Ghosts from the bohemian 50s to the hippy 70s inhabit the now smokeless air of Lizottes, a re-invented picture theatre in Lambton in Newcastle.
Phil Emmanuel and Pete Hawkes were live @ Lizottes on Saturday 28th April 2012 and delivered a great, if at times surreal, night’s entertainment.
Super cool, the gentlemanly Phil Emmanuel, as expected, dazzled the crowd with his performance.
But it was Dane Laboyrie’s trumpet that sent me in search of pencil and paper to record hearing this great musician for the first time.
The food was good, the venue comfortable, welcoming and slightly exotic – a difficult feat to achieve - and the entertainment well worth the trip. I’ll be back on my next Newcastle trip.
Thank you Mr Edison. Thank you Mr Marconi. These two men laid the foundation for the technology which today gives millions information, education and entertainment.
Edison invented the phonograph in 1877. Twenty two years later Marconi broadcast from America. Both men probably would have believed a visitor from the future who regaled them with tales of where their inventions led. After all, they were that most valuable of world citizens, people with creative imaginations and great ability, and would no doubt have been quite at home in Broadcasting House, the London home of the BBC.
Last year the loss of Radio 7 from the BBC network and the transference of BBC radio spoken word entertainment to Radio 4 Extra marked a downturn in the quality and variety of radio comedy and drama being broadcast across the world, at least in this listener’s opinion. However the BBC still leads the world in the quality of its programming, and I continue as one of Radio 4 Extra’s 949,000 listeners, and continue to pay the download cost to listen to it, even now back in Australia, the land of the costly download.
A long-time devotee of the audio book and advertisementless radio, I expanded my range of audio material during an extended stay in Australia in the late 1990’s. This period, in retrospect, seemed to involve a lot of driving long distances in rain at night and introduced me to the ABC’s podcasts and to their excellent late night programming.
Since then the internet has provided radio audiences with a wonderful choice in radio listening. As well as Australia’s ABC and the BBC, there is NPR in America, the original home of A Prairie Home Companion, re-broadcast on both BBC and ABC as Garrison Keilor’s Radio Show. The segment, News from Lake Woebegone, reminds me of news from so many towns I've lived in, albeit tropical versions.
The website of rfi in France is well worth checking out. SBS in Australia promises great stuff, but has one of the most confusing websites of any radio station in the world. However it is also worth a look and listen.
Below are links to all the radio stations mentioned. If you can’t find anything worth listening to, visit your local library and borrow an audio book, or download one from any reputable online retailer, and give an occasional thought to Edison and Marconi.
Mosques, as places of worship, originated with Islam on the Arabian Peninsula. However the large Friday mosques that grace the cities of the Muslim world today are a far cry from the flat rooftop from which the first call to prayer was made and on which the first Muslim prayers were offered.
Mosque architecture accommodates the practical elements of Islamic religious practice yet is often a reflection of the culture and of the history of the area in which the mosque is situated.
The Sheikh Zayed mosque is an amalgam of styles, linked with traditional Islamic architecture and displaying Arab, Moorish and Mughal influence. It sits on a man-made rise on the island facing the mainland between the two bridges that connect the island of Abu Dhabi with the mainland. The mosque took eleven years to build and was opened during Ramadan in 2007.
It is said that Sheikh Zayed wanted the mosque to present a welcome to visitors to the city, to be a gateway to the city. This mosque is the largest in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and can accommodate 9,000 worshippers in the main prayer hall and up to 40,000 within the mosque walls. During Eid festivals the numbers frequently exceed these figures and the grounds around the mosque fill with late arrivals to prayer.
The Emirati culture is a deeply conservative culture, conservative yet tolerant and the mosque, apart from its obvious religious function, is a symbol of the balance between these two elements.
It welcomes visitors from other monotheisitic religions. However the friendly people manning the tour desk have never been heard asking visitors to state which monotheistic religion they adhere to.
Minarets, qiblah, mihrab, musalla, minbar, ablution (wudu) are some words associated with mosque architecture. Some of these elements are essential, others serve conventional or aesthetic requirements.
Minarets originally served a practical purpose. They were built higher than buildings surrounding the mosque. In this way when the imam climbed the minaret to call the faithful to prayer he could easily be heard. Today, with the advantage of watches, mobile phones and computers, in many countries the minaret’s function has become aesthetic rather than practical.
All the mosques on the Arabian Peninsula still use their minarets for the call to prayer. Now instead of a person, electronic speakers attached to the balcony broadcast the call.
The musalla is the prayer hall. It is the musalla that provides the most controversy among Muslims when a new mosque is built in a modern western country. For cultural and traditional religious reasons the men’s prayer hall in a mosque is usually much larger than the women’s prayer hall. It is the design of these separate prayer halls that are quite revelatory of cultural aspects in the U AE. The massive men’s prayer hall is the dominant aspect of the mosque, but the two smaller women’s prayer halls have been designed with such grace and artistry that they deserve special mention and certainly a visit if possible.
The men’s prayer hall contains the three largest chandeliers in the world (made from Swarovsky crystal and gold plated) and the world’s largest carpet hand woven in Iran. The massive central dome and the side domes, the marble pillars, gold and Italian glass inlay of the aspects of Allah along the qiblah wall all combine to impart the solemnity of religious belief, the massive responsibility of the faithful.
But the women’s prayer hall with its glass and crystal, it’s curlicued gypsum ceiling and carpet reflecting the ceiling design has a unity, a lightness and a transcendence that seems to reflect the spirituality of the feminine.
The mihrab and the qiblah wall are essential element of a mosque’s prayer hall. The prayer hall is wider than it is deep, so the qiblah wall will be one of the longer walls in the mosque. The mihrab is the niche in the qiblah wall that indicates the direction of the Qa’aba in Mecca, the direction that Muslims should face when praying. In a prayer hall all worshippers including the imam will face the qiblah wall.
In the first mosques the qiblah wall was flat with a sign on it indicating the direction of mecca. There are several theories as to the origin of the niche, the mihrab. It may originally have had a practical acoustical purpose and amplified the words uttered in prayer by the imam. Today a wall in the prayer hall with a niche in it indicates that this is the qiblah wall.
The minbar (or pulpit) beside the mihrab has an obvious purpose. It is from the minbar that the imam delivers the Friday sermon.
One of the most important aspects of Islam is ritual ablution (wudu) before prayer, and before touching a Koran.
The Ibn Tulun Mosque in Egypt is the oldest mosque in Cairo. It was completed in 879 AD and contains an ablution fountain that has achieved recent architectural fame. The ablution fountain with a high domed roof was added in the central courtyard at the end of the thirteenth century. I. M. Pei, designer of the Louvre Pyramid, at the age of 90 designed The Museum of the Islamic Arts, Qatar. His inspiration for the design of the museum in Qatar came from the ablution fountain of Ibn Tulun’s mosque and the Allhambra Palace in Spain.
The ablution area as a fountain in the centre of the courtyard was often an architectural feature of Friday mosques. However today there is a whole industry around providing ablution blocks for mosques and the ablutions facilities for the Sheikh Zayed Mosque are located below the arcade on the side of the courtyard furthest from the prayer hall. The men’s ablution facilities are at one end of the arcade and the women’s at the other. These facilities contain examples of Moroccan mosaic work as well as carved marble fountains.
Non-Muslim visitors to Abu Dhabi should take the opportunity to tour the mosque as most mosques on the Arabian Peninsula are closed to non-Muslims. In Saudi Arabia the cities of Mecca and Medina are also closed to non-Muslims. So the opening of the mosque to visitors is a huge step for the government of Abu Dhabi and one way for the non-Muslim visitor to engage with an important aspect of Emirati culture.
PS: Tours of the Sheikh Zayed Mosque are offered six days a week at 10.00 a.m. The mosque is closed to visitors on Fridays.
The Jumeirah mosque in Dubai is also open to visitors. Each Thursday the mosque runs a tour followed by a question and answer session. Anyone wishing to go on either tour should ring the tourist information office in either city to check times and dress requirements.
PPS: Another mosque that is open to non-muslim visitors is the Sultan Qaboos Mosque in Muscat. If you are planning to visit the mosque, please contact the Oman tourism authority for days and times.
In 1945 George “Pete” Wimberly began his first major project – the redesign of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Waikiki. When he died 51 years later his company, Wimberly, Allison Tong and Goo (WATG), had become a world leader in designing resorts, public buildings and palaces around the globe. Wimberly’s fortune was made on giving his clients exactly what they wanted.
In 2000 a man who always knew exactly what he wanted had come out of the desert and now led a rich young country. Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan president of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) intended to host major political and diplomatic conferences in his new capital city. He needed a palace to reflect his country’s status and stability – a grand civic building along the shore of the city. It would be a guest palace for kings, sheikhs, sultans, for all the world’s leaders. Wimberly’s company was in the business of designing just such edifices, having recently completed a new palace for the Sultan of Brunei.
In 2005 the Emirates Palace Hotel opened its doors. It boasted as well as rooms suited to a luxury hotel, six rulers' suites – one for the leader of each of the Emirates, sixteen Palace Suites and 22 three-bedroom suites for hosting heads of state and their guests.
The Hotel and that other Abu Dhabi landmark, the Sheik Zayed Grand Mosque are each built on an imposing scale. Both are tied to architectural conventions, the mosque to Islam, the hotel to civic architecture. Both are lavishly decorated and both are surprisingly accessible for the visitor to the country.
Sheik Zayed was renowned for his hospitality, for his open-handedness, for his accessibility and these buildings, institutions now, reflect this.
The Emirates Palace is a great pile of a building set on 84 hectares of landscaped gardens with 1.3 km of private beachfront. The almost dour architecture of its exterior clads riotously indulgent interior spaces.
The hotel is owned by the government, and is integral to future plans for the Emirates. One of these plans is for Abu Dhabi to become a cultural icon, a world class venue for global art.
Saadiyat Island development is at the locus of these plans. Five major cultural institutions will open on Saadiyat between 2012 and 2013. These will include Frank Gehry’s Gugenheim, Jean Nouvel’s Louvre and Zaha Habib’s Performing Arts Centre.
In the interim the Emirates Palace Hotel cultural program is doing its bit to prepare the residents of the UAE and the world for the grand opening.
This is happening through a range of programs. Government entities have been established to coordinate these programs. The Tourism Development and Investment Company (TDIC) and Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage (ADACH) are just two.
TDIC is a master developer of cultural, residential and tourism destinations in Abu Dhabi and has also produced programs, educational courses and exhibitions as part of its portfolio.
ADACH’s platform for the visual arts is to bring together contributions from contemporary artists from the UAE and from throughout the Arab world.
Over the past few years the Emirates Palace, with assistance from these and other overseas institutions has provided a venue for both performing and applied arts, giving the public a taste of what is to come after 2013.
Opera, ballet and classical music are performed at the Emirates Palace Hotel Theatre which also hosts the annual Middle East International Film Festival.
Pop and classical music stars perform regularly on the palace lawns.
Gallery One is where the applied arts are displayed. These programs have included such a variety of exhibitions as - The Arts of Islam: Treasures of the Nasser D Khalili Collection; Picasso Abu Dhabi; Emirati Expressions; Talking Art: Louvre Abu Dhabi.
During Abu Dhabi Art Gallery One featured Signature an exhibition of contemporary Emirati artists and the grounds of the hotel displayed sculptures and site specific installations. These shows were linked to the first exhibition held on Saadiyat Island at Manarat Al Saadiyat, Disorientations II curated by Jack Persekian, which is still on display.
The current show at Gallery One is The Guggenheim: The Making of A Museum which is running until February 4, 2010. This show consists of educational programs, lectures, workshops, films as well as displaying the work of over forty modernist, non representational artists . These include the work of Jackson Pollock, Georges Seurat, Paul Cezanne and Willem de Kooning. Some of these works have never been shown before, some have never travelled outside the United States.
An exhibition held all year round at the Emirates Palace is the Saadiyat Island Cultural District Exhibition. Visitors are encouraged to spend a few hours in this space which displays in a range of media plans for art and culture in Abu Dhabi. The displays include profiles of the architects, models of the buildings and information on the cultural partners and content for the museums.
In spite of the gold leaf, the crystal chandeliers, the hotel manages to balance grandeur and accessibility, to juggle being a luxury hotel destination with securely accommodating heads of state, with operating coffee shops and restaurants with hosting rock star performances and international art exhibitions. The Emirates Palace Hotel has become the hub of cultural life in Abu Dhabi. It will be interesting to see what happens in 2013 when the focus shifts to Saadiyat.
