Fleeting moments looking over Valby and Sydhavn in Copenhagen yesterday evening. Non-chronological, but I was witness to a glorious transformation from late afternoon to mid-evening colors. While golden hour is magical, blue hour gives it perspective.

There is a building across the street that is a favorite landing spot for the Sydhavnish seagulls. I like to call these BORs or BOPs (Bird On Roof, Bird On Pipe, respectively). The corner of the buildling is one of my favorite angles and it seems I'm not alone in that opinion. Many a seagull will take the vantage point and survey Sydhavn for a time. The pipe on the roof is a little more mysterious to me, but it offers a nice resting place for a portrait.

Apparently, I'm a fan of clouds. The colors this particular evening were just everywhere. In a good way. To think how wind and air currents shape the water vapor into such magnificent forms, makes you feel just that small. It's all one connected system that we are miniscule pawns in. Yet, the birds know how to enjoy the currents and fly to unfathomable distances above our lowly position.

I had a hard time choosing my favorite image of this undeterminable yet determined bird. On Top has a great profile of the …seagull(?) on top of the tower, but Amidst has this wonderful bright light of the sun behind the clouds on the right.

The bird landing in the third version (really the first photo chronologically) is the most dynamic, but I also like the idea of snapping a photo of a meditative mind, enjoying the sight, at peace. An introspective yet expansive moment.

I think I will rename what used to be "On top of the world, alternate" to "Landing on top of the world". It seems to be a more fitting name, and now I can choose between all three.

Let me know which of the three is your favorite!

The Crow's Nest is of course a cellular tower, but you would be that corvid if you could, wouldn't you? Here's another version of it.

An envious position.

Just...the colors...and it almost looks like the buildling is transparent. I couldn't help myself. And this one is basically untouched, just a tiny little extra contrast to deepen the shadows.

Carlsberg Byen in the distance. These real skyscrapers are changing the skyline of Copenhagen, though of course they are expensive. At least there’s some extra population density in those dark buildings.

The birds certainly enjoyed this evening, and thanks for enjoying it with me.

I've been contemplating how best to continue the blog, and I believe the Create-of Day is a good thing to keep. Doing it every day was very difficult as finding an idea or subject, capturing it, editing it, and posting about it all in a day can be a lot to manage. Perhaps I will have a capture day and then an edit/post day. Two for one?

Therefore, I want to start giving my experience and (sometimes limited) coverage of recent events such as our performances of Ouverture at the Frederiksberg city hall, seen below (the magnificent clock tower is shown in the head image).

Ouverture 2024

Create-Of Day 11

Ouverture is a program that succeeds the Open Orchestra format that Copenhagen Phil pioneered before the pandemic began. Copenhagen Phil's Ouverture incorporates several segments by composer Rasmus Zwicki. Known for his film scoring and operatic material, he is emerging as a wonderfully tonal, melodic, yet textual composer with hummable themes and recognizably high craftsmanship.

For Ouverture 2024, Rasmus has written three beautiful segments:

1. An introduction to the musicians and how soloists' music combines with each other's to create a group and then how multiple groups create an full ensemble. "Musikerne"

2. A musical abstraction of how orchestras can emulate the feeling and sounds of certain weather types i.e. Rain, Wind storms, Thunder, and my particular favorites of Snow and Sunshine. "Vejret"

3. A narrated musical synopsis of Shakespeare's legendary Romeo and Juliet.

Between Musikerne and Vejret, we play a light-hearted and condensed alternative to Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra. We play a tune tutti altogether, then the narrator explains that the orchestra is made up of four different families, and each family plays its part of the tune subsequently.

Strings
Woodwinds
Brass
Percussion + Harp

This piece: Welcome to the Orchestra by Peter Due is charming, informative, and could have better trombone parts, but I digress.

The weather portions are fun, as you can watch the audience experiencing, in surround sound, an acoustic version of rain, thunder, or a combination of these and others. It's only about 8 bars and 30 seconds, and I like how Rasmus has each of the weather systems self-contained, yet fit harmonically in any possible combination. Then again, I don't think we ever tried Sunshine and storm together. Now I'm curious.

This leads us well into the 4th movement of Beethoven's Pastoral symphony, the Storm movement. If the premiere concert order is to be believed, this technically would be the first appearance of trombones and piccolo in the symphony orchestra (since the 5th symphony was premiered later in the 4-hour benefit concert on Dec 22, 1808). We play this movement to demonstrate how composers have been writing programmatic music for centuries. It's quite effective, and I absolutely love this moment when the piccolo becomes obvious in the texture and initiates the beginning of the movement's climax.

Now, it's lovely to show off the orchestra's own musician. I'm a big fan of using the innate talent that is just sitting in the modern symphony orchestra, because we (for the most part) have won our positions in direct competitions. While yes, concert soloists are incredible musicians, orchestral musicians these days are generally just as studied and extremely creative people in my experience. Hence, the musical distillation of Romeo and Juliet is an excellent way to show off one of our own violinists, Andrea, and one of our own violists, Jákup.

They are called to play several solos throughout the miniature tone-poem, all from memory even! And one of the loveliest moments is when they meet masked at the Capulets' party.

While the ribbon divides the orchestra into Montagues and Capulets, (trombones featured as beautiful E major and D-sus chord foundations for the regal and elegant Capulets), fortunately there are production members of the orchestra that help to clear a path through the wandering audience so that the star-crossed bowers can meet up and cross strings together.

Not to give the story away, but Andrea and Jákup act out some more fights and then the famous tomb scene.

Though never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo,
Prokofiev hath also an epic wrote
of Capulets and Montagues both.

Prokofiev

While the opening movement of Prokofiev's 2nd Suite of Romeo and Juliet is about as dynamic as an orchestra can be, it's the infamous swagger of the bass trombone and tuba that truly set the stage's tone between the rivaling households.

But it's not a trombone soli without all four of us, naturally.

Perhaps in the future, it would be fun to play the Romeo at Juliet's Tomb scene. Absolutely incredible and gut-wrenching music.

Variations

To end the concert, we switch gears we touch on an audience favorite, the Nimrod variation from Elgar's Enigma Variations. While it's hard to draw a line between the previous pieces and Nimrod, but it works very nicely as a thoughtful and contemplative ending to the concert.

The audience is asked to enjoy a seat, wherever they can find it, and often it's at the edge of our platforms. Fortunately, the trombones don't play for the majority of the movement, so we're not blowing the audience out of the water. When we do finally enter the ensemble, it's fun to watch the people in front being washed over with warm Bb/Eb/Ab tonalities (particularly good harmonies on trombone, I should add).

They are visibly moved and often look at their partners with wide-eyed faces. I like to think at these moments that the audience is experiencing exactly what we experienced the first time inside the orchestra. Awe, warmth, a sense of belonging and community, extremely powerful and enriching feelings. It's especially enriching to us to feel that we can help give the same experiences and belonging.

While, at times it can feel as if we're giant fish in fishbowls, being gawked at, I have to remind myself it's about the sound and experience of the audience.

I believe it's of the utmost importance that Ouverture happens in large enough spaces with good acoustics that the audience (and most typically this is students, mind you) can actually experience the big sound of an orchestra. We've played in some venues just barely big enough for the platforms, and it was not the same sense of awe and inspiration; it was oppressing and dead. Let's give them the great experience instead!

Thank you to our conductor Natanaël Iselin, our narrator Nila Parly, and of course Rasmus Zwicki.

We couldn't do it without our production team Katrine and Jesper, and of course without our producer Karl. Bravo to them.

Hope to see you at next year's Kulturnatten, where you'll get to experience a whole new program!

For more information, here was the page for this year's Kulturnatten.

Kulturnatten - Ouverture - Copenhagen Phil

hele Sjællands Symfoniorkester

Copenhagen PhilFrederiksberg Rådhus, Rådhussalen

Moonlit Heron

often it is the waves that murmur,
that splash against the rocks-

the time that shows through
soil and erosion.

the bird that stands upon that shore
it waits for prey to kill-

with long neck, bill, and graceful legs
shine in irridescent moonlight.

the lapping of the waves,
skipping the light from place to place,
illuminate my little friend.

Though it's dark, I see
the desire in her eyes-

that make me wish
that we could fly-

together to the moon.

BRSvdE, Sep 18 2024

Not a whole lot of creativity today, except for this sweet sweet cover logo I made for the site.

Anders Vonder Wander is semi-officially ready! There's a contact form and all the SEO yadda yadda is in place (I think). I think that's enough work for a creative platform now.

Sorry I can't share much more but here are thrwe recent photos I really like. Two are film scans from my Nikkormat EL on Kodak Gold. And the other is a digital-schmigital photo.

Pizza in Frederiksberg.

Ironically, there's no evidence of our pizza from Diamond Slice, but we swear, we ate pizza! (these tables behind the Fiat are of the said pizza parlor.)

And then we sat by the lake eating our pizza. We were visited by some friends.

FYI: I updated Day 6 with more shots from the game in case you're interested.

Here are some buildings from yesterday in the inner city of Køge, a very beautiful and quaint town that dates back to 1288.

The building to the right has some really beautiful shutters and the light hitting it was particularly golden. (I know, I'm a sucker for golden hour). I believe this little square we were in had no fewer than 4 wine related shops/restaurants. I mean, wine not?

On the ride back there were so many beautiful sunset silhouettes, but I had to stop for this one look back west. Nothing in particular, but I was incredibly lucky as the street lights had just started to ramp up as I was framing the shot. They wound up being much brighter afterwards, so I got them as a very nice soft warming accent to the street they were about to illuminate. It was a nice turning-point on our trip back home. Over 80km ridden yesterday!

Most of today was spent on my longest bike tour yet with my partner. While I couldn't create much per se, I did get to capture some moments. We rode from Copenhagen down the coast to Køge and watched our first soccer match of the season!

We expected the ride to be aroudn 30-35km each way. Here goes nothing!

A little warm-up session:

The game, Køge vs Aarhus:

Køge beats Aarhus 4-1! All-in-all a very fun afternoon.

So...today started a little uncreative because I nearly destroyed the server running this blog. Long story short, my partner was correct and suggested to try a different angle to resurrect the problem.

Before I tried any "brilliant" ideas I hadn't come up with yet, I took a walk to the grocery store to clear my mind. On the way, the clouds were just so miraculous. Like out of a painting. Perhaps it was the IT heavens shining down on my little blog to say "you could run these servers all by yourself, or perhaps...you could do it in the cloud".

I didn't bring any of my cameras, but as they say, your best camera is the one you have on you. And luckily the Pixel 7 takes some nice pictures!

Here are some lightly edited shots from my walk. I tried to find different angles to change my perspective on these photos. I hope you enjoy my personal clouds.

This one's kinda boring, but important. Just like most life decisions!

I have put the final touches on the website (Sep 2024 version) to include a new logo:

I opted for the RGB version instead of the BW version:

Also, since this is my spin-off of DuckChase Productions, call it "'CEO musings" or something to that effect, we of course need a duck. Look at that little guy! He's so cute!

I made him from this picture:

And he became this:

An Orange and Blue kind of evening.

It's been nice being back in the orchestra, playing some music, but often it doesn't scratch the itch for pure creativity. I often times get pictures from my partner on her way around town and boy was golden hour a beauty.

I sadly missed my timing, but managed to get out and try my hand at some tripod long exposures of the nearly half-moon tonight. While I didn't get my golden hour, I certainly discovered some golden hues in a beautiful contrast to the purpling sky.

When moving to Copenhagen in lockdown, composing became a reality for me. The celestial bodies were an influence for me at that time as I was able to abstract the Moon, Jupiter, Mars, and Venus into musical personas.

Here is my Luna movement from Orbital Suite fro brass ensemble:

BSvdE Orbital Suite 3 For the Moon Never Beams

0:00

/385.855979

1×

Tripods help with long exposures. Also, your moving subjects will nicely censor themselves.

I really love our traveling companion in the sky. Luna is a lonely yet loyal friend, happy to share the light she receives, never asking for much.

Day 2!

I made some photos biking home along Islands Brygge at of course everyone's favorite time of day, Golden Hour.

Here are two haikus to commemorate Day 2 of my Create-of Days.

Golden Hour

There is but one time
That makes our hearts full of light.
It's golden hour.

Islands Brygge

This place finds me here
waiting for new memories,
On Islands Brygge.

BRSvdE, Sep 9 2024

Nothing, yet Everything

I am nothing
of the thoughts I have.

I am nothing
but the wishes I had.

I am nothing
if not the comments of me.

I am nothing
but the reflections on me.

I am everything
I have wished to be.

I am everything
I brought myself to be.

I am not: thoughts of me.

I am: realizing me.

BRSvdE, Sep 9 2024

This is a first in a series that I wish to fulfill. I call it Create-of Day. Partially out of the desire to break from consuming casual media, and partially out of a desire to hone my skills, I realized that nearly every day for the past recent memory has so far been creative. Whether it be photography, composing, or something else, why shouldn't I mark each creative day with a create-of-the-day.

I dream it could be every day, but surely I will miss something. Perhaps it will just be a poem or a picture. Or like today it will be a font of creativity with a new composition, a poem, a post, a picture, a painting! ... Perhaps I'll postpone the painting though. I have yet to hold a brush.

I sit here, in Copenhagen, on a rainy and pensive day, alone with my thoughts. Today was a good morning though, despite the instant coffee. Despite the thick clouds, the light outside is dim, yet even, casting soft shadows on the puddles on the way to the corner market for yogurt and bananas. My partner is out braving the rain, yet hurrying back for what little lunch break a banana smoothie can make. It will be a nice lunch. Today is the first rain of fall, the last moments of summer.

Be creative.
- Brian

This is DuckChase, a brand new site about my (Brian Santero von der Embse) composing and creative journey.

Things will be up and running here shortly, but you can subscribe in the meantime if you'd like to stay up to date and receive emails when new content is published!

Sincerely,