January - February 2000

Hello everybody, we hope that you are all doing well in this special
millenium year.

In the past two months we have been forunate to have experienced the most rewarding concerts of our carreers to date. The first one took place in Rolf's home town, Kristiansand,in Norway at the beginning of January. This was a special millenium concert hosted by the Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra, and a local choir of 160 singers.It was just fantastic for us to perform on home soil with such a huge and powerful line up. From the very first rehearsal to the final performance we had a wonderful time and all 4000 people in the audience gave us a fantastic reception.

We have said before that it can be harder to perform for your home audience because sometimes as an artist you feel that you have more to prove, so in the case of Kristiansand, it meant that the performance had a greater emotional reponse from us. Speaking of home towns, we do hope that during this year we will have an opportunity to perform in Ireland as we have not worked there since winning the Eurovision Song Contest in 95. If that happens it will be a very special moment for Fionnuala and her family, who have yet to see a Secret Garden performance!

After the concert we stayed and worked in Cross studio.This is where all the real creative side of our music takes place and where we prepare demos for all our recordings. Its special for us to work there because of Alf Emil Elk. He is a true friend, a wonderfull engineer, and has a deep understanding of us, and how we need to work. Apart from that we always have great fun with lots of laughs.

This was a very important session for us as we had not been in studio for a year due to all the touring commitments in 99 and so we were very anxious to know that we could be creative again. Rest of January was spent in Oslo with our US promoter David Bucksner reviewing the past year and planning ahead.

The early part of February was spent in a flurry of last minute preparations for our debut performances in Hong Kong. Doing a full 2 hour show with a symphony orchesrtra as well as our own band requires a team of people co-ordinating and tending to all the many details and problems that can arise, not to mention the volumes of music scores etc. to be sent in time for pre-orchestra rehearsals.

Everyhing was finally set and we arrived on February 14th (Valentines day) to allow for 1 day of rigging, a press conference and tv/radio interviews and then 3 days of long hard rehearsals. No we did't get to celebrate Valentines!! no time !

The three concerts were performed to capacity audiences in the Queen
Elizabeth Stadium and were a real thrill for us. The orchestra was wonderful to work with helped by their great conducter Yip Wing Sie. We feel we have made friends with everybody there and look forward to returning for more performances in the future. This also was the first time for most of our band to visit Hong Kong and they made great use
of any spare time available, using their credit cards!! and sightseeing. Everybody fell in love with Hong Kong and all look forward to returning.
Our oboe player Henrik missed the trip as he and his partner Paulin had a beautiful healthy baby boy on February 26th. However Simon Emes our original oboist kindly stepped in at short notice and flew from Kuala Lumpur where he now works as principal oboe player in the Malaysian Symphony Orchestra, to perfom with us. It was terrific to see Simon again and to know that he is doing brilliantly in Malaysia.

After the Hong Kong trip we recovered, and then began working on new music making this a very important creative period for us.

March will also be spent writing and creating aswell as a week in New York planning next falls US tour and other engagements. As soon as details are finalised we will let you all know.

Stay well and thank you all for your continued support.
Lots of love ,
Fionnuala and Rolf