Happy Hu Year! And Happy NEW Year too! We played CoSM’s Full Moon Blue Moon New Years Eve party with Alex Grey and fam last night to ring in the year. Quite the lovely all encompassing ceremony! Here are a couple of photos with us and Alex:
Today we head up North to do a ‘semi-private’ show in Sutton, Quebec….onward
By the way…Our ‘Trapeze’ album is popping up on a few ‘Best of 2009’ lists here and there such as these two links:
Oh, to summarize a year…what a strange process. Years are the selection of segments of time that blend into the whole. They, and time for that matter, are the strange encapsulation of human perception of the life process…the measurements of moments of birth, growth and disintegration of form before that which is being observed becomes the material and conceptual basis for newly generated life. With the daily and yearly enshroudments of “time” we lose sight of the whole…an expansive, unidentifiable universe in which time is irrelevant. With that said, 2009 has been a phenomenal year.
The expression ‘hindsight is 20/20’ has been accepted and repeated and adored and unquestioned for decades (at the very least). But how often does that expression truly apply? It is applicable to situations that are fairly void of emotion, but sometimes hindsight skews situations even further than their initial tilts (such as when brooding lovers who are close to the end of a tempestuous relationship go their separate ways after a fight to brood, or brew, their quarrel).
However, the hindsight that us HuDosters have gleaned from the storm-ridden end of our tour is clear as polar cap day. What follows are the lessons learned. In the midst of driving three and a half miles over the course of six hours on black ice in the mountains of California while witnessing numerous accidents occur, it became very obvious that even in traditionally warm locations, places of higher altitude should be regarded in a different light. If one is heading anywhere near the northeast US in December, snow tires are an essential ingredient. Also, at that time of year, never book shows in the North East in rapid succession that are more than a handful of miles apart.
Lessons learned. Apologies extended to the lovely people who did not get to attend the cancelled shows.
We toured for eight months out of the year, performing at a good number of wonderful performing arts centers and festivals (Including headlining NPR’s World Fusion Festival, FloydFest, the Levitt Pavilions, Tim Robbins’ WTF Fest, and many others). In May we released our new album ‘Trapeze’ which was produced by Grammy winner Malcolm Burn (Emmylou Harris, Peter Gabriel, Bob Dylan) that was recorded right after I (Moksha Sommer) was diagnosed with a brain tumor and prior to surgery. I have gone through an astounding healing process using music as the primary tool to regain language abilities. Every year is a strangely intriguing mixed brew in a bucket…the question, of course, is whether it is half empty or half full. I have done a census and the members of HuDost think it is definitely half full and getting fuller.