Czech singer, violinist, composer, and actress, Iva Bittová reappeared in Berkeley tonight, at the Freight & Salvage coffee house.

I don't use the word mesmerizing much.  But I could apply it here. It was mesmerizing!

Bittová, solo, she sang, spoke in tongues, acted out, as if she was in conversation with a cast of characters, and all the while playing the violin, or thumb piano, or kazoo (even).

For an hour and a half we were taken to a gypsy camp somewhere in Moravia, as Bittová sang her versions of Moravian folk tunes, gypsy songs, and even some Yiddish songs (including one by Osvaldo Golijov, she announced later).

The intimate setting of F&S was perfect for this, and at one point Iva stepped into the audience while singing an extremely lively gypsy song at top volume.

Her voice is amazing. She reminded me of a down-home version of Cathy Berberian, if only Cathy could play violin while singing.

Bittová's scope is extremely broad. Known for her (very serious) recordings of Janacek and Vladimir Godár, she also spans folk and jazz. (See discography).

I was surprised to see an almost-full house. I didn't expect that so many people here knew about Iva Bittová. And they all seemed quite familiar with her work. It's been almost ten years since she last appeared in Berkeley. Lets hope she comes more often in the future.

I'm off on a business trip tomorrow to Reno, NV. (Business, really.  No, .. really.)  I'll be gone for a week. And I'll be blogging about it on my work-related blog, rchrd@sun.

By the way, a friend informs me that the picture of what is supposed to be Greenwich Street today is, in fact, the wrong street. (See Visual Discord entry below). Figures. I couldn't believe it could be THAT different. Apparently the old garage is still there. Anyway, said NYC friend is going to wait for some good sunny weather and take a correct picture to compare with my 1970 image. 

Nice. 

So I'm back from a week in Reno, Nevada.

I don't plan to go back. Reno's not a place I'd intentionally return to.

One begins to wonder about the future of the human race when confronted with a place like Reno.

My purpose for being there was work. Specifically, SuperComputing 2007 at the Reno-Sparks Convention Center. In all, a strange place for a few thousand computer and science geeks set on rubbing elbows with the fastest and geekiest computers ever assembled in one place on Earth.

More about SC'07 on my work blog.

But there was one moment where my life-worlds did clash. A group of us were walking back to the hotel after some free beer and finger foods at a pub along the Truckee river downtown (the only civilized part of town, perhaps). A nearby restaurant was playing some canned music in their outside patio. It sounded extremely familiar. It took me a few seconds to realize it was Copland's Rodeo, but most oddly played by a synthetic electronic "orchestra".

But when I recognized what it was, even in this weird version, I wanted to exclaim this discovery to my colleagues, I quickly caught myself in mid exclamation, realizing that, in fact, they probably wouldn't know what I was talking about. Wrong crowd.  It would be similar to talking to my musician and composer friends about how difficult it can be to convert a sequential linear equation solver into a parallelized version running over a cluster of Sun Blades using MPI on Solaris Express. I'd get blank stares, followed by "gee, thanks for sharing" or some such probable dismissal.

So, I spent most of the walk back to the hotel contemplating the strange orthogonalities of my parallel lives.

And in Reno, of all places.

This is really worth investigating. Dhomont is an important figure in electronic music.

But I'm not that familiar with Dufort.  We'll see.