Concert poster speaks a thousand words

In my vain attempt to describe the upcoming house concerts we are organising for pianists Nathanael May and Brendan Kinsella, I completely underestimated the power of a single page image that says it all.

Here are the various e-mails and texts I sent out. Compare these words to a single image which speaks a thousand words. Thanks, Thera for asking yesterday, “Do you have a poster or something I can include in my invitations?” I persuaded Robert Bekkers to drop everything, stop practising, stop arranging music, and create a colourful image that contains all the information at a glance.

---

Summer greetings!

Robert and I have returned from our coast-to-coast concert tour & sabbatical in the USA for just a few months before we travel again in August. In our adventures through 9 states in 7 months, we learned much about American philanthropy and fundraising and successful approaches to house concerts. We would like to try them here, in our home, in welcoming two American pianists who are traveling to Italy for a festival, using the opportunity to fundraise for Robert’s graduate studies with Eliot Fisk in the Fall.

What is so very special about house concerts for art music (see 14-page PDF of my paper on this subject) is not just the live music in an intimate setting but also the community-building, networking, sharing of great food and conversation. We commit to organising 2 concerts from our home each year to revive that special 19th century European salon tradition.

Hope you will join us for these festivities of the first weekend of July 2011, each of them completely different except for the organic wine tasting, raffle, and silent auction.

Friday 1st July 2011 7:30 pm doors open for 8:15 pm
Body of Your Dreams Concert by Nathanael May, founder and artistic director of the Soundscape Contemporary Music Festival in Italy, since 2005. Optional Andalucian dinner at 6 pm.

Saturday 2nd July 2011 7:30 pm doors open for 8:15 pm
Kinsella Concert from Beethoven to Rzewski by Brendan Kinsella. Optional Vietnamese dinner at 6 pm.

The concerts of 1st and 2nd July are 12 euros (prepaid) – including a glass of wine. Optional dinners at 6 pm are 18 euros (prepaid, reservations).

We will have a raffle draw (lotterij) for prizes such as CDs, Monument House Glass Mugs, sportsclub passes, and more.

Please feel free to forward this email to others who may be interested. We are also accepting donations of items or services for the Silent Auction of value over 150 euros each.

Hope to see you & catch up!

Warmest regards,

Anne

Body of Your Dreams Concert Weekend at the Monument House, Utrecht

Question is – how do I reduce the 1 page PDF to a file size below 1.7MB — perhaps to a manageable 300 kB?

Breaking news! Here is the reduced one page PDF with links (just 340 kB).

Next wish: if only I have a budget to print these posters in colour and the manpower to put them up at various locations in Utrecht! We will never say no to sponsorship!

Body of Your Dreams Concert

"Rings" 24"x48" acrylic on board by Rob Judkins (2009)

Everyone wants to have the body of your dreams. It requires conscious regular exercise and attention to a balanced diet. Without concerted effort, the body of your dreams remains in your dreams.

Dutch composer  Jacob ter Veldhuis (affectionately known in the USA as Jacob TV) wrote a piano solo work in which the pianist needs to listen to a click track tape of his remixed American television advertisement of a slimming weight-loss belt. The so-named “Body of Your Dreams” for piano and boom box has made its way into the concert repertoire of a new generation of pianists, further made popular by the body-builder pianist Andrew Russo.

The tape, CD, and now video broadcasts: “It’s one of the ea­siest ways ever to get your bo­dy in the sha­pe you want it. It helps to to­ne and tigh­ten your up­per abs, lo­wer abs, arms and legs with no sweat at all!. It’s one of the simplest, smal­lest and most com­for­ta­ble to­ning de­vi­ces ever. You can use it whi­le wat­ching te­le­vi­si­on, do­ing the dis­hes, mo­wing the lawn.”

In short, Jacob TV’s “Body of Your Dreams” is a clever take on the American finesse in marketing and obsession with fitness.

When American pianist  Nathanael May told me he had included “Body of Your Dreams” in his programme for the house concert we are organising for him on Friday 1st July 2011, I just had to give the concert this name. I met Nathanael in 2003 when he invited me to give a sightreading workshop in North Cyprus. Since then, he has invited our duo to Italy where he founded an annual festival of contemporary music, first in Cortona and now in its third location in the alps. The Soundscape Contemporary Music Festival has now expanded to offer scholarships for composers and performers each year.

The concert will take place in the Monument House, in the multi-cultural neighbourhood of Lombok in Utrecht, the fourth largest city in the Netherlands, and also known as the creative capital and home of the oldest Dutch university.

Along with the theme of “Body of Your Dreams,” we have booked Eveline Scheren to provide tasting of organic wines she has carefully selected from Italy, Spain, France, and Chile. I met Eveline at a Rotary club meeting, before she started her own business of introducing organic wines to the Netherlands.

Each ticket will be entered into a raffle draw after the concert for prizes such as CDs, the limited edition of Monument House Glass Beer Mugs, and more. There will be also be a Silent Auction (to be linked to a blog yet to be posted) to raise funding for an artist-in-residence fellowship. Besides items from the Monument House, we are happy to receive donations for this cause.

** Breaking news: We are pleased to have Chef Alberto, who was born in a small village in Cordoba, to cater for a pre-concert dinner at 6 pm. He will be serving canapes, tapas, and a main course from the traditional Andalucian cuisine at 6 pm. This optional dinner before the concert can be reserved by indicating it in your email.

For more information and to reserve a seat, visit High Note Live, a web-based concert management and audience development website I am testing for use outside of the USA. Thus all $$ are actually in Euros for this concert.

This is the first of several concerts at the Monument House featuring music of American pianists and composers. The next one is on 2nd July 2011. [Watch this space.]

Friday 1st July 2011

6:00 pm: doors open – Traditional Andalucian dinner (optional) **

7:30 pm: doors open

organic wine tasting, view of silent auction items & bidding

 New! Panel discussions

New! Robert Bekkers, guitar, support act

8:15 pm concert starts (no intermission)

9:30 pm raffle draw (prizes include CDs, Monument House beer mug, and more)

9:45 pm silent auction results

The above painting by Rob Judkins, my classmate from Kubasaki High School in Okinawa, comes from his private collection. I will display more of his work in forthcoming posts of this Concertblog.

Parking until 9 pm is euro 2.29 per hour. But I expect most people will cycle or walk along the canal.