Northumberland is in the far north of England, a place of high moor and hills, North Sea coast, Hadrian’s Wall and Scottish border. It is a land where the music reflects those influences and melds them into a Celtic style all its own. It is the home of Kathryn Tickell, who plays the Northumbrian pipes and the fiddle.

She’s taken her music, both music she’s written and music from the traditions of Northumberland, to places as varied as Uganda and Nova Scotia, to festivals, art centers, and concert halls across the world. She’s often asked to give workshops and master classes while traveling. Several years ago, Tickell made the decision to make teaching a regular part of her time at home in the north of England, as well. As things turned out she ended up teaching students at university level, as well as teen aged players in a folk orchestra and school children just having their first taste of music in the classroom. She finds it all fascinating.

“I teach university students who are on the traditional music course at Newcastle University, that’s often one on one tuition on pipes or fiddle. Then there is Folkestra, which is a youth ensemble from the north of England. It’s based in the Sage Gateshead music center up here. For many years they have had an ensemble for the region’s young classical players,” Tickell explained. “The students would go through their school orchestra and then their county youth orchestra and then the top ones from the county youth orchestra would go into Young Symphonia. There wasn’t an equivalent for other sorts of music. Now Sage Gateshead has set up Folkestra, which is the folk equivalent, and they’ve a big band ensemble too and a wind band and various other things like that.” These students come from across the northeast of England.

Her smallest students are middle school and primary school children. “The youngest ones are about seven, going on up to eleven or twelve,” Tickell said. “That is going in right at the beginning. I usually have about fifteen of them, all different levels, just fiddle players, and we have about an hour a week.” The school system decided to build on local interest in a folk festival, and that’s what got Tickell involved in the first place.

“The festival is an informal thing, not one that anybody gets paid to do, everybody just gets up and does a song or a story,” Tickell said. “They wanted to encourage the kids to feel involved in their own traditional music.” She finds that her youngest students “don’t even seem aware of whether it is traditional music or folk music. They just think it’s a fiddle class and if you want to play fiddle that’s what you do. There’s no pressure on them, they just play their tunes and go home.”

The tradition lingers in her students’ lives, though, and that sometimes comes out in unexpected ways. “I try to teach them Northumbrian tunes, tunes that are written about places they know or written by people they may know. One child wanted to learn a slow tune, and I thought of a tune called Lament for Ian Dickson, and the child went home and came back the next week and said ‘Ian Dickson was my grandad!’ They have different surnames, he died before she was born, I had no idea,” Tickell said. “But you’re actually teaching the kids their own heritage — there’s a waltz called Rothbury Hills, and where the school is, it’s in the middle of Rothbury hills. So they hear the tune, they look out of the window, and they’re just surrounded by it all.”

Tickell herself grew up in that area, which is about thirty miles outside Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Whether touring internationally, collaborating with classical or pop or folk musicians, playing for a packed concert hall, or working with a class of ten year olds, the landscape and heritage of Northumbria are sources which ground Tickell’s understanding, and which she enjoys sharing with the next generation . “I play as part of a tradition. That tradition is something that is very alive, to me,” Tickell said. “I have more confidence in being able to experiment, to work with other artists, to teach, knowing I have that.”

photograph of Kathryn Tickell copyright Kerry Dexter

Bad dining experiences are a good thing, or at least they can be, from a certain point of view.

Located at the lovely Vineyard Hotel & Spa in the shadow of Table Mountain, Myoga is the third restaurant opened under the direction of award-winning chef Mike Bassett, who’s enjoyed considerable success in Cape Town with Ginja and Shoga. With a menu that focuses on “contemporary, global cuisine that entices the mind, excites the eye, and tantalises the taste buds to new extremes”, Myoga has certainly followed in its sister restaurants’ footsteps in racking up the accolades since opening late in 2007.

Conde Nast named it one of the Top 100 New Restaurants in the World, saying Bassett’s “global brand of cooking continues to wow” and calling the service “helpful and informed.” Fodor’s effused that Myoga “has all the makings of an über-hip, foodie hot spot, minus the hipsters”, while Food24 loved the “clean Asian flavors with classical undertones”, while calling the reasonably priced six-course tasting menu “the deal of the season, and perhaps the century.”

When Dinner Disappoints

We were lucky to score a same-day reservation for 8:30pm on a Friday night, and when we arrived the 100-seat dining room was absolutely heaving. Here in Cape Town’s affluent Newlands suburb, the crowd was evenly balanced between the obviously wealthy and the obviously on their way to being wealthy, with sweaters tied around every other neck and wine glasses indiscriminately filled and refilled like tap water.

We were seated at a small candlelit two-top, near one of the tables with playful, oversized chairs that could have been plucked from the set of a Tim Burton flick. Decorated in the common trappings of so many contemporary fusion restaurants—think metallic silver ceiling fans, subdued orange lighting, vintage tables and chairs—Myoga has a distinctly New York feel to it, right down to the bloated, overpriced wine list that’s long on bottles and somewhat short on glasses (especially reds).

Priced at just 150 Rand, the winter tasting menu seemed like an excellent option for sampling a variety of food; for an additional R135, it could be paired with a selection of wines chosen by sommelier Carl Habel. We passed on the wine and, in the absence of any recommendations from our aloof, always-preoccupied server, instead chose glasses from vineyards we’d visited during our three-day stay in Stellenbosch, before later finishing with a bottle of rosé which, at 115 Rand, was the most affordable one available.

With three options to choose from for each course, we appreciated the diversity but feared that tasking the kitchen with preparing 18 different dishes well might prove overly ambitious, and unfortunately, on this night at least, we were right.

It wasn’t just that one or two platters were off; they all were. Nothing stood out as bold or inventive, everything (except the dessert) needed salt, and though we were as patient as possible given the crowded house, no meal should be involuntarily dragged on for 2 ½ – 3 hours.

The first course— lasciviously dubbed the “Mouth Tickler”—was a comically small, bite-sized pastry tart made with Healy’s cheddar. Served on a tiny, white porcelain altar and complimented with two micro dots of berry sauce, I half expected a little cartoon mouse to pop up with a miniature knife and fork and pull it off my plate.

While our server busied himself with the rich couples seated directly behind us (couples who by the end of the meal were sloppy drunk and fashioning turbins out of their napkins), we waited, without apology, for 35 – 40 minutes for the second course, a watery, tasteless potato and leek soup with puzzlingly mismatched chunks of teriyaki salmon.

Next was a bland, mealy plate of baked spinach and ricotta dumplings with mushroom ragout and roasted olives… or at least that’s how it was described. I saw the mushrooms, and I saw the spinach, but somehow didn’t taste either of them—just dough. The passion fruit sorbet, served in a tall shot glass, was a welcomed cleanser after these misses.

The main course, described as as “herb and mustard crusted white fish, with Mediterranean steamed potatoes, charred leaks, and asparagus”, shouldn’t have left the kitchen. The fish was overcooked and rubbery, while the “crust” was more like a terrine and slid right off the meat, like a gelatinous glob of goo, when I dug in. The potatoes were undercooked, and again, the mustard sauce was flavorless and sorely in need of salt. I asked our disinterested server, whom we had to ask twice for more water, about the fish:

“Can you remind me what sauce is on the fish again?”

“It’s a crust.”

“Are you sure? Because the sauce…”

“It’s a crust.”

And That was That

We polished off our tasty, if uninspired final courses—mine was a milk chocolate pot de crème with a caramel foam—then asked for the bill and waited another 15 minutes for it to come. Our server ended up getting a slightly bigger tip than he deserved, because after nearly 3 hours I didn’t care to wait any longer for him to bring back the change.

Obviously, our experience wasn’t a great one, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a memorable, educational one. The food and service were both unacceptable, but they sparked a lengthy discussion afterwards as we tried to make some sense of what just happened at this, one of the trendiest and most popular restaurants in Cape Town. Was Myoga skating by on Bassett’s good reputation alone? Maybe, or hey, maybe it was just a bad night while the boss was on vacation.

It gave us a reference point to compare and contrast our experiences at other four- to five-star restaurants in the area, like Terroir, Delaire Graff Estate, and the Table Bay Hotel’s Atlantic Grill. We left all of those places gushing about the food, the ambiance, and the service, and sitting through the polar opposite at Myoga allowed us to see the other side of the coin, and helped us better define what, exactly, constitutes a well-executed meal at a high-end eatery… and what doesn’t.

We need to eat bad food at gourmet restaurants, and suffer through poor table service, and just generally be disappointed from time to time. We need to ride the culinary pendulum in both directions, because otherwise there’s no constant for comparison, only variables.

I saw this in a blurb in Real Simple magazine and had to go look at it….graphic designer Chris Peck put together a video of what he says is every painting on display in the painting galleries of the Museum of Modern Art in New York as of April 10, 2010.

It’s quite a hypnotic cascade of art, a bit of a jumble of styles, but I love it and hope you do, too.

Thanks, Chris.

Here is the direct link to the video on YouTube if you can’t see the embed box below.

Every five years, one of the biggest celebrations of Basque culture is held in Boise, Idaho.

Had to pause, blink and re-read that, didn’t you? Me, too.

If you’re anywhere near Boise, head on over because the Jaialdi 2010 International Basque Cultural Festival is going on right now through August 1st.

There is pelota (a court sport rather like handball but sometimes with a racket) plus food, music and dance – full schedule here in English and Basque.

If you travel to Boise any other time, make a stop at the “Basque Block” downtown, where you’ll find museums, cultural centers, markets and restaurants open year-round.

More Jaialdi stories here in the Idaho Statesman; you can follow them on Twitter at @Jaialdi2010 and check out the Twitter hashtag #Jaialdi2010 and there’s a Jaialdi 2010 Group on Facebook.

(This post is included in Trekaroo’s Spotlight Thursday.)

A tagine is not made of copper.

It was an understandable mistake to make before I’d traveled in Morocco, really.  A traditional tagine is made of a ruddy clay. If you squint and are a little drunk, you might be excused for describing a tagine as “coppery” –  if the domed top is glazed and very, very shiny.

That’s actually a good overall description of how my mind imagines a place before I travel to it: a destination as seen through the eyes of drunk, squinting.  Now that I’ve been home from Morocco for a week, my preconceptions (and misconceptions) have been swept away by actual experience.

On the other hand, let’s not pretend that actual experience eliminates the role of imagination. For now that I’m back home, I find myself once again imagining Morocco, by way of my memories.

Memory feels solid, but it is in fact fragile. It’s not nearly as robust as imagination, which routinely edits our memories of events. For example, we tend to remember ourselves as the central character in any circumstance, regardless of our actual importance at the time.  We often incorporate bits and pieces from similar events we’ve experienced, or events we’ve heard about, or the reactions of the people with whom we share our memories with after the fact.  Imagination can even turn memories into total fabrications.

I’ve touched on some of this before, but if this intrigues you as much as it does me, you will want to read about the memory research of psychologist Elizabeth Loftus. Slate ran a terrific series on her not that long ago; there’s a more terse summary in this profile in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. There’s also a chilling article about memory manipulation and Tiananmen Square.

As a nonfiction writer, unreliable memories are a professional concern; when I travel I take copious notes and routinely shoot more than 100 photos a day. But I’m deliberately not looking at any of my memory aids just now — I won’t insert the photos into this post until I’m done writing — so I can rely entirely on my imaginative memory of Morocco.

It’s different than the picture I described before traveling, that Route 66 postcard. Now it’s a series of dreamlike shadowy impressions.

I remember the intricate pattern etched into the pavement on the streets near the mosque, and then walking near to the plaza Djemma el Fna, on a Saturday night among a group of veiled women and men in jellabas. I remember wondering whether the bus that had just wooshed up had been in service during the day, since I hadn’t registered the sight of commuter buses among the petit cabs and horses and motorbikes earlier that day. I remember the gray light inside the bus, although it was probably just the window tint.

I remember eating lunch high in the Atlas Mountains, and looking up at the peaks around me soaring higher still, and realizing that if I squinted I could make out entire Berber villages up there, and people climbing up snaking, pebble and boulder-strewn roads to get home.

I remember the smell of rosewater on my hands and the taste of dates and almond milk. Also the smell of layers and layers of horse urine on a day that was over 100 degrees, and a wall of searing cobalt blue. And how, in my room at night,  I did not like to look out over Marrakech , because the orange glow of high-pressure sodium street lights were the same as any city anywhere. It was only by day that I could see through the palm leaves that all the buildings in the city were in the shape of cubes — either fashioned out of red clay or painted to look like they had been.

Ah, and so there’s a clue about the story imagination would like to shape from my Morocco memories.  I want an exotic story to tell; so my memory did not as readily bring up the many European women wearing tank tops and shorts against advice (and, in my view, respect), that were among the crowd near the mosque that Saturday night; nor the flushed Scottish woman who eagerly complained to me about the heat.

I did not at first remember how oppressed I felt on the long flight back home by the announcement in Arabic, which I understand not at all, and then French, which I understand some, and eventually in indifferently translated and often incomprehensible English.

I stared at the overhead sign that had Arabic script on one side, and the word Exit on the other, for hours.  But no matter how long I looked at those curving letters, I could not resolve the shapes into language.

I do know that I will eventually resolve my Morocco memories into meaning.

But I do not kid myself: my imagination will leave its fingerprints all over that process.