Odessa and Kopasetic

The following weeks will be busy indeed.

Tomorrow (as part of a group of five) I leave for Odessa in the Ukraine to support and serve some people bravely trying to be followers of Jesus there, far away from their native swedish culture.

When we get back next week the KOPAFestival gets going where I´ll be doing a solo performance as well as a concert with Plunge and Bobo Stenson.

At one with the tide

The fruits of gigging and recording with Niklas Hegfalk are now available on his My Space site (Titled "At one with the tide).

Take a listen to his heartfelt and sincere music... and check out that (slightly less than) virtuoso drummer.

Waiting for the Plunge

Well, it seems the release of the new Plunge album will be delayed until late summer as the process of manufacturing (printing etc) has dragged on a bit more than expected.

We won´t have time to do a proper releasegig before we all disperse for summer (with Peter actually moving home-base to New York for the rest of 2007) so we´ll have to do it in early autumn when he is back for a month of gigs (including the KOPAFestival)

The album will of course be available in stores and from the Kopasetic website well before that, but we´ll put a hold on the pr machinery until later...

Refreshingly Addictive

An update on the progress of our new Plunge-album. The title is set to be "Refreshingly addictive" (Go trace the quote!). It´s due for mastering next monday and should be available for purchase around june 1:st.

Band meeting

The final stages of work with the new Plunge album seems to take forever. On friday however, it is time for a band meeting. Hopefully we can make final adjustments to the sound, decide what songtitles to use and get a glimpse of the artwork for the cd then.
If we pick up speed the album should be available in mid/late may.

Andreas Andersson: Teacher, drummer, narcissist

Starting today i will be spending this week in a jury listening to vocalists and brass/woodwind players eager to be accepted at the jazz school in Skurup (link in swedish). What they end up in is a strange situation for the spontaneous and often intimately personal expressions of improvised music. Imagine coming in to a room of complete strangers, with teachers hunched behind a table scrutinizing every note you sing or play and scrabbling notes on a paper while you give your all! I do admire them for doing it and hope that we can create an at least somewhat safe and welcoming environment for them!

In the evening i rehearsed with Niklas for a gig wednesday evening. I did some backwards counting yesterday and came to the conclusion that my last professional gig as a drummer was in 1993! 14 years ago!

It was nice though to switch roles in a band. I´m used to standing in front of or beside the drummer, picking up his sounds and movements and translating them into melodic shapes and gestures. It´s sort of "the other side of the coin" here! Now I find myself providing the rythmic foundation for Niklas melancholic The Band:ish music, while translating his melodies into rythmic shapes on my drums and cymbals. And it´s fun too...

In my morning prayers and readings of late, a psalm has been helpful in putting me in a proper perspective. Being an introvert and somewhat bent towards selfcenteredness I do need to lift my gaze from my shoes, recognising and submitting to someone who was before me, still is, and will be when I am long gone.

"Lord, from the very beginning you have been like a home to us. Before you created the world and the mountains were made, from the beginning to the end you are God." (Psalm 90:1-3)