November 20th - Day 216

The five guys in this picture bore no resemblance to the five who took the stage this evening in a packed out 200 seater hall at The School of Oriental and African Studies. This was because, I later discovered, Club do Choro is a collective with thirteen musicians listed on their myspace site as Club do Choro members, as well as "anyone who can play choro and would like to come and join us".

Before the concert started, the audience were encouraged to close their eyes and imagine they were sitting lazily in a sunny backyard of late nineteenth century Rio.

More about choro from Club do Choro's myspace:

"The first choro groups emerged in Rio de Janeiro in the second half of the 19th century.

The term choro was generically used to describe a small group ( flute, cavaquinho and seven string guitar), often with one group member as a soloist ( improviser).
Actually it is also played with other instrumentation ( clarinet, trombone and a few percussion instruments particularly pandeiro and surdo). The musicians, the majority of whom worked at the customs office, post office, or the railroad, had musical parties at their houses in the Cidade Nova area of Rio, located in the suburbs.
At these events they performed the popular salon music of the bourgeoisie, but in their own style. Polkas, waltzes, and schottisches became, in the hands of the choro musicians, distinct from their European roots. The choro was, in its essence, a way of playing. As a genre, only around 1910 did the choro take on a more defined form, which usually consisted of three distinct sections and modulation to the V or IV in the third section."

On the way back to the Russell Square tube I came across this person singing atop some scaffolding high above the Brunswick Shopping Centre...

I think it may have been former X-Factor contestant Laura White. She was there for a reason, by the way - I mean she wasn't up there fixing telephone lines and singing to keep her spirits up. Her performance was part of The Brunswick Centre's Christmas lights switch-on.

Oh...found out more about the theremin today. It can be hard to learn. Apparently 90 % of people who take up the instrument give up within six months. To counter that I also read about someone taking up the theremin, playing with a punk band a week later and playing in Berlin a month later (important to point out that she didn't live in Berlin...or Germany).