MARCH
/ APRIL - 2004
Dear
Friends,
Belated Easter greetings to you all. It’s a late journal as we have been
working and touring and also needed some recovery time.
OCEANA TOUR
We are back now after a tour in Singapore and Australia. This was our first
ever concert tour down-under, and what a great welcome we received by everybody
there.
To begin we rehearsed in Oslo for a few days working on the new set list for
this tour.
This was the tour of “firsts” as we also had for the first time
the wonderful Irish singer and harp player Saoirse, as well as our new tour
manager Mike De Lisle. With this new team we had extensive rehearsals in Oslo
before leaving for our premier concert in Singapore. We performed in the new
Esplanade Concert Hall, which was a beautiful venue. We arrived on St Patrick’s
Day and got a great Irish welcome by our promoter Hugh McAteer, who even dressed
in green for the occasion!
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Sadly we had only a little more than 24 hours in Singapore, and hope that our next trip will allow us some tourist time. One great treat for us was a special visit from the oboist Simon Emes, who used to perform and record with us. He is now principal oboist with the Kuala Lumpur Philharmonic Orchestra, and flew down to be with us on this night. He joined us to perform 2 songs from our White Stones album, Poéme and Celebration.
After Singapore the main band flew to the Gold Coast to recover and prepare for the first Australian concert, while Rolf, Fionnuala, Mike and our sound engineer Dag Stephen flew to Sydney for promotion, including interviews, in-store performance and signing. We then flew back up to the Gold Coast to join the others to perform.
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During our stay in the Gold Coast the boys got to experience “surf’s up”, as a typhoon passed by the coast and brought the waves up to house high! They also got a chance to flex their jet-lagged muscles, roller-blading. We even got to visit a local wildlife park to say hello to some very friendly kangaroos and Koala bears. The concert in the Twin Towns was also a sell-out and a wonderful first experience of the warmth of an Australian audience.
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From there it was down to Sydney for the concert in the Opera House. To say we were excited would be a gross understatement! I think most artists dream of performing in this wonderful and legendary venue, and we could not believe this dream was coming true for us.
Everything about Sydney Opera House is special, it draws you in and you can’t help but fall in love with it. Inside, and especially backstage, is as lovely as the outside. Our enormous dressing rooms had glorious views over the Sydney harbor, and were so comfortable it was nearly possible to forget we had a concert to perform! To be on that stage looking out at a full house was something we will always cherish, even though it’s a big 2700-seater auditorium, it still retains a sense of intimacy with the audience. After the concert we had a meet and greet which lasted almost 2 hours! It was fantastic that we got to meet so many wonderful people, who made us feel very welcome and at home.
The morning after was a rush to the airport to get to Melbourne for a concert there. We performed in their beautiful Town Hall concert venue. This was a brilliant hall with the most wonderful acoustics. As with the others, we had a wonderful time performing there and so appreciated the audience that came to see us. Melbourne is a beautiful city and we had some time to enjoy it the day after the concert, where we even found a beautiful park close to the hotel. After our long winters it was wonderful to wander around enjoying the sunshine and beautiful weather.
Then on to Perth for our final concert. There we met our wonderful friend Dorothy Lee. Dorothy was the first person to write to us from Australia after she heard our song Nocturne. She wrote such a fantastic letter to us back then that we have stayed in touch, and it was a pleasure to catch up with her and her friends. Dorothy is possibly the most active retired person we have met, with an unbelievable energy. She even put together her own flyers and publicity for the Perth concert.
Perth was also great hall with wonderful audience. After the meet-and-greet we got some time together for our last night with our promoter Tony Brady and all his team. Sadly then we all departed for home the following day.
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We are so grateful to Tony, his staff and Universal in Australia for taking us all the way down and for allowing us to achieve such special moments and memories to cherish. Also, a special thank you to Richard and Cyrus from Universal Records, who gave us fantastic support and helped make our CD, "Dreamcatcher", reach #1 on the Classical Charts there.
NEW
PRODUCTION
Since our return Rolf and I are back planning the production of our new and
5th CD
We hope to begin the final recording end of May. We will keep you posted.
We are also getting ready now for our 7th Korean tour, which will take place early May. We will perform for the first time with the fabulous Korean opera singer Young-ok Shin.
WEB
SHOP
We have had a special Secret Garden tee-shirt made by our website artist Tone
Aanderaa. It will be available very shortly through our web site in time for
the summer weather! We think it’s very beautiful and features the tree
that we love so much on this site. Apart from the usual regular and big sizes
we have also had a special lady’s fit made. We will let you all know as
soon as they arrive in our warehouse in the US ready for distribution from there.
Love from,
Fionnuala and Rolf
