Monday, 30 July 2012

New website!

Blog entry 30th of July Hi everyone! The summer is here - but not my holiday... I'm very lucky to be traveling around this summer and play concerts. (My holiday will be in October - at a beach somewere warm...) I just came home from some nice days in Yorkshire on the English countryside. In between rehearsals and concerts I went for walks in beautiful landskape - felt like I was in a Jane Austen novel :) On wednesday I'm off to Rome, and then Germany and Nothern Irland will be the next stops this week. I actually have a lot to tell you all about my spring and summer so far, but that will have to wait until next time I write. For now I just wanted to let you in on exciting work on my new web site! I'm really pleased with how it's looking and all the features - can't wait to show you. It will be up and running any day now... Yours from the road, Tine x
Me with artistic director of Ryedale Festival, Chris Glynn.

Saturday, 21 January 2012

A new year - a fresh start!

Blog entry 19th of January 2012

A new year - a fresh start!

I have decided that I will quite promising to write more often, maybe then I'm actually going to do it... The autumn went by in a spin, like a whirlwind! Suddenly Christmas was upon me and I completely dived into the holiday season with no thoughts of work what so ever (yeah - really! Not easy, but for once I managed to do so...)
So many things have happened since I last wrote a blog post, and I will not use this space to guide you chronologically through all my performances, but I would still like to mention some of them.
Living in a bus with tenThing for two weeks is definitely worth mentioning! We all felt like real rock stars, having our very own bunk bed on the top floor in our jumbo cruiser double decker bus... Very glamorous! (do you hear the irony in my voice?) Even though we lived like a proper rock band and played concerts (and had master classes and work shops) every single day, we turned more and more into a real ladies club. By the end of the tour everyone was knitting, shopping only exercise outfits and running shoes, not to mentioned we actually used the stuff we bought and went for a run almost every day. No drinking, no smoking... What a thrill for our tour manager (male) and light/video guy (also male), they thought ten girls would be fun!

The countries I got to visit autumn 2011 were Italy, Germany, Denmark, Switzerland,
United Kingdom, Monaco and not to mention so many great places in Norway I had not been before. This is one of the real privileges in my job, I get payed to visit new and wonderful places around the world!

Right now I'm in Belgium, preparing for my first concerts of 2012. This Spring will take me to many new (and old) places, among them Canada, United States, Hong Kong, Japan, UK, China, Ukraine, Germany... :) it's going to be a good spring (I hope)!

One absolutely thrilling experience that started this autumn and will continue throughout the spring of 2012 is the release on my very first album for EMI Classics. It's called Storyteller and it's a collection of songs written originally for the voice. I play with the amazing (I do love them) Royal Liverpool Philharmonic with conductor Eivind Aadland and I also have Håvard Gimse( the one and only!) with me on the disc. It's already released in Scandinavia and Germany/Switzerland/Austria, and will be released in the rest of the world this year. Look out for it!

Well, that's all for now. I have to get back to my practicing.

All the best from the road,
Tine :)

Tuesday, 27 September 2011

Saturday, 3 September 2011

Finally made another video... :)

Hi there,
Finally figured out how to use iMovie on my iPad - great stuff! And quite easy.... Here comes first video. It's from my tour with pianist Håvard Gimse February 2011.
Enjoy :)

Tine


YouTube Video

- Tine Thing Helseth 2011 -

Friday, 5 August 2011

We will never be the same

There are those moments were you just know that the world will never be the same. Something happens that makes you think that there is no thing more precious than life itself. I love what I do - but without life I couldn't do it. Without life I wouldn't be here.
Friday the 22nd of July started out as a normal day. I woke up in Liverpool, pretty tired after three long and amazing days of recording, and had rehearsal with the Liverpool Phil and Carl Davis for a concert the next day. Just when I get off stage I feel my phone vibrating in my handbag, I ignore it. It rings again and I check the caller ID, my mother, I ignore it again thinking I can call her back when I get to the hotel. She call a third time, and I answer - the first thing she says is that there's been a bomb in Oslo. I think she must be joking, she has too, this can't be happening. I turn on the TV as soon as I come to my room and the pictures on SkyNews live from Oslo are just unbelievable. This isn't my city, my home, this can't be happening in Oslo - the city of peace. My mother calls again, and she assures me that all my friends are safe - good. I talk to her for a long time.
That evening I've got tickets for Harry Potter, the last film. I'm a huge fan of the books, but seeing the world collapsing on screen on a day like this? I meet up with someone from the orchestra and we go together. Everyone has heard about the bomb. My mum calls again - there is a guy shooting at the labour party's youth camp at an island. This can't be happening. I watch the movie. It's really amazing (I have to watch it again, my head wasn't there the whole time...) and I go to bed. I wake up the next morning,for a couple of minutes I'm happy - then I remember. The bomb. The shooting. I call my mother. Almost 90 people dead. Murdered. Young people. It's a bit too much, and I'm so far away. I go for a walk, every front page of every newspaper has pictures from Oslo. I decide to focus on the concert that evening. I dedicate one of the songs I play to the victims and their families and I play with a black ribbon.
Next day on the plane, the tears comes.

Monday is a strange day. Out on the streets people care for each other, even though we are total strangers. You feel the love. Around 5pm I get a phone call - two hours later I play for over 200 000 people in front of the city hall. All there to pay respect, to show the man who did this that we are stronger together, to say that we love each other no matter religion or skin color. It's like I'm not there. When I play the very opening of my piece, solo trumpet before the piano joins me, everyone lifts the roses they have in their hands. Then I just close my eyes. I'm not there. My voice is, my music is, but I have to be strong. I tell myself I can cry later - right now I have to forget I'm there and just play. It's definitely one of the strongest and most special moments in my life. I feel privileged to have felt, seen and tasted air full of so many emotions - most of all love.




There are so many other amazing things I want to tell you all about from the last month. And I will. I just needed this entry for these emotions. I'm lucky, I didn't personally know anyone who died, but I know people who did. Norway is a small country, not so many people, we are all affected by this.

We will never be the same after 22nd of July 2011.

Love,
Tine


- Tine Thing Helseth 2011 -

Wednesday, 6 July 2011

tenThing at the mall

Just wanted to share this short video with you. From a festival in Kongsberg in Norway in January ;)

YouTube Video

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Tuesday, 21 June 2011

Back on the road

Blog entry 21st of June 2011

I love meeting people I know at airports! Today I met two amazing musicians at Gardermoen. While checking in, the great jazz trumpeter Mathias Eick calls my name from the line next to me. On his way to LA to play :) His record The Door is truly amazing - I highly recommend it! Always nice to bump into Mathias (this is not the first time!) always smiling - even when he discovered that I could skip the incredibly long line at security and use the fast track...
Arriving in the SAS lounge, working on my iPad and waiting for my flight to start boarding - who other than Arve Tellefsen walks in! Great Norwegian violinist, has been around forever. He was one of the first to "discover" me, I think I was 16 years old the first time he invited me to play at his two festivals in Norway. He might be in his seventies, but he is so full of youth and spirit that you wouldn't notice. He and his violin was on their way to Alicante - I got instantly jealous, will imagine it's a tiny bit warmer there than in Glasgow (which is were I'm heading today).

So much has happened lately. May was full of concerts, and I truly had some wonderful musical experiences that month! Another thing that happened was that my best friend since I was 6 years old, Dagrun, got married. The horrible thing - I couldn't be there... I played an important concert that day and couldn't cancel.So what I did, was that I arranged all the music for the ceremony and made a video greeting/speech with a lot of pictures from we were kids :) I'm really sad I missed it, but I know that they both knew my heart was there with them. I wish them all the best in the world!

Sometimes it's hard to know how to make all your different aspect of life go together, but usually it works out in the end.
Tine :)

PS: me and Dagrun 11 years old





- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad