Norwegian singer-songwriter Yngve, otherwise known by his musical project name Mork's Medicine played a nice acoustic show Thursday night at Treehugger Dan's. Not only does he have a great voice, but he also does fun things with electronic looping, open tuning and finger picking. I do not have a set list, but some of my favorite tunes included "Daylight" and "Trap." "Daylight" incorprated looped bird whistles and some nifty noises from some handheld squeaky electronic gadget. I especially liked the lines, "I miss you. I never met you.I miss you." fromone of his songs.

Michael Kentish (UK), who recommended Yngve in the first place after seeing him perform in Berlin, and Jérôme Li-Thiao-Te (Reunion Island) opened the evening with their usual fine set of Michael Kentish originals.

Saturday night I went to go hear Mork's Medicine again at Smiley's music showcase. He did another good, but obviously shorter set to make room for the other two performers in the showcase.

American singer-songwriter Julia Sabatine took the stage next and demonstrated what a good voice she has with a good mix of her own songs and some covers, including "Fever," and one of my favorite Alanis Morissett tunes, "Isn't it Ironic." Of course, she sang her now famous "Pogacsa" song.

Amsterdam-based klezmer ensemble Payazen closed the show with a high-energy performance of Jewish folk-rock. The gig reminded me of the time in December, 1988 in Sarajevo when several tourguides from Bosnian, Croatian, Serb and other backgrounds adopted me for the night and took me all over the city - from the soon to be infamous nearby hills, to the inner-city bars. Desperately in search of some grub late at night, we finally found a place. Stepping into a smoky basement pizza joint a seemingly out-of-place band cranking out "Havanagila" on stage. But for that, and my upbringing, I know very little about Jewish music. The first time I ever heard, let alone heard of klezmer music was in the early 1990s in Krakow. I had, after several years in Budapest finally decided to visit Auchwitz. The reality and the trauma did not hit me among the sun, green grass and seeming peacefulness of the surroundings until I got into the rooms of hair, bags, etc. Hyperventilating, I made it back to Krakow in quite a state. Luckily, an old colleague whom I had not seen in a couple years called the NGO office I was at and set up a meeting at a cafe in the old Jewish ghetto. Mucking through the rain and depressed from Auchwitz, my whole being was revived walking into the Ariel Cafe to the sounds of some superb Balkan-sounding live music I was soon to learn was klezmer. Combined with friends, some awesome homemade chocolate cake and several glasses of kosher palinka (slivovitz), the klezmer music saved the day. I was not depressed when I saw Payazen Saturday night, but their music still lifted my spirits to a higher level.

Payazen's webpage list the band members as
- Dolan Jones- violin & trumpet
- Jason Alder- clarinet & bass clarinet
- Stephan Raidl- contrabass
however, there was no clarinetist but a percussionist. All three were highly professional and gave a very tight performance.