Below you can read the full article, if you speak German!

The Group are Peter Broderick, Casper Clausen, Francesco Donadello, Martyn Heyne and myself.

First up will be another Berlin show, this time at the Urban Spree art space on June 15th. Then, we will heard to Denmark and the Roskilde Festival, where we will play three shows over June 30th, July 1st and July 2nd. Not bad for a band who have only played one concert and have no songs!

Hope to see you there.

15/06/2013 – Urban Spree / Berlin, Germany
30/06/2013 – Roskilde Festival / Roskilde, Denmark
01/07/2013 – Roskilde Festival / Roskilde, Denmark
02/07/2013 – Roskilde Festival / Roskilde, Denmark

Catch one of the shows of the May tour to get an advance copy!

You can stream it here:

The album will be available for sale at the London edition of the Denovali Swingfest this coming weekend, as well as at all my tour dates in May. Also being released in May is the 3xCD /5xLP collection of my previous three albums, entitled simply “2006-2012″.

Enjoy!

The other is for the Hungarian website Phenomenon, which can be view here, if you speak Hungarian!

After watching it and finding it extremely moving, I would now like to share it with you.

First will be something of a “warm-up” show, testing out new material at the Scala in London as part of the Denovali Swingfest. On the next six shows I will be supporting Olafur Arnalds in some large concert houses in the Netherlands, France and Germany. Then I will continue the tour with Poppy Akroyd or Carlos Cipa as support and will be covering quite a bit of Europe.

Hope to see you at one of the shows!

It’s a great privilege for me to be able to create a work for full orchestra in a building as esteemed as The Royal Opera House, and also to continue my collaboration with David Dawson – something that began at the Muziektheater with the Dutch National Ballet last year and will hopefully continue on into the future.

The London dates are listed below, although tickets will not go on sale until 9th July. Being performed in the same evening is the Stravinsky masterpiece, The Rite of Spring, and Wayne McGregor’s Chroma.

Saturday 9 November 2013, 7.00pm
Wednesday 13 November 2013, 7.30pm
Tuesday 19 November 2013, 7.30pm
Wednesday 20 November 2013, 7.30pm
Saturday 23 November 2013, 1.30pm
Saturday 23 November 2013, 7.00pm

Royal Opera House Official Website
David Dawson Official Website

Firstly, Nicolo Fonte will premiering his new work using a version of “Azure” with live piano score at the Tulsa Ballet, USA on May 3rd. The piece will then run until May 12th. For more information, please click here.

Secondly, my ongoing work with the wondeful David Dawson will bear its next fruit: “Opus 11″, to be performed at the Semperoper Dresden, Germany on the 10th July. This duet will use the my composition “183 Times”, also from the Digressions album. For more information, please click here or here.

Please note, I will not be performing live at either of these performances, but they are bound to be fantastic evenings.

Berlin is the city I have chosen to live in for almost five years now. It’s a great city, full of great people. Another extremely nice thing about it is that in the majority of the districts, you can take a nice relaxing walk or cycle without being bombarded by Macdonalds, Starbucks, etc. etc. Being lucky enough to travel around a lot, I see a lot of cities and it’s really quite incredible how homogeneous they have all become. When I return to Berlin, one of the nicest things about it is that I instantly know I have arrived – it looks different, it feels different. It’s certainly not the most attractive city in the world, but what can you expect with the history that it has? And besides, anyone who has spent enough time here will tell you that there is a certain charm to its cold, industrial architecture.

The city is changing, and extremely rapidly. It’s easy to be nostalgic about the past, but having only been here for five years, I am not even really part of that past. Having said that, even in the short time I have been here, it has changed dramatically. But change is good, its exciting – another thing that is so nice about the city is the speed in which it evolves. I, for one, sure am happy that there are so many great restaurants in Berlin. And you can get a good cup of coffee now, which sure is nice too. “Gentrification” is a word you hear a lot, and I suppose some people would see the above as an example of that, but the way I see it, if somebody wants to open a bar, a restaurant, or a shop that they think will benefit the community, then I say good luck to them.

Despite what seems to be a global vision of Berlin as some kind of mythical dream city, especially for creative people, that view is at best outdated. It’s unbelievably hard to find a room or an apartment to rent. Prices are rising, but it’s still cheap compared to other capitals – the problem is the insane amount of competition for every possible space that one could put a bed and a sink. Its tough out there – I’ve heard it described as a “property crisis”, but I have no idea who decides those things and what it takes to get that definition. As hard as it is becoming to simply find a place to live, I can’t help but think the term was fabricated in order to justify the new style of Berlin apartments being build all around. These are apartments with elevators to lift your car (yes, your car…) to the floor that you live on, and other such amenities that are so ludicrous that they are almost laughable. These kind of apartments are not being built for the people who need them – rather for people who could live anywhere and afford anything.

Despite that, I understand that this kind of thing is, sadly, inevitable, and sooner or later Berlin will become like any other popular capital, where its own citizens are priced out their own cities. I also understand that by moving here, I am in some way part of the problem and I understand the hypocrisy of all this, but when I read a recent news story, I felt like things were going a little too far.

You can read the article in English here.

This is just the latest story concerning the privatisation of the riverbank in what is/was a great area, and one that was frequently used by tourists and locals alike. But there is something about this specific story which is just one step to far. To rip down part of a historic structure that represents something worth remembering and contemplating in order to build YET MORE luxury apartments is, I feel, almost just like one big “fuck you” from the government of Berlin to the people who have been fighting these kind of developments for years. And that is the reason I think you should sign this petition. You can’t fight everything, you have to pick your battles, but to me this just shows how audacious the government (or governments of the western world, I should say) have become. They KNOW that this will be hugely unpopular, they just don’t care, because the public’s apathy has reached such a critical that they feel like they can do whatever the hell they want. Remember that the government should be there for the benefit of citizens, and not the other way around. So come on, just sign the petition so I don’t have to ride my bike past that horrible, ugly building that they propose – one that will act only as a representation of how callous and fearless our “representatives” have become.

I have no idea if a petition can make the slightest bit of difference – but its worth a try, isn’t it?

SIGN HERE