Christchurch City Libraries Blog

Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman

Yay for New Zealand Music Month, and yay for live performances, and for hearing new musicians and old favourites!   On TV! On the radio!  In libraries!  But also yay for the particular brand of musical insanity that can be found on the internet.

A friend and I recently spent a few nights emailing each other bizarre and fantastic music clips from YouTube.  It was so much fun, not to mention distracting – every clip we found led to dozens more.  Which is the coolest thing about the internet; it just seems to go on forever.

Much like me, in fact.  Because what I really wanted to share with you today is a wee project I discovered through Twitter.  It’s called the 8in8 project, and was organised by a few of my favourite people.

Superstar author (and my ultimate superhero) Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer (of Dresden Dolls fame) recently got together with Ben Folds and Damian Kulash (from OK Go), and attempted to write and record 8 songs in 8 hours, as part of Boston’s Berklee College Rethink Music event.  Described by Gaiman on his blog as being the ‘world’s least super supergroup’, they were initially inspired by Kulash’s question:

“Can the album cycle actually be reduced to a single day? If the recording industry is supposed to be a means of connecting musicians to music listeners, well, then, here it is – spontaneous and circular.”

They nearly managed it – 6 in 6 being the eventual output, all presented on an album called NightyNight, which you can buy online, with all proceeds going to charity.

The songs are crazy and funny and charming, and witty and sad and clever, and get stuck in your head like the best kind of earworm.  And the icing on the cake?  Because they ran the whole project through Twitter, hundreds of people online got to have a say on possible song titles, AND THEN hundreds more went straight off and made music videos for all the tracks.  My favourite so far?  The Problem with Saints, I think, but I also loved I’ll Be My Mirror.  Ooh, and Nikola Tesla and …

So while you’re waiting for the next New Zealand Music Month performance at your local library, jump on our free internet computers and search Twitter or YouTube for “8in8″, then sit back and enjoy, and then tell me your favourite!

Our city is broken.  When I talk to fellow Christchurch residents, I get the feeling people are ready to make the city better and stronger. I feel quite excited about all the different possibilities that arise and have already shared some of my ideas (which are magnificent, if you ask me) with the Christchurch City Council.

And now, I am getting ready to be inspired at the TEDxEQChCh event that is being held this Saturday at The Aurora Centre for the Performing Arts. Speakers will cover a broad range of disciplines including urban planning, architecture, entrepreneurship, culture, and economics.

Looking at the programme, I feel as curious as George to find out what Art Agnos learned from rebuilding San Francisco after the ’89 Loma Prieta Earthquake. Undoubtedly, Ariana Tikao’s opening performance will be something not to miss.Do not worry if you haven’t got tickets to attend, you can feel the spark in the comfort of your home because they will be streaming live on the day!

I like to think that a lot of love and thought will go into the rebuilding of our city … who knows? It might end up looking as nice and open as this aerial image from the 1910s!

Aerial view of Christchurch looking west towards Hagley Park photographed by F.G. Radcliffe from the Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, ref.35-R406

Last weekend I attended the Share an Idea expo at the CBS Canterbury Arena. Hundreds of people had thousands of ideas of how we can rebuild our city. Some ideas were good, others maybe not so good, but all were important. Post-it notes were stuck on the wall, pictures were drawn and plastic-block buildings constructed. The guest speakers gave interesting presentations about what they thought the city should look like.

The ideas are split into four categories:

• Life is what keeps the central city vibrant;
• Space is everything that goes into creating the central city;
• Market is all about how to encourage economic activity in our city centre; and
• Move is how we travel to, and around, our central city.

It’s not too late to have your say. To see what has already been suggested, visit the Share an Idea website. Read the suggestions and watch the  clips on YouTube.  Forms are still available at some libraries and service centers, so you can write down your idea and hand it in, or go online, sign up for the newsletter and have your say.

If you want to read up on some urban design ideas our libraries have some great resources. Try these subject headings:

• Urban design
• Public spaces
• Sustainable living

Whether you sing solo or in a choir, or play drums in a rock band or for the school orchestra, we can help you with your NCEA Music assessments.

• Get your classical music fix at the Classical Music Library;
• The Jazz Music Library has more than 8000 albums by jazz artists and ensembles;
• Find tuition resources such as graded exam playlists, pronunciation guides, a glossary of musical terms and much, much more at Naxos Music Library;
• Oxford Music Online is another brilliant reference and research tool;
• Check out all the excellent music links on our website;
• Read interviews with New Zealand musicians, find the lyrics to your favourite song, and more on The Pulse;
• Borrow music CDs, scores, magazines and books on music theory and composition from one of our community libraries now open;
• Head along to our free New Zealand Music Month performances happening in May;
• Be prepared for your assessments with help from NZQA;
• Find out what the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra is up to, post-earthquake;
• Go watch the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra in action if you get the chance;
• Chamber Music New Zealand has news about artists, contests and upcoming performances.

Want some more really useful resources for another NCEA subject? Go to The Pulse, the library’s website for teens.

Tūhonohono sounds like a New Zealand landscape – in the best sense of what that might mean. It is an unashamedly lush, ambient, spacious album, evoking a sense of mystery as it weaves together the strands of two apparently distant musical tonalities.

The artists Richard Nunns and Judy Bailey became enthusiastic about the prospect of a musical dialogue between piano and taonga pūoro (traditional Māori instruments), after meeting on a previous project. Tūhonohono was a completely improvised recording. The open sessions allowed Richard and Judy to develop and explore a common music language. Steve Garden was then to take a crucial role, not just capturing the sound of the instruments, but shaping the form of the music in an extended editing process.

This is neither traditional Māori music nor is it jazz as some might understand it. But the appropriately titled Tūhonohono is an extraordinary and utterly compelling album.

This album (and over 52,000 more) is available online for free from anywhere with your library card number and PIN.

For New Zealand Music Month we are featuring a daily dose of free online New Zealand music from Naxos Music Library and the Source.

• More free online New Zealand music
• Posts about New Zealand Music Month 2011
• New Zealand Music Month events
• NZ Music Month 2011 — official site

A happy function at Southbridge, the opening of a new recreation ground.

Great news for family historians, students and researchers – more of the Ellesmere Guardian has been digitised and can be viewed online at Papers Past.  This means papers from 1891 until 1945 can now be seen online.

This project has been a partnership between the National Library and Waihora Ellesmere Trust with financial assistance from Lincoln University Library, Christchurch City Libraries, Selwyn District Council, and the Ellesmere Historical Society.
Collated and curated by the National Library, Papers Past includes regional papers from all over New Zealand. Some key features include:

• 63 titles, with more being added regularly.
• Includes New Zealand’s earliest newspapers — the oldest listed is New Zealand Gazette and Wellington Spectator, August 21, 1839
• Features full-page and article images plus a powerful keyword search engine.
• Browsing lets you look at all the newspapers, starting with a year, a region, or a newspaper title.

I become the books I read.

Chameleon like, I take on the speech patterns and idiosyncracies of the characters on the page. This is not too detrimental to everyday life and personal relationships when I am reading something sunny and upbeat, but when I am in the throes of a dark, dysfunctional read – woe betide.

David Vann is one of the authors at the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival 2011. I took his book Caribou Island on a recent trip to Sydney. From the get go, the book and real life became intertwined. As the plane ascended, the passenger in front of me took ill and the fruits of her labour flowed back into my handbag narrowly missing Caribou Island. A clear case of real life mirroring the many physical discomforts of this book.

Fortunately there wasn’t much time for reading in Sydney or, given my chameleon tendencies, I’d have morphed into an unfulfilled wife sniping at her husband’s bumbling failures. Add in a whole bunch of “searching for self” young people in bitterly cold, isolated Alaska and the scene is set. Sounds bleak I know, but the message that comes across (live your  dream, not someone else’s) is so well wrought, I guarantee you will relish your reading of this book.

The sick passenger on the plane was tended to by a very young doctor, the apple of his mother’s eye to be sure, who had (after eight years of study and vast sums of money) chosen this day to wear his  “Musician Searching for Groupies” t-shirt!

So Vann-like.

And the chameleon in me does not believe it would have happened like this had I been reading a  Danielle Steel!

The Great Hall and clock tower 1910

My first memory of the Great Hall at the Christchurch Arts Centre is of sitting my exams in it during the last year it was still operating as a university. It was cold and cavernous and I can’t help feeling that its later use as a wedding venue and concert hall was a much better one.

The hall has hosted a wide variety of music over the years. Off the top of my head I remember listening to Michael Houston playing his way through the Beethoven piano sonatas (on a grand piano that seemed a bit out of sorts), several Jazz School end of year concerts – in the days before the auditorium opened at CPIT – and various other jazz groups during the Christchurch Jazz Festival.

I remember one local singer who had to tell her instrumentalists which song was next as she went, even having to sing the first line to them on one occasion – I guess that’s called improvising. I always regretted that work hours stopped me from attending the Lunchtime Concert Series which featured so many talented musicians.

Victorian Gothic architecture is beautiful, but it has its limitations and the heating problems were never really solved. However, up to 250 people and a roaring fire in the big old fireplace used to at least make it seem warm in winter. The high ceiling and all that wonderful kauri panelling made up for the heating by providing great acoustics.

Due to earthquake strengthening the hall survived the September earthquake quite well and it was available for events and functions from 1 February 2011. Until 22 February that is. Let’s hope this special venue resumes its role in the city’s cultural life soon.

Jack Body is a composer who has travelled to remote locations to experience his musical sources first hand. Obsessively recording, collecting, and transcribing, he has set out in an instinctive way to recreate his experiences in a new musical context.

Pulse won the award for Best Classical Album at the NZ Music Awards in 2002. Performers on the project include the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and the New Zealand String Quartet and Budi Putra (a Javanaese artist playing the gender and kendna) as well as Japanese guitarists Nary Sato and Kei Koh.

This album (and over 52,000 more) is available online for free from anywhere with your library card number and PIN.

For New Zealand Music Month we are featuring a daily dose of free online New Zealand music from Naxos Music Library and the Source.

• More free online New Zealand music
• Posts about New Zealand Music Month 2011
• New Zealand Music Month events
• NZ Music Month 2011 — official site

I have a number of favourite blogs and one of the best is Bookman Beattie.  He is the go-to man for news and views about the New Zealand publishing world and lots of interesting literary news from around the world. He is a fan of the New Yorker and gets a paper copy delivered. He recorded the cover (and the article) of the latest issue with some relish on his blog.

Deciding I had to read that article right now I went to our new catalogue. Typing in a search for New Yorker and clicking on the Full Text available link  gave me the option to select the issue I wanted from Ebscohost, and there it was – 2 May 2011. Scanning through the digitised content I soon came to the article Holy Matrimony! What a laugh. I think the writer must have dredged up every obscure fact and story in the wedding hysteria.

Our new catalogue has many other great features – keep lists of what you have read and what you plan to read, comment on books you have read and so on.  The other part of the equation is the link to our great suite of online resources The Source which gives library card holders access to a fantastic range of online information and resources.