Press Release: Deals Done
Small UK Publisher Acquires Huge European Bestseller

Posted at 10:57AM Wednesday 22 Feb 2012

The UK rights for a European publishing phenomenon have been acquired by the small independent British publisher, Hesperus Press.

The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson is a Swedish debut which has already been sold in 26 territories by Spanish agent Anna Solar-Pontas. Sales in Sweden stand at over a million, while the German translation has sold over 300,000 in just three months and total translation sales are approaching two million.

But when the manuscript first did the rounds of UK and US publishers a couple of years ago, the right remained unsold. Then Hesperus MD Karl Sabbagh heard his Swedish stepmother raving about the book and he enquired after English language rights. Finding, to his amazement, that they were still available, he contacted Solar-Pontas, who then sold World English Language rights to Hyperion in the US, who in turn sold UK and Ireland rights to Hesperus.

Sabbagh says: ‘It was a long shot – I was astonished to find that no US or UK publisher had picked it up. And I managed to acquire it by convincing the agent that we were passionate about publishing it well, rather than by paying the sort of huge advance that Hesperus has never paid in its ten year history. This is a real feel-good book and shows that Swedes can write light, amusing novels as well as dark thrillers about serial killers; it is both compelling and laugh-out-loud funny’

Jonasson’s story is as strange and meandering as the title. The plot concerns a centenarian who escapes from his Old People’s Home just as his hundredth birthday celebrations are about to begin. Waiting for a bus, he acquires a suitcase full of money belonging to a criminal gang, who then pursue him across Sweden. Along the way we hear the story of his very long and remarkably eventful life, during which he has met some of the most significant people and played a part in some of the most significant events of the twentieth century.

A film of the book is in development at the leading Nordic company, Nice Entertainment, and several Hollywood studios are already in discussions with them about the remake rights.

Hesperus will publish The Hundred-Year-Old Man on 12 July 2012, to coincide with its 10th anniversary.

For further information, please contact Jacqui Graham

jacqui@jacquelinegraham.co.uk

07973 884 290

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Article source: http://www.booktrade.info/index.php/showarticle/39026

While Houston Symphony’s Orbit – an HD Odyssey trekked around planet Earth, the River Oaks Chamber Orchestras’ journey took flight and reached for the Solar System’s fifth largest satellite. Moonstruck and moondrunk, the opening premise of JoAnn Falletta’s poem in response to Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, was the muse for the ensemble’s premiere of Paul English’s Lumière Lunaire this weekend at The Church of St. John the Divine.

The program also included Haydn’s Concerto for Cello in C Major with principal cellist Richard Belcher and Schubert’s Symphony No. 4 in C Minor “Tragic” led by visiting conductor Kazem Abdullah.

The nod to space wasn’t in reaction to the Houston Symphony, it happened serendipitously. English was taken by Falletta’s much lighter reflection of the otherwise noir and gloomy setting of Schoenberg’s 1912 pre-serial atonal composition. That Pierrot was celebrating its centenary anniversary was coincidental, but no less significant. 

Of course the viola represents the main character. Subject to countless jokes, the instrument is largely unappreciated in general music zeitgeist, not unlike Pierrot.

It’s by no means a stretch to call English a music Renaissance man. He’s equally as comfortable improvising jazz riffs as he is whipping up country western tunes at the recording studio, versatility he adopted growing up with a band director for a father. That familiarity with a wide range of genres seeped in comfortably in Lumière.

The justification for doing so emerged from the many languages that intermingled leading up to Falletta’s text. Her Pierrot is an English memoir of the music which set Otto Erich Hartleben’s German translation of a 1884 French text by the symbolist Belgian poet Albert Giraud. And Pierrot originates from 17th century Italian Commedia dell’Arte. 

Yet that was no reason to call on instrumentalists to sing while playing, wear microphone headsets and sprechstimme German-style vocalizations, which appear in Schoenberg’s Pierrot. That idea came from the group’s founder, principal oboist and art troublemaker Alecia Lawyer.

Surprise! They can sing, in tune, and pull off an effective theatrical piece.

That’s so ROCO, something many ensembles can’t do and won’t dare commit on a playbill. ROCO’s audience may appear conservative, but that doesn’t stop Lawyer from pushing boundaries.

The music: Lumière Lunaire

Of course the viola represents the main character. Subject to countless jokes, the instrument is largely unappreciated in general music zeitgeist, not unlike Pierrot, who endures ridicule in loveless pain while basking in the reverie of the moonlight. First coherent, then implicitly drunk, the leitmotif and its permutations travel across the wind section.

Lumière Lunaire opens with rising intervals bowing to the sonorities of Schoenberg. It quickly moves to focus on the verse, highlighting action words with text painting and hand gestures. Spooky chatter leads to a juxtaposition of recognizable influences: A little Stravinsky, some Tristan und Isolde, a touch of film noir and plenty of Mission Impossible with walking bass lines, groovy drum kit beats and gimpy asymmetrical rhythms. English’s background definitely showed.

 To American ears, Belcher’s New Zealand brogue lies somewhere in between debonair chivalry and witty mischievousness, also words that accurately describe what happens when he speaks through his lustrous instrument.

With atonal interjections sprinkled during transitions, English nostalgically reminisced of the composer he wished to honor, not just during his serial period, but his complete opus. Like the moon vanishing in the horizon, Lumière Lunaire disappears into nothingness.

To append context to Lumière, Space Center Houston provided a large exhibit with images of Apollo 11′s mission of 1969, Buzz Aldrin’s first footprint on the moon, photos taken by Apollo 17 mission commander Gene Cernan of geologist-astronaut Harrison Schmitt standing adjacent to the lunar module “Eagle,” displays signed by astronaut Mark Kelly, a space suit and models of craft used during exploration. 

A fresh new Haydn

Josef Haydn’s showcase may have been written in 1760s, but at the hands of principal cellist Richard Belcher (Enso Quartet), it was as if the piece was written yesterday. The concerto is a staple of the instrument’s repertoire, often learned early in the career of an emerging musician but, like Mozart, constantly refined years into professional life. It can sound over-rehearsed, calculated and academic. But not this fresh take on Haydn. 

Belcher plays with an accent. To American ears, his New Zealand East Coast brogue lies somewhere in between debonair chivalry and witty mischievousness, also words that accurately describe what happens when he speaks through his lustrous instrument. When he executed Haydn’s perky happy gem it was as if his musical maturity framed the energy and coquettishness of a young child, rendering this performance very “expensive.”

That is certainly not an observation on ticket price. Rather, expensive details a raucous finesse: A pinky-up classical facade with a naughty undercurrent. It’s a compliment.

Tell me more

Schubert’s Tragic Symphony might as well be dubbed the symphony of countless deceptive cadences that, although you know they are coming, surprise every time. Abdullah clearly understood the harmonic implications and leaned into their role with gusto and dark zest. His pending post as the Generalmusikdirector of the city of Aachen, Germany (starting in August) validates his musical prowess, though refining his speaking skills from the podium may be his next step.

After all, ROCO loves nothing more than connecting musicians with their fans.

Article source: http://houston.culturemap.com/newsdetail/02-21-12-a-drunk-pierrot-and-an-expensive-haydn-roco-commissions-music-others-wont-dare-perform/

DIETMAR Hamann tells a famous story about Giovanni Trapattoni, elements of which are unsuitable for a family newspaper.

It revolves, perhaps predictably, around the Ireland manager’s inability to fully grasp the nuances of a different language. Hamann was a youngster at Bayern Munich when Trapattoni regularly caused hilarity with his attempts at German. Press and players lapped it up.

During a difficult spell at Bayern, Trapattoni called his squad together at the training pitch for a pep talk 48 hours before an important game.

He was imploring his players to show the fans they had balls, that they had cojones. But he didn’t know how to say the German equivalent, so he turned to the multi-lingual Brazilian striker Giovane Elber and asked for help. Elber responded mischievously with the German translation for a private part of the female anatomy. Unaware that it was the incorrect answer, Trapattoni proceeded with an impassioned speech, thinking he was telling his underperforming stars to show the doubters they had balls, when in fact he was saying something entirely different.

Eventually, the urge to laugh got the better of the group. Trap was furious and demanded to know what was going on. When Elber explained and apologised, Trapattoni considered his previous statements. “First, there was a little smile,” says Hamann, “Then his smile widened and suddenly Trap burst into a fit of hysterical laughter.

“I think that little ‘cojones’ episode and others like it earned Trap extra respect,” he explains. “They helped people to see him as a normal guy, a nice fella. Some managers believe that you have to appear infallible, but that’s when they become distant and unapproachable. Trap believed the opposite. He could laugh at himself, and players loved him for it.”

* * * * *

ON Saturday morning, Hamann smiled as he recalled his experiences with the Ireland manager. He is sitting in a meeting room above Eason Bookstore on Dublin’s O’Connell Street, where a large number of fans are waiting downstairs for his signature on their copy of his new book, ‘The Didi Man, My Love Affair with Liverpool‘, which builds his life story around his experiences at Anfield.

Trapattoni was an influence in his formative days at Bayern Munich, and the above incident is outlined in detail. He speaks more about him in discussion, and is a firm believer in his methods. Therefore, he views Ireland’s Euro 2012 prospects in a positive light. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they are the dark horses,” he says. “He will be prepared for everything and anything. In tournament football, you have to keep possession and must not concede goals. Trap is known for that.”

He is known for a lot of things. Hamann was always likely to be influenced by Trapattoni because his approach to the game mirrored the Italian’s thinking process. “I was known for thinking about where I should be and trying to make sure that I was there at the right time,” he explains. Those foundations were laid by the man in charge at Bayern.

“He worked a lot with us,” he recalls. “At times it was long. We trained for two and a half hours or three hours a day in pre-season. There was a lot of moaning and whinging, but three months later, you knew why you had done it. You change things without thinking about it, and that’s where he is good.”

Irish players are recurring characters in Hamann’s story. They have shared experiences about Trapattoni’s ways.

“I remember one of the first games I played, a cup game in the evening, he was only there about four or six weeks and he came down in the morning and I was having scrambled eggs,” Hamann says. “He asked what I was doing. I said ‘having eggs’. He went off his head and said ‘no eggs’… until this day he never said why. Apparently, eggs are no good for you in the morning, but it didn’t do me any harm for the next 15 years.

“It was the same with Richard Dunne, who was having mushroom soup before an Ireland game and Trap went bananas. He was running around like mad and nobody knew what was going on. He told one of the waitresses to get rid of the mushrooms as they are no good for you.”

While acknowledging the idiosyncrasies, the thrust of Hamann’s main point is that Trapattoni is obsessing on behalf of the players, not for his own personal benefit. The 72-year-old may be a disciplinarian, but he has a warm heart.

And it is for those reasons that Hamann actually believes that another old acquaintance, a certain Stephen Ireland, could thrive under the veteran’s tutelage.

Hamann was obviously attracted by characters that were a little bit different. He was enthralled by Jamie Carragher‘s sense of humour and warmed to Sven-Goran Eriksson‘s unorthodox attitude towards life. Perhaps, it was because he was keen to challenge the English stereotype of his nationality, going as far as lying down on the street in order to stop a moving car — and paying them for a lift home in the absence of a taxi — to demonstrate that Germans do have a wild side.

But despite meeting a range of fascinating human beings along the way, Hamann found that Cobh’s enigmatic midfielder lived in a particularly bizarre world.

Ireland was known in the Man City dressing room as Otter, quite simply because Ben Thatcher convincingly argued that he looked like one. During the Grannygate incident, Ireland turned to Hamann for support. He confided that he was thinking about retiring from international football, and was advised against it. And he still went through with it anyway.

Instinctive

“That’s the guy Stephen is,” Hamann says. “Maybe that’s what makes him such a good player because on the pitch he is instinctive.

“He says he doesn’t feel happy going back and leaving his kids and missus in England. It was a big call. People tell me now he wants to come back, I doubt he’ll come back for the Euros. But maybe in future people will forgive him and he’ll come back. I’m sure if you ask him now, he’ll admit he made a mistake. He’ll be hurting this summer watching the team in Poland and the Ukraine. He could and should be part of it, but he’s not.”

He is asked if Trapattoni and Ireland — who seem poles apart on so many levels — could work together.

“We had a similar player in Mehmet Scholl,” Hamann responds. “Trap was hard on him, but he kind of took him under his wing. Mehmet, at times, was like Trap’s son. Ask Trap about Mehmet at his next press conference, his eyes will probably light up. I feel Stephen is a similar player with tremendous technical ability.

“Obviously, Trap likes players he can trust. Power and discipline are two of the main things he asks for. But at the same time, I think Stephen’s ability would make him a perfect match. He would bring the best out of him. So, hopefully after the Euros, they shake hands and move on.”

By then, Hamann has a feeling that Germany could be champions of the continent. He’s not so sure about Spain, citing Barcelona‘s erratic league form as evidence that the spine of the team is now vulnerable, and thinks Joachim Loew‘s side are best placed to capitalise in a tournament which he thinks is harder to win than the World Cup. Of course, he reached the final of the latter competition in 2002, and a lingering regret from his career is that loss to Brazil. “If we’d scored first, I think we’d have won,” he sighs.

Looking forward is the priority now, and after an unfortunate introduction to management at Stockport, the man whom Liverpool fans will remember for his contribution to the 2005 miracle in Istanbul, is targeting happier days in the dugout.

Trapattoni’s philosophy will be prominent in his thoughts as he embarks on that journey.

Irish Independent

Article source: http://www.independent.ie/sport/soccer/premier-league/trap-would-bring-out-the-best-in-stephen-ireland-3024528.html

It’s a story as old as time: alien girl sings about how she’s bored, alien girl steals spaceship for planet earth, girl dances with snakes, elephants, and stereotypical African natives. And she does it all in sequins. It’s just a normal day on the set of the German musical revue Bühne frei für Marika.

This film, which translates as The Stage is Set for Marika, is a series of song and dance numbers featuring Austrian-German singer and actress Marika Rökk. This number is called “Mir Ist so Langweilig” or “I’m So Bored,” and it’s pretty self-explanatory, even without a German translation.

And, as one Metafilter user notes, it looks like we’ve discovered the secret origin of Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal” dance lean.

[via Neatorama and Metafilter]

Article source: http://io9.com/5886243/an-alien-woman-dances-with-a-snake-in-this-weird-german-musical

Berlin

One doesn’t have to go to a Sunday morning world premiere screening at the Berlin Film Festival, now in the last few days of its 62^nd incarnation, to come to the obvious conclusion that  movies have become the world’s religion. Ten o’clock on Sunday morning and the festival venues around the city are packed to overflowing. The churches are largely empty, regardless of whether a film festival is on or not.

The cinema’s priests and priestesses arrive at the Marlene Dietrich Theatre in the glitzy Potsdamer Platz, where twenty years ago there was nothing but No Man’s Land between East and West Berlin, and step out of black BMWs (an official sponsor of the festival) onto the red carpet to the jubilation of the throngs of worshippers.

The Berlinale has long staked out February as its moment to claim the international movie spotlight, but the Oscars marched into the end of the month nearly ten years ago, an invasion that has made it more difficult for this festival to lure Hollywood’s blockbusters.

At least Brangelina was here this time around. The pair came for Jolie’s directorial debut, In the Land of Milk and Honey, a movie concerned with Bosnian war atrocities. Film pilgrims followed them everywhere, from their dinner in a trendy Italian restaurant to the Gendarmemarkt for the conferral of Angelina’s Cinema for Peace award, handed to her by Nobel Peace Prize winner, Mohammed El-Baradei. Even though many of the devout couldn’t get a ticket to enter the cavernous cathedral of St. Marlene for the holy rites of the premiere itself, the faithful could content themselves with a glimpse of a bare Jolie neck and shoulder, or of Pitt’s mustache.

In the Christian epoch music was fostered on a massive, if often uneven, scale. From St. Peter’s to the most distant country church there had to be song—from elaborate masses with choir and orchestra, to the simplest of hymns accompanied on a small, ill-repaired organ. Religion was the driving force of the musical economy—from schoolteachers to international star composers.  While European opera was the Hollywood of pre-industrial Europe, the church provided far more jobs than did the theatre.

The promise of celebrity and wealth drove opera culture, just as it drives that of the movies. But few ascend to the heights occupied by John Williams or A. R. Rahman, both of whom have amassed large fortunes from their movie scores. The musical elite, like Josquin Desprez in the Vatican’s musical Golden Age, is richly rewarded, while thousands below seek to get a hand up to the next run of the hierarchy: from writing music for a student video project; to a short film (if lucky, one admitted to a festival); then an independent movie; perhaps one day a feature; and then, just maybe that call from Hollywood.

At Monday’s Berlinale screening of short films for children twelve years and older, a kid of about eight asked the half-dozen filmmakers arrayed on stage if any of them were rich. It is a safe bet that all had poured years of work and probably all their savings into their respective projects. The questioner eagerly awaited an answer in the affirmative, but the directors on stage remained bemusedly silent.

In times past, the church formed the basis for musical education by funding schools and orphanages (the first musical conservatories). While there are an increasing number of college programs devoted to the study and composition of film music, the real teacher is the medium itself. Children are immersed in the musical accompaniment to moving images from the womb: t.v. advertisments, cartoons, Disney films. The human musical hard-drive is formed most decisively by Hollywood’s repertoire. The sound of cinema, seen and heard first at home, is mother’s milk to millions.

This perhaps partly explains the robust state of proficiency among the ranks of film composers, from the top of the hierarchy to the bottom.  That is not to say that all are equally gifted simply as a result all the watching and listening they’ve done, and that no work is required to hone native talent in the development of the skills required for composing film scores, but rather that the ambient world of cinematic sound teaches us a common language, whose vocabulary and inflections are globally understood.

Last Sunday morning the House of the Cultures of the World—just one of many venues filled with the fascinated and devout—was packed to see the world premier of the much-hyped animated film, Zarafa directed by Rémi Bezançon and Jean-Christoph Lie. In rather predictable, and often charming, fashion the movie tells the story of the first giraffe taken to France in 1827. As in Babar and Bambi, the young animal’s mother is slaughtered at the start of the movie, in Zarafa by a nefarious slave trader who is tracking a runaway slave boy. This boy promises the dying giraffe mother that he will look after her child, the eponymous  Zarafa. The young giraffe is in turn captured not by a trader in humans, but in animals, and the adventure is launched.

The film indulges in pre-packaged feasts of exoticism from around the Mediterranean: a seductive (female) Greek pirate who wields her cutlass and fulsome lips with equal aplomb; a big-nosed, big-toothed Arab camel trader; a tall, dark and handsome Bedouin (spoiler alert: he miraculously recovers from a late-in-the game shot in the back to end his days on a Greek island cavorting with that sexy Greek pirate); twin sacred Indian cows; menacing Turkish galleons; a benevolent pasha; a loin-clothed African with big eyes, which grow to extraordinarily disbelieving dimensions when they confront the corruptions of Europe. This francophone multicultural squad could even teach Disney a thing or two about over-the-top ethnic profiling: from the Arab merchant’s incessant haggling to the man-eating antics of the saucy maritime wench—the biggest, if still minimal, feminine presence in the movie aside from the Buddhist cows. If one hadn’t been long ago inoculated to such nonsense by the vaccinators at Disney, one might get offended by the seemingly harmless tale that is Zarafa.

In contrast to Babar, the Europeans in Zarafa are painted as the bad guys they undoubtedly are; the best Africa can do, however, is to blast the French king Charles X (the monarch who presided over the invasion of Algeria a few years after the giraffe’s arrival) and his dandified court with hippopotamus dung at the unveiling of this latest animal acquisition at his zoo—a scene that delighted the littler kids in the Berlinale audience. The artistic renderings of 19^th-century Alexandria and Paris are particularly striking; those of the African savannah and desert rather flat by comparison, as if broad vistas do not whet the draftsmen’s appetite for precision and hectic composition, from the minarets and battlements at the mouth of the Nile to the beaux arts botanical gardens on the outskirts of Paris.

Zarafa is a French production with the backing of a host of European film funders. Needless to say, all the characters speak French, and will continue to do so unless the film gets distribution internationally and is redubbed into other languages. One is so accustomed to hearing Africans speak English in Disney films that it hardly seems remarkable that they should speak French in a French film. But somehow hearing the language of north and central African colonialism deliver the same old formulae of adventure on the Dark Continent proves quite unsettling, even when these clichés are served with large helpings of African kindness and culture as well as with side-dishes of European depravity. The younger kids were oblivious to such nuances in the welter of European languages that came at them during the premiere: French-speaking characters; English subtitles; and simultaneous German translation over the loudspeakers. In the end though, Zarafa is an almost benign epilogue to the same colonialism at which it occasionally slings animated excrement.

The composer Laurent Perez Del Mar, whose credits include a handful of French features, knows his way around the phrasebook of cinematic Esperanto. For the grand tableaux he favors parallel chords and serpentine melodies through which the Europeans have long portrayed exotics both from the Middle East and Africa.  Sweeping symphonic updrafts and euphoric choral voices lift the balloon over Mediterranean, and almost over the Alps. Blaring horns pile up dissonantly when amok is to be run by beast and bad guy. These symphonic sounds come courtesy of the Macedonian Philharmonic Orchestra; the church of cinema spreading the wealth, even if away from the more expensive ensembles of Western Europe.

Zarafa is competent enough, and never cloying for too long, though almost never unexpected. The story, along with its visual and sonic presentation, tries to beat Hollywood at its own game, with as much talent and a fraction of the budget. A French fairytale touching tentatively on its colonial past, this giraffe, welcomed by the Berlin bear, might just be gobbled up by the Hollywood lion—or picked apart by the vultures. Either way, after spending a morning in cinema’s Sunday school, it feels good to leave the church and get out into the fresh winter air.

Next Week:  Babelsberg’s 100^th Anniversary and the Berlinale: Music for Emil Jannings.

DAVID YEARSLEY is a long-time contributor to CounterPunch and the Anderson Valley Advertiser. His latest book is Bach’s Feet. He can be reached at  dgyearsley@gmail.com

Article source: http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/02/17/zarafa-big-neck-melting-eyes/