The ChessBase Christmas Party – part 2

Pictorial report by Frederic Friedel and Nadja Wittmann

Every year in the week before Christmas the ChessBase staff and business partners gather together for a company dinner. We showed you some pictures in a previous report, but left the special event for part two, which we are now pleased to present.

A special guest at the Christmas party was Vaile, a well-known actress, singer and composer, who is a big chess fan – she plays at least one game a day, usually independent of her work schedule.

Vaile is quite well-known to our readers – her are some stories which feature her:

• World Championship 2008: Analysis of game six, Vaile in Bonn
• The New Chessboxing Season Starts in London
• An Evening of Chess, Literature and Music
• Smudo, Vaile, Vladimir and Ludwig – when chess meets music
• Vail at the Chess Classic 2006 in Mainz

If you go to the second article listed above you will see that Vaile is also interested in chess boxing. In fact the actress keeps fit by attending training sessions for chess boxing (we kid you not) three times a week.

Vaile has also helped ChessBase to promote our music composition program Ludwig

At the ChessBase Christmas party Vaile gave us a concert, on a little stage we had
constructed in our entry and storage department

She sang songs from her latest album, due for release in February this year

The ChessBase staff and visitors listened in fascination to the musical presentation

Naturally we recorded the concert and have posted a short clip of it on YouTube

Video of Vaile at the Christmas party

Vaile sang some of the songs from her new album, and then bravely went on to sing
"White Christmas", doing this for the very first time, in English, from sheet music.
The section begins at around two minutes into the above video clip.

Finding freedom

This astonishing young lady is not just a singer and actress (and chess boxer and deep sea diver, and a number of other things). Once a year Vaile sets out with two horses on a trip into the Scandinavian forests, to spend six weeks alone, meeting no human soul, surviving essentially on what she can dig up, pluck or catch. She has done this for ten years now, ever since she was a teenager. When one of Germany's top publishing houses, Knauer, heard about this they commissioned her to write a book, Frei Sein, which was published as an illustrated top title last November.

The book is in German, but will probably soon be available in other languages (an English language publisher is being sought). At the same time Vaile has the new album which contains songs that are closely connected to the horseback trips and finding freedom in the forests of the north.

Incidentally Vaile and her music production company will be distributing this album directly and are still looking for investors. If you are interested you will find the conditions for the potentially lucrative investors' agreement here. The page contains sample songs, media links and contacts.

Finding freedom – Vaile in concert and in the forest

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