemed". It was "a great week of music and instruction". Noting the diversity of the people, their instruments of choice (Stick, Warr Guitar and Santucci TrebleBass) and the somewhat less than optimal conditions I believe this to be a marvellous indication of how the music and the desire to make music overshadows the more destructive elements that sometimes are associated with the community we are all a part of.

Top Five High-lights

• watching Traktor Topaz strap on his TrebleBass - weird!
• Myron Edwards attempting to do the twist (an old sixties dance) to an African rhythm - and succeeding
• the Belgium beer <SIGH>
• Rubber Maid! (no, the stuff used to provide a non slip surface for shelving and great for damping strings - thanks Traktor)
• the apparently common phenomena of Stick players trying on a Warr Guitar, only to have it hit them in the face when they let go.

Top Five Low-lights

• the food - and we thought Borzee last year was bad
• the accommodation - the insect life in my room left me a note of sympathy as they moved out (just kidding)
• the weather - led to the Neufchateau joke: how do you tell if it will rain in Neufchateau? Well, if you can see the hills 3 miles away then it will rain soon. If you can't, then it's already raining
• Traktor Topaz, party pooper! This guy went to bed before 10 o'clock and I mean PM!

And finally...
Q: What do you call a Stick Player with a pager? A: An optimist

Photos
Courtesy of Ola Rinta-Koski.