isabella

Moriarty’s Missing Room tour, going back to the French Alps and the Swiss border; Annemasse, Château-Rouge, March 3rd 2012.

Moriarty’s international Paris tour: Fondation Suisse, March 11th 2011. An acoustic show for 70 people, inside Le Corbusier’s strangely cosy reception room, with a giant fresco as a backdrop for the stage. The acoustics sound warm and dynamic, sounds bouncing off the curved walls and huge glass facades. Meanwhile warm mulled wine is served outside to the audience. The dressing rooms...

Moriarty’s international Paris tour: Fondation Deutsch de la Meurthe, March 10th 2011. An acoustic show for 120 people, Black Betty at the balcony, the audience sitting on the wooden floor, the high-pitched roof and the chandeliers towering in darkness…

« Before Dylan »: Moriarty with Wayne Standley, playing songs by Woody Guthrie, Hank Williams, Blind Willie McTell, Mississippi John Hurt, Chuck Berry, Johnny Cash, and Robert Zimmerman too! Cité de la Musique, Paris, March 8th 2012.

Digging into the American soil, looking for Robert Zimmerman’s musical roots… Woodie Guthrie, Hank Williams, Mississipi John Hurt, Chuck Berry, Doc Watson, Robert Johnson, Big Joe Williams, Leadbelly, Elmore James, Johnny Cash, Blind Willie McTell… « Before Dylan » project. Moriarty’s Studio, Paris, February 2012.

The Velvet Underground played by Rodolphe Burger & friends, featuring Rosemary on « Heroin ». Théâtre de la Cité Internationale, Paris, February 2012.

Moriarty on tour, Gare du Midi, Biarritz, 18.02.2012. After crossing the Saint-Emilion vineyards, we reach Euskal Herria, finally!

The Missing Room tour goes back on the roads of France: Théâtre-Auditorium de Poitiers… a wonderful place, building (by portuguese architect Carrilho da Graça), team, acoustics. Three days ago the theatre was accidentally flooded by 70000 liters of water – like a monsoon or a tropical rain, they said – but the staff managed to organize the show anyway. And the audience finished...

In a weird house playing Isabella for strangers having dinner in front of us (outside, big TV spotlights flood the neighbours’ windows too, so they have to close their blinds if they want to sleep!)

On the way back from Australia, we took a short break; six days of rehearsals, writing music with Christine Salem & her maloya band, Vincent, Harry, David on kayamb, rouleur, triangle, picker… Moriarty on tour, Ile de la Réunion, January 2012.

Moriarty on tour, Reunion Island, January 2012. 6 days of rehearsals with Christine Salem & her musicians, & little Zoe too, trying to grasp that maloya rythm. A nightly concert of Sophie & Christine Salem in the middle of the sugarcane fields above St-Pierre, Kabar Boissy. Dust and smoke and swaying bodies until three. Up in the Cilaos circus, between the cliffs of dark stone and...

Moriarty’s with Christine Salem & her musicians, Ile de la Réunion, January 2012; today we’re playing with Zoe on the cigar-box guitar.

January 22nd 2012, Ile de la Réunion, the « Saline » sessions: Moriarty rehearses for future concerts with Christine Salem & her musicians, Harry Vincent and David on the percussions… guitars, double-bass and harmonica meet kayamb, rouleur and picker percussions. there’s also a kabossi luth from Comores. And the voices of Rosemary and Christine Salem, in creole and english.

Queensland here we come! Our dear Tania welcomes us at the airport. On the way in, Brisbane’s skyscrapers glimmer in the sun; a storefront says « Jimmy Possum »… maybe a distant aboriginal cousin? Our home for tonight will be a mansion in the New Farm area, surrounded by fat tropical trees which exhale a sweetly suffocating animal smell. Down at the Powerhouse there’s no trace...

The Australian tour goes on… after a quick flight from Melbourne we’re in Sydney watching the monorail hiss overhead and with only two hours left before the soundcheck we scatter around the city, Surrey Hills and Bondi… then we reach the Hyde Park Barracks, former prison where the festival takes place – our dressing rooms are set inside the courtrooms where incoming...

Australian summer in Melbourne. Moriarty plays acoustic shows at PBS radio studios and Reading’s bookstore in St Kilda. January 2012.

Roaming through the red desert… Moriarty’s australian tour, January 2012.

A gigantic picnic for 3000 people. a feast of french wines and pastries. Lush and mighty australian trees and flowers, lemon-scented gum trees, banya-banya prehistoric pines from Queensland. A cloister without the monks, a mansion with the australian flag flying at the top. Somewhere in one of the bedrooms, the lady who owned all that garden of Eden perished in the flames, a candle falling onto...

Heat and sporadic rain. A gap through the McDonnell ranges. Aboriginal families roam across the dry bed of the Todd River, which flows only once every decade… Alice Springs, Northern Territory, Australia jan. 2012.

Flying over the red desert. Trails and songlines from 30000 feet up. Melbourne to Alice Springs, Australia, January 2012.