Valletta, capital of culture, part 1

There should be something happening every day. That's one of the propositions put forward at the meeting I attended about Valletta as EU capital of culture in 2018.

That will be the easy part because it's already happening. Even the physical infrastructure is already in place and there are certainly artists producing high quality work here in Malta. What will need a lot of groundwork and imagination is community engagement in art production, not just consumption, and contemporary artwork that challenges the status quo.

I want to give a brief glimpse of what's already happening by summarising some of my cultural activities over the last couple of months. Rather than give a chronological list, I'll group according to some of the cultural venues that are currently in use in Valletta.

I have to start with the churches. Not only are they the hub of the year round programme of fiestas, exhibitions and processions, but now they also play host to lunchtime and evening concerts. Sometimes these are associated with fund-raising projects such as the restoration of the chapel of St Catherine of Italy. The model of lunchtime concerts that was adopted here with the collaboration of St James Cavalier has now been emulated by several other churches in the capital sometimes with the effect of direct competition for audiences.

The restoration of St Catherine's is now nearing completion and perhaps in the spirit of community cultural development, the programme has been reduced to Sundays only and is currently held in the Music room of St James Cavalier. For several years, their programme has raised the profile of the venue, played a major role in raising restoration funds and seeded the idea of high quality lunchtime recitals. Now other venues can capitalise on this foundation and offer their own programmes. So over the past few weeks I've attended lunchtime recitals at St Paul's Anglican Pro-Cathedral (every two weeks on a Tuesday), a beautiful evening concert by Malta's only male voice choir, Cappella Sanctae Catharinae at the Jesuit Church in Merchant Street, and next week I'll take a friend, visiting from UK, to a lunchtime recital of Baroque music at St Francis church in Republic street. Unfortunately, the two lunchtime recital venues are now competing so I have to choose which to attend.

St James Cavalier, or perhaps I should name in particular violinist Sarah Spiteri and pianist/composer/bass singer Alex Vella Gregory, play a key role in much of the cultural activity happening around Valletta. They run their own lunchtime concert series, Performers Platform, on Wednesdays in the Music Room, but also serve as a hub for information and bookings.

St James is a multi-arts venue. The brilliant restoration of the old Knights' cavalier includes several gallery spaces showing top quality work by Maltese artists and sometimes expatriate artists with links to Malta. For a while, Malta Contemporary Art found a home in the upper galleries, but for some reason they have moved out this year as I learnt when I attended the first lecture in a series called Contemporary Art in Dialogue with... organised by Dr Raphael Vella of University of Malta at St James Cavalier.

In part 2, I'll talk about the other cultural spaces in St James Cavalier and get on to the other venues around Valletta.

One last carnival

Next post I'll return to words but photos are good for carnival!

Dressing for carnival 2011

And then he said....

Carnival 2011

A new venture - a photo blog for my nephew in NY who wants more photos!

Augustinian convent in Naxxar

I'm on my way out to St James Cavalier to see the new play, Immaculate. I just wanted to see if I could put up a brief post with more than one photo. The first one is the corridor of the Augustinian convent. Now I'll try another photo and see where it goes.

So it goes on the top above the first one! But I quite like the grandfather clock going first. Refer to yesterday's post for text about these two photos. Interesting white light in the convent!

Museums, Convents and Palaces

Did you know immediately who this woman was? And whose head she is so casually holding out to you?

Thus do we turn horror into everyday.

The statue is Salome with the head of John the Baptist and I think it is in the Parish Museum in Naxxar.

Already Sunday's tour with Malta Council for Culture and the Arts is blurring together into generic images of religious museum artifacts - clerical robes, ancient books of music, iconic paintings- and chapels - gold leaf, domed and vaulted ceilings, christ crucified. Malta is so richly endowed with historical collections that it is impossible to hold a catalogue of even one morning's exploration in my head.

Nevertheless, the two places we visited in Rabat surprised me. The Augustinian convent is not normally open to the public. We were shown around by one of the seven monks for whom this beautiful cloister is home. The convent is massive with wide, stone flagged corridors around a central court, a huge, wood paneled refectory and a grandfather clock bigger than any I have ever seen complete with its own ladder beside to enable adjustment. It is a contemplative order and the convent certainly provides room to think! Yet the small living room shared by the seven residents has ordinary armchairs facing a TV, and there is an enormous laundry with white and brown habits hanging on a rack to dry.

Casa Bernard is also in Rabat and was the C16 home of a Maltese noble family. It is still lived in today and has been restored and opened to the public. I will return there and enjoy one of the guided tours that they offer Monday to Saturday with a smaller group than we had on Sunday. The family has a huge collection of French and Maltese antique furniture and their modern art hangings include a Dali and several Dinglis.

The streets of Rabat were already decorated in preparation for the feast of St Joseph this coming weekend. But Sunday morning was cold and rainy and it was difficult to appreciate the exteriors of the chapels and museums as we trudged from bus to entrance. For the next tour to Fort Manoel, Selmun Palace and tas-Sultan Castle in Wardija, I must take a note book so I can remember more of the full commentary given by our English-speaking guide.

Gozo in brief

It's wild flower season in Gozo. On Friday and Saturday of last week, it was sunny and the garigue and meadows glittered with deep greens and the yellows of fennel flowers, daisies and sorrel. The photo is of a rubble wall on one of this weekend's walks with Malta Ramblers.

On Friday morning I had an English language class with a young woman from Hamburg. We set off together on the journey to Gozo because when we were practicing conditional clauses she revealed that if she were to return to Malta, she would like to visit Gozo.

I always underestimate the travel time. We lingered at the news agent in Merchant street and that made us miss the bus that might have connected with the 11.15 ferry. As we waited for the next bus, two other friends arrived who were also joining the Ramblers on Gozo for the weekend. We stood next to the 45 bus (there were several 45s and no-one had revealed which was to leave first) and chatted in the sun. History might reveal that this was the beginning of a fascinating EU project involving older women and craft!

The crossing was calm although still cold from the plummeting temperatures we have had lately. I left my friends to deal with negotiations for the taxi we planned to share to get us to Xlendi and guided my student to the Green bus for her tour of Gozo. The arrival of the ferry in Gozo is always as confused and bustling as the arrival of ferries everywhere. Taxi drivers vie for trade and visitors try to look as though they know exactly what they are doing.

In Xlendi, the whole world was sitting in the sun on the sea front. My brother, who now rents a small flat in this small fishing village, had booked me into St Patrick's hotel. He has made this hotel on the front his hang-out and spends many hours here enjoying the life of the bay or chatting with people inside the bar/restaurant when the wind is up. On Friday he was feeling miserable because he was having trouble with his teeth and couldn't find an available dentist in Rabat to deal with it.

I left him to continue his dental quest and joined the Ramblers for their afternoon walk. The planned circular route lead out of Xlendi, past the knights' tower and along the cliffs towards the channel we had just crossed from Malta. We then headed back through Sannat and down to Xlendi along the side of the valley running down from Rabat As soon as we got going, I had to peel off the multiple layers of clothing that I was wearing against the cold.

The cliffs along this side of Gozo are magnificent - weathered and jagged, white and shear - and the garigue sparkled with the blossoms of small heathers and wild flowers.

That evening, I enjoyed dinner with my brother who had not solved the dentist problem but had worked out a holding pattern with his tooth until he could deal with it the following day. We ate at St Patrick's with one of his friends and discussed the complexities of family and the world.

Saturday's walk was planned as an 8 hour marathon but my intention was to leave halfway through and return to Xlendi to meet up again with my brother and pick up my overnight things ready to return to Valletta. I had booked in for the Malta Council for Culture and the Arts Sunday tour and that will be the subject of my next post.

This time we left from Rabat and I just managed to catch a lift to the starting point after breakfast with my brother. We walked down through an interesting little valley in the outskirts of Rabat and then up some very steep inclines. I'm not sure where the route went but we passed through some lovely countryside as we appeared to walk in a large circle around the citadel. Eventually we came down along the cliffs into Marsalforn. It was sad to pick out the spire of the old church now completely hidden by the engulfing blocks of flats that surround the sweep of the bay.

I left the group at that point and joined with others who needed to finish the walk there. We shared a minibus back to Rabat and then I got a lift down to Xlendi to meet up with my brother, now shorn of two teeth but feeling much better. We lingered over lunch and I got back to Valletta late in the evening.

There continues to be discussion about various means of speeding up the journey to and from Gozo. Ideas for airstrips and bridges and tunnels and chairlifts are bandied about. For me, the journey is part of the pleasure of Gozo. Turning Gozo into a suburb of Malta with the inevitable increase in cars and blocks of flats would be a disaster both for the people of Malta and Gozo and for the tourists who visit Gozo because it is different from the built up Northern areas of Malta.