stefa

Got row B in royal circle Does anybody know if the age limit is only a reccomendation or they will leave out those < 14? Looking forward! Stefania

Hi Sabine. I think you should be very grateful to the translation team since it takes a very long time and it is a job done for free. I am personally new to that team and I participated to only one translation. It is a very long process if done properly. The other girls are doing an amazing job for more than one year now, giving up lots of their free time, so please do not call "old news"....it can become demotivating. Cheers Stefania

I loved the expo during the summer, despite the almost 40 degrees, but when I went back a couple of weeks ago it was a nightmare. Some pavillons had something like 7 hours of queueing....and there wasn't even Mika inside

A short report, since nobody else seems to have written one yet. Loved the show! I am in Paris with my daughter (almost 7) so we took it easy. We arrived at the venue at around 6ish, and there was the longest line......with people trying to sneak in from the sides and skip it We ended up in some pretty good seats towards the left side. The concert was quite similar to the one in Milan, which is the other larger one I attended in this tour. Mika had great energy. He started with NPIH, then pretty much standard set (big girl, good wife....etc...). I noticed that the audience was on fire especially with the old songs. Relax really made everybody around me stand up and dance. At least those around me did not seem to really know the songs from the new album. There were lots of families with kids, and I noticed that also the kids knew the old lyrics, not really the new ones. Emme me dit of course was also a hit. Underwater was as always beautiful with lots of stars from the lights on the mobile phones. He did not actually sing too many french songs....(not even l'amour l'a l'a a-mour...sorry Miri ). Promiseland was there I really liked the new rhythmic beginning of Lollipop, maybe especially because I really hated the version in Milan with that lady screaming the italian version "le caramelle fanno male" (candies are bad for you). He did again a snippet of Happy ending without mic. That was quite something. Overall a great concert. He was in great energy, jumping all around. He started with a suit which I actually liked (blue with some white horse or unicorn all around, sorry I did not take pictures, my camera broke last week.... ) and then changed to more casual outfits. He was talkative but not too much I would say. At least I do not remember any fun story he told. It was quite late for my daughter when it ended (two hours show) so we left pretty much immediately. We just had time to say a quick hi to Nina and her lovely family. Enjoy London tonight everybody!

Nice idea! I just bought 30 more at the airport What time will you get there? Looking forward to meeting you!Stefania

Hello! I am looking for two standing tickets for Milan for September 27th or 4 sitting ones. Thanks! Stefania

Good that he says he likes the italian show because there is lots of freedom

Sounds like she was just telling him. It is not clear if she is also part of it.

Last two pages of the Wired Italy interview. I post them now since I am afraid I will forget tomorrow, as I am quite busy. You should wait for Charlie's first half though...even if the text can also work on its own. I like this article, but is it just me who sees basically zero connection between the text and the graphs visualizing the songs? “In reality it is very complex. Often it is a process that you need to refine working hard, and then do it without thinking about it. You train to develop melodies, to decorate them, elaborate them, reinvent them, to find some techniques to get them, but when it happens it is automatic, because like an athlete you enter in an instinctive area: the melody comes out as it should, but you do not remember how it happened. You remember only all the steps to reach that point”. But there is a paradox in the creative process. “How can an author provide emotions and surprise himself? It is a process that requires presence and detachment at the same time. In a certain way the creation of an original musical object is equivalent to be able to be tickled by yourself. It is impossible”. says Francois Pachet, director of Sony Computer Science Lab in Paris, expert in artificial intelligence and researcher in musical creativity. How can an author give emotions and surprises to himself? “Creation is similar to what monks do” says Mika. “Some years ago I took a meditation class. I was starting to work to my second album, when something horrible happened to me. I lost 60% of hearing. I have an sensorial hypocausia (?), it happened also to others in my family. So now I have a 60% decrease at 3000 Hz. It has never been solved. At the time I went to a meditation class to try to get better. I was getting crazy, I was constantly hearing noises. Even now I am very sensitive to sounds, I always need to protect my ears” says the songwriter with libanese origins. “During the meditation class the monk invited me to start a pattern, something familiar to me, and I replied abruptly: What the hell of a pattern?” because I really did not want to be there. He saw a coke can, and he started to repeat “Coke coke coke”. He told me to do like that. “Say it and get it into your head”. The he used the pattern as a structure, to guide me forward and backward in the conscience. It is exactly what I do when I write: I find a pattern that puts me in that zone, and I can write”. From the “classical” Mika writings (“words and melodies, I do not think in terms of sound”) we move to the construction of the musical object. “This is the first album I recorded almost completely at home. In a single day, with 3500 dollars, I built a recording studio in the living room. The main part of what you hear in the album was recorded like this in Los Angeles. Almost all the voices were captured with a cheap microphone. The main part of the studio work was done on the music, but the voice and the piano were often rough. There is little voice manipulation, very little tuning”. In our model, the voice is treated as a part of the track, but the texts add several level of complexity to a piece. Mika uses often words to introduce ambiguities in a song, a dark element that is in contrast with the happy rhythms: other means to manipulate expectations. The voice was also used is contrast with the music, to add a very physical and “breathing” element. “I have a collection of my breaths. If one is cut in the track during production, I put it back”. he says, during an electronic track. Mika tells that thinking about our experiment with his songs he made an experiment himself during a performance: “I was singing the new songs at Webster Hall, in New York, and I was studying the reaction of the listeners for the first time. I was trying to understand how long it took to become emotional, and lower defences and feel the same joy as when they hear the songs they know. It is incredible how increasing the dynamic between verse and main melody I managed to create a more intense reaction with the material they did not know. if I was reducing the dynamics I was becoming less intriguing, less satisfactory and so there was no space for them in the song. The second night, when I exaggerated the dynamics in my performance and the one of the band, the song suddenly opened up”. It is music seen as a social signal, the performer seen as an emphatic communicator. But how do we measure the audience’s reaction? “ I look at what happens. I look at the tension in the faces, I check if they tap their feet or not, or if they talk among each others or if they stare at me”, answers Mika: “there is a wonderful world in italian, which does not really have a translation in english “consapevolezza” (something like awareness). As a performer you develop an extreme form of awareness, you must do it. I always say that a musician should consider himself part of the team. The first thing you need to learn when you perform on stage is to get away from the priviledged position where you are as an author. You must become an interpreter, a provoker, and thinking of yourself as one of the team you become more receptive of what happens in front of you, you adapt and become a better performer. In this way it is easier to read the audience’s signals.” The emotional communication with the audience is metaphorically rendered as a line of tension “It is an invisible line that goes directly to the stomach, direct to the mind, stretched between you and the audience. Your role as performer is to keep aware of this tension. It is like the heartbeat of the performance, I see it like this. You must always keep a minimum heartbeat level, otherwise the perfomance dies. There is no need to be hyperactive on stage, you can also have a slow song. The idea is the tension, but tension is created by intention”. As Mika said, the performance takes the identity of an intense communication act, started and directed by the performer. It is the performer that creates a lowering of the defences, visible in the physical symptoms of the relaxation of the face and the muscles. “And when you managed to open those areas on someone, once you manage to communicate that way, you must be very responsible, you are forced to be, since you are holding them by the hand, and if they feel you are not respectful, you do not know what is happening or that you will let them fall, they will become harsh again and you will have lost them.” According to Mika concerts are “controlled improvisations, not different from what happens in classical music”, but his idea of intention goes beyond a set of interpretations. “As much as we try to analyse the writing process and interpretation, there is always an undeniable alchemy, and this is why we will always be fascinated by the art of interpretation and performance”, he keeps saying “it is the alchemy of someone who can do something and we do not know why. There is a person stepping on stage, a person in meat and bones that you recognise as such, but he has a power on you that you cannot justify, and your interpretation is that he has a special power. There comes the idea of Stardust. It has nothing to do with celebrity per se. “ In practice it is like having superpowers right? Mika laughs “Ah but I don’t have them. I am more like a baker. It is hard to make good bread, it is pure alchemy.” Like music.

Sure I can. I will post it after yours

I just noticed that the guy who made the analysis in the Wired article is one of my colleagues....small world ! I would not mind to translate that one if it helps. Cheers Stefania

Thanks everybody for the lovely reports and pictures. I was also there but I have not much more to add. I had a great time. I was in New York with a friend and we also wanted to visit the city so we arrived quite late at the venue. We were in line at around 7PM. We got the same troubles as others mentioned with the tickets, but when we entered we managed to find a great spot at the balcony just in front of the stage. Everything was fantastic. Apart from of course the energy, the music and the stage, I especially enjoyed the lights. I thought they were designed very well and really made the stage change a lot and create very different moods. I loved the very colourful ones, but also the ones with different shades of red, blue violet.... In my opinion it worked perfectly with this new stage. The night before after the Brooklyn's concert I was too tired and jetlagged to join for the famous pierogies, but after this second concert it was very nice to chat outside while waiting for Mika. It was great to meet you Deb, and catching up with Nina, as well as meeting the lovely Indy and Kira and other nice fans. Of course it was also nice to meet him for the first time. I told him the concert was amazing, and I guess he recognized a strong accent so he asked me where I was from. I said something like "italian, but not one of those crazy teenagers of yours, plus I live in Copenhagen". he laughed and said something like "oh scanditalian" or something like that. I really don't remember, I was exausted after walking all day and dancing and singing through the whole concert, and at the same time I was definetely feeling lots of adrenaline after such a great show. I need to watch the M&G video, thanks so much for posting it! I was really hoping he would add some dates in UK and Scandinavian to the tour, but now with this Xfactor business it sounds pretty unrealistic ...Cheers Stefania

I just got my ticket too. I had to buy the album twice in order to get two promotional codes Looking forward to meeting you Deb!

Hi. I have two tickets for the extra night to sell, since I cannot come to Montreal. I paid 195$ and I do not want to sell them for more. They are parterre. Cheers Stefania

But the hashtags say #spot #tv #mediaset (BTW mediaset is the company owned by Berlusconi which runs several TV channels....), and the other guys are italian, so unfortunately it looks more like another commercial rather than a private gig in Paris...

I am glad that at least some find this ad funny and cool. I think it is quite depressing honestly....let's hope this is the bottom and he does not surprise us with something even worse...

I am glad that at least some find this ad funny and cool. I think it is quite depressing honestly....let's hope this is the bottom and he does not surprise us with something even worse...

Couldn't it be that discussions are boring since his current activities are also boring and there is not much to talk about? I really enjoyed reading all the concerts' reviews and seeing the videos. Sometimes it was almost like being there.

Precisely. I also do not understand why it cannot be accepted that some find those TV shows and side activities crappy and way below Mika's potential level. And in my case this opinion was formed after seeing them. Yes also the fabulous italian version. But no point to keep looping on this topic.

Sure but from what I read these side projects are fully occupying him till at least January 17th. And as Christine already very clearly said, we are not asking to completely remove those projects, but it is hard not to agree that they are his main activity right now.

That's precisely what I meant, even if my style might have sounded slightly harsher It is not about how many shows he had in UK or France in 2013, now it is about producing some new music and performing it instead of using his time in yet another interview where he repeats pretty much the same story all over again. Even I who have not been such an "hard core" fan from the beginning, or whatever you want to call it, am tired of listening to the same story told to different meaningless TV hosts. I can just imagine how you, Christine, Rose, and many others must feel about it.

In my opinion no fans have everything now. Maybe the only ones that have something are those scary screaming teenagers that just care to see him at crappy talent shows or shopping malls, with zero interest for his music. And they hardly can be called fans.

Well at least watching this video we can be sure he did not do Xfactor for the musical skills of the other judges: ....the lady cannot even spot a fake drummer!

Italy IS a beautiful country. Shopping malls are ugly and depressing all around the world.

You are all very welcome! I liked how they edited the interview with the different videos. I do not write much here, but I follow the posts and I really like this community. Cheers Stefania