Category: Night & Day

THURSDAY 19 | Think opera is the preserve of posh types? Think again. This month, a shy 23-year-old wearing a hooded top and trailed by a Staffordshire terrier made international headlines when he was discovered singing spine-tingling renditions of everything from Nessun Dorma to Hallelujah outside a British supermarket. Maxwell Thorpe, dubbed ‘Chavarotti’ by the tabloids, has amassed almost 100,000 hits on YouTube and prefers to do his singing on the streets of northern England than on reality TV shows. Staffordshire terriers may be in short supply for this evening’s operatic exercise at Doors, but Ai Iwasaki (mezzo soprano) and Kiyong Ryu (tenor) can still conjure forth the very best of Puccini, Tosti and Donizetti.

WHO: Ai Iwasaki (mezzo soprano) and Kiyong Ryu (tenor)
WHAT: Opera
WHERE: Doors, Street 84 &47
WHEN: 8:30pm September 19
WHY: “Staid middle age loves the hurricane passions of opera.” – Mason Cooley

THURSDAY 19 | Guitarist Diego Dimarques is perched on a barrelhouse stool, sipping bottles of Angkor and playing Spanish jazz at the finest music room in Phnom Penh. Clean-shaven with greying, shoulder-length hair, the 50-ish-year-old guitar player could easily pass for a son of Jose Reyes, the world-famous flamenco guitarist whose five sons – Nicolas, Canut, Paul, Patchai and Andre – comprise a majority of the Gipsy Kings. “There are rumours that I was part of the band, the one with the white hair,” Dimarques says, dispelling any notion that he might be a long-haired Nicolas Reyes in disguise. “I am not part of their family in the sense that we have no common blood.” But Dimarques is a fellow traveller on the same circuit, a compadre in heart and spirit, and considers Gipsy Kings co-founder Jalloul ‘Chico’ Bouchikhi both a friend and inspiration. “I met Chico when I was playing a hotel in Paris in 2006 or 2007 and he was there to promote his new album Freedom. I was surprised to see him and I went to him to apologise for not playing his songs very well, but he told me: ‘The more they are played, the less we forget the culture.’ We talked together around a Pastis and he told me there was no problem if people thought I was part of the band!”

WHO: Diego Dimarques
WHAT: Gipsy and Latin music
WHERE: The Groove, Terrazza, Street 282
WHEN: 9pm September 19
WHY: Our very own Gipsy King

WEDNESDAY 18 | The first punk rock music arrived in Burma on cassette tapes carried by sailors in the ’90s, igniting a growing movement in the capital. For young Burmese, punk provides a radical way to spit their political frustrations in the face of the much-despised government. Lyrics condemn miserable living conditions in a scream for freedom and human rights. The main characters in Yangon Calling: Punk In Myanmar, by Berlin-based filmmakers Alexander Dluzak and Carsten Piefke, are leading members of Myanmar’s punk scene, filmed in secret for six months without official permission. Small, undetectable cameras followed them in homes, work places, rehearsal spaces and illegal gigs to capture the underground culture. The voices of people representing the scene and imprisoned during the dictatorship are also heard. Says rokumentti.com: ‘Yangon Calling is a film about a country where punk is still true rebellion and literally a fight for freedom, and not just a random bunch of slogans and a way to dress. The music represents a lifeline amid the stranglehold of the government and personal hardships. Any talk about the death of punk is much exaggerated, at least when it comes to this vigorous documentary.’

WHO: Punks, old and new
WHAT: Yangon Calling: Punk In Myanmar screening
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd.
WHEN: 7pm September 18
WHY: ‘Yangon Calling is a film about a country where punk is still true rebellion and literally a fight for freedom, and not just a random bunch of slogans and a way to dress.’ – rokumentti.com

WEDNESDAY 18 | Poet of the bar room, thoughtful musician and ceaselessly rolling stone, Scott Bywater is probably one of the most extraordinary ordinary guys around. That’s not what he tells people, of course; ‘(kind of a music guy)(writes a bit)’ his card advertises apologetically. “I got sick of reading on everyone’s cards ‘CEO this, Master of the Universe that,’” he says in explanation. “That’s what I am and it doesn’t get anyone’s hopes up too much.” His style is redolent of chansonniers like Jacquess Brel as well as Anglophonic troubadours Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan. Bywater, of course, sidesteps such laudatory comparisons and, like Dylan, he delights in not playing by the rules. “I’ll give everything a shot; there aren’t any rules.” Join Scott tonight for the first poetry open mic at the newly opened Snug.

UPDATE

WHO: Scott Bywater and fellow poets
WHAT: Poetry open mic
WHERE: Snug, corner of Streets 308 & 29 Java Cafe
WHEN: 8pm 7:30 pm September 18
WHY: Let loose your inner musings

Born in Barbados to English parents and having spent her formative years in Kenya before graduating from London’s much-admired Central St Martins University of the Arts, this elegant chanteuse cuts quite the dash on the runway. But it’s what’s underneath – namely, her vocal chords – that really quickens the pulse. “Music in Barbados is a big deal,” says Rhiannon Johnson. “In the Caribbean, it’s a huge part of their culture. Once a year, we’d have this big festival to celebrate the end of the crops and sugar cane; it’s called Crop Over. Listening to the radio and singing was always a huge part of my life, but it wasn’t until I got to school in Kenya that I got the chance to focus on it. It felt great: it was me coming out of myself. I’d only ever sung by myself in the shower.” From singing in the shower to fronting Cambodia’s rowdiest funk band, tonight she takes centre stage at Doors.

WHO: Rhiannon Johnson Trio
WHAT: Jazz and soul
WHERE: Doors, #18 Street 84 & 47
WHEN: 9pm September 14
WHY: One of the city’s most silken crooners

FRIDAY 13 | It was a very different world 10 years ago when Amrita Performing Arts’ founder Fred Frumberg embarked on a mission to salvage what was left of Cambodia’s dance heritage after the civil war. “Today, we have a company of 15 artists who we bring in on a project-by-project basis, creating new works of dance and theatre with international choreographers and directors,” Frumberg says. “We are developing opportunities for those artists to develop their own skills as choreographers.” To mark the milestone a special night is being held at Java Café, including an exhibition of highlights from the past 10 years, talks from the artists involved and a series of short performances choreographed for the occasion. Asked about high points along the way, Frumberg says: “It would be really hard to define any one project as more than any other, but this spring one of our artists, Chey Chankethya, premiered her choreography Me And My Mother in New York at the Abrons Arts Centre at the Season Of Cambodia Festival. It was a momentous occasion for her as a Cambodian artist and for us as we strive to see more work by Cambodian artists on the international stage.”

WHO: Amrita Performing Arts
WHAT: 10th anniversary celebrations
WHERE: Java Cafe, #56 Sihanouk Blvd.
WHEN: 8pm September 13
WHY: A decade of dance in one night

FRIDAY 13 | Lost oral traditions and years of civil war almost wiped Cambodia’s creative slate clean, but the good folk at Bophana Centre have spent the past year compiling a new album of traditional music that might otherwise have been lost forever. Cambodian Forgotten Songs: Eight Songs From Our Ancestors, launching today, is the second such endeavour, the first having been produced in 2008. Each track comes from the 1921 book Chansons Cambodgiennes, by Albert Tricon. The book was gifted to Bophana Centre founder Rithy Panh many years ago and includes 54 traditional songs from before the 1920s. The album spans several genres, including Areak (‘spirit possession’ songs) and Mohaori, and is notable for its poetic lyrics.

WHO: Music revivalists
WHAT: Cambodian Forgotten Songs album launch
WHERE: Bophana Centre, #64 Street 200
WHEN: 6pm September 13
WHY: Hear the ghosts of Khmer songs past

Five artists born before 1990 have been invited to occupy Java’s creative space and interpret the theme of ‘rebuilding and destroying within contemporary Cambodia’. Each is from a different generation and has different life experiences, but they share one thing in common: this moment, now, the present. explored in this new exhibition of paintings, poetry and installation.

WHO: Chhim Sothy, Prum Vichet, Phe Sophon, Meas Sokhorn and Sou Sophy
WHAT: The New Age: Until Now exhibition opening
WHERE: Java Arts Cafe & Gallery, #56 Sihanouk Boulevard
WHEN: 6pm September 11
WHY: Five very different takes on this very moment

TUESDAY 10 | In a world teetering on the brink of self-destruction, award-winning filmmaker Velcrow Ripper sets out on a unique pilgrimage. Visiting the ‘Ground Zeros’ of the planet, he asks if it’s possible to find hope in the darkest moments of human history. During a five-year odyssey exploring whether humanity can transform the scared into the ‘sacred’, Ripper travels to war-torn Afghanistan; the toxic wasteland of Bhopal; post-9/11 New York and the minefields of Cambodia. Here, in the jungle, he meets Aki Ra, once a child soldier forced to lay landmines for the Khmer Rouge. Today Aki wanders Cambodia’s ravaged countryside with a simple wooden stick, decommissioning thousands of mines each year. Here, as in each Ground Zero, the film unearths unforgettable stories of survival, of ritual, resilience and recovery.

WHO: Award-winning filmmaker Velcrow Ripper
WHAT: Scared Sacred screening
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd
WHEN: 4pm September 10
WHY: “The human capacity for burden is like bamboo: far more flexible than you’d ever believe at first glance.” – Jodi Picoult

SUNDAY 8 | In 1983, lanky New England actor Spalding Gray arrived in Cambodia to play the role of the US ambassador’s aide in Roland Joffé’s film The Killing Fields. Over the course of the following two years, Gray perfected a monologue about his experiences in Southeast Asia and in 1986 Jonathan Demme, who found fame directing Silence Of The Lambs, filmed it at New York City’s Performing Garage. The set of Swimming To Cambodia consists of little more than a table, a pair of maps and a background painting of sea and clouds, but Gray’s ramblings encompass everything from journalistic egos to a curious row with his New York neighbour. Interspersed with harrowing details of Cambodia’s history are tales of marijuana binges, sex shows in the bordellos of Bangkok and Gray’s own neurotic fear of sharks, remembered only when he finds himself swimming in an uncharted sea.

WHO: Spalding Gray
WHAT: Swimming To Cambodia screening
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd.
WHEN: 4pm September 8
WHY: “Who needs metaphors for hell or poetry about hell? This really happened, here on this earth.” – Spalding Gray