Limassol Jazz Festival 2011

Last Wednesday I took my mother, a big fan of jazz music, to the Limassol Jazz Festival 2011. I’m not a big fan of jazz myself and this week’s schedule was pretty tight, so we just went for some live music at 7 Seas without any prior research of who was playing there and so on. After all, I don’t find it unreasonable to expect some jazz at the jazz festival.

7 Seas is a bit too posh of a place for my tastes, but I can handle it once in a while. Especially, since we were coming from Chester’s where I’ve already enjoyed some food and a few pints. Festival tickets weren’t expensive at all – 10 Euro per person only. The drinks are more, but that is something to be expected.

Anyway, we were in, with a drink in hand, together with some friends we met over there. Not too long after we came in, the band appeared on stage. As I’ve learned later from the program, it was CUBATROPICAL SEPTET – an Afro Cuban Latin Jazz band. They tried their best and it was obvious, but I didn’t like the music. First of all, the sound configuration was way off, making them to loud, unbalanced, and harsh. Secondly, we came in for some jazz and this band wasn’t playing any. As I said, I’m not a big fan of jazz myself, nor am I a music expert, but it sounded more like your regular Latin music. Maybe it was Latin jazz, but no, to me it wasn’t.

Gladly, my mother shared the opinion. So we stayed only for 3 or 4 songs, to finish the drinks, and then we were off. A downer.

Did you go any events of the festival? Did you enjoy it? Would you recommend anything from what is left now?

Jazz all the way

Usually, when I work I need absolute silence. Especially when I write code. Any sound disturbs me. Those which have to do with human voices (phone calls, talks, music) are the most harmful. I never turn the music on or anything else when I program. I also prefer to leave all my development tasks for my night shifts.

But toda I found out that I can actually listen to music while writing code. I was looking for some new radio stations at Shoutcast to add to my music player and stumbled across some Jazz stations. I decided to try one before adding it to the list. I wasn’t yet programming, so it was OK to liste to it for some time.

It was only in the morning, 8 hours later that I noticed that I’ve programmed and did everything I had to do and never switched off the Jazz music. It didn’t disturb me even one bit. In fact I have a suspecion that it actually helped me. I will be repeating the experiment, but until than I’m surprised anyway…