36 Degrees of Weirdness

I haven´t had such a strange concert in many years. It was last night. And it bordered the surreal.

The setting was actually very nice; a beautiful small old plaza in a small town near Valencia, in Spain.

36 degrees Celsius and plenty of humidity promised less than desirable performing conditions in terms of comfort.

The promise was fulfilled, of course. My hands were so sweaty that I had trouble hitting the notes while the fingers slipped right through the keys.

But that was not the strange part. That’s nothing compared to the rest.

We were greeted by a mixed public of music enthusiasts together with casual bypassers who sat there with cans of beer, a mad old Russian man shouting through a phone sitting right in front, a gang of drunk Mexicans, a family of shy Asians, a couple of teens doing tiktoks… and 4 bar terraces right on our sides.

Left AND right.

The scene was like right out of a Fellini movie. It was also very hard hearing ourselves.

And the best part is yet to come:

We actyally had a situation where a few people were getting close to the stage trying to engage in conversation, WHILE we were performing!

One woman asked us to stop playing that strange music (a contemporary piece by an Argentinean composer) and to play The Wizard of Oz :(

Another one went so far as to write a whole list of songs she liked, handing the list over to us and demanding that we play them. We had to politely decline…

To make things worse, there was plenty of wind (just for the hour of our concert of course, since before it was calm… and afterwards also) and there were a few moments of flying sheet music, forcing us to stop several times.

As a professional, what should you do in such an awkward situation?

Well, there are many things you could do.

For example, you could decide to stop playing because the conditions were so far from acceptable that we shouldn’t even have gone there in the first place.

So, what did we do?

We played the full concert plus 3 encores because in the end, people loved it.

It was a strange, surreal, and beautiful evening. I’ll definitely remember it for a long time. Maybe forever.

To end today´s story, I’ll share with you this video which is taken from a live concert in Germany, although a very “controlled” one. Although the music is quite crazy, and for a good part improvised: GENESIS by Constantini.

Have a great day!

Claudio.