Italy

Several people involved in Bryan's art foundation had a bit of a retreat in Italy about a week and a half ago. Since I'm married to the CEO, I got to go along as well. Italy is about a 3.5 hour drive from here. We had fun!
I'm about to inundate you with pic
tures...this is a photography kind of blog
anyways.






Walking around the town of Connobio





























A view of the Alps from the Italian side







'Nuff said

Thanks, Mom!

I think you're the only who looks at this blog anymore!

Love you!

Montreux

Last month, we took a break from the chaos and went to Montreux, which is located in the french-speaking part of Switzerland. It's right along Lake Geneva.











Montreux is a jazz city. The people here love jazz and make it known with so many little tributes all over the city. Here is a sculpture of Mr. Ray Charles. There were also other sculptures of Quincy Jones, Ella Fitzgerald and B.B. King.
We hung out at Sinatra's Bar and enjoyed a couple cocktails as we listened to the fantastic live jazz music.





Chateau de Chillon

One of the best, most interesting castle tours ever!
















Enjoying the waterfront














I really love this picture! There's a real serene feeling to it and it feels like something out of a dream to me.

Ballenberg

Ballenberg is an open air museum in Switzerland
that gives you an idea of what Switzerland used to be like. It features around a hundred or so century-old buildings from all over the country. Also included are farm animals and old-time gardens and some of the old machinery and traditions that were most prevalent in the last couple hundred years.
We spent hours walking around. It's pretty interesting to look at and one of the hugest exhibits I've ever seen. There is so much to see!. I took a ton of pictures but thought I'd highlight some of my favorite parts.




My most favorite part was going to the cheese house and seeing how they made cheese back in the day. You can see in this picture that the cheese maker is skimming the top of the surface of the water in the cauldron and taking the cheese curds. He then puts them into those buckets for cooling. We got to sample some fresh cheese and it was fantastic! One of the rooms in the house was a little cheese store and we bought several different kinds of cheese. They didn't last very long! We at them up pretty quick!





This is an old wine press. I could not believe how large it was!












Here are several cow bells. I couldn't imagine being a cow and having to wear one of these. They are really big and heavy!














An old office/reading room.















If you have any extra time, I'd encourage you to check out the website:

http://www.ballenberg.ch/en/Welcome

Like I said, there's so much to see and the pictures I've shown, along with my description, really don't do it any kind of justice at all.

Summertime

One of my favorite concerts I played/sang this summer was in August. I had the pleasure to play and sing with a jazz saxophonist from Germany named Uwe Steinmetz. We met in Austria back in May during the arts conference I was at. Since we knew we'd be playing at the same place in Basel in August, we decided to do couple songs together. It was one of those moments where the excitement gets to you and you can't stop smiling like you got the biggest piece of chocolate cake out of everyone else.
I've only written one jazz song in my life and couldn't wait to hear how it would sound with a saxophone. Does it sound stupid that I got goosebumps from my own song? One thing that's so great about collaborating with other musicians is that you get to see them take a song and go some place with it that you could never go. He hit it out of the ballpark. It was a grand slam...a homerun...a plethora of goosebumps...whatever you want to call it. I REALLY wish I had a recording of it, but I don't. My camera ran out of battery power right around that time.
Uwe's choice of song that we collaborated on was "Summertime" by Sam Cooke. Up until that point, I had never heard of it and I really don't know why I hadn't heard it before. What a great song! I downloaded a couple different versions from iTunes. It's more in the vein of a jazz lullaby. My favorite line from it is:

One of these mornings, you're gonna rise up singing
You're gonna spread your wings and take the sky

Just before my camera shut down, Bryan was able to capture a bit of it on video. The sound quality is horrible, but you get the idea and you can hear how obviously talented Uwe is.

Woodstock

It's been a long time, I know since this blog has seen any action, but I'm about to update you on some of the things I've been up to the last couple of months...
As I'm sure you know, this year was the 40th anniversary of the Woodstock festival.
On the same anniversary weekend in August, there was a celebration of it here. I got to be apart of the festivities.









My friend, Luzian, accompanied me on the drums and we had a grand time playing. I ended up doing a cover of Janis Joplin's "Piece of My Heart"...not nearly as good as the original, of course, but A LOT of fun to play and have the crowd singing along.
There were a lot of other great bands and musicians that played and what made it even more enjoyable was how much variety and diversity there was!








And, of course, there was some dancing...












....and great food!

Luzern and David Gray (a lovely combination)

A couple weeks ago, I went to Luzern to go see David Gray at the Blue Balls Music Festival. (yes, that's really the name of the festival...no, I don't know why it's called that) Actually, I should specify that I went to Luzern twice in one week because I somehow had mixed up the dates wrong and didn't even bother to check the tickets when we left the first time around. (sigh) I'm hoping that that was my major blonde moment for the year. But Luzern is absolutely lovely and we made the most of both trips. :) Here are some pics:






















You can always count on seeing a plethora of swans there.
It actually made me think of the "Ugly Duckling" story and I had the sudden urge to go and re-read the story.










We saw a very interesting photography exhibit by Olaf Heinie. He's a really great photographer and I found myself taking a lot of time looking at each picture. He's that kind of photographer that captures your interest.









This was one of my favorite ones. I love the feeling of it and also the depth of field.









This is the MTV VIP lounge.....not so VIP...it seemed pretty pretentious. We stuck around long enough to satisfy our curiousity...(which took about 3 minutes) and then left.




I was ecstactic to see David Gray in concert again and so was the rest of the sold out crowd. He sang some of my favorites "Flame Turns Blue" and "This Year's Love" as well as some new songs from is forthcoming album 'Draw the Line'. The new record comes out next month and I can't wait to get it!


As you can see, there were a lot of people at the festival.










I love this night shot.

Just Oustide the Window...

Right now, people here are gearing up for the big August 1st celebration this Saturday. What are we celebrating? The day that Switzerland became a country...their own independence day. Almost everyday now, an Alpenhorn is brought out and played near the entrance of old town Liestal....just outside my window.
I took a short video of it:




Whenever I see an alpenhorn, I always think of those old Ricola commercials.
Of course, the real thing is so much better!

Train Travel

I'm heading back to Switzerland tomorrow...just a little more than 8 hours by train. I am hoping that it will be just as enjoyable quick going back as it was coming here to Austria.





Here's a little video to give you an idea of it...

An Afternoon Well Spent in Hintersee

This last Wednesday afternoon, a group of us had some free time and took a short drive to a place called Hintersee. I had never been there before nor had I ever heard of it. Had I known about it the first time we were here, I would've come here most definitely! After we had parked, I came across a couple horses along the way.






They stood very still as they stared back at me. Such perfect posers!






















I think I need to browse through my thesaurus and choose a couple different descriptive words other than "amazing, beautiful, gorgeous" when I try to describe the view.
I don't know if I could really find the right words. Pictures rarely ever do places like these justice.
When you come here, you realize just how small you are.












































Not only were there cows, but there were also many goats aimlessy wandering about.

An Austrian View

Check out the view...

Welcome to Austria

Mittersil, Austria....that is. It is beautiful! At the tail end of our "worldwide wedding tour", we came here to attend an Arts Summit.


Overlooking the valley, we stayed here at Schloss Mittersill...which is an old castle. We ended up sleeping in the room that the Queen of Netherlands stayed in 100 years ago when she came here for her honeymoon! There is another room full of memorabilia, old pictures and historical information of the castle. A random tidbit: back in the day, Clark Gable was here. I wonder which room he stayed in....






This castle even had a couple dungeons. They were cold, damp and creepy....just like you'd imagine them to be. What made it even creepier were some of the stories we heard of prisoners that were thought to be witches and whatnot. They don't call it the Dark Ages for nothing...yeesh!






This is a place where you can really enjoy the quiet.









The castle gardens are quite beautiful.










The view from the patio of our room.










There is a glass house on one corner of the castle that you can just go into to relax and write. It's a fantastic space to soak up the quiet, gather your thoughts, reflect and enjoy the view.





We had a fantastic time at the summit and met a lot of great people and had some really intellectually stimulating conversations. I ended up doing a couple of spontaneous concerts here and they invited me back to play here for an arts conference.

Fastforward a little over a month, and now I'm back here again. It's hard to believe! I came a couple days early and it's nice to enjoy the quiet. It was just a little over an 8 hour train ride to this place. I know that may seem like a really long journey, but the european countryside is just gorgeous and time flew by so fast!

Language Flub of the Moment...

I've been trying to be better at practicing my German as of late. It can prove to be quite entertaining and confusing at other times for those who can actually understand what I'm saying.

So I was trying to say, "Bryan and I decided" but instead ended up saying "Bryan and I divorced" leaving my german teacher absolutely incredulous which then segued into a giggling fit.

Wedding Pics

And here you are finally...