Good thing I was listening to NPR while a sponsor message came on, telling of a night of traditional Scottish folk music to be performed at the newest museum in the Phoenix area: The MIM. The band Old Blind Dogs were to take the stage on Friday night at the Musical Instrument Museum and so I finally headed over to the MIM’s website to look for tickets. WOW! Old Blind Dogs wasn’t the only act of interest to me but they were the first show I bought tickets for. Besides the occasional performer from India and the Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed performance a year ago, there has been little in the way of world or experimental music to be heard here in Arizona during the last three or four years. That is all about to change.

First off, Old Blind Dogs. They opened with Terror Time which may have been appropriate as we were their first audience on their U.S. tour. The drummer wasn’t on stage, he wasn’t even in America as he was tending to a medical emergency, but that didn’t distract from the performance. The truly great thing about this concert was that it took Caroline and me back to Europe where we would often stop to listen to buskers – ah, the good old days. The guys played just shy of two hours with a fifteen-minute intermission between the sets. The simplicity of the music and the expert musicianship made for a great night out, I would wish for more nights in the desert like this.

Luckily, I won’t have to wish too hard anymore. The Musical Instrument Museum on the corner of Tatum and Mayo Blvd just opened in late April, so I thought I had plenty of time before the museum got up to speed and started featuring artists or special exhibitions, but I was wrong. From over two dozen performances scheduled between now and the end of August, we chose six shows to attend; Tuvan throat singers Huun Huur Tu performing with electronic musician Carmen Rizzo, Japanese taiko drummers On Ensemble who are mixing traditional drumming with hip-hop rhythms, and a turntablist, we’ll stop in to see Etran Finatawa from Niger performing a kind of Nomad’s blues, kora musician Toumani Diabate performs in August, and the last show of the series for us will be oud master Rahim Alhaj. Click the links to watch a video of each act on YouTube.

There is a strict no photography and no cell phone or text messaging rule at the MIM but the house photographer Jimmy C. Carrauthers of Great Leap Productions was kind enough to send me the three photos above. I couldn’t choose one, so I posted them all. Thank you, Jimmy.

This is Sonu Nigam who performed at the Phoenix Symphony Hall this evening – for nearly 4 hours. Sonu is from India, works in Bollywood, and is what is known as a playback singer. Caroline and I had fantastic seats for the show, near the center in the 16th row. As he took the stage he opened with a song from Kal Ho Na Ho and went into another popular song, this one from Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham. That set the stage as we swooned to the romance of two of our favorite mushy love songs. Sonu’s songs have graced some of my favorite Bollywood films such as The Legend of Bhagat Singh, Dil Chata Hai, Main Hoon Na, and Om Shanti Om. Sadly we missed Asha Bhosle on her tour to Phoenix last year but we did get to watch Alka Yagnik and Kavita Krishnamurthy during their tours of America in years past. Now if Andy Lau would come to Phoenix for a concert!

Laurie Anderson on the left and her husband Lou Reed on the right performing in Chandler, Arizona this afternoon to benefit the Yongey Peace Prevails Center of Phoenix. The show started quite early, at 3:00 p.m. – the encore was finished before dark! The first highlight of the day was Shangao Cai and the Phoenix Chinese Art Ensemble performing three traditional pieces, one Chinese, one Tibetan, the last Mongolian. Before I move on to Lou Reed’s and Laurie Anderson’s performance I have to say I was shocked at how many people left during the concert – I can only imagine it was not what they expected. As for us, we were thrilled with the show. The best I can describe it is as though it were a Post-Bush American interpretation of a traditional Hindu Raga. Raga is Sanskrit for color or mood and that is just what these two legends of the music industry created. Where a Raga performance picks a ground note for a drone, Lou and Laurie used a drone that didn’t always follow a continuous tone but would shift between the artists from a synthesized noise to Laurie Anderson’s violin, to Lou Reed’s guitar or a device in front of him we could not identify from the audience and at other times the drone was replaced by Laurie Anderson’s storytelling with a simple melody playing beneath, before the drone would come rising back up. As I said, I was thrilled by this performance since it felt we were afforded the opportunity to see these two artists genuinely work their craft and not dredge up their famous past. Steve Hunter of Alice Cooper fame joined the duo for a while, adding another layer of ambiance for the audience to try and digest. How nice it was to see these artists paint their canvas live and in real-time for those of us lucky enough to attend.

To see a traditional Raga performed by Veena Sahasrabuddhe click here to watch on YouTube.

The last performance of the month for us to attend was at the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts. Tonight featured a dance and music group from Hawaii that told the story through their performance of the great and sacred Maui chief Kahekili. Jutta attended the show with us and enjoyed the opportunity to see a slice of Pacific Islander life and mythology that is rarely if ever performed in Germany. These cultural moments that transport Caroline and me out of the drab confines of what would otherwise be a very boring city are mini lifesavers.

Last evening Caroline, Jutta, and I went to the Phoenix Symphony for the world premiere of Enemy Slayer, a Navajo Oratorio. The performance opened with the Grand Canyon Suite. After the intermission, with no applause allowed, the oratorio got underway. The silence was requested as the performance was being recorded for a CD release later in the year. Above is the composer, the photographer whose photos were shown as an accompaniment to the music, the Navajo librettist, and the vocalist. The symphony was joined by a 130 member strong choir.

This evening Caroline and I drove over to the Scottsdale Center of the Arts to see a performance of the Peking Acrobats. The show was great, but, unbelievably, it wasn’t sold out. Here in Arizona they only did one show; when we lived in Frankfurt, Germany, the show would have its own tent and would go on for an entire month. If you look closely at the photo you might notice that the girl center top and just below the dragon head is actually riding a unicycle on top of an umbrella supported by one of the male acrobats.