Tuesday, December 26, 2017

ICE RINK PARTY at T.R.A.C.S

Tonight, at The Ice Rink Platform 2017/18 at Timothy Street on River Island!
You are welcome to join us, for a wonderful warm tune-aged set, performed by DJ Deepert. 
He is playing his Soulful House and Vocal House year mix 2017, mixed with Christmas songs. 
There is a contest with L$ 1000 to win for best in Christmas / Winter outfit.
So, come over here, put on you skates and celebrate Christmas.
We start at 12PM (NOON) SLT – 21:00 CET

Monday, December 25, 2017

The Nutcracker at River Island

After weeks of 24/7 building, making animations and rehearsals, it is finally ready.
Tonight, is the premiere of "The Nutcracker & The Mouse King" at the R.I.P.A. theater.

Thursday, December 21, 2017

The Nutcracker

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
The Nutcracker is a classical ballet in two acts. It is based on E.T.A. Hoffmann's 1816 fairy tale The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. It tells the story of a little girl who goes to the Land of Sweets on Christmas Eve. Ivan Vsevolozhsky and Marius Petipa adapted Hoffmann's story for the ballet. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky wrote the music. Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov designed the dances. The Nutcracker was first performed at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia, on 18 December 1892. It was a modest success. Some people liked it, others did not. Because of its reception, the ballet was rarely seen in later years.

About fifty years later, Walt Disney used some of the Nutcracker music in his 1940 animated movie Fantasia. People liked the movie and started to take an interest in the ballet. Interest grew when George Balanchine's The Nutcracker was televised in the late 1950s. The ballet has been performed in many different places since then. It is loved by many people. Before the first performance, Tchaikovsky took some numbers from the ballet to form the Nutcracker Suite. This work was a great success on the concert stage, and is still played today.

Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy
Celesta
The "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" is one of the most famous numbers in The Nutcracker. It was written for the celesta. This instrument was new at the time the dance was written. It looks like a small piano, but it sounds like bells. Tchaikovsky discovered the celesta in Paris in 1891 while making a journey to the United States. His publisher purchased one and promised to keep the purchase a secret. Tchaikovsky did not want Rimsky-Korsakov or Glazunov to "get wind of it and ... use it for unusual effects before me." Petipa wanted the Sugar Plum Fairy's music to sound like drops of water splashing in a fountain. Tchaikovsky thought the celesta was the instrument to do this. The original steps for the dance are unknown. Antonietta Dell'Era was the first to dance the part of the Sugar Plum Fairy. The character has very little dancing to do so Dell'Era put a gavotte by Alphonse Czibulka into the ballet. She then had something more to do.

NO PARTY

This Saturday there will be NO PARTY at T.R.A.C.S

SPACE ODYSSEY PARTY

 ▲▼ DJ Tim
 ▲▼ Ganymede as HAL 9000

Thursday, December 14, 2017

SPACE ODYSSEY PARTY at T.R.A.C.S

T.R.A.C.S at Timothy Street on River Island

2001: A Space Odyssey

2001: A Space Odyssey is a science-fiction narrative, produced in 1968 as both a novel, written by Arthur C. Clarke (16 December 1917 – 19 March 2008), and a film, directed by Stanley Kubrick. It is a part of Clarke's Space Odyssey series. Both the novel and the film are partially based on Clarke's short story "The Sentinel", written in 1948 as an entry in a BBC short story competition, and "Encounter in the Dawn", published in 1953 in the magazine Amazing Stories.

Clarke was originally going to write the screenplay for the film, but this proved to be more tedious than he had anticipated. Instead, Kubrick and Clarke decided it would be best to write a prose treatment first and then adapt it for the film and novel upon its completion.
Clarke and Kubrick jointly developed the screenplay and treatment, which were loosely based on The Sentinel and incorporated elements from various other Clarke stories. Clarke wrote the novel adaptation independently. Although the film has become famous due to its groundbreaking visual effects and ambiguous, abstract nature, the film and book were intended to complement each other.

Film
The film was written by Clarke and Kubrick and featured specialist artwork by Roy Carnon. The film is notable for its scientific realism, pioneering special effects, and provocatively ambiguous imagery and sound in place of traditional narrative techniques.

Despite receiving mixed reviews upon release, 2001: A Space Odyssey is today thought by some critics to be one of the greatest films ever made and is widely regarded as one of the best science fiction films of all time. It was nominated for four Academy Awards, and received one for visual effects. It also won the Kansas City Film Critics Circle Best Director and Best Film awards of 1968. In 1991, 2001: A Space Odyssey was deemed culturally significant by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

Also sprach Zarathustra -Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None (German: Also sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen, also translated as Thus Spake Zarathustra) is a philosophical novel by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, composed in four parts between 1883 and 1885 and published between 1883 and 1891. Much of the work deals with ideas such as the "eternal recurrence of the same", the parable on the "death of God", and the "prophecy" of the Übermensch, which were first introduced in The Gay Science.

The book chronicles the fictitious travels and speeches of Zarathustra. Zarathustra's namesake was the founder of Zoroastrianism, usually known in English as Zoroaster (Avestan: Zaraϑuštra). Nietzsche is clearly portraying a "new" or "different" Zarathustra, one who turns traditional morality on its head. He goes on to characterize "what the name of Zarathustra means in my mouth, the mouth of the first immoralist:"

Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, cultural critic, composer, poet, philologist, and Latin and Greek scholar whose work has exerted a profound influence on Western philosophy and modern intellectual history.
He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. He became the youngest ever to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in 1869 at the age of 24. He resigned in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life, and he completed much of his core writing in the following decade. In 1889, at age 44, he suffered a collapse and a complete loss of his mental faculties. He lived his remaining years in the care of his mother until her death in 1897, and then with his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, and died in 1900.

Also sprach Zarathustra (Strauss)
Also sprach Zarathustra, Opus 30 (Thus Spoke Zarathustra or Thus Spake Zarathustra) is a tone poem by Richard Strauss, composed in 1896 and inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophical novel of the same name. The composer conducted its first performance on 27 November 1896 in Frankfurt. A typical performance lasts half an hour.

The initial fanfare – titled "Sunrise" in the composer's program notes – became particularly well-known after its use in Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The piece is divided into nine sections played with only three definite pauses. Strauss named the sections after selected chapters of the book:
  1. Einleitung, oder Sonnenaufgang (Introduction, or Sunrise)
  2. Von den Hinterweltlern (Of Those in Backwaters)
  3. Von der großen Sehnsucht (Of the Great Longing)
  4. Von den Freuden und Leidenschaften (Of Joys and Passions)
  5. Das Grablied (The Song of the Grave)
  6. Von der Wissenschaft (Of Science and Learning)
  7. Der Genesende (The Convalescent)
  8. Das Tanzlied (The Dance Song)
  9. Nachtwandlerlied (Song of the Night Wanderer)

Monday, December 11, 2017

Little Drummer Boy - Snare Drumline

And a last one because they do such a great performance.

Angels We Have Heard On High


Gloria, Gloria

Angels, from the realms of glory,
Wing your flight o'er all the earth;
Ye who sang creation's story,
Now proclaim Messiah's birth:

Gloria, Gloria

Gloria, in excelsis Deo
Gloria, in excelsis Deo

Gloria, Gloria

Saints before the altar bending,
Watching long in hope and fear,
Suddenly the Lord, descending,
In His temple shall appear:

Though an Infant now we view Him,
He shall fill His Father’s throne,
Gather all the nations to Him;
Every knee shall then bow down:

Gloria, in excelsis Deo

Gloria, in excelsis Deo

Little Drummer Boy - Pentatonix

I was wondering if I ever post it, because it gives me the shivers, in a good way. Now I did ;-)

I played my drum for Him
Pa-rum-pum-pum-pum
I played my best for Him
Pa-rum-pum-pum-pum

Me and my drum