Göteborgs Remfabrik

Last Sunday Dolce trio had the honor to play at an award ceremony at Göteborgs Remfabrik, an old textile factory that was in use during the first half of the 20th century and is now a museum and a memory from that past age. The society in charge of preserving the building and present it to the public got a very prestigious national award: "Årets industriminne" (the industrial heritage of the year) and we where there with our portable piano and played background music which was much appreciated by the invited members of the society who attended. You can read more about Göteborgs Remfabrik here.

But there is more to the story than that. When Henrik was still in high school, about six years ago, he was involved in film production together with a bunch of friends, and the biggest project they ever did, a two-hour-long Gangsters drama-thriller which took place in early 20th century Chicago and shows a desperate police-man dealing with the Italian gangsters of the city, used Remfabriken as a primary location for scenes in the police headquarters and gangsters hide-outs. The movie was a great success at the time for Henrik and his friend Ted Jönsson (script-director-editor-lead star), and besides being producer and holding the camera, Henrik also wrote music for the score to the picture. He recorded it with an orchestra put together of other friends playing musical instruments, and there was a big gala premiere in of the movie in 2007 with around 100 guests.
Anyway, since Henrik had a connection to Remfabriken the board thought it a good idea to have the trio play some of the music as an entertainment number at the award ceremony, so Dolce presented a specially arranged "Gangsters medley" of some of the melodies from the movie!

We really enjoyed playing there and it was a special feeling for Henrik, returning, quite literally speaking, to the scene of the crime some five years later!

Gig at Royal Bachelor's Club

Tonight we had a gig back home in Göteborg. It felt a bit like we had a couple of days off and then met up for work just as any other night on the ship for the last two months. Although on a different location and with different settings it felt even more fun and exciting! The event was a dinner with a society from Göteborg and their friend society from Norway (so Dolce trio was really the ideal choice).
We played first at the reception after a meeting in a room without a piano, so we had to bring our electric one. A snowboard soft case works really well for easy handling and transportation:

Then we played again to the coffee after dinner. This was in a room with a piano, and we enjoyed playing some of our best hits, like some Strauss waltzes and the Can-can!

Here we are having our own coffee before playing. And tuning:

We've now played at the Royal Bachelor's Club twice, and we would be happy if we were to return anytime again in the future!

End of contract

We have now lived and worked on the Epic on our second contract for 10 weeks. It's funny when you are on a ship how time goes by both really fast and sometimes quite slow. Anyway, we have had a great time; we have met so many interesting, fun and lovely people, we have seen some new places and we have played our repertoire so many times we've lost count of it. To everyone on the Epic, thank you so much for making our stay there so good!
This blog post is basically just a big thank you and goodbye to the Epic. It's just one more thing we want to share with you all, and that is the last two weeks when the ship crossed the Atlantic sea to do the winter season in the Caribbean.

First we headed through the strait of Gibraltar - pretty amazing to see one continent on each side of the ship! This one is Africa.

And then after 9 days with one stop (the Azores) we finally got the Caribbean and the island of St Thomas. It was really hot there, especially when we thought about all our friends in Sweden stuck with snow!

For the flight back home we went via Houston, Texas, and spent some six hours at the airport. We found free wi-fi though so we managed, and it doesn't matter if it's a long travel as long as you know you're going home.

So once again, thank you Epic and all your people for this time! We've enjoyed playing for you and spending time with you.
Yours
Dolce trio