2015-Dec-6 Longital Suita + My Baby / St Vincent Depaul, Bratislava, SK

LONGITAL
(adapted from http://www.pohodafestival.sk/en/news/doma-dobre-concert-longital-suita.html)

Longital Suita – project of band Longital and a string quartet with arrangements by Slavo Solovic saw a huge success at its sold-out premiere at Konvergencie Festival. On December 6th, they were playing with the same lineup for the second time as part of Doma Dobre concert in the lodging house of St. Vincent de Paul.
Last year, the amazing drummer Marián Slávka rejoined Longital (Shina and Daniel Salontay). Besides playing gigs, they decided to sum up 15 years of band’s existence in a studio. They recorded album A to je všetko! (That is all!) within one session, live and without any additional editing. But that was not all... A few months later, they started cooperating with a string quartet led by Slavo Solovic. Apart from Solovic, the quartet includes well-known musicians Štefan Filas, Milan Adamec and Jozef Lupták.
The author of arrangements Solovic says for Denník N daily: “The Quartet and drums play exactly the same thing and are accompanied by a guitar and bass. I stuck to the original form. We are playing the same songs, together, and at the same time we are doing it our way.ˮ The proof lies in the first video from Konvergencie capturing A to je všetko song, where vigorous string parts are accompanied by similarly intense emotions of Marián Slávka’s solo. According to Longital Suita’s members, the project can be characterized by five words: happy (about musical and human appreciation), self-confident (in the sense of knowing and appreciating yourself), courageous (to try and change), wild and lively.
Longital:

* Shina – vocals, bass, bow
* Daniel Salontay - guitars, bow, vocals
* Marián Slávka – drums, piano

The quartet:

* Štefan Filas – lead violin
* Milan Adamec - violin
* Slavo Solovic - viola
* Jozef Lupták - violoncello

Sound:

* Martin Čema

MYBABY
After last year’s Lola Marsh performance, another band with amazing singer played Doma Dobre concert. This Sunday at Doma Dobre concert, a low threshold night shelter St. Vincent de Paul hosted a phenomenal Dutch – New Zealand trio My Baby. The band combines funk-blues roots with dance music. This mix of styles wills you to dance and fall into (according to band’s fans) the so-called voodoo trance. We saw them live and can confirm that they are one of the best up-and-coming bands in Europe.

My Baby was formed by siblings Joost and Cato van Dijck and guitarist Daniel Johnston from New Zealand in 2012. A year later, they released their debut album named Loves Voodoo with socially conscious lyrics pointing out various negative phenomena in society. Their second album Shamanaid saw its release in May this year. Joost says they “borrow from the rich history of folk music from all around the world and bring it to the moment of now.”
With high-quality records and a number of live shows (150 a year), they made it to festivals such as Glastonbury or Sziget. They also opened for artists such as Larry Graham and Seasick Steve (who said they are the future of music). According to Q Magazine, their music “will haunt your dreams for weeks” and Clash says the band “match classic songwriting to a keen exploration of sound.” In our opinion, you should listen to one of their songs, which clearly show that the band’s energy is worth seeing live. You’ve got your chance this Sunday at Bratislava-based St. Vincent de Paul low threshold night shelter.

2015-Oct-14 PHOTO+VIDEO Katka Koščová, Jamadan, Adela Banášová and photographers / Rozvojový deň, Stará Tržnica, Bratislava

The subtitle of this  event was "Plea for Humanity: What next?" (click here for my gallery and impressions from the said concert/plea). Wednesday's event in Stará Tržnica provided the much needed context and space for debate in regards to Slovakia's role in helping developing countries in the midst of a refugee crisis.

Even though I couldn't attend the actual discussion, I am making it up now (as you can do too) by watching this video:

What I actually arrived for was much noisier, Jamadan, Slovakia's response to world music. 

After it, I was treated to lots of very interesting photographs and discussions with (photo) journalists. I was in particular, pleasantly surprised by seeing a fellow photographer from my hometown, Vranov, Andrea Kerestešová. Here's her blog. She was among the winning photographers! Please, do check out the winning articles: Pavol Štrba's The Boy Who Survived His Own Death" from Srebrenica,  Magdaléna Vaculčiaková's Cambodian sugar doesn't taste sweet and Tomáš Bella's How did the immigrants radicalise me in one week

While all this was very interesting and important, the best part of the evening was the performance given by Katka Koščová from Prešov, with Daniel Špiner on the piano/pepper-shaker, Jozef Lupták on the violin/mandolin and Michal Matejčík (of Depeche Mode/George Michael fame) on the harp. It was simply splendid, and really heart-felt! Look and listen for yourselves:

Watch in full-screen

2015-Sep-10 Longital SUITA / MDPOH, Bratislava,SK

What a ride, Longital + String Quartet, thank you for letting me a part of it!

It all began with an invitation by Daniel Salontay, not much unlike this one:


It was to a one-off concert collaboration during the renowned Slovak classical music festival Konvergencie, with its director Jozef Lupták playing the cello as a one part of a string quartet, with the string section arranged and composed by Slavo Solovic, an old friend of Longital and Slnko records, now also famous for his work with Korben Dallas (Symphony + Sen), Sendreiovci (Le Orchestroha) and others.

It all started in 2005, when Longital won the Tatrabanka Prize for Art and Slavo Solovic was asked to compose and conduct a full orchestra rendition of one of Longital's song Zlatá (My dear). The performance was amazing, but too grandiose to repeat elsewhere, the band had decided. See for yourselves:


Now, ten years later, after performing with a vibraphonist Stroon in 2013 and after another one-off concert with an old flame of the band, drummer Marián Slávka, which led to them doing most of their concerts in the past year together (like this one just a few days before in Banská Štiavnica), they were ready once again to up their game, with four more musicians on stage.

For me, the invitation was not only to the concert but also to the rehearsal, where I made a lot of shots of the suita rehearsing together in a lovely, sun lit space on top of the city theatre.  This led to another photo invitation, this time in a video form, using animoto:

I was also lucky enough to be a part of the general rehearsal, where I had enough space to take close ups off the performers, and other shots I would not be able to take later at the concert.

Open in full screen Google Photos Album

And continued later in a day with the evening performance itself, where my wife Nadja, having a birthday that day tested a new Sony A7 camera (to a great result, as you can see from the first pictures in the slideshow, which are hers:

I would have lied if I said there were no other photographers - in fact two, plus a camera crew. But it is the video made by one of them, Martina Mlcuchova, that I want to share with you, for its raw energy:


And that is all? (A to je všetko?)



Or is it? To be continued...

From 2015-09-10 Longital Suita otvárala Konvergencie