What a beautiful day outside the Stadsschouwburg. Go in, and guess what? I will be performing tonight on this stage as part of TEDxAmsterdam!

Here are my impressions from TEDxAmsterdam live. The evening was live streaming of the TED2011 conference “The Rediscovery of Wonder” held in USA organised by the independent TEDx group in Amsterdam (does this make sense?) with local speakers and entertainers in the breaks. And I was one of the ‘gap-fillers’ which was such a privilege.

For more information about the TED talks, you can visit the blog of my friend Barbara – Living Antenna or Brainpickings. For the sake of avoiding repetition I would like to expand on the music part of the evening.

I performed Moondog’s Bird’s Lament on cello with my loop. I chose this piece because Moondog – Louis Thomas Hardin – has been a real inspiration to me recently. He was blinded as a teenager and went on to become a serious composer and inventor of musical instruments. Not only that, but he was very outrageous and for approximately 20 of 30 years in New York City he spent as a street musician, selling his poems and playing music. He became famous this way because he was always situated around 6th avenue and 54th Street. He was an influence to many jazz musicians such as Charlie Parker and younger minimalist composers such as Philip Glass. Bird’s Lament was the first Moondog song I ever heard and immediately I was captivated by it. It’s music you can feel when you listen to it. To commemorate Moondog (and remember his blindness), I asked the audience to close their eyes. Here it is, filmed by Lieke:

Below: the young and talented Celine Cairo with her band mates Mart Jeninga on acoustic bass and Matthijs Lievaart on viola. Beautiful music. Celine was born in 1990 which only makes her 20 years old. Such a great young talent with so much potential. Watch this space.

Andy is a beautiful singer-songwriter, mostly composing on her piano, with thoughtful stories in her songs, very Tori Amos-esque if one had to compare. In her recently released EP Casually Incredible she collaborated with a French harpist Francois Pernel. Wow! Oh, the other wow factor was that Andy is actually an investment banker by day. Some people are just so amazing.

Thank you TEDxAmsterdam for inviting me! To wrap up, it was so great to experience my first real TED event as a guest on stage at the Stadsschouwburg (City Theatre). Now I’ve played at the Melkweg in Amsterdam and now this. What’s next I wonder? Perhaps Paradiso? Then Concertgebouw?

Read more at the TEDx Amsterdam Live recap.