Events

Ecumenical Christmas concert at Margarethenkirche, Medias

This past week, churches of several religious denominations from the city of Medias got together and gave a wonderful Christmas concert, as they’ve done every year since 1989, at Margarethenkirche (Church of St. Margaret). It took place on Wednesday evening, December 16, 2009. I recorded video sequences from the concert, which you can see below. While I couldn’t record it in its entirety, I know a professional video team was on site with two cameras, and they’ll make their edited video available to the public in the near future, possibly even this week.

I need to apologize for the quality of the video… At the time, I had a cold, and was literally shivering up there in the drafty upper level, trying to hold the camera steady. It didn’t work very well, so the video sequences are quite shaky. I had to leave early, too, as I felt a fever coming on and didn’t want to make things worse. At least I stuck around until the choir in which my wife participated sang their carols (Seventh-day Adventist Church of Medias).

http://blip.tv/file/2997380
Watch this video on blip.tv

At the end of the concert, selected choristers from each church choir sang together in a unified, ecumenical choir. Unfortunately, I wasn’t around for that, but my wife sang in that choir, and she said it sounded heavenly. By the way, in the video, my wife is the very pretty, curly-headed girl on whom I kept focusing my camera. 🙂

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Lists

Condensed Knowledge – December 20, 2009

This is a summary of articles I read and found interesting during this past week. The list is shared from among my feed subscriptions. I only share a certain number of articles in each of these posts, so if you’d like to see more, visit my full Google Shared Items list.

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Places

Tokyo timelapse by Samuel Cockedey

static : pulse from Samuel Cockedey on Vimeo

remanence : variance from Samuel Cockedey on Vimeo

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Events

Paula Seling in concert, Medias

Paula Seling, a very well-known Romanian pop star, gave a Christmas concert yesterday evening, December 14, at Sala Traube, a venue in Medias, Romania. We were in attendance, and I recorded most of the songs she sang on my cameraphone. You can watch the video below.

Paula is my wife’s favorite singer. Ligia has followed her progress from the start of her solo career, and has always told me that Paula is the most talented singer in Romania. After tonight’s performance, I agree.

The concert began with a few Christmas carols, after which Paula launched into a great mix of new and old music, including a few songs from her newest album, “Believe“, which came out earlier this year. The show was great. Paula’s performance was consistent, and she established a wonderful rapport with the audience. She got a standing ovation at the end, and she sang a beautiful song for an encore — I’ll let you watch it for yourselves in the videos.

Watch the videos on YouTube in five parts (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5)

If you’d like more information about Paula Seling, then her website is definitely the place to go. She has both English and Romanian versions of her site, each loaded with tons of goodies. In a move I found unusual but very welcome, she has posted her entire discography online, and each song is recorded in both English and Romanian. In other words, you can listen to samples from each of her songs in both languages. That must have taken a significant, sustained long-term effort, and I applaud her for that.

Paula also deserves applause for being so gracious and welcoming after the show. My wife wanted to meet her and give her one of her quilling pieces, as a way of saying thank you for her wonderful music. Adrian Matei facilitated the meeting, and we are very grateful to him for doing so. Paula agreed, and was thrilled when she saw what Ligia had prepared for her. I took this photo of the two of them together as we said our goodbyes and wished her the best for the future.

Ligia and Paula Seling, on December 14, 2009, Sala Traube, Medias, Romania.
Ligia and Paula Seling, on December 14, 2009, Sala Traube, Medias, Romania.
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Thoughts

Summer scenes from Grosvenor Park

For the past several years, we’ve lived in a beautiful community in North Bethesda, MD, called Grosvenor Park. The community was built inside a forest that stretches from Bethesda to Rockville. This is a video recorded in that forest, on the shore of a brook that makes its way through the community, in the summer of 2008.

The nature that surrounded us while we lived there was a constant source of inspiration and relaxation for us. I wrote and posted photos taken in Grosvenor Park in the past, too. If you’d like to see more, here’s where you can start:

You can also see several hundred photos from Grosvenor Park and from North Bethesda in my photo catalog.

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