Bellatrice

Singer Nina Salis of Bellatrice performing live at Mehrspur in Zurich

So usually you wouldn't find me in clubs where people all sit still while the band's playing and wait with moving, getting drinks, clapping hands and chatting until a song's over. This weekend was very different - I got to take pictures at Bellatrice's local show. They call their style "distorted vocal jazz", which might scare some people (like me) at first, but is really worth shutting up and listening to.

I got to take pictures with the big camera, and 'twas a bit of a stuggle: Even the sound of the shutter could have disturbed the sound, so at times I would just stand there and hold my breath, waiting for the drums or the bass to kick in again. Also, as everybody was sitting/watching/listeing, moving around wasn't easily possible, and I also didn't want to stand in the line of sight just because that would be the perfect place to take a picture for the next thirty-or-so minutes.

But what was definitely a challenge were the lighted boxes behind the stage. While they added great ambiance to the room, by definition everything on stage was back-lit. There were some tiny spotlights in orange (wonderful when the background would turn blue or purple). The ceiling was very low though, and also the bass player was really tall - he was lit from his nose on downwards. However, they say when life gives you backlight, take cool pictures, so I took the one below.

As for the rest of the pictures - I was lucky enough for it to be a jazz band, so they, too, wouldn't move too much and just listen: I could set the shutter speed as low as 1/30 O.O .

(and oops, the ugly pixeling in the second one was Blogger :-( ... )

Check out Bellatrice on their MySpace and their Website.

The club with the low ceiling is called Mehrspur.