Must Be the Season of the Witch

Nomen Est Omen Sessions (photo: Mihai Plămădeală)

In 2012 we celebrate 10 years since the release of the CD Witchcraze, the most appreciated (by the public) of the 12 albums made by Nomen Est Omen by now. A year ago we unexpectedly recovered the recording sessions from a decade ago, which led us to the idea of ​​a remaster. The anticipated title is Session of the Witch, and the album will contain, besides the songs from Witchcraze, some bonus tracks recorded than which did not entered in the final version, but also some original songs. A number of instruments will be replaced and new voices will be combined with the existing ones. For the moment, Nomen Est Omen is working to another album, and we hope to launch it in Sighisoara, Sibiu and Arad this summer, but it would be an good idea to finish the Sessions by November, the month when Witchcraze was (officially) released in 2002 in Club A. The "re-release" in the same club sounds interesting, but there’s a lot to do until than. At the time of writing these lines, (intense) work it’s done for the cover.

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History of the Thirteen

The Magnificent Thirteen (photo: Liviu Pancu)

There were in 2009, in Alba Iulia, during the City Fair, thirteen musicians, men and women alike, having the same feelings for the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, all endowed with the power to promote chamber music in public spaces (often unconventional), honest enough not to gossip each other without a good reason, clever enough to overcome what divides them and to call for what unites them, gifted with the ability to ignore the cultural confusion and unfair competition, extremely fortunate to live and professionally express themselves in Romania at the turn of the millennium. Finally, for not depriving this description (obviously satirical and not at all malicious) of the paraphrased synoptic pattern, History of the Thirteen by Balzac, these thirteen people are today so famous, that there’s no way to escape the sympathy of the masses and especially the one of the employers, not even on the smallest side streets. Nomen Est Omen, Grafic and Huniadi Cantores took position on that occasion, from Alba to Iulia, in a photo for the personal archive.

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Bizarre Things at Bizere

Nomen Est Omen - Backstage (photo: Florin Marginean)

A very profound phrase says that the one on the top of the stairs is not so low as the people downstairs think. By extrapolation, while on stage, one lives a different feeling from those experienced by the audience. In 2009 Nomen Est Omen participated in a cultural project (initiated by the Museum of Archaeology and History from Arad) in Bizere - Frumuşeni, where a XII century Benedictine monastery was found. The event, coupled with a fair, gathered an audience composed (mainly) of local people, the so-called peasants, some archaeologists, a television, few local authorities, the police officer Pamela and last but not least, a beautiful girl specially coming from Timisoara, who knew Nomen Est Omen from the previous editions of  the Sighisoara Festival. The concert was well received by public, which enthusiastically responded to the show, especially to the rhythm and costumes. No matter how strange the artistic moment seemed to the people watching it, the real bizarre things from Bizere were those the band saw from the stage, a spectacle both beautiful, unique and decent.

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Sighişoara Strikes Again

The Knight Nicola of Severin (photo: Mihai Plămădeală)

In the summer of 2011, Nomen Est Omen came into the Citadel of Sighisoara to make a video for the song Packington’s Pound. There, we met our good old friend, the Knight Nicola of Severin, whom we asked to participate, for a few seconds, with us in a scene, in front of the Dominican Church, filmed in an aerial perspective from the Clock Tower by our friend (himself) Mr. Victor Veculescu. “The takes” were ok, except for the fact that the armor of  Nicola and the costumes of the musicians were from different historical times. A small detail that slipped out of our sight, but things are’nt so critical as they seem to be: postmodernism will surely sometime offer the solution to use the material, in an artistical context. Until then, Nomen Est Mihai published a picture with the noble Knight in the art magazine "Cultural Observatory", no.586 , August 2011.

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Shamanic Trance

Nomen Est Omen – The sound on the fly (photo: Mihai Plămădeală)

Shaman means wizard in Tungusic language. Yet, the term is known by his meaning of ideologist of ecstasy. The drum is the vehicle through which the shaman goes over the physical boundaries, in order to find and fight the demons that troubled the balance of the most beautiful world possibly  – the one we live in. The truth is that if you wildly beat a percussion instrument, the spirit that invades you at one given time raises up to the euphoria of the extreme sports. Rivers of endorphins cross the body of the “scrapper”, to the despair of the detached witnesses, most of the times. Sometimes, as it was the case at the “Transylvanian Fortresses” Festival, Sibiu 2010, Nomen Est Iulian, Tania & Anca raised over the Lesser Square, riding on a darbuka, flied over the Liar’s Bridge and landed on one of the nearby terraces, for a beer. Gabriela and Mihai waited down for them in order to fasten hair, respectively to take a picture for the archive.

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The Mercenary Trap

Emil Hartmann and Mihai Plămădeală (photo: Victor Velculescu)

Sibiu, August 2011, Captain's log: The meeting with Emil Hartmann in front of the Ibis Hotel, the ex Conti(nental), represented, whitouth any doubt, the event that reminded us of the movie made by Sergiu Nicolaescu four decades ago, The Mercenary Trap. One of the mercenary of those days, the most handsome, smart and strong one, today a movie/theater insider and a master in swordsmanship somewhere in Germany, is Emil himself. The movie (as we recall) starts or ends with him. Nomen Est Mihai did not met the nobleman Hartmann for seven years, since the band wore, in a series of concerts, costumes and clothes from the past provided by Emil. The joy of the recap was authentic, unaffectionate but also in fighting trim, according to each other’s infinite vanity.

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Sleep in Graphic

Graphic and Nomen Est Omen at Şoimoş (photo: Florin Mărginean)

In 2009 Nomen Est Omen performed in the Fortresses of Arad County, strictly speaking. The homonym project, extremely interesting, materialized in a roving festival. Going from one site to another was made with the bus of the Philharmonica, but sometimes, as it was the case at Şoimoş, the musicians had to track on a narrow path to reach the fortification, on the top a super hill. All this in costumes, carrying the instruments on their back, about 45 minutes of walk. We arrived at about the middle of the concert performed by our friends from the band Graphic (from Arad), and after their concert it was our turn to play. We remember especially two things: Benny, the percussionist of the named band, carried a boulder (as Sisyphus) from the base of the hill, in order to have a stool during the concert and Nomen Est Adam, our colleague (bassoon player) who fell asleep in the grass while The Graphics played. After our concert started, suddenly a storm arose, but this is yet another story. The communion with nature was at its peak.

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Railway

Sinaia, mon amour (photo: Mihai Plămădeală)

Coming back in our capital city from the Sighişoara Medieval Festival 2010, the train stationed no less then three hours in Sinaia. Meanwhile, Nomen Est Omen took delight in blackberries wrapped in paper cornet, peanuts in bags and many more wonderful things. Nobody bought a key trinket with compass or a thermometer (shaped as a deer), nor a fanny pack tailored as a shoe, but everybody felt ok even so. From the platform Mihai took a picture of us standing at the window; we took him some pictures from the train, while he tried to keep the balance on the railway. His picture came out much more convincing, hence the idea that in life it’s better to look up.

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Soprano & Base

A magical exchange  (photo:  Bodor Sandor)

The children are our future and the future sounds good (or at least we would like to think so). Asked by many parents to make a picture with their children, as a fairy, princess, entertainer or actress as those from the Mall, Nomen Est Anca once made a magical exchange with a little girl from Sibiu: she gave her the drum and took in exchange the flute. Thus resulted twenty seconds of musica universalis and an nice picture. After this artistic moment, the kids probably went to bed, dreaming to grow faster, while we went to The Owl, where we ate pancakes with vanilla – fantastic as the Wonderland of Alice.

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After the Parade

What you see from outside, you don’t see from inside (photo: Victor Velculescu)

It’s easy to be wise after the parade … The parade of the “Transylvanian Fortresses” Festival from Sibiu was impressive in 2010 and 2011. It is a great feeling to march in front of a wide public of (tens of) thousand of people, on a central route three-four kilometers long, to be finally presented on the stage in the Grand Square, in all dignity, as a participant artist. Nomen Est Omen, as many other bands, ensembles, reenactment groups or theatre companies, was photographed by many cameras, more or less professional. Finally, when the party was over, we took a picture for our hearts, to have it in our own collection, but also to find out how we looked in that evening. “What you see from outside, you don’t see from inside”, as Dorian Radu (he is a friend of ours, we don’t think you know him) said (in a song from 1989).

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An Arc Over Time

The Northern side of the Evangelical Lutheran Cathedral from Sibiu (photo: Victor Velculescu)

2011 was the year of Nomen Est Omen’s tenth consecutive participation to the festival “Transylvanian Fortresses”, Sibiu. Scheduled, by tradition, in the last weekend of August, the medieval gathering makes our band to associate the end of the summer with the presence in the beautiful gothic city on the Cibin river. To find again and again, in the same season, the Grand Square, the Evangelical Lutheran Cathedral or the Liar’s Bridge, gives you a keen feeling of time jump. “The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older”. We promised ourselves to take a picture in 2012, in the same relative position we took a year ago, in front of the northern side of the Lutheran Cathedral, dressed with the same costumes. That is, if destiny has not already decided that we will skip Sibiu next year. As an old saying says – the devil laughs when the man makes plans. 

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