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





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I'm an EMI Classics Artist :)

Blog entry 20th of May 2011

We have to stop meeting like this...
You can only guess were I am right now. That's right - up in the sky! I've just answered 13 emails and gone through my itinerary for the next 12 days, when I remembered that I hadn't written that blog entry about my EMI signing that I've been wanting to do for some weeks now.




19th of April was a truly exciting day for me. I flew over to London in the morning, checked in to my hotel in Kensington, went for some express stress-relaxing shopping, walked around one of my favorite neighborhoods in London (behind Royal Albert Hall) and tried to really enjoy and memorize everything so that I can think back on this day when I get old, and then - at 6pm - I entered the great EMI building. And from that on everything became very overwhelming. So many enthusiastic and happy people cheering, drinking champagne, eating EMI and trumpet muffins. Eric (the boss), Andrew (the A&R), Ed (my manager) and myself signed the contract - huge moment for me.
After the big gathering were I got to meet everyone from all the different departments there was a nice dinner with my amazing management team (Kathryn, Ed, Clare and Clare ;)) and some of the EMI Classics people. I can't wait to start working with everyone (well, I've actually already started and it's great!) and look forward to work out some new and exciting artistic concepts and record ideas.

I only have one thing to say - you're allowed to dream - and before you know it, it might just come true!

Yours from the road,
Tine :)

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SK841, destination: Zurich

Blog entry 27th of April

'There's no use trying' she said. 'One can't believe impossible things'. (Alice)
'I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was younger I did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

I love this quote. It's funny, but true. Always believe, always. Your goals in life will never be achieved if you don't believe they will. It's a while since I read the book about Alice, but I always carry with me the Queen's words. At Oslo airport I bought myself a book before boarding the plane, and what a nice surprise that the first words in the book were actually this particular quote! I had to include it in this blog entry ;)

I'm at the moment a big Kurt Weill fan. I've been for quite a while actually, but just bought myself a CD with Anne Sofie von Otter recorded in the early nineties, and wow! What a voice for this music. Listening to it at the moment ;) I could of course go on and on about the music I love and artists I really admire, but let's take one at a time, shall we?

At the end; just a little encouragement to all of you loud talking gentlemen at planes, not everything is meant for everyone to hear...

Ciao,
Tine :)

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On my way home from Brno

Blog entry 16th of April

In the air between Vienna and Oslo

I'm up in the sky again. It's been a lot of that lately... I'm sure I've already told you that I'm supposedly afraid of flying - well, I've just decided to forget all about that. It's no use when you spend so much time up here as I do. Besides, they say that flying is more safe than driving a car so...
Today the weather is perfect, no clouds which means that you can see everything that's happening on the ground as well. Not that I look down, I mean - hello - I'm afraid of heights... There's a lot of thing I'm scared of. But hey, I'm not complaining, that's just life :)

I've had the most amazing week in Brno. Brno is situated only one and a half hour driving from Vienna, and it's the second largest city in the Czech Republic. When I travel I always get a feeling of the city I'm in, if I feel comfortable, safe etc. Brno looks like a miniature version of Vienna and feels warm, welcoming and definitely both safe and comfortable. The orchestra is good, but most importantly the musicians are so generous both with their musicality and friendliness. I can say the same about their Chief conductor Alexandar Markovìc, a joy to work with. Two enjoyable concerts in a nice concert hall (a small version of Musikverein in Vienna, same architect), with a lovely and warm audience - can you ask for anything better?

It's time for my Easter holiday next week. Looking forward to spending time with my mother and little sister, I've been away so much the last month, so good to spend some nice days at home together. Lot of things to be done in our house, so I will try to be as useful as possible... Let's see how that goes!

Just some pictures from Hanover last week:


















Lovely carrot flowers!
And here from Brno:






Not easy to stay awake backstage after a long day... Don't think the Schubert Symphony had anything to do with it...









That was all from up here,
Tine :)


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In a car in Germany

Blog entry 8th of April

I just fell asleep in the car. The Finnish singers were talking in Finnish, the car is very comfortable, the sun is shining through the window so it gets warm inside the car - but most importantly it got a bit late last night... woke up by my own snoring (quite embarrassing...)!
I'm in Hannover playing with the wonderful NDR Radiophilharmonie. They have a Norwegian Chief Conductor, Eivind Gullberg Jensen, and he invited us to his apartment after the concert last night. It's so nice after a performance to have some social time with the others. Extra special this week is that they have a visiting Norwegian Concertmaster, so a real Norwegian trio in front - fun ;)

As I were saying we are in the car. New concert tonight, new place but same reportoire. Hummel is a great piece to play. The concert last night was definitely fun, full hall and nice atmosphere, but some concerts I find it hard to focus - last night was one of those. I guess when you play concerts all the time it's hard to have the same concentration and focus in all of them, but I hope that it will feel better tonight. Because that's the thing, even though I might not have complete focus it still goes well (most of the times anyway... :)), it's just that I want to feel good, feel great actually, because there is nothing better than a performance were you just forget everything else and live in the music.

A friend will visit me tonight, always great to have a friendly face among the audience ;)
Including a picture of the Maestro and myself trying to figure out how to take pictures with this iPad.






That's all for now. Will enjoy tonight, try to focus - and at my early flight home tomorrow I will definitely stay awake, snoring among total strangers on a plane that IS embarrassing :)
Tine
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Skopje

Blog entry 1st of April

Had the earliest start ever this morning. Pick up time from hotel 2:50 am, I call that in the middle of the night... still alive though, waiting for our flight to Vienna to start boarding. If everything goes as planned I will end up in Flekkefjord, Norway, around 3 o'clock this afternoon. Just have to stop in Vienna, Frankfurt and Stavanger first ;)

But, the reason I'm writing is that I have to tell you about Skopje. I really enjoyed the two days in the capital of Macedonia. Such a nice place with a beautiful old city (our hotel was situated in that part) and so warm and welcoming people in the orchestra! Had an amazing lunch with Roza from the orchestra and the conductor at a great (and very cheap compared to Norway) French restaurant sitting outside in 20 degrees celsius!

Also so nice that one of my very best friends that I've known since we were both 6 years old, Dagrun, could come with me ;)

Here are som pictures:












Boarding now....
Tine ;)
Alexander the Great Airport, Skopje


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Video from Røros

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Home

Blog entry 21st of March

The sun is shining!! Wonderful ;)
Just finished three hours of press for a new release that I'm part of. The Staff Band of the Norwegian Armed Forces' new CD is full of Nordic music fir wind band. Together with conductor Ole Kristian Ruud I contribute with one trumpet concerto by Jukka Linkola. Great piece! Loved the process and looking forward to performing it, hopefully this autumn ;)

Wednesday last week was my Royal Albert Hall debut - Classic FM Live was a blast! Really enjoyed it. Friday was different but also great! My quartet, TTHQ, played at Studentimpulser in Bergen, and we had the greatest time. Including a video here of my band mates jamming backstage...

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Backstage at Grieghallen

It's me again. And quite some extraordinary days in Røros - such an amazing looking place! Lovely to meet up with good musician friends and also to meet new ones ;)







And I also wanted to answer some questions that people ask me a lot (also here at the blog comment section ;) )

My instruments:
Bb trumpet - Bach Stradivarius 37
C trumpet - Yamaha Xeno Chicago
Eb trumpet - Schilke
Piccolo - Yamaha and Schagerl

Mouthpiece:
Bach 1 1/4 C

Thanks for lovely comments about my Carnegie Debut! My last encore was Libertango by Astor Piazzolla. And of course I would love to come to all the countries in the world and play ... ;) just check out my web site for concert dates.

Rehearsal now - have to be on stage.

Tine ;)

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Between Oslo and Røros

Blog entry 9th of March

Is it really possible that time are flying by at this horribly rapid speed?!? Already 8 days of March has been filled with concerts and a lot of thinking. Sometimes it feels like over 50% of what happens in my life actually goes on inside my head... Sometimes it's cozy in there, other times quite hectic - and right now it's the latter. A lot of stuff to sort out, I might be making things bigger than they actually are, but at least these 5 hours at the train gives me a lot of time to explore every single thought up there ;)

I'm looking forward to coming to Røros, it will be my first time! A festival with so many friends so I don't really see another option than having a great time.

For all you Norwegians out there reading this you should also start to follow the blog tenThing has just started! Promise you that you will get to know us all better. Maybe you watched the Norwegian Grammy on Saturday? We absolutely loved playing there!
Anyway, here's a picture of me from backstage:





Wishing you all the best from inside my head - in the middle of all my thoughts ;)
Tine



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