Hello from Holland! We're currently on a brief break from our Art Monastery work and are enjoying a well-deserved week off. It's unusually rainy and cold for this time of year, but the Amsterdammers are still whirling around the city in full force. Except for the phonetic throat-clearing that happens every few seconds in a Dutch conversation, it feels just like home sweet Seattle.After a month in Italy it is safe to say that entertaining Italians on a very small budget has been an unusual and challenging endeavor. Our first "Debutto" performance in Labro was so successful that we were asked to do it again a week later for a new group of dignitaries. What? An encore debut performance? Half of the first Debutto cast had left by this point, which meant that we had to put together a totally new show. Naomi sang, cavorted onstage with an Italian accordion virtuoso and performed a new silks act to David Bowie's "Space Oddity," complete with upside-down kazoo solo. Andrew played bass, sang and impersonated Elvis Presley in a comedy sketch wherein Pavarotti and the King reconcile their musical differences over a shared love of Italian cuisine. Though we had very little in the way of tech support or rehearsal, it came together at the last minute and actually seemed to impress some Italians. A notable audience quote: "When you play Portishead, you make me cry."

Who knew?

Incidentally, the Italian word "debutto" (debut) with TWO t's is nearly identical to the word "debuto" with ONE t, which has a totally different meaning, something closer to "one's entry into the adult entertainment industry." A subtle difference easily overlooked by non-native Italian speakers, this misspelling accidentally made its way onto the headline of a hundred flyers advertising one of our shows. Most of the flyers were distributed before the error was found, leaving us to only hope that nobody would notice. We weren't completely sure, however, so as a litmus test we handed one of our hotel waitresses a flyer and asked if she saw anything wrong with it. She read it down and seemed about to say that everything was fine until her eyes wandered back to the top of the page and a beet-red expression of amused horror crossed her face. She tried to cover it up and assure us it wasn't that bad, but we were already cracking up to notice.

Ah, cultural exchange.

After Debutto v2.0 we had a day to prepare for our three-week trip to Belgium and the Netherlands. This time was mostly used for packing luggage and washing clothes in the sink with hand soap, which seemed to have its own selective ideas about where dirt should be removed. Intermittent rain of astonishing force was a constant threat, providing a nice workout as we sprinted to get our drying clothes inside several times throughout the day. Busking costumes were finished, travel plans were laid, and soon we were stumbling out of bed at 4:45 AM to fly to Amsterdam. A word of advice to any and all people reading this: NEVER book a flight on Alitalia. Italy's largest airline has a very professional-looking website, but that's as far as it goes. The story is too long to relate, but the lesson learned is that behind Italy's world-famous food and fashion lurks an inefficient and fragmented infrastructure the likes of which one would expect in a country like Djibouti.

This was especially apparent when we arrived in Amsterdam. Wow, culture shock. You know you've been cloistered on an Italian mountain when clean trains, English signage and fresh vegetables seem alien.

We were inspired to action by our new surroundings and had a full day of stere

otypical sightseeing: walking along beautiful canals, constant consumption of frites and chocolate, and yes, Heineken.

We've been here several days and have already been to a comedy show, seen some sights, met some cool people and attended the Tong Tong Fair, the largest gathering of Indonesian people outside of Indonesia. The fair wasn't terribly interesting, but boy, can we recommend the deep-fried bananas.

We also somehow ended up playing at an art opening on the NDSM Werf, a huge complex of shipyards-turned-artist-lofts on the edge of the city.

This gig, which we got through a friend of a friend of a friend, involved playing ridiculous cover tunes next to a shipping container with a single glass wall that revealed a tableau of found objects being observed by a rabbit figurine. We played a half-hour set prior to the opening ceremony, which started out fairly normally but slowly became more and more bizarre as the proceedings unfolded. The ceremony began with the placement of a large brass lamp stand with a microphone where the bulb would have been, into which was delivered a short but theatrical speech by two men in gladiator helmets and matching black-and-red tuxedos. The speech concluded to enthusiastic applause as a massive piece of white paper was placed on the ground in front of the shipping container. A Vespa was driven onto the paper and began to rev the engine at top speed. The tiny engine roared as two men in goggles and safety gear walked up and began to throw a continuous stream of strike-on-box firecrackers at the paper. The paper began to explode as if strafed by a machine gun, flinging a light snowfall of confetti onto the assembled spectators. This firework-throwing/scooter-revving demonstration continued for five minutes without interruption, during which time one of the caterers was so surprised by a particular explosion that she spilled an full tray of champagne flutes on herself, creating an equally captivating scene several yards away. The explosions concluded just as the last of the champagne was mopped up, followed by a brief moment of silence as people contemplated the piles of shredded paper and broken glass on the ground. Pancakes and beer were then served.

Commedia rehearsal video

Check out the video from the rehearsal for the Commedia piece performed for our second performance in Labro!

Labro Debutto Pictures

A week ago, the Art Monastery Project had its Debutto ("debut") performance at Colle di Costa, where we are staying. It was a presentation of the vision of the project to the community of Labro, along with several local speakers, a video, and performances by Art Monastery artists. The wonderful Marco Ventimiglia took some fantastic pictures of the evening, and we thought you would enjoy them.

impromptu band performance during aperitivo in

the courtyard

Naomi taking a kazoo solo

Betsy and Christopher introduce the

project

Naomi's Silks act, view from underneath

Jazz set during dinner

Ciao for now!

First week in Italy

Hello friends! We have survived our first week at the Art Monastery, and boy, has it been an adventure.

Where to start…

First, our home. We had seen a few pictures prior to our arrival, but nothing could have prepared us for this. We are out in the middle of beautiful nowhere in the mountain village of Labro, which was founded around 900 AD and strongly resembles Minas Tirith from the Lord of the Rings movies. We live across the valley from this medieval wonderland in the Colle di Costa, a 14th-century monastery that has been partially converted into a hotel. Most of the original structure and adjacent church have been preserved, and the contemporary additions give the place a very cool feel. The modern additions include conference rooms, a restaurant and a small theater that has housed most of our creative endeavors. It’s so quiet that the neighborhood birds form a thunderous morning chorus, and the view from the belltower is breathtaking.

Our days begin at 8:00 AM with a chilly jog across the valley to Labro, where Naomi leads the assembled Artmonks in a rigorous physical training regimen. Such things are far less common in Italy and the locals who have wandered by regard us with a mixture of confusion and amusement. We then retire to the hotel restaurant for breakfast, which in Italy means coffee, juice, cake and six kinds of cookies. Not just tea biscuits, mind you, but cookies specifically designed and advertised for breakfast consumption. Needless to say, this is a little challenging for a health-conscious vegetarian/gluten intolerant pair like ourselves, but we’ve found some delicious ways around this little hitch. Lunch is at 1:00, followed by individual training and projects until dinner at 8:00. After dinner we gather in the monastery’s church to do a compline service, a twenty-minute segment of Gregorian chant and meditation that winds us down at the close of the day. The rest of our schedule will be in flux for the rest of the summer, but here’s a brief overview of our recent activities

:

For the last week we have spent our mornings doing a Gregorian chant intensive and are now in full-on Artmonk mode. Our instructor is a jolly old Belgian man named Eugeen (pronounced OY-gen), who we simply refer to as “The Boss.” He has been studying Gregorian chant for over twenty years and is a very knowledgeable (albeit demanding) authority on this esoteric subject. Despite the fact that this music is sung in unison over a range of less than an octave, it turns out that Gregorian chant is very hard to do. It is even harder to learn, as it is written using an archaic notation system that implies no meter and delineates a variety of almost-imperceptibly different dynamics and articulations using one of about twenty kinds of squiggles. Virtually every rule has multiple contextual exceptions, melody lines change without notation or textual warning and most melodies must be constantly modified to fit lyrics which never repeat and are written independently from the actual music. Did we mention that this is all done in Latin?

We’ve also done several performances for the folks of Labro, including a grand debut/presentation of the Art Monastery Project to the community. Andrew melted faces with beatboxing, jazz and a straitjacket escape, while Naomi blew Italian minds with a smoking aerial silks act and several sultry vocal numbers.

We’ve done several Gregorian chant performances this weekend. One was performed with an actual Bishop (!) in the beautiful town of Orvieto. If you are not aware (We weren't), Orvieto is the home of a beautiful cathedral, the Duomo, that was built to house the bloody altar cloth miracle thingie of Corpus Christie (something something Christian important something...) and has a stunningly ornate exterior. We didn't go inside cause it cost three Euros. But we strolled around the lovely, if very touristy town, tried four different flavors of gelato, and threw a paper airplane off a cliff.

This next week brings us an experimental music project in which we will start to pull apart our chant work and reassemble it to produce a number of new pieces. With luck we’ll have some recordings to play for you shortly, so stay posted!

Ciao!

~Naomi & Andrew