vm12 :: picture book

october 07, 2006.

On sunday september 24th Björn Eriksson organised a play with Vicky just south of Kramfors in Sweden, in an old oil cisterne on Svanö, an island in the river Ångermanälven. A wonderful spot to perform, both inside and out, as you will be able to judge for yourself from the many fine pictures that document the event, together with (!) a sound recording of the performance that lasted for about one hour and fifteen minutes ...
"It was a nice, sunny and warm late september day in our area this day," Björn told me in a email the morning after the performance. "We did start the VM12 by just saying a few words about the Vicky's Mosquitos performance (instructions) and then something about the oil cisterne. I had outlined a rough scheme for the performance which we quite well followed with some few exceptions. Vicky´s voice started and after a couple of minutes some sounds from outside the cisterne was accompanying Vicky's voice. Vicky's voice was of course very reverbated and I don't think so many could hear every word of her - but I guess that is OK as I did not alter the sound or anything of the reading except volume and taking away a little bass to make it a bit mere persistent in the clangy cisterne."

These were the ten performers that together did the twelfth 'play with Vicky' :
Sebastian Svenberg - trumpet, singing bowl, percussion, melodica
Petter Thermaenius - percussion, mandolin, bells, xylophones (children model)
Hildur Hardardottir - violin, singing, percussion
Sara Rydeman - flutes, clarinet, bass clarinet, percussion
Björn Eriksson - cd-player, clarinet, bass clarinet, flutes, bells, accordion
Mikael Danielsson - guitar, mandolin, singing (joik)
Linnea Danielsson - dancing
Per Åhman - dobro, singing, voices, sounds, percussion
Lars Braf - oscillators
Sten Engblom - guitar, mandolin, percussion, singing ...

An absolutely amazing scala of instruments ... I am left pretty much speechless ... for of course here is something that one should hear and see ... experience inside of what I merely can imagine to be a bit like a big rusty metal womb ...
Because of the presence of the players and audience (some 40-45), Björn observed, "the really, really long reverb was cut off some seconds. Maybe it was like 15-18 seconds instead of 25 sec. But it sounded great anyway."

In his 'Vicky play' on Svanö, Björn brought together people from four branches of his musical activities.
"There were people from MäAM (Sten, Per) the improvisation band we have here in Sollefteå, there was people from Schneekapelle (Mikael, Sten) the windwood band that plays everything between Bregovics to german umpa-umpa, there was people from Hjärtnäs (Sebastian, Petter, Hildur, Sara) the young orchestra with students from the school I work at and Aggresiv Trädgård (Lars) with whom I play now and then with electronics and saxophone/clarinets/oscillators ... Strangely - or maybe not so strange if you think about it - is that this mental picture made some pretty nice sound mandala analogy... which also made me think about all choices in life... It was very nice to be so unprepared but still convinced that everything will just work out fine. . . and it was nice to feel that all participants also did feel like that... I was very quiet for some parts letting things happen by themself."

[ Added April 20th, 2014: The full recording of Vicky's Mosquitos #12, on Soundcloud: ]

[ All photographs are by Björn Eriksson and friends. Earlier related SB-entry : de_tails of lite house keeping ; next related SB-entry: Vicky, Killers and Avatars ]