Ólafur Arnalds @ SNFCC
May. 21st, 2019 11:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yannisSo, yeah, yesterday I've been to both concerts of Olafur Arnalds.
I managed to get both tickets! Although they were free, lol.
It happened so that for the first concert I got one of the worst tickets possible, but for the second one I got one of the best lol.
More specifically, the place I got for the first concert was in the second row of the highest (4th) balcony.
Not only it was difficult to see anything except for general view, but also it was pretty scary at the beginning, because I'm afraid of heights. Well, I got used to it after a couple of tracks, but still watching the concert from the height of a four-storey building is not the best option lol.
However, it was compensated by the ticket to the second concert. This time I've been sitting in parqet, right in front of Olafur.Technically it was the 7th row, but as the first rows were empty, in fact it was more like the 3rd, besides, three seats in front of me were also empty, so there were no heads blocking the view.
So, all in all, a great experince - at first I had watched the show from the furthest place possible, and then, half an hour later, from the closest. Not that bad at all. What more could one wish.
And yeah, speaking of empty spaces - while I've been sitting at a place located so high during the first concert, I certainly spent some time looking for empty spaces located lower than my own. And there were dozens of them! Well, the parquet was full, as it seemed at least, but there were plenty of not-so-good places in the balconies. Yeah, literally dozens.
So, they decided to make a second show, since all the tickets for the first one were given out in a matter of minutes, but many people just didn't show up, it seems, and even though if a person doesn't show up 45-minutes before the show their ticket is revoked and given out to any person without a ticket which shows up, still they couldn't totally fill the venue. It's strange.
But, why would I care? Two free concerts of Olafur Arnalds are certainly better than just one lol.
Olafur Arnalds himself was totally aware of the fact that these concerts were free, and joked a lot abut it. In fact, he talked a lot between the tracks, but, as he said "the problem with two consequitive concerts is that I've got only one joke for each song, but as many people have attended both concerts, it is stupid to repeat one joke twice since many have already heard it".
So, he was much more talkative during his first concert. He told almost everything about his music career. Starting from the point when he was a teenager playing drums in a band called "Fighting Shit" to the more recent times, when he injured his hand, lost the ability to play piano properly and spent two years in a techno band. As he told himself, "these were definitely not the best spent two years".
He also told about his deceased grandmother, who would call him to fix her broken radio, which in fact was not broken, but was just an excuse to make him come to her and to listen with him to Chopin for a few hours straight. Which, in turn, brought him to classical music and made him who he is now.
And other funny shit.
His band consisted of three violinists (one bearded man, one man with the glasses and a woman), one bass playing woman and a drummer. He presented them to the public after one of the last songs, but both times I couldn't hear a word due to audience clapping and roaring lol.
He himself played a piano (Steinway & Sons) on the top of which sat a little synthesizer and he also had two other synthesizers on his left. There were also two more pianos, one on the far-left and one on far-right, he explained that they could be both played manually (and he played the left one once or twice) or just play pre-programmed sequences themselves (which they did a lot).
Since he played two concerts, the setlists were a little bit different, but not that much. Both times he played one song as an enchore.
The light-show which accompanied his concerts was great and elaborate.
As for the music, his style is defined as "contemporary classical" and "ambient", and yeah, that's what it sounds like. The closest thing to his music I listen to is Tangerine Dream, but Tangerine Dream is much more electronic and experimental, although there were a couple of moments during the concerts at which I thought to myself, "yeah, this certainly has some Tangerine Dream vibes in it".
Yeah, great concerts anyway. Great free concerts. As Ólafur Arnalds said, "someone had definitely paid for your free tickets". Well, someone had also paid for a free bus, not a mini-bus as usual, but a real big bus which took everybody who managed to get a place to Syntagma. Yeah, since his second concert started at 11 P.M., it ended at about 0:40 A.M., so there were not many transport option - Athens Metro is closed by this time, and only nightbuses run two or three times an hour.
So, I'm very grateful for these two great concerts!
Ευχαριστώ πολύ, Κέντρο Πολιτισμού Ίδρυμα Σταύρος Νιάρχος!
By the way, these were two first concerts of Ólafur Arnalds in Greece. He told us that other organisers tried to bring him to Greece two times before, but something didn't work out for them.
But finally someone did it!
I managed to get both tickets! Although they were free, lol.
It happened so that for the first concert I got one of the worst tickets possible, but for the second one I got one of the best lol.
More specifically, the place I got for the first concert was in the second row of the highest (4th) balcony.
Not only it was difficult to see anything except for general view, but also it was pretty scary at the beginning, because I'm afraid of heights. Well, I got used to it after a couple of tracks, but still watching the concert from the height of a four-storey building is not the best option lol.
However, it was compensated by the ticket to the second concert. This time I've been sitting in parqet, right in front of Olafur.Technically it was the 7th row, but as the first rows were empty, in fact it was more like the 3rd, besides, three seats in front of me were also empty, so there were no heads blocking the view.
So, all in all, a great experince - at first I had watched the show from the furthest place possible, and then, half an hour later, from the closest. Not that bad at all. What more could one wish.
And yeah, speaking of empty spaces - while I've been sitting at a place located so high during the first concert, I certainly spent some time looking for empty spaces located lower than my own. And there were dozens of them! Well, the parquet was full, as it seemed at least, but there were plenty of not-so-good places in the balconies. Yeah, literally dozens.
So, they decided to make a second show, since all the tickets for the first one were given out in a matter of minutes, but many people just didn't show up, it seems, and even though if a person doesn't show up 45-minutes before the show their ticket is revoked and given out to any person without a ticket which shows up, still they couldn't totally fill the venue. It's strange.
But, why would I care? Two free concerts of Olafur Arnalds are certainly better than just one lol.
Olafur Arnalds himself was totally aware of the fact that these concerts were free, and joked a lot abut it. In fact, he talked a lot between the tracks, but, as he said "the problem with two consequitive concerts is that I've got only one joke for each song, but as many people have attended both concerts, it is stupid to repeat one joke twice since many have already heard it".
So, he was much more talkative during his first concert. He told almost everything about his music career. Starting from the point when he was a teenager playing drums in a band called "Fighting Shit" to the more recent times, when he injured his hand, lost the ability to play piano properly and spent two years in a techno band. As he told himself, "these were definitely not the best spent two years".
He also told about his deceased grandmother, who would call him to fix her broken radio, which in fact was not broken, but was just an excuse to make him come to her and to listen with him to Chopin for a few hours straight. Which, in turn, brought him to classical music and made him who he is now.
And other funny shit.
His band consisted of three violinists (one bearded man, one man with the glasses and a woman), one bass playing woman and a drummer. He presented them to the public after one of the last songs, but both times I couldn't hear a word due to audience clapping and roaring lol.
He himself played a piano (Steinway & Sons) on the top of which sat a little synthesizer and he also had two other synthesizers on his left. There were also two more pianos, one on the far-left and one on far-right, he explained that they could be both played manually (and he played the left one once or twice) or just play pre-programmed sequences themselves (which they did a lot).
Since he played two concerts, the setlists were a little bit different, but not that much. Both times he played one song as an enchore.
The light-show which accompanied his concerts was great and elaborate.
As for the music, his style is defined as "contemporary classical" and "ambient", and yeah, that's what it sounds like. The closest thing to his music I listen to is Tangerine Dream, but Tangerine Dream is much more electronic and experimental, although there were a couple of moments during the concerts at which I thought to myself, "yeah, this certainly has some Tangerine Dream vibes in it".
Yeah, great concerts anyway. Great free concerts. As Ólafur Arnalds said, "someone had definitely paid for your free tickets". Well, someone had also paid for a free bus, not a mini-bus as usual, but a real big bus which took everybody who managed to get a place to Syntagma. Yeah, since his second concert started at 11 P.M., it ended at about 0:40 A.M., so there were not many transport option - Athens Metro is closed by this time, and only nightbuses run two or three times an hour.
So, I'm very grateful for these two great concerts!
Ευχαριστώ πολύ, Κέντρο Πολιτισμού Ίδρυμα Σταύρος Νιάρχος!
By the way, these were two first concerts of Ólafur Arnalds in Greece. He told us that other organisers tried to bring him to Greece two times before, but something didn't work out for them.
But finally someone did it!
