Would you like some Awesome with your Salzburger?

Let me start by saying that I don't think I've ever been so irritated by such a small thing as a foreign keyboard before.

So I touched down in Salzburg after sleeping through most of the plane trip and playing Metal Slug when I wasn't. I saw snow and was like WOW. It was great to have such an amazing initial view from above of this incredible city.

Once again, I did the traditional walk around without looking at the map, and then i tried to find 

my way back to the hostel. Oh, before that, I 

bought a ticket to the 'Mozart Dinner Concert' and had some time to kill beforehand- This mainly involved taking pictures of the brilliant snow and beautiful architecture. Well worth the cold. Maybe it's me gradually aclimatising to this cold weather, but -8, -9 degrees doesnt seem that cold anymore. Perhaps it's also my Drizabone.

Anyway, better write something quickly about the concert I went to. When I booked the ticket and looked at the program, my heart sank a little, because i saw that they were going to be playing 'Mozart favourites'...so I was expecting to hear 12 different variations of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and Symphony No. 40 played upside down. BUT - it was totally not that kind of concert. It was reeeeally good, and the food was amazing. The string ensemble and the two

 vocalists performed excerpts from 3 of Mozart's operas - Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro and the Magic Flute. They were very good and I found the singers extremely enjoyable to watch. I realised that I still can't sit through Madamina, Il Catalogo without giggling at the 'Spain' bit. I'm sure anyone who was in the Classical Studies class at the Con may share some fond memories...

The food, as I said, was delicious... The entree was lemon cream soup with cinnamon...

OH 

YEAH.

 

Then the main course was Capon with an unreal sauce and potatoes cooked incredibly 

well with

 other tasty vegies. The dessert was a semi-frozen honey parfait which was scrumptious, but not so much my kind of meal.

I headed back to my hostel afterwards and caught up with a couple of Aussies who were watching the '24/7' screening of The Sound of Music at the hostel. That's right, the TV only plays the one movie. I didn't watch it with them, I viewed it in full another night.

Full photos can be found on my Flickr page and in the next post I'll talk a bit about my snowboarding adventures.

Direction of the Asterix revival

Any Asterix fans?

I just found out here that Albert Udzero has sold a 60% share of the book's orginal company to the publishing giants Hachette Livre. I guess we'll wait and see what happens, but it would be such a shame to see the timeless brand of Asterix, mauled by modern popular design and merchandising.

The thing I always loved about Asterix is that you didn't have change any aspect of the novel to make it enjoyable for people of all ages, despite the first book having been written in the 60's. One of the great qualities of Asterix is the jokes they made about 'modern' events or topics. In the recent books though, they branched out into REALLY modern stuff, like extra terrestrials and all that, which was rubbish, to be honest. I actually stopped enjoying/reading the series after Asterix and Obelix: All At Sea. I also played some of the Asterix videogames, most recently 'Asterix at the Olympic Games'...which was horrendous.

As I said, I'll give Hachette Livre a chance to see what they come up with...but once I see Asterix Happy Meals at Dirty Donalds, then I know they've stuffed it. I don't like the idea of it becoming popularised (in the sense of marketing and products).

I love my Obelix Pez dispenser, but who eats Pez anyway?

Let me know what you think...(about Asterix, not Pez)

Photo from www.telegraph.co.uk

A London Evening...

The other night, I went to see London Philharmonic perform a pretty amazing lineup of repertoire and thoroughly enjoyed the evening.

However, allow me to briefly paint a picture of my short time out on the town beforehand. I went to the concert by myself, so my wandering allowed me to be somewhat more observational than usual. Saying that, it would have been particularly difficult for me to miss the things I saw.

In a true overview of London I noticed the following three things:

1. A giant crowd of tourists standing outside of a Subway restaurant arguing about whether they should eat at Subway, or Ha Ha Bar and Grill (big difference).

2. A street preacher, and

3. A man relieving himself against a railing.

Big props to the bloke for trying to do it inconspicuously, but unfortunately he clearly was not aware that the fence/railing was on the edge of the road and he was facing the traffic. Luckily for me, I was on the same side as his back. The people over the other side of street were not so lucky...

Anyway, on to the concert.

The performance was of excellent quality, overall. The LPO played Richard Strauss' Til Eulenspiegel, Piano Concerto no. 22 by Mozart, K. 482, Suite from 'Daphnis and Chloe' by Maurice Ravel and Firebird Suite - Igor Stravinsky.

Great Grizzly Pandas, what a line up (especially for flutes).

The conductor was a very talented lady by the name of Marin Alsop.

She seemed to inspire the orchestra with a lot of energy and intensity. The shining qualities of each of the pieces were captured extremely well. Til Eulenspiegel was quirky and crazy, Daphnis was just pure magic - floating, soaring, swelling magic and Firebird was just bloody fantastic, mate. Yep, that's the best I can come up with today.

The only thing that didn't work as much, in my opinion, was the Mozart piano concerto. Jonathon Bliss is an exceptional pianist, I can tell that - but he just didn't have the flow and elegance that was presented in the concert with Mitsuko Uchida. I much prefer that in performances of Mozart. He certainly has vibrance, which is also essential. The other thing that didn't work as well (which I couldn't put my finger on at first) was Alsop's conducting of the piece. I much prefer to have the ensemble directed by the soloist, when playing works by a composer like Mozart. Alsop's direction of the orchestra in the concerto was a little clunky, and I believe this transfered into the soloist's playing.

On the whole, as I said - the concert was fantastic. Special mention needs to be given to Adam Walker - the flautist who played principal for the evening. Absolutely top flute player and a good bloke as well - I caught up with him after the concert and went out for a drink with his crew of musos.

Well, that's a good time out in London, and I really do recommend going to see the LPO. If you're keen to catch them, let me know and we'll catch up at or after the concert.

Potayto or Potarto?

Erik Sheppard has raised an issue that I've thought about on and off - here

Is it 'voiceover', 'voice over' or voice-over?

Personally, I have always gone with 'voiceover'. I never really looked at which made the most sense grammatically, just which looked better.

It's interesting, because as a flute player, there is a similar debate with the name of that profession. There is flautist - pronounced either 'flawt-ist' or 'flout-ist', or flutist. James Galway raised a valid point that he does not play the flawt or the flout, but the flute. I like to avoid any conflict whatsoever, by just saying I'm a flute player.

What do you think? If you don't care about voiceovers or flutes, do you have a similar situation with your vocation?

Tryin' to Get Rid of the Hurdles

A new blog that I've been reading recently is 'Inspired Startup' by this guy Andy. It's a great read, and he has just done up this article about removing 'blockades' in your life that might stop you from achieving your goals. It's a really good one for the New Year, and I know it made me think about which hurdles I need to pull out from the track, ASAP.

For me, personally, I tend to work hard at improving something, but end up putting the ole' blinkers on and don't see the elements that really need to be removed to make everything change. It's so much easier to press forwards once you do realise what's in the way.

Enjoy, and I hope it helps you in some way.

Check out Andy's original post

2009....GO-TIME!

Friends, family and Romans...a very Happy New Year to you, and all the best for 2009 (I know some of you back home have already seen the first sunset, but give the rest of us some time to catch up).

A lot of my friends who blog have written some lovely summaries of the year, and some extremely informative and insightful business thoughts, but all I can say is that it has been an AMAZING time for me in the past 365 days.. To those of you who I met, worked with or even just talked to in 2008, you have changed this year for me and some, been a HUGE influence. So for this I say thanks, and see you in 2009!

Take care and prosper,
Matto

P.S. Expect MANY more blogs in 2009!

New York, New….something…I forget the rest.

Day 1 in New York was pretty quiet. I arrived later in the evening but got to have a good walk around Times Square. Ca-razy place. Seriously. All the movies I watch with New York are mostly set before the 60’s, so I was pretty shocked to see so many people. You hear about all the cars and buses, but there’s really nothing like standing in the middle of it (the hustle and bustle, that is, not the road – you don’t wanna do that). I called it a night pretty early as I was buggered from the flying and lugging luggage.

I hit the road pretty early the next day and did some more walking. Then I made my way to the TKTS (discount ticket booth) to check it out and see what the deal was with getting passes to shows. Then I saw that Avenue Q was available, so I lined up to grab tickets. I had no idea what the time was, and then the guy said the show started at 2 p.m. and told me how to get to the theatre. I moseyed over and realised that everyone was lining up, so I asked when the show started – “Now”, was the grouchy and urgent answer. Pretty good timing I guess.

The show absolutely rocked my world. Avenue Q is one of my favourite musicals, although I had never seen it performed live. I know the soundtrack and score inside out and obviously know what goes on in between. I am very used to the Original Broadway Cast performance, and for that reason I had to do a quick adjustment and accept that the show I was seeing was NOT the show I knew so well. Some of the characters were performed in a similar way to the original recording, but mostly the actors had a great new slant on the voice and style. This I liked, once I got into the swing of the show.

Now, after spending some time in New York City, it becomes kind of weird to see pigeons actually flying in the air. It’s that breed of town. There is so much trash (I hope it’s just trash) on the ground in Times Square, and of course the flying rats just flock to that area.

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The next day in Noo Yawk was a whole heap of fun. I started the day by walking around Central Park and visiting the United Nations headquarters. I caught up with 3 friends from New York - all fellow voice actors. First I met Lucien, who I know through the internets. We chatted for a bit and then Rachel joined us. I had met Rachel at the VOICE conference in Los Angeles, but she lives and works in NY. We all had a great meal at a restaurant with all organic meals and then cruised out back to Bryant Park. We caught up with Crystal, who is a roomie of Lucien (and of course, a VA).

We had planned to watch the original Superman movie in Bryant Park (they do free screenings there in summer). Unfortunately, although we arrived about 4 hours before the movie started, the whole park was absolutely packed. We stood for a while, but after a little while, our legs grew weary and Rachel and I decided to head off to Downtown Manhattan. We checked out a busy little comic book store and then moseyed over to a restaurant called Max Bremmers. Ok, so this restaurant’s gig is chocolate. Big time. And they do it with style. When there is an abundance of food, and you can’t decide between all the tasty dishes, the best thing to get is a platter. So we did.

Oh man, the decadence, the flavour and the pure, chocolatey goodness was just too much. Rachel and I ploughed our way through a banana split, Italian hot chocolate, chocolate slice and marshmallows, banana and strawberries with a fondue. It was brilliant and I’d recommend this place to any chocolate lovers or closet chocolate lovers.

Having eaten enough sugar to power a plasma TV for 3 hours, we called it a night.

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The next day, Rachel and I hung out again. We first met at the NY Natural History Museum. It was really fun. I met Rachel’s buddy Armistead, and he showed us around some of the exhibits. We saw this very impressive movie about the universe and all the cosmic changes that have been happening and will happen. It was narrated by Robert Redford and the movie screen was the roof of this dome building! We also saw this sea monsters film, which was really cool. We also checked out the lizards exhibit and it was fun to see some reptiles from back home (frill necked and blue tongue lizard). It never matches up to the seeing them in your own backyard, but it was a nice bit of nostalgia!

After a classic New York pizza and some more looking around the museum, we headed back to Times Square to try to get tickets to Wicked. We spent some time enjoying the interior decorating in the Gershwin Theatre (waiting in line) to try to score us some reserve tickets. After about 2 (?) hours, Rachel and I managed to get superb seats. Orchestra, to the left. Elated, we left to get a meal at the ‘Musical’ restaurant nearby. Oh, the place was great fun. Waiting staff dancing on tables and root beer and ice cream – you can’t get much better than that.

Then we made our way back to the theatre during which time I was goin’ supernova. Like Avenue Q, I’ve wanted to see this musical for about 4 years. I could have actually seen it in Melbourne before I came to the USA (Wicked just started an Australian tour), but I thought that as I’ve waited this long, I can wait a few more months. Plus the cast looked a bit unimpressive (except for a few cast members, namely the late Rob Guest – I wish I had seen him in his last show)

Anyway, back to the action. I felt like I’d taken a trip back to childhood, walking up the steps to the theatre doors. When we finally got inside, I found myself lookin’ up at an amazing set – I had never seen anything so impressive in all the shows I’d been to. Obviously it’s Broadway, baby, so they have a huuuuuge budget, but it was still mind boggling.

The musical was pretty much all I hoped it to be and more. I was slightly let down by the acting of the gal who played Elpheba. She actually performed in the West End debut and was clearly British, trying to do an American accent. Unfortunately that was a barrier for her and resulted in a lot of ‘forced acting’. Her vocal performance was outstanding though. I also liked the performance of the actress who played Glinda – she had a fun slant on the character. A little more serious and subdued…

I am so glad I went to see the show. I sat through the whole thing, thinking ‘hell yeah’….it was a bloody beudy!

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Last day. I caught a train to Astoria, which is Rachel’s neighbourhood. We hung out for a while, I did some laundry, and we went to a brilliant little Greek restaurant. Seeing as I had eaten so much meat so far on my trip, I thought it would be the responsible thing to do, to get a salad. It was freakin’ massive! We had some dip and bread before that, so the salad destroyed me. Some of you may shake your head in disbelief, considering my usual appetite, but this thing could have catered for a couple of big Greek weddings. After that it was just about time to dash off to La Guardia. Having been lucky enough to spend a whole heap of time with my mate, Rachel, it was a bit sad to say bye! New York won’t keep me away for long, though….

The city was amazing, and as I said, I know I’ll be back there again soon. Next up, I’ll be writing about my very first European adventure ever. Watch this broken jpeg!