Composer Salina Fisher combines traditional sounds with an orchestra.
I think I have made Salina Fisher blush. I can’t be absolutely certain, because a glitching internet connection means our Zoom conversation is being conducted by audio only, but I have just put it to Fisher that, aged 29, many consider her to be New Zealand’s most important living composer.
“What?!” she says. “That’s a really strange thing to hear.” Fisher’s right, of course, but then so too are those who have showered award after award upon her. A two-time winner of the Todd Young Composers Award (2013, 2014), in 2016 she became the youngest ever winner of the SOUNZ Contemporary Award, our top composition prize. She won again the following year, and should have but didn’t get another for her piano trio Kintsugi. A Fulbright scholarship took her to the Manhattan School of Music, where she claimed the Carl Kanter Prize for the year’s best orchestral composition.
A more reliable indicator of quality, though, is that Fisher’s work is performed constantly all over the world, even though she’s never pursued an international profile.
“I’ve been really lucky that people have wanted to play my music,” says Fisher, who as well as being lucky is also overwhelmingly gifted. “I’m continually amazed when it gets programmed, especially overseas.”
Fisher’s latest, Papatūānuku for Taonga Puoro and Orchestra (“I don’t want to call it a concerto”), gets its premiere closer to home on August 24, during the APO’s In the Elements concert.
Papatūānuku is a collaboration with traditional instrument expert and good friend Jerome Kavanagh. Fisher says it was important to centre the work on Kavanagh’s instruments, rather than writing an orchestral piece then crowbarring in the taonga puoro.
“I recorded Jerome’s puoro and then transcribed them, to understand the pitches and rhythms, inflections and ornamentations he uses,” Fisher explains. “From there I orchestrated around his instruments in a way that supports the puoro and feels natural and, hopefully, nurturing. Jerome is composing and improvising his part, but to write notated music around a non-notated form of music is an interesting challenge.”
Papatūānuku is the third major work featuring taonga puoro with orchestral instruments to appear in this column in 2023. Is this coming together the current direction of New Zealand’s classical music language?
“The movement to revive these traditions plays a crucial role in New Zealand music; these indigenous instruments are unique to this land, and were almost lost forever due to colonisation,” Fisher says.
“I’m drawn to taonga puoro for many reasons including their beautiful sounds and profound connection with the natural world, but at the heart of each collaboration is a deep friendship, and a desire to listen and learn.”
Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, In the Elements, Auckland Town Hall, August 24
First published in The New Zealand Listener, August 19-25, 2023
Most will remember her as the broadcaster who fronted TV and radio shows for decades. But she’s changed her tune as Gina. Richard Betts on the reinvention of Leanne Malcolm.
Singer-songwriter Gina Malcolm has just released her second single, ‘Deep Dark Blue’. The words are raw and confessional and wreathed in echo. There are granite slabs of piano, spectral guitar and a ‘Ticket to Ride’-on-medication drum beat. It’s a bit Reb Fountain-ish or, for those of a certain vintage, a less blissed-out Mazzy Star, and it’s quite wonderful. Last December Malcolm released the similarly excellent ‘Don’t Expect the World’, which has an evocative, sepia-toned video, shot in the South Island’s wide-open spaces. Although Gina Malcolm has released just the two songs, there’s enough to suggest she’s one to watch.
You may have watched Malcolm before. Gina’s her middle name; she used to be and mostly still is Leanne.
“Gina’s a way more interesting name,” says Malcolm. “I never liked Leanne.”
We liked Leanne Malcolm, though. She was constantly in our homes throughout the 1990s and 2000s, and on and off thereafter, as a TV3 and RNZ National newsreader, presenter of shows including Nightline and the tradies’ nemesis, Target. Leanne was famous. No one knows Gina. If you want people to hear your music, why ditch the advantage of name recognition?
“I wanted to signal that I’m no longer the person I was,” says Malcolm, who recently turned 60 (“Hey, I’m going to own it”). “I’m not a newsreader any more, I’m not a celebrity. I wanted to signal a change, a new focus. I do want people to hear the music but because I’ve been so low-profile for so long, I’m perhaps nervous about the reception. But I’m in a great position in that I’m doing it for me; I have the means to make a video and record songs, and some talented people to work with.”
Chief among these is Arrowtown musician Tom Maxwell, of the band Killergrams. He and Malcolm have known each other since Malcolm moved to Central Otago in the early-2000s, when Maxwell was a youngster. He moved away, spent time in and around the fertile Lyttelton music scene, returned during Covid. The two re-entered each other’s orbit last year.
Malcolm, who’d had singing lessons and been performing in covers bands, was bursting with lyrics and ideas, and approached Maxwell about collaborating.
“I was terrified,” she says. “It took a lot of courage to show him [the songs]. They’re raw and from a deep place.”
If Malcolm brought poetry and a vision for the songs, Maxwell supplied the means to express them: the ability to put everything in its right place, the added touches that polish a rough demo into a finished song. Malcolm says that as a newcomer to the recording process, it made sense to follow Maxwell’s lead.
“I had to listen and take advice. It would have been dumb to go in there and say, right, I’m doing it this way.”
Maxwell’s way was quiet, restrained and, in the two songs so far released, unashamedly morose. It’s not entirely what Malcolm had in mind, but she found herself persuaded by what Maxwell imagined for her lyrics.
“For me,” says Maxwell, “the idea was to find something that felt authentically Leanne, true and honest. A lot of the poems she’d written were very exposing, very honest. Some were sorrowful. So the idea of fragility was a big part of the project, and we tried to lean into sparseness. That was probably one thing where there was a bit of… not disagreement. She maybe wanted it a certain way and we had to do a bit of convincing that this was the right sound and style to go for.”
Malcolm: “His advice all the way through was to pull back, let the microphone do the work. It was interesting because I’ve always thought the best thing was to belt it out. He kept saying, ‘No, your strength is the slow and meaningful and powerful song.’”
Malcolm initially wanted something rockier.
“I’ll happily admit I’m a bogan at heart and I love playing loud rock’n’roll. I’m a 60s kid, so for me the 70s is my go-to.” She likes a bit of Patti Smith, Jack White, music with a classic sound, and some of that could be on the cards in the future.For now, the rock racket is confined to Malcolm’s weekday show on Radio Central, which has beamed throughout Central Otago for four years.
“It’s great. I still enjoy being behind the microphone. I did TV but radio’s what I love. I don’t know how many listeners we have but it makes me happy.”
Radio Central owner Shane Norton isn’t sure how many listeners Malcolm gets either (“They don’t do surveys down here”) but he says the station receives plenty of positive responses. Sure, listeners recognise Malcolm from her TV days, but she’s one of them now, and the locals are as likely to know her from the school run. Norton met Malcolm because their kids played football together.
“People absolutely love [Malcolm’s show],” says Norton. “We speak to local people down here and the feedback is that people like hearing people on the radio that they know.”
The Leanne Malcolm people know last year turned up in an unlikely place, when she briefly joined The Platform, run by broadcaster Sean Plunket, which has a studio in Central Otago. That was… odd.
“When you’re down here there are no media opportunities,” reasons Malcolm. “Sean said I want you to do a show. I asked if I could make it an arts and music show and he said yes.”
She managed interviews with the likes of Exponents singer Jordan Luck and indie legend Shayne Carter, but the liberal Malcolm was a poor fit with The Platform’s usual diet of contrarian opinion.
“It was a total mismatch but Sean wanted a woman and I think I was meant to be the approachable person in the line-up, I hadn’t been cancelled.”
A disagreement over Plunket’s views on the Christchurch mosque attacks led to Malcolm’s resignation.
At least she had more time to work on her music, making room for the release of ‘Don’t Expect the World’. Coincidentally, Malcolm’s son, Joel, a drum’n’bass DJ who works under the name Altercation, had a new song out around the same time.
“It was the biggest thrill – mother and son on Spotify! He’s super-supportive and loves the fact there’s music all around us.”
The confessional nature of Malcolm’s lyrics must give him pause, though. Unlike singer-songwriters who use real life as a jumping-off point, Malcolm’s songs are deeply autobiographical.
“Sometimes I look at poor Joel and he listens to the songs and the words and he goes, ‘God, Mum, what do you mean by that? What does Don’t Expect the World even mean?’ I don’t want him to think I’m miserable or it was some pointed dig at his dad or anything like that.”
Joel’s dad – Malcolm’s husband – is Philip Smith, head of film and TV production company Great Southern.
“Phil was intrigued and surprised [about the music],” Malcolm says. “I don’t think he knew what to expect but he thinks it’s great. He also thinks it’s quite an expensive hobby. I had to tell him it’s not actually a hobby.”
The family support has been welcome. Malcolm’s had a tough time in the last decade. When we speak, Malcolm’s mother is in the final stages of a terminal illness, and many of Malcolm’s unrecorded songs are a way of processing that. (Sadly, Malcolm’s mother died days before the publication of this story.) Malcolm herself experienced what she calls “a scrape” with breast cancer in 2014. And she lost her father to cancer eight years ago. ‘Deep Dark Blue’ is about him.
“The words describe scattering my father’s ashes in Pauanui. I was very close to him and it was something I’d been putting off. I remember that day; we went out on the boat, it was pretty rough. The ocean was particularly blue, it just looked so deep. There was a feeling of peace, like a lot of people have when saying farewell.”
Malcolm uses universal phrases a lot: like a lot of people; everyone goes through that.
“I’ve had many great experiences and a fair bit of fortune in my life, so to moan about the bad times sounds a bit entitled,” she explains, though it feels like she’s pre-empting any Kiwi tall poppy nonsense too. “I’m not the only human who feels loss and despair; life is a series of obstacles amid the happy, carefree times.”
And although her songs reflect personal experiences, Malcolm says several times that she wants listeners to connect with them.
“I want to release music that people relate to and that gives people pleasure,” she says. “I want to keep producing music and I’d love to play these songs live. David Bowie said something like, the great thing about getting older is you finally become who you were meant to be. I totally relate to that. This isn’t me trying to be famous, I’m just doing something I need to do.”
First published in The New Zealand Herald, Canvas magazine, 7 May, 2023.
Tupac fan Samson Setu thought professional rugby was his future until opera – and his extraordinary talent – led him to the world’s most prestigious stages, writes Richard Betts.
Samson Setu is telling Sunday about his anxiety dream. It’s of a very specific type, that only an opera singer would experience. In it, Setu is not long off the plane from London, jetlagged and bedraggled, when Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, ONZ, our greatest cultural figure, phones. She asks whether Setu has auditioned for the Royal College of Music, as he was supposed to, as he planned, as destiny demands. He hasn’t.
In Setu’s dream, Dame Kiri issues a curt, “Wait there, I’ll call you back.” Not long after, he’s told to be on a plane back to the UK the following day, where, upon arrival, he absolutely will have that audition, even if it – or Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, ONZ – kills him.
Of course, it isn’t an anxiety dream; it happened to Samson Setu. That was 2019, when he was a young man with talent but far from the finished article. Having won his audition at the Royal College, these days he’s a rising star of New Zealand opera, yet another Samoan New Zealander with a beautiful voice and the world in his sights. He gives a lot of credit to Dame Kiri for helping his career get to this point – as well as benefiting from her formidable Royal College connections, he received priceless support from the Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation that assists young singers – but he was born with that voice. Not that he realised it.
Setu didn’t grow up with classical music. As a kid he liked reggae, especially Bob Marley, and was a big fan of Tupac. The only time he sang was at the Good News Family Church in Manurewa, where his grandfather was pastor.
“We had no choice but to sing or play in the church band,” Setu says. “It wasn’t until high school that someone told me, ‘You know, that voice isn’t normal for a 16-year-old’.”
That was Claire Caldwell, then on staff at Dilworth School.
“Samson walked into the music department and wanted to take music as a subject,” Caldwell, now working at NZ Opera, recalls. “We asked what his instrument was and in this booming voice he said, ‘Bass guitar.’ The singing teacher Ian Campbell and I looked at each other and said, ‘Young man, with a speaking voice like that, you’re a singer’.”
Setu didn’t think so; singing was hardly special.
“Everyone sings in church,” says Caldwell. “So the idea that singing would be anything special is something a lot of Pacific Islands people struggle with. It’s not seen as a skill, it’s too ordinary.”
Caldwell’s faced this dynamic before. As well as Setu, at Dilworth she discovered Samoan New Zealanders Joel Amosa and Filipe Manu, the latter just a year above Setu. Both of them went on to win our most prestigious classical singing prize, the Lexus Song Quest. Even now, Setu isn’t sure singing is anything praiseworthy.
“Singing and dancing enrich our culture, so to be able to make money off it is a cheat code,” he says, bursting into laughter. “‘You sing for a living? That’s what we do every other day.’ I’m like, yeah, I know, it’s not right.”
An unlikely opera star
Except most people don’t sing the lead role in m(ORPHEUS), NZ Opera’s post-modern remake of Orfeo ed Euridice, which plays in Auckland and Wellington between 6 and 23 September. Christoph Willibald Gluck’s work, an operatic staple since its 1762 debut, is being given a 21st-century polish by Kiwi composer Gareth Farr, who has reorchestrated the piece for just 10 instruments, and not the ones in the original work. It’s a big sing. Setu’s character – Orfeo, the musician who descends into the underworld to rescue his wife Euridice – is on stage almost the entire time, and consumes much of the first act’s music.
“There are parts that are tricky to navigate,” Setu says. “It’s going to take some time singing the role into the body but we have a long rehearsal period, so that will come.”
Setu isn’t the singer you’d expect to hear in this role. Orfeo was written for a much higher voice, and is mostly performed by a mezzo-soprano or counter-tenor. In this production the vocal line will be adjusted to meet Setu’s molten chocolate bass-baritone, so it should sit nicely within his range. But this production is being directed by Neil Ieremia, leader of the acclaimed dance troupe Black Grace. No one yet seems quite sure how that will play out on stage, but expect rhythm, momentum and a few contemporary dance moves.
Claire Caldwell reckons Setu will be fine.
“There’s a grace in there,” she says. “I’m excited to see how that’s brought out in this production. You don’t necessarily look at Samson and think he’s a dancer.”
You don’t necessarily look at him – powerfully built, long-haired – and think he’s an opera singer, either. He almost wasn’t. In his third year as a music undergraduate at the University of Otago, he threw it in.
“I was enjoying the singing but it was everything else,” Setu says. “We were encouraged to network or schmooze, and I didn’t know the slightest thing about any of it. A lot of the people were from a completely different demographic to me; we had nothing in common, so I would struggle to make conversation and to answer questions that seemed intrusive.”
With hindsight, Setu realises that in those moments he was pretending to be someone he wasn’t and the solution was simply to be himself. He says these days he’s much more comfortable in that world. At the time, though, he couldn’t stand it. Call it a crisis of confidence, call it an almighty strop, but Setu escaped to Brighton, England, where he pursued a long-held dream to play professional rugby. He was offered a contract and only returned to New Zealand to pack his things. Setu’s mother staged a last-ditch intervention – “She convinced me that I should see the study through” – and instead of quitting altogether, he transferred to Auckland, where he found the support he needed among fellow vocal students with shared Pasifika backgrounds, and in singing teacher Te Oti Rakena. It was Rakena who assured Setu he was good enough to sing professionally.
“[Rakena] instilled a lot of confidence in me and reminded me, in his words, ‘You’re good enough to go far, to go beyond these shores; just give me a couple of years.’”
Working with the best
In a couple of years Setu was in London. The experience was cut short by Covid, but Setu got a lot from his time at the Royal College of Music.
“You work with some of the best teachers and technicians in the world. Some of the coaches at the college were also coaches at the Royal Opera House, so you can only imagine the amount of information we absorbed.”
His London adventures coincided with those of old schoolmate Filipe Manu, the exciting young soprano Madison Nonoa, who sings the role of Amor in m(O)RPHEUS – “She’s a Samoan girl, so we have those automatic connections” – and tenor Manase Latu, one of the vocal students Setu bonded with when he transferred from Dunedin back to Auckland.
“Manase and Filipe were living in the same building; being able to walk to Covent Garden was awesome. I thought I would be overwhelmed but it was amazing.”
If Setu liked London, he absolutely loved New York. He was there having won a place on the Metropolitan Opera’s prestigious Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. On the same course was Manase Latu. The pair shared the experience and an apartment, living together on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
“Catching the train to the Met every day, you’re not running low on inspiration,” Setu says. “To be able to walk those halls so many great singers have walked before you, it’s such a cool experience. To be able to watch any opera any day of the week. I was blessed to have that opportunity, and to share it with my best mate Manase again, you couldn’t script it.”
“He was an absolute pain!” says Latu with a belly laugh. “He was good for me because he’s one of the cleanest people I know. Very organised, very structured; he likes his routines.
“It was nice to have the support of someone who knows you inside out, and also that ear of someone who’s heard you from where you began and seen you evolve and develop. He’s a kind person, really generous and not only with his time. Samson’s left a big hole in our friend group in New York. He was the one who brought us together; he was the glue.”
Southside pride
Days after this interview, Setu and Latu jetted to Croatia to tour with their vocal quartet The Shades. The group is completed by Ipu Laga’aia and Taka Vuni, two more singers from the Auckland University band of brothers.
“We were the only Pacific Island boys in the class,” Setu recalls. “I think the first week someone said, ‘You guys want to go for a jam?’ We went to a practice room and sang Franz Biebl’s ‘Ave Maria’. It was perfect for us. We went, ‘This is cool, we should hang out more.’ [With The Shades] we try to combine classical music with popular songs, so people can see there’s fun in opera.”
When Setu returns from Croatia, he’ll be too busy for fun. He’s got m(O)RPHEUS, and then he’s moving to Switzerland as a contracted singer at Zurich Opera House. This is the beginning of his career proper, where he will sing every week to filled halls.
“Zurich’s a good place for young artists,” Setu says. “Literally the day I signed my contract, they had already assigned me three roles for the season. That’s what you want, as much stage experience as you can get. You can only learn so much in a practice room, you’ve got to be out there doing it.”
London, New York, Zurich – they’re all a long way from Manurewa, but at Setu’s request, we’re conducting this interview in Brown Pride gym, Manukau, not far from his childhood home. Why?
“For me, keeping fit and singing go hand in hand, and my love for both is equal,” he says. “To be in this gym in particular is a positive, something coming out of South Auckland. I remember hearing [co-founder] Johnny [Timu] on a podcast and him and his boys saying, ‘Let’s make something positive in this community,’ and the gym is a product of that one whiteboard session. It’s more than just a gym, it’s a beacon of hope for young kids coming up in South Auckland. And my story is similar in a way; I never thought I’d be singing opera for a career or living in New York, London. If you’d told this Manurewa boy I’d be overseas singing opera, I would have laughed.”
NZ Opera’s m(ORPHEUS) runs in Auckland from 6 to 10 September, and in Wellington from 20 to 23 September.
First published in The Sunday Star Times, Sunday magazine, 23 July, 2023.
He was a jovial man with shaggy, sandy hair. I remember big hands and a bulbous nose but it’s been a while so perhaps that’s my memory playing tricks. His name was Tony Brooker – always Mr Brooker to me – and I knew him really well and not at all.
Mr Brooker died recently. Roger Marbeck of Marbeck’s record store reckons Mr Brooker was 92; I think he was 89. We may both be wrong. I don’t even know what he did for a living and yet I knew him intimately. For more than 10 years he was a customer of mine at various record stores. He came in at least once a week and always bought something, and his music buying pre-dated our association by decades.
By the time he died, aged 92 or 89 or neither, Mr Brooker had compiled one of New Zealand’s finest classical music collections.
He was a proper collector. Mr Brooker owned complete sets of Bach cantatas (more than 200 of them) and Haydn symphonies (more than 100 of them). He had the full Schubert lieder, 600 perfectly crafted songs in a language that I’m pretty sure Mr Brooker didn’t speak.
He went off on tangents, too, following history and geography and whim. Music of the Iberian diaspora was a passion, and he loved his late-Romantic Russians and his Italian Baroque vocal music. He bought more Telemann than I knew existed, literally hundreds of CDs, some of them almost certainly rubbish but that’s collecting for you.
In all he had 35,000 CDs and LPs. Each one had a little sticker on it, where he recorded every occasion he pulled it from the rack to listen. I remember him telling me that he’d reached a point where he knew there were many albums he would never hear again. There was just so much, and always more on the horizon.
So when Roger Marbeck tells you that Mr Brooker’s entire collection has been dropped at a junk shop, $2 a disc – well, you would, wouldn’t you? And you’d tell everyone you know who might care, wouldn’t you? (Though only after you’d spent 10 hours over three days picking through.)
So now I own another 250 CDs that I can’t really afford and that I don’t really need and that I absolutely do not have room for. And on the back of each one there’s a little sticker, telling me the last time Tony played it.
First published in The New Zealand Listener, January 14-20, 2023
I’m not saying our hotel is unique, but we’ve certainly never come across anything like it. As well as accommodation, the premises offer a clay pigeon shooting range and a go-kart track. It seems an unlikely combination aimed at a very specific clientele. There’s not a sign of any other building for miles around; even the closest pub is a 15-minute drive, which may well be an English record. For a modern business hotel, it could hardly be less well situated. Even so, we struggle to get a room, partly because we’re in Dorset in the high season and there are no rooms available at anything like a reasonable price anywhere else in the county, but also – and I like to think this is the clincher – because a Take That tribute band is playing here the following night.
We’re not looking for fake Robbie Williamses, we’re just glad to have secured somewhere that is clean, spacious and well appointed. After the day we’ve had, we need a lie down.
It starts in the gently peeling seaside resort of Worthing, chosen entirely for reasons related to Oscar Wilde. But soon we are on the road: next stop, Chichester Cathedral.
More than anywhere on our trip, Chichester Cathedral feels like a modern, relevant church in touch with the community. Which is not to say there’s a lack of awe. It is, after all, a bloody great stone structure built in the 11th century; one of the stained glass windows was designed by Chagall; and there’s an astonishing tapestry that was commissioned in the 1980s.
Chichester Cathedral stained glass window designed by Marc Chagall. Image by Arjen Bax
But there’s also a kids’ school holiday activity going on in a room next to where the cathedral keeps its treasures; and at one point a fully cassocked man takes to the pulpit and addresses the visitors. He explains that he is about to pray, and that he’d like us all to share in it. If we are not believers, he says, just pause for a minute to reflect: on family or friends, or perhaps upon the everyday things for which we should give thanks but never do. As the prayer echoes through the building, I wonder what, as a non-believer, I’m missing out on. It’s moving enough for an agnostic; I can’t imagine what it must be like for Christians.
Our next stop, Salisbury Cathedral, is more austere, a sombre place, less homely than Chichester. That’s fitting, because it houses an original copy of the Magna Carta, the founding legal document of Britain, and therefore the founding legal document of most English-speaking countries, including ours. It’s the reason we and dozens of others are in Salisbury. The Magna Carta is short – just a single, one-sided sheet of paper – and housed in a locked, darkened cabinet. It’s almost disappointing to discover it doesn’t glow, illuminated by its own importance, but it’s a privilege to see it none the less.
Salisbury Cathedral photographed by Bjoern Eisbaer. The scaffolding has been up since 1986 but will come down for Magna Carta’s 800th birthday, which is celebrated in 2015
By now it’s getting on for 4:30pm and we’re tired after a long day on the road. We’re about 90 minutes from Stonehenge and at this point it feels too much of a hike. It’s only a bunch of stones (the giveaway is in the name), and we’ve seen numerous pictures of it. Here’s a tip: even if you’re tired, whether or not you’ve seen numerous pictures, heck, even if there’s a Take That tribute band awaiting you, you have to visit Stonehenge.
During our trip, people told us you can no longer get anywhere near the stone circle. Not so. It’s true that a rope fence means that these days you can’t walk among the stones or touch them, but you’re never more than about 10 metres away. In an era of selfie sticks, and on a holiday we’ve often had to experience through other people’s iPad screens, it’s a relief to have some breathing space. Which is just as well, because Stonehenge takes that breath away. We get lucky with the weather (is it luck or something else? Stonehenge makes you contemplate the alternatives), and a shaft of sunlight pierces the threatening clouds, illuminating the stones in a ridiculously cinematic way. If I’d seen it in a movie I’d have scornfully dismissed such cliched Hollywood scripting. As it is, I’ll never forget it.
RICHARD
Stonehenge, complete with Hollywood lighting. Image: author’s own
STRAY OBSERVATIONS
Magna Carta turns 800 in 2015. Happy birthday!
Britpop-era CDs flood charity shops, which is great if you’re looking for driving music
Catatonia’s International Velvet is much better than you remembered; Blur’s 13 much worse
Just how much cocaine went into the making of The Stone Roses’ Second Coming?
A lifetime ago I wrote that San Francisco managed to dispel a bunch of (unfounded) negative preconceptions I had about America. That’s nothing compared with my reaction to Liverpool.
I’m relieved. We’re here entirely at my behest and I’m anxious about what we’ll find. I’m in search of The Beatles and Liverpool Football Club but my expectations beyond that are low. I expect all the deprivations of post-industrial Britain. I expect the tattered remnants of Empire. I expect the place that – as was revealed in declassified documents – Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was urged to let wither and die, a place set alight by civil unrest, a place in the grip of drugs and generational unemployment.
That’s not the place we find. We’re not looking too hard and a tour guide says we can find those things if we ferret them out, but that’s true of any city. The Liverpool we experience, though, is absolutely buzzing, a town determined to rise again, with two fingers metaphorically raised aloft at those who were willing to cut adrift this once great city.
The word on people’s lips is ‘regeneration’. You can see it everywhere but nowhere more than along the river. The contemporary architecture is daring but it complements the historic buildings that flank the Mersey, creating new, dynamic shapes but preserving sight lines and history. It’s a model of what a waterfront can be if you don’t let politics or special interests get in the way.
Clever planning means that, despite recent waterfront development, historic sight lines are preserved on Liverpool’s riverbank
I find what I’m looking for, too. I presume our tour of Anfield, Liverpool FC’s stadium, will be overly reverential but it’s not. I anticipate our Magical Mystery Tour of Beatles sites will be cheesy but it’s not. I expect Liverpool to be hardened and charmless, but it’s wonderfully, confoundingly, emphatically not.
RICHARD
Strawberry Field: Liverpool landmark. Cheese: author’s own
STRAY OBSERVATIONS
Thank you to the hotel worker who not only let us check in four hours early but also gave us a view of the Mersey
Thank you to the driver on our Magical Mystery Tour who responded to our non-Beatles questions about Liverpool with such enthusiasm
Thank you to the taxi driver who took us on an impromptu tour of the city then refused to accept an extra fee for his efforts
Thank you to the guy who sold us tickets to the Mersey ferry, and still found the will to laugh politely at my Gerry and the Pacemakers quip, even though he must hear it all day, every day
Instead, we found ourselves tired, frustrated and uncertain, tumbling out of a TGV from Barcelona onto the forecourt of Paris Gare de Lyon at midnight.
That’s when Richard halted, a look of wonder on his face, to declare, “Holy shit, Paris really looks like Paris.”
And there it was. The Belle Époque facade of the station behind us, a cafe with its sidewalk chairs, tables and aproned waiters in front, all lit by the neon signs of the bars and hotels.
Gare de Lyon train station. Image credit: Metro Centric
Paris carried a burden of expectation possibly heavier than Barcelona. The Catalan city was new to both of us. But the City of Light not only carried its traditional reputation, but my desire to share the magic I had experienced on earlier visits.
When we returned to Paris as planned three weeks later, the city responded with true Gallic indifference to delivering what I wanted.
It rained part or most of every day, with unrelenting steely skies. The peak season holiday crowds meant at best queues, at worst bodily crushes and obscured views of any given sight. The combination of the upcoming Bastille Day celebrations and a terrorist threat meant a disconcertingly high police and military presence.
But there were glimpses. The rain refracting the lights of nighttime Paris; the winding, cobbled streets of Montmartre; the voices of a youth choir in the stillness of La Madeleine. The sheer pleasure of seeing Richard’s face when he saw the glass of Sainte Chapelle, Chagall’s ceiling in the Opera Garnier or Van Gogh’s brushstrokes at the Musée d’Orsay. Sitting together at sidewalk tables, watching the Parisians go by.
The Chagall ceiling of the Opera Garnier. Image credit: Wiki Commons
And I’ll always have that first moment of delight, when Paris really looked like Paris.
MELANYA
STRAY OBSERVATIONS
Parisian parking. Wow
After weeks of threatening to do so, Richard finally bought his yellow Lamborghini Euro scarf in Montmartre, home of Amélie and, briefly, Van Gogh
Trying frogs’ legs for the first time, at a bistro in Île Saint-Louis. Tastes like chicken
In France, are you still guilty until proven innocent? I ask because I have just set off an alarm in the Louvre.
It’s our second day in Paris and I am suffering culture shock. In contrast to the emptiness of rural Burgundy, Paris is heaving with life. I’m not really coping. The city’s museums, to which we have retreated as a way of escaping what turns out to be 10 solid days of rain, are not the answer.
This should have been obvious. It’s the European summer holiday season in one of the continent’s most populous and popular cities, a city that houses many of the world’s great artistic treasures – of course it’s busy.
I’m unprepared for what it’s like to experience these treasures in the flesh. They are so familiar but somehow they look different, more alive. Wandering through the Musée d’Orsay, you turn round and suddenly there’s Van Gogh’s Bedroom in Arles or a piece of Lalique jewellery. I know them from books but in person they are breathtaking, more moving than you can possibly imagine, even those objects that are so commonplace they have become the wallpaper of our lives. I once had Monet’s Poppy Field on a set of coasters. It looks better hanging in a museum.
Monet’s Poppy Field. Image source: Wikipedia
The Musée d’Orsay is, for me, the most engrossing of the major Parisian museums we visit. The Louvre contains wonderful things but it’s too big to take in. Although we follow a carefully planned route, restricting ourselves to only a fraction of the items on display, I suffer object overload.
And, of course, it’s the Louvre, so what seems to be the whole world is here to see The Picture. Except us. We can’t get near the thing. There are hundreds of people literally elbowing each other out of the way in an attempt to stand in front of the world’s most famous artwork and, once there, take a photo. It’s hard to appreciate a picture through someone else’s iPad screen. The Mona Lisa just looks bemused by all the attention.
Crowd struggling to see the Mona Lisa. Image source: Wikimedia Commons
The crowds finally prove too much, which is why we’re in the furniture section when I lean over to get a closer look at a typically exquisite Danish chair, thus breaking the hitherto unnoticed beam of light and setting off a thunderous alarm. Presumably this alerts a whole station-full of police officers, whom I expect to be armed to the teeth and who will soon skid, Keystone Cops style, in to the room, handcuffs drawn. I whisper a glum farewell to Melanya, mentally compose a letter to my parents and brace myself for the inevitable. Nothing happens. It’s slightly disappointing. We make a sheepish escape past two museum staffers. They say nothing but give us withering looks, just to let us know that they know.
Before heading for the exit we take a detour through the antiquities. Tucked away in a dimly lit corridor is a small, unobtrusive sculpture. It is a marble carving of a man’s head, produced in piercing detail. He looks like a young Laurence Olivier but his identity remains a mystery, a nameless Roman silently watching the four million tourists who dash past him every year on their way to the nearby Venus de Milo. For me he’s the highlight of the museum. While we are there, few people stop even for a moment to appreciate this beautiful, ancient man, but there’s something inexpressibly poignant about him. Someone knew him once, he probably had friends and family too, but now he’s anonymous. And yet 2000 years after those friends and family have turned to dust, here he is, sitting on a plinth in a Parisian museum, waiting for someone to see him. Out of place, out of time, immortal.
RICHARD
STRAY OBSERVATIONS
If you want a photo of every painting and object in the Louvre (apparently a popular aim), please just buy the book
Photography is banned in the Musée d’Orsay
There are numerous smaller, perfectly formed museums in Paris. Musée Galliera (formerly the Musée de la Mode de la Ville de Paris) is a favourite of Melanya’s and didn’t disappoint on this visit
If you think the Louvre is busy, wait till you get to Versailles
There’s a man banging furiously at the door. He has a gun. I’m not sure the fact he’s a gendarme makes it better or worse.
This is not necessarily the strangest thing to happen to us in Burgundy but it’s in the top three. The other two occurrences to make the list are, in no particular order: the day that, without warning, our water supply is cut off; and the day Melanya has an argument with a neighbour. The latter would be upsetting rather than than odd, except that it involves photographic evidence. And an axe.
We have rented a house in Tannay, a small village in rural France. The house turns out to be exactly as advertised. A former cafe, parts of it date to the 17th century. It has a spiral staircase hidden behind a door. Swallows nest in the beams of its porch. It’s everything we’d hoped for and we love it.
Tannay
There are a few things, though.
The building’s owner, an artist, splits his time between France and Holland. This becomes important when one day a guy pulls up and starts doing something workmanlike on the footpath outside the house, which, we soon discover, leaves us without running water. We presume the council is fixing something or other but six hours later we’re still without water. It turns out the owner has not paid the bill. After some frantic ringing around and various conversations in a language not our own and about things we wouldn’t understand even if we spoke better French, we are revisited by the chap who cut us off many hours earlier. We discover, perhaps to our surprise but definitely to our relief, that the person we have mentally characterised as an evil water company representative is actually lovely. Quite clearly playing fast and loose with the rules, he reconnects us so that we have water before the owner sorts things – from Holland – the following day.
Our neighbour is a bit of a problem, too. In our welcome pack the house owner has made a special note that no wood chopping can occur between 5pm and 11am. The house is lovely but the living room is cold, so Melanya cuts some wood. It’s 1pm, well within the stipulated time. Nevertheless, she’s only a couple of chops into her task when a fizzing ball of fury appears at the fence, armed with a camera, and screaming in incomprehensibly rapid – but utterly incandescent – French. Melanya tries to engage but he is having none of it, and continues his stream of consciousness ranting, before thrusting the camera triumphantly skyward – Melanya’s guilt now captured for posterity – turning on his heel and striding away, a gleam of victory in his eye.
Melanya pictured of an evening. Note transgressive woodpile in the background
Apparently, we’ve landed in the middle of a dispute.
This is confirmed when it transpires that the gun-wielding gendarmes (there are three of them) are knocking on our door in search of our house owner. His car has been left in the town square and its insurance has expired. We are told that this is Against the Rules. Well, yes. Except no one has been fussed until now, even though the car’s been there for months. The neighbour, it seems, has made a phone call.
These three things all take place within the space of four days and we learn to roll with the punches. And besides, we love our time in Tannay. We take long walks in the countryside and eat picnics by the canal. We visit lakes and chateaux, and other charming villages in the region. We buy fresh bread from the boulangerie every morning, eat more cheese than our clothes can bear and drink wine until it seeps from our pores. We are visited from London by a dear friend and together we sit until 11pm watching the bats flit around us, while owls glide above.
In other words, we discover the France we were looking for. Who cares if we went without water for a few hours?
RICHARD
The canal just outside of Tannay
STRAY OBSERVATIONS
We chose Burgundy as a destination in part for its exotic wines. Turns out 60% of Burgundy’s wine is chardonnay
We also chose Burgundy because it would be less busy than, for example, the Dordogne. It was; there was hardly anybody around, and virtually no tourists at all
Burgundians are excellent drivers but they go everywhere with foot flat to the floor. Do not try to keep up with them
If you’re taking a cruise on a lake, make sure you do so with a group of drunk retiree trampers. It’s great fun
I was adamant that we would not write a travel blog. Who needs more mediocre travel writing? Travel writing requires drama to make it interesting. Our holiday was planned with precision; there was no room for drama, let alone interest.
I underestimated two things: first, the need to document for the sake of my own failing memory; second, the French capacity for industrial action.
And so it is that we arrive at Barcelona’s Sants train station for our connection to Dijon, only to discover French rail workers are on strike and that our train is cancelled. At last, the drama our blog has been craving.
A train, not moving
There is one train to France; it’s going to Paris and it leaves in eight hours. Oh, and the only available tickets are in first class.
We really need to be in France. We have precisely planned bookings. We take a deep breath, and the tickets. Once we’re in Paris, we’ll go to the place that has rented us a car, explain the situation, and pick up a rental, which we will then drive to Burgundy. They must deal with this sort of thing all the time. And hey, a first-class, cross-border train trip – it’ll be a luxurious adventure.
Our first class carriage turns out to be no flasher than the other carriages, just a whole lot more expensive. We’re not fussed, we made it to France. Just not the part of France we’re supposed to be. Still, we’re in Paris – Paris! – and we’ll sort it out in the morning.
In the morning we get more French disdain than is strictly necessary. Our car rental agency in Dijon has cancelled our booking and given our car away, because they didn’t hear from us. It wasn’t for lack of effort. We tried calling the previous day, but it turns out the number we were given – in fact the number on the website – works only from within France. We were ringing from Barcelona. We also tried emailing, except that the website doesn’t give the email addresses of individual branches. The chap at the rental agency in the Barcelona branch gave us Dijon’s email address (and with it a shake of the head and a regretful sigh of, “I’m sorry, your problem is with the French”) but no one received a thing. Allegedly. So they didn’t hear from us and gave our booking away.
To compound the problem, the car rental person on the end of the line doesn’t speak English. This is fair enough. She’s French, she’s in France, we should speak her language. Melanya does, very well, but explaining our situation is complex. Even so, “I understand what you’re saying,” the person from the rental company says, encouragingly. Then, less encouragingly, “So?”
So we are now in Paris, in an eye-wateringly expensive hotel. We’re supposed to be in Dijon, several hundred kilometres away. Even if we can get to Dijon, no car is awaiting us. That’s moot, because the train strike means that almost every rental car in Paris is accounted for anyway. Tears are shed.
We start going through all the rental agencies. We’re not having much luck.
Eventually, we meet Antoine. Antoine is a trainee at Avis/Budget in Paris Gare du Lyon railway station, and he is a marvel. He is friendly. He speaks English. And, crucially, he has a car, even though it’s a 4WD and we (we being Melanya) have to drive it out of Paris (if you think that’s no big deal, you’ve never been in a car in Paris).
Antoine, if you ever come to New Zealand, I will buy you a beer. You can stay in our spare room. You can stay in our room. If I had a daughter or son, I would promise them to you. I will adopt a daughter or son, and promise them to you.
Lacking the requisite offspring, on our return to Gare du Lyon some three weeks later, we instead leave Antoine a bottle of good Burgundy. We hope he enjoyed it. He saved our holiday.
RICHARD
STRAY OBSERVATIONS
Everyone – everyone – in Barcelona speaks perfect English. Everyone, that is, except for the people working at Barcelona train station
Spanish SIM cards stop working exactly at the border
Even when you’re under stress, it’s amazing how much Paris looks like Paris
This blog entry is dedicated to my cousin Tracey, who died while the events outlined above were unfolding, and whose passing puts everything into perspective.
people stop even for a moment to appreciate this beautiful, ancient man, but there’s something inexpressibly poignant about him. Someone knew him once, he probably had friends and family too, but now he’s anonymous. And yet 2000 years after those friends and family have turned to dust, here he is, sitting on a plinth in a Parisian museum, waiting for someone to see him. Out of place, out of time, immortal.
Kiwis on Tour 