2018年3月31日 星期六

Liam O'Flynn 1945~2018


Liam O'Flynn RIP funeral service rte news

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zT2U9wpIkXI

Farewell Liam

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqjY-4MeE08

Photo
Liam O'Flynn at a folk club in Islington, London, in December 1990. He helped revive the popularity of the uilleann pipes, a traditional Irish instrument, in the 1960s. CreditTony Kearns
Liam O’Flynn, a master at coaxing mournful, inspirational and even rollicking music out of the uilleann pipes, arguably the most difficult instrument to play in the arsenal of Irish music, died on March 14 in Dublin. He was 72.
Among those announcing his death was the Society of Uilleann Pipers, a group he helped found in 1968 and of which he was honorary president. On its website it called him “a great ambassador for Irish traditional music throughout Ireland and around the world.”
The society did not specify a cause of death, but Mr. O’Flynn, who died in a hospital, had been ill for some time.
Mr. O’Flynn was comfortable in practically any musical world, playing alongside rock and country stars, in front of orchestras and on his own. He was best known as a member of Planxty, an acclaimed Irish folk band, formed in 1972, that was influential in the Irish folk revival of that period.
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The group released a series of albums, and Mr. O’Flynn also recorded solo records and played on albums by Emmylou Harris, Mark Knopfler, Enya, Nigel Kennedy, Kate Bush and many others.
“When it came to music, he was just pure genius, and his music was filled with heart and soul,” said Joanie Madden, of the Celtic group Cherish the Ladies. (Mr. O’Flynn is heard on its 2001 release, “The Girls Won’t Leave the Boys Alone.”) “I think the testament of a great musician is playing a slow air, and, by God, he could move your heart by how he played slow airs.”
Liam O'Flynn - "The Winter's End" Video by Donjosé Bakunin
Liam Og O’Flynn was born on April 15, 1945, in County Kildare, Ireland. His father, also named Liam, played the fiddle, and his mother, Maisie, played the piano and organ. In an interview rebroadcast by RTE Radio One last week as a tribute, Mr. O’Flynn recalled that his musical awakening came when his parents took him to a classical music concert when he was about 8.
“Before the concert started, as was the case then, I guess, the orchestra played the national anthem,” he said. “The audience rose, and the orchestra played, and the effect on me was extraordinary. I actually nearly fainted with the might and the beauty of the sound.”
The instrument he fixated on, though, was not part of the traditional orchestra.
“As far back as I can remember, there was something about the sound of uilleann pipes that just struck a chord very deep within me,” he said. (The instrument’s name is pronounced ILL-yin or ILL-in.)
Learning to play the pipes — the instrument involves a bag inflated by a bellows to produce a wide range of sounds and notes — was no easy task, but Mr. O’Flynn had as his first teacher one of Ireland’s greatest experts, Leo Rowsome. He fondly recalled his Friday evening lessons with Mr. Rowsome.
“That was the high point of the week for me,” he said. “I lived for that hour.”
Two other great pipers, Willie Clancy and Seamus Ennis, were also major influences. Mr. O’Flynn even shared a rental with Mr. Ennis for a time. When Mr. Ennis died in 1982, he willed Mr. O’Flynn his pipes.
In a 1999 interview with thistleradio.com, Mr. O’Flynn noted that, though people may have heard the pipes on recordings, they don’t fully appreciate what goes into playing them until they see it done.
“It’s great when someone comes up to you after seeing the uilleann pipes played for the first time,” he said. “They can be utterly amazed by all the things going on. You’re pumping bellows, keeping pressure on your left arm, sending air into the instrument, and they also see something happening under the right wrist, where the regulators are. There’s a lot going on.”
The instrument had begun to fade from use in Mr. O’Flynn’s childhood, despite a few famed players, but in the 1960s he and others helped bring it back into the public eye and ear. A crucial moment came in the early 1970s, when the folk singer and guitarist Christy Moore asked Mr. O’Flynn and two others, Andy Irvine and Donal Lunny, to play on an album he was making, titled “Prosperous.”
The four realized that they had a unique sound and formed Planxty. Their first album — titled simply “Planxty” but often called the Black Album because of its cover, an allusion to the Beatles’ so-called White Album released a few years earlier — was a revelation.
“The Planxty Black Album made traditional Irish music as powerful as rock and roll,” Gwen Orel, publisher of the online magazine New York Irish Arts, said by email, drawing a comparison to a signature Rolling Stones song. “The passion and anger in Planxty’s arrangement of the trad song ‘The Blacksmith,’ in which a girl is betrayed by her lover, is up there with ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ any day. It is explosive, scary, even feminist.”
Planxty---The Blacksmith Video by macbrid
Planxty disbanded and re-formed several times over the years, but Mr. O’Flynn pursued other projects as well. Among the most notable and beloved was “The Poet and the Piper,” a series of collaborative performances with the poet Seamus Heaney. (It became an album in 2003.)
Mr. Heaney, the Nobel laureate, introducing Mr. O’Flynn at one performance, said of his music, “It’s like putting your back to a strong tree of sound, and you feel safe with it.”
In 1979 Mr. O’Flynn began working with the composer Shaun Davey on what was originally intended to be just one song commemorating the adventurer Tim Severin’s attempt to re-create an ancient Atlantic crossing that was part of Irish legend.
“He sent me the tune and we worked at it to make it fit the pipes,” Mr. O’Flynn said of Mr. Davey in 1999. “Then he decided to do another one, and another one, and then he had the idea of trying to tell the story of the whole voyage through music.”
Their collaboration led to Mr. Davey’s “The Brendan Voyage,” an orchestral suite featuring the uilleann pipes — played, of course, by Mr. O’Flynn. They recorded the work in 1980, and Mr. O’Flynn played it numerous times with orchestras.
Mr. O’Flynn appeared often in the United States, including at Alice Tully Hall in New York in 2001 with Mr. Heaney. He is survived by his wife, Jane, and a sister, Maureen.
Fellow musicians remembered Mr. O’Flynn not only as a great player, but also as a man of gentle warmth in a business full of volatile personalities. Ms. Madden recalled wanting to kick off the release of “The Girls Won’t Leave the Boys Alone,” an album full of guest musicians, with a 2001 concert.
“We were launching in Ireland,” she said in a telephone interview, “and I said, ‘Liam, I’m embarrassed; I can’t afford to pay you.’ And he said, ‘Joanie, it’s not about the money; I’ll be there.’ That’s the kind of person he was.”

2018年3月29日 星期四

The odd world of Victorian Easter cards. Where the Easter Bunny came from

DW Culture

16分鐘
Everyone knows bunnies don't lay eggs, right? So how did bunnies and eggs become inseparable at Easter? We got to the bottom of this — and other — odd Easter traditions.


The odd world of Victorian Easter cards

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-35361381

The story of one town's high street crisis. How to bring a high street back from the dead


Thousands of high street outlets have closed in the last decade, leaving behind a wasteland of betting shops. But one community in York has found a simple way to reverse the decline. Could their model be used nationwide?

Could the Canadian concept of a 'sticky street' – designed to be a place that people stop and stay, rather than just pass through - save the British town centre?
THEGUARDIAN.COM




Britain's high streets are in crisis with retailers fighting a "perfect storm" of pressures including a squeeze on incomes, a shift to online shopping and rising overheads.



"There isn't enough to bring people into [Nuneaton] - they are going to Coventry, Birmingham and Leicester"

2018年3月25日 星期日

留英後遺症


http://www.bbc.com/ukchina/trad/uk-qa-39792225?

你問我答:留英後遺症

(圖片來源:Getty Images)Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES
問:大家留英回國後有沒有十分懷念英國,適應不了國內生活?
答:在英國留學生活的日子,對每位留學生來說,都是人生中最珍貴的時光。尤其時間待得越久,越難割捨,彷彿英國已經成為我們的第二故鄉。
在英國的時候,我們常說生活太無聊了,還是國內熱鬧。的確,尤其那些不在市內的校園,無聊得簡直寡淡。
但神奇的是,為什麼離開英國的那天,我們會淚灑希斯羅機場,為什麼回國後的常常夢回英國,為什麼只要看到英國的文章就忍不住的點進去?
我們離開的是油畫般的生活。
一位在Milton Keynes生活的留學生說,自己曾去市區的途中下錯車,加上又不認識路,結果只能沿著高速路旁邊的小道走了將近兩個小時才到市區。
原本是件很鬱悶的事,但途中的風景讓她完全忘了這回事,鄉間、木屋、藍天、草地,和小時候看到的童話書裏的配圖一模一樣。
一位在倫敦生活的留學生說,只要周末沒事,她就喜歡在市中心溜達,從national gallery走到塔橋,自有一番文藝情調。那些街道,河岸,公園,路人,總會想再走走,每一次的感覺依然美好。
我們離開的是適合你的博物館。
在北京逛博物館,得趕早,不然就得排著長長的隊伍,等待刷身份證進入。
進到博物館內,若是遇到特定的展區,又得排隊。人多,吵雜,大,累,遠,在國內逛完博物館大抵是這類感受。
英國的博物館五花八門,有大有小,有近有遠,風格不一,總能找到適合你的那一座。有高大上的國家美術館,有適合凹造型的泰特美術館,有適合迷妹們的福爾摩斯紀念館,還有"謝耳朵"熱愛的火車博物館……太多了。
交通方便,大小合適,不會走到腳痛還沒逛完。
我們離開的是白菜價的娛樂生活。
都說英國物價高,但仔細想想,在倫敦中國城的KTV,20英鎊就能歡唱一個下午,還能吃港點吃到飽;在英國看電影,不用團購,各類電信公司常常免費送電影票,還可以辦cineworld年卡,電影隨便看,只要你願意,從早到晚都可以。
想看熱門音樂劇,20英鎊是均價,60英鎊已經能坐到前兩排。但在國內,想看的舞台劇常常買不到票,五六百元人民幣的票連主角的臉都看不清。
更不用說英國的衣服鞋帽簡直比國內便宜得不要太多。
我們更離不開的是英國的小日子。
在這幾年中,我們學會下廚,練就煲湯,逛集市,享受藍天,生活雖寡淡,卻將我們清洗,淡去了名利心,減去了浮躁感,把小日子過得有滋有味。
我們中,有人回國後帶著對英國的懷念,漸漸融入了國內的生活,工作,安定;也有人最終揣著對過去生活的執念,回到了英國。
其實,我們懷念的不僅僅是英國,也是懷念當初獨自努力奮鬥的自己。