Christmas Concerts

Over the last couple of weekends, I've gone to two awesome Christmas concerts - one at a French church and one at the American Church. The American Church has a very professional music director, and the whole program was wonderful and eclectic. There were children's and adult choirs, handbells, and some invited professional classical musicians.

The French concert, though, was a group of young volunteers, called Pic'Pulse, performing an entire concert of Gospel music. I really had no idea that Gospel was so popular in France, but they were very well received and got a rousing ovation. They did a dozen classic Gospel songs like We are Climbing Jacob's Ladder, Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho, and Go Tell it On the Mountain, with a couple Zulu songs, including the National Hymn of South Africa. It was a really great concert, not because they were terribly professional, but because they sang with such enthusiasm. They may not have perfectly achieved the Gospel sound, but they sang with a lot of heart.

It was a bit strange to hear Gospel such with strong French accents, but anyway I admired their effort of learning so many songs in English. I have a fun time attempting Christmas carols in French, but I can't imagine performing by heart! Sorry about the blurry picture, but it was the best I could do.

Pic'Pulse has some more concerts in the spring, if you're around in May, and for the Fete de la Musique in June.

Nuit Blanche

I didn't stay up all night, but I did wander around the Marais for a bit, to see what there was to see. Firstly, there were a lot of people. Secondly, we had to wait in line for each 'attraction.' (Perhaps the second is more of a corollary to the first) Fortunately, the lines moved along fairly quickly at each place, and everyone could have a good time. Most of them were art installations that didn't take more than 5 minutes to see. I went with a friend, Florence, first to a garden near the Hotel Carnavalet, where there was a large tent in which the artist had sand installed, and a live satellite image of a beach in Tahiti was projected onto the wall of the tent, with the sound of the waves and birds being broadcast on speakers, and I swear I could feel a little ocean breeze. Very relaxing.
Then we went to an installation by Carlos Garaicoa, who had made candles in the shape of various famous monuments and buildings, and as the night progressed, the monuments melted and disappeared. Behind the table of candles, live video close-ups were shown on a giant screen. The whole thing was set up in a church, so the collection of candles also played off the theme of religious ritual.



We also went to see a giant necklace dangling in a pool of water.



Finally we went for a cafe and, having lost most of our momentum, decided to call it quits for the night. I guess I'll leave the staying up all night to the young whipper-snappers. Here was the scene at Eglise Saint Merri, next to the Pompidou Center.

Non aux BASM

On Saturday I went to Bastille to see the Pyramide de Chaussures, an annual demonstration, held all over France, against the use of land mines throughout the world. By adding a pair of shoes to the pile, you signify your solidarity with victims, and your support for the fight against a type of weapon that's frequently responsible for the murder and gross mutilation of innocent people.

As depressing as the situation is, it was a beautiful day and there was music and face painting, so the place took on a kind of carnival-type atmosphere.



People had the opportunity to try out life in a wheelchair, including a demonstration area where you could see what it's like to navigate tight doorways and corners, and up and down ramps, and even sports, like fencing from a wheelchair.



There was a brief demonstration of the process of clearing fields contaminated with land mines, which showed how painstaking and onerous the process is. The area is divided into strips about one meter across, which are inspected in small increments, first visually and then with a fine metal wand to make sure there are no trigger lines across the path. The inspector runs a metal detector over the ground, and upon finding something, he pushes on the ground gently with the wand to find any hard objects, which he uncovers manually by sweeping away the dirt. If the metal object is a mine, he marks it with an orange cone and comes back to wire it up for detonation at the end of the day.



In the case of cluster bomblets, like those which are currently estimated to number over a million in southern Lebanon, the inspector might use a pulley system to lower them out of tree branches from a safe distance, then mark the location and come back to wire it for detonation at the end of the day.




At the end of that Saturday, in each of 39 cities in France sponsoring Pyramides des Chaussures, all of the shoes were donated to the local charity organizations for distribution to the needy.
Here, you can find more information and sign a petition for a ban on land mines. And here you can find out about Handicap International's work with the disabled.

Groupe F and Le Village Thaï

It seems like Paris never stops having festivals and events, and it truly amazes me sometimes. There is always something to celebrate, I guess, especially in an incomparable city like Paris where people from all over the world come to live.

On Friday, I went to the Parc de la Villette (again) for a 'spectacle pyrotechnique' by Groupe F that was so amazing that I'm tempted to surrender to it the title of 'best fireworks I've ever seen' that is currently held by the Bastille Day fireworks from this summer. But, it was more than fireworks -- there were multiple fiery plumes of natural gas beating in time to abstract synthesized music being performed live, spinning wheels of sparklers rising and falling with the ebb and flow of jazz themes by a saxophonist and then a cellist, and dancers bearing fireworks mounted on huge frames to give the shape of wings and the forms of somethings, I'm not sure, but maybe monsters? And of course more banging, spiraling, and exploding fireworks than one's field of vision can encompass simultaneously. It was quite a sublime exhibition of light and sound. I didn't have my camera with me, so you'll have to take my word for it.

And today, a 9-day festival of Thai culture ended at the Place St. Sulpice in the 6eme arrondisement. The church I go to to is nearby, in the 7eme, so I stopped there to have a look and happened also to have some pad thai and a dessert that was made from sweetened glutinous rice and black beans cooked inside a stick of bamboo (see photo below of stuffed bamboo and banana leaves), since it was lunchtime after all. Having never been there, my only experience of Thailand is through the food, which seems much less spicy here in Paris than what I had in California, but I certainly hope that that country can make it peacefully through its current political transition.

L'autre Défilé

Last weekend was the annual 'Journées du Patrimoine' festival of French heritage, in which museums and workshops hold special events all on the same weekend. What this means is that, if you choose this weekend to go to a museum, c'est dommage because it will be even more crowded than usual. I did brave the crowds at the Parc de la Villette, however, to see a fashion show (défilé) that showcased costumes from the National Opera and the National Theater. It was pretty cool, although it was very quirky, somewhat characteristic of the director, Philippe Decoufle, who also produced the opening ceremonies of the winter Olympics in Albertville. Of course, the costumes were amazing, ranging from huge getups with sailing-ship headpieces, to barely there fairy costumes and a naked fat-man costume. It was hard to take pictures of the runway show itself, but the make-up room was open for the public to watch during preparations, so I managed to get a few close up views too. The picture below which shows the runway is from the finale when they brought all of the costumes out at once. There are more photos at my Flickr site.

Bastille Day

Bastille Day in France doesn't go by that name at all, it is either called 'Le Quatorze Juillet' or 'La Fête Nationale' and, at least in Paris, the parade involved only military troops. I shouldn't say 'only,' really, because they were every sort of troop of soldiers you could imagine. Of course, there were some on horseback and some playing marching music, but also the alpine units, firefighters, paratroopers, and others. I didn't get a good picture, but the Patrouille de France also did a flyover, as well as bunches of helicopters and other planes. After the parade, the military units dispersed to different neighborhoods to have closer contact with the public. I took this picture in front of the Opera Garnier. I wonder what they told that little girl about the purpose of that gun.

I watched the fireworks display at the Eiffel Tower, and it was the most magnificent fireworks show I've ever seen, partly because the music was great -- a tribute to the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birthday. I even took a video, which show some of the middle part, when they played one of my favorite Mozart piano concertos:



If you can't see the video as it is embedded, you can watch it here.

Solidays

On Sunday, I went to the Solidays concert festival at the Hippodrome de Longchamp, a huge horseracing stadium in the Bois de Boulogne park just outside Paris. It was a terrific event with five stages and 60 different concerts over the course of weekend.
Here's the view from the south end, from the biggest stage (not pictured).



My favorite, and the reason I decided to go, was Maceo Parker, a saxophonist who also plays the flute and sings with his jazz/funk band. The only bad part was that the sound amplification kind of mushed up the music. The audience was better than I expected at appreciating him, considering that most of the acts there were pop, rock or techno. Here's Maceo Parker and his band:

La finale

Ah, la finale. Maggie and Tom left Paris this morning, bound for Bayeaux and the beaches of Normandy. It was really great having them here, I had a ton of fun and sometimes I can't believe that, despite long passages of time and distance, our friendship holds true. If you want to look at some of the pictures they took while in Paris, I've uploaded a couple batches onto Flickr, first my site and then the site of my dad. If you look at the sets you will see the pictures in the order that they were taken, rather than the inverse order, the way are displayed on the Flickr Home of each account. Both of those accounts are maxed out as far as uploads, so you'll have to wait for Maggie and Tom to get back to the US to get a link to the rest of the pictures they want to share on the server they use.

So, as for the other finale, Paris is really gearing up for Sunday's match. I hope they win! In a spooky coincidence, I accidentally stained my recently synthesized polymer with blue marker ink that refuses to come out. Allez Les Bleus!

I am thinking of going to part of a 3-day concert weekend that is part of a festival to benefit the fight against AIDS: Solidays. There are 60 different concerts over the span of the weekend, and people even have the option to camp out there the whole time. The weather is perfect right now, although it might rain a bit this weekend.

Stade Charlety

Here are some pictures to go with my previous post about the French v Spain match of the World Cup on Tuesday. The first two show the crowd, and the last one shows what a French crowd does to demonstrate enthusiasm after a goal: burn stuff, naturally!

Manifest avec nous à douze heures et demi...

Today was the second Tuesday in a row that unions around the country 'united' in striking to protest the CPE. This strike was a lot lighter than the previous one. Arriving at my school this morning, I passed were a couple young people standing at the school gate handing out flyers and inviting people to join them in demonstrating (manifester) today. In fact, the students at the engineering school I go to are lucky that they can still attend classes and do their work, because a number of other universities are still blocked by protesters. The situation is giving rise to regularly held anti-strike demonstrations, which are much smaller but resonate pretty strongly with the opinions of the students I work with. My first reponse to the demonstrations by the students was that it was great that the French feel empowered to take action when the government does something they don't like. And then, with the length of time of the strikes and their growing intensity, I thought it was amazing that they were so stubborn and amazing also that the government didn't step in and require the schools to reopen during some negotiation. But now, it seems like it was too late to stop the law and that the demonstrations mainly affected the political landscape for the coming presidential elections. I hate to think that all of this time and energy was spent for campaign posturing.