Beff's semester finishes today, and she is due home after dark tonight. Tomorrow night we take Big Mike out for Chinese buffet
Download 2.79 Mb.
|
| Meanwhile, it's been more strange springness -- NECN commented that there were forty-six consecutive days of above-normal or normal temperatures here, which would explain the earliness of the crocuses, as well as the sucky year for Vermont maple syrup. The syrup story was in the New York Times, so it must be true. And in the nice weather that's been in between the War-Making storms, I expanded the "new yard" area and got ready for planting grass seed. Which will happen soon, I promise. I don't lie about stuff like that. And the weather allowed me to take my third, fourth and fifth March bike rides, thus equalling or surpassing my total number of March bike rides in the eight years that preceded this one. Wu hu!
Meantime, Beff is here for this weekend, too, and is leaving a bit early to catch the Portland (Maine) Symphony with Chris Thile. Whose name I would put on my list if I only knew the guy. The latest bit of rain, a small one, ushered in a two-day cold snap, which gave us the ability to do a visit to downtown Concord with temps in the 30s during the day. At least it was sunny. And otherwise. We watched Broadcast News and Where The Wild Things Are during meals. And about the latter movie -- it was a high-budget arthouse movie, and I couldn't help going, "WTF???" about once every ninety seconds. Sorry, not a big Sendak fan. Meanwhile, Geoffy had been here for three days of Musica Viva rehearsals, followed by a flight to London to join Musica Viva for a three-day thingy-dingy at King's Place to be capped off with a performance of my own "Mikronomicon". On Tuesday, after all the musicians had gotten maybe an hour of sleep after a redeye, they were live on BBC3 radio, where they gallantly and expertly played two movements of Mikey Gandolfi's "Grooved Surfaces" and the third movement of "Mikronomicon". After the latter performance, the announcer remarked "All the energy of the New World." And the British journalist who was in town in November for the Viva concert with Mikronomicon on it, and who interviewed a bunch of folks here (Obamaspeak), published an article in the London Times laying down the gauntlet about how American composers have official permission to have fun in their music and Brits aren't, and yours truly got quoted several times. I have not put a link to that article to the left because that would be like orahshi, only different. As I type this, I hear Beff practicing downstairs, and out come the strains of "The Squeaky Wheel" on E-flat clarinet. It's very hard, very fast, and very octatonic. Which is the case for all my E-flat clarinet pieces that were written in less than three hours. And Beff is playing it in Burlington (Vermont) on Wednesday night in a duo concert with Liz. Meanwhile, she has come close to finishing her orchestra piece with video that is about trains. So there. Meawhile, the furnace saga was punted to plumbers, and it looks like when heating season is over, we get a new boiler and maybe new water heater ($$$$, $$$, and $$) and will likely convert to natural gas heat. As for the time being, the current boiler overfills because of a leak in the "tankle$$ coil" (which the Dunn Oil people have said does not exist). So now every day I flush the furnace, which yields maybe 2 or 3 gallons of extra steamy water that would go through the radiators and make them knock ("Who's there?" I always say, to more knocking, meaning the radiators are as bad as 3-year-olds at telling jokes), and, for the time being, carrying it all out to dump into a woodchuck hole. Just in case any woodchuck was thinking of reusing it. And speaking of $$$, enough slate tiles have fallen off the roof in the last five years that we are asking Maynard Door and Window to replace them -- "we now have a leak" being the camel's back-breaking straw. The other back-breaking straw is that birds are nesting in one of the gaps left by an exiting tile, and the noise they made made me think we had mice in the attic, and the poison I left for them, being as they are nonexistent, went unconsumed. What a paragraph! I have begun work on Etude #95, having officially put in two days on it. It's for I-Chen, of the red links to the left, and I let her suggest the "idea" as well as her "favorite notes". It has been very hard to write, since I'm combining uneven repeated notes and fast swirls, and that's ... uh, counterpoint. But it's got some stuff in it for discussion in grad seminars -- namely two chords that get built up and down that are also middleground lines, also going up and down. End of grad seminar discussion. Important notes: G below middle C and F an octave and a seventh higher. And no, there's no uber-soprano line doing the beginning of the old Star Trek theme, or "Somewhere" from West Side Story. And why not, you may ask. As of this date, no title yet. But that's always the case. And soon, only FIVE etudes left to write, all time. MWA ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha (burp) ha ha. After this vacation week, my schedule a-splode. Utah. Rochester. New York City. Extra extra office hours. End of school. Start the huge pile of writing for the sabbatical year. New York, Hudson. And ah ... vacation time in Vermont. Where we plan not to buy any local syrup. But that's a bit far in advance. More locally ... plant grass, get mint and catnip to plant, plant that, too. More big rain on the way this week, though since I don't have to get to Brandeis it's not a big deal. And NECN speculated it may be 80 by Saturday. Doubting it is done by me. This week's pictures begin with more spring a-sploding -- the first beer-in-the-gazebo shot, the rhubarb reaching the scrotal stage, Sunny viewed from the bathroom window, the Ben Smith dam at flood stage, some of the new future yard area, the sticky A-220 on the piano (memo to I-Chen: thanks for not choosing that note), Beff and the Concord cemetary, an unfortunate gravestone in the Concord cemetary. Bye. APRIL 10 Breakfast was grapefruit, Trader Joe's French toast, strawberries, orange juice, and coffee. Dinner was snacky chicken with sauteed portabello 'shrooms. Lunch was blackened swordfish and scallop cake. TEMPERATURE EXTREMES SINCE LAST UPDATE 36.5 and 87.6. MUSIC GOING THROUGH MY HEAD AS I TYPE THIS The Come to Jesus tune by Adam Guettel. LARGE EXPENSES SINCE LAST UPDATE parking at Logan airport, $96. COMPANIES THAT HAVE NOT COVERED THEMSELVES IN GLORY US Airways, but it's not bad news -- just blah, bland. COMPANIES THAT HAVE COVERED THEMSELVES IN GLORY The Greek restaurant near the University of Utah -- one of what is no more than two nearby edible options. PET PEEVE really long red lights. POINTLESS NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE: One of the RA's in the dorm where I stayed during the Summer 1975 "Summer Music Session for High School Students" at the University of Vermont was Dennis Taylor, a sax player. Who was pretty cool. I ramped up my compositional activity that summer, and before the session was over he asked me to write him a piece. So that September I did, for sax and piano, and a lot of it was in 5/8, which I thought made me look really smart. I also played a little tune of Beff's called "Call" for orchestration class of the Summer Session, and this would have been the first time I met here. Off is what we did not hit it. I sent the sax piece to Dennis, and he never acknowledged it. It was one of those "get used to it, dude" moments. NUMBER OF HAIRCUTS I GOT LAST WEEK: 0. CUTE CAT THINGS TO REPORT: They've been to Bangor and back during the update, and of course upon their return they were very needy, and going in and out, in and out a lot. UPDATED ON THIS SITE THIS WEEK: This page, Reviews 5. THIS WEEK'S MADE-UP WORD: daruska, the inedible part of a lamb shank. RECOMMENDATION AND PROFESSIONAL LETTERS WRITTEN THIS LAST TWO WEEKS: 6. FUN DAVY FACT YOU WON'T READ ANYWHERE ELSE Beff doesn't think I throw away old socks and underwear quickly enough. WHAT THE NEXT BIG TREND WOULD BE IF I WERE IN CHARGE: When someone says up is down and/or down is up, he or she is immediately corrected. PHOTOS IN MY IPHOTO LIBRARY: 14,582. WHAT I PAID FOR GASOLINE RECENTLY $2.85 at the Exxon in Acton, including $.10 per gallon extra for using a credit card. Why, I never. A DAY WITHOUT ORANGE JUICE IS A DAY YOU WON'T FIND THESE sticky gold stars, the corner of the bedroom, some wainscotting I forgot about, a head of steam. As I type this, it is one of those hypercloudy, hypersunny (stripy that way, in the sense of striped time -- polka-dotted time is far more difficult) spring days that's kind of cool and windy, which makes the cats want to sit in the window, run away from it, sit in it, run away from it, etc. Beff and I have already been out and about, but mostly about, which is fine, since it seems that about anything is not what this paragraph is. So far. Much has transpired since the last update, at which time my Passover vacation was beginning. Baby, that's gone, and the home stretch, for what it is, is that which we are in. And also, the beginning of "my schedule a-splode" has happened. And I have traveled more than five thousand miles in that time. But maybe more a-splain. Another one of those stalled storms passed by and flooded up the joint again, though not much at all in my neighborhood. Down theres in Rhode Island, it was called a "two hundred year" flood, which is pretty dire -- local news showed (formerly) paved roads that pretty much took the shape of complex sand dunes. And I presume that my route to work was closed off, again, which was not an issue because I was on vacation. Hey wait -- "vaca" means cow, and does that mean I was spending cow time? So, being as I was vacationing, I spent time writing. And I wrote etude #95 for I-Chen Yeh, finishing it just before the end of the month. Dear reader, I am not posting a copy here because internet trawlers are now sucking up posted files and re-re-re-re-posting them in other places, and I think I'd rather keep control of who has copies and how and why and when and of and for and at. But said etude was generally laid out by I-Chen ("Ravel-like with fast harmonic rhythm" and I like G below middle C and the F almost two octaves higher than that), which turned into "uneven repeated notes and swirls"), and it pretty durn hard. Because of its zephryish nature, I called it "Flit". Which is about as close as I can come in one syllable to describing the motion of a moth around a light in the night. So there. And there. And there. And, again, there. And finishing that sucker forced me back on my arrangement of/meditation on "The Ladies Who Lunch", which had been totally kicking my butt. Ah, if I had a nickel for every time Beff said, "you mean it's not done yet?" ... In any case, I got an unexpected breakthrough simply by starting a generic groove for an untroubled and untroubling pass through the third verse, and gradually it got swingier and stridier until it got to the tritone substitution chord, and sounded very Tatumesque, indeed. That would be Art Tatum, not Tatum O'Neal, but on the other hand, I don't know if she plays the piano. Then I built in some comedy (unresolved appoggiaturas to the dominant that represent, uh, tipsiness, I guess), and ... vacation ended. Or, at the very least, Beff got in for the weekend, and frolicky stuff had to be done. So Beff and I did our usual stuff like Cast Iron Kitchen, watching TV episodes on a laptop, doing the long walks for exercise, etc. I planted a buttload of grass seed in various patch places in the backyard, including the "new yard" area under the stand of pines. And then, despite still being on vacation, I had to pack, to go to Utah. This was the beginning, thereof, of schedule a-splode. I had a 6:10 flight from Logan Airport to Phoenix, and a connecting flight to Salt Lake City, and there were no prisoners to be taken, even though I know that's a non sequitur (I hope to get some more non sequiturial work this summer). For you see, and you will, Oscar, you will, I was slated as the Maurice Abravanel Distinguished Visiting Woo Hoo Guy for Monday and Tuesday, which were the last two days of my vacation. And since I would be gone, Beff took the cats with her to Bangor for the week (I'm sure they love being in a box for four hours, twice in the same week). And, oh yes. Alarm going off at 3 am on Easter Sunday. So the trip to the airport and the flights themselves were undistinguished and unnotable, save for the fact that I haven't flown US Airways for a while (the U of Utah made the reservations), and won't again for some time. One characteristic of taking USAir from Logan Airport is the long, long, long, long and circuitous hike from central parking to the terminal, as well as the completely blah character of the terminal itself. Though it was nice that the Boston to Phoenix flight was about a quarter full, thus meaning we could have played shuffleboard on the plane had we been so inclined. And the drinks service took about a minute and a half. Then, of course, I got to indulge in the new nothing-included ethos that is consuming airlines -- heck, even a pillow was seven bucks. Well, I spent nothing going out, but six bucks for the cheese and fruit selection, also known as "a seventy nine cents worth of cubed cheese and grapes", on the return. "Sky Harbor Airport" in Phoenix is another airport to avoid, mostly because of the silly structure -- essentially a mile-long rod with four spokes emanating, on which all the gates are put. The silly airport directed me to my connecting flight at the far end of that rod, which, as I got to it, announced that the connecting flight was leaving from a different gate -- w-a-a-ay at the other end of the airport. Thus about 25 minutes of my 55 minute connecting time gap were spent walking, fast, with a heavy computer bag. The pilot explained, after we boarded that "the jet stream winds are very fast today, so by the time we got in our gate was taken." Fill in the three missing logical steps on your own. I was starving by the time I deplaned (I like that word, and I hate it), so I hopped into Burger King for a coupla cheezboigas, my phone rang, and it was Morris Rosenzweig's TA David Snedegar, arranging my pickup. So I got my bag, got to the University Guest House, where I would spend three nights, and frolicked as much as I could, given that I was in a guest room at the University Guest House. I am accustomed to flying into Utah when it 100 degrees (early August, Barlow Board), and it was a mere 45 degrees and the mountains were mostly covered with white -- so it was a new experience. I got a nice view of some distant mountains that don't photograph well because of their distance, but you know, there you have it. And Morris picked me up for an excellent Chinese meal in the SLC downtown. My two days of residency included nine composition lessons, coaching performers, doing lunch with the other composition faculty, and a public talk. Dear reader, I haven't made light of my TMJ in this space for a number of years now -- I've been doing the stoic Vermonter thing, and since I'm a native, I'm pretty good at it -- but the TMJ thus made the two days more ordealish than otherwise. But I made it through partially scathed, and was glad for it all to be done. In a sign that this is a very, very good program, all nine composers were very different and had very different approaches, and I don't know how helpful I was to all of them, but I did my darnedest (more stoic Vermonter there). Amusingly, a lot of composers brought in recordings to play from their phones, and I was totally down wid dat. So my Monday lunch was with Steve Roens (five plus five!) and Tuesday with Miguel Chuaqui (six plus seven!), both at a really nice Greek place. On Monday afternoon, after five lessons, I was to coach a piano trio, a clarinet and piano, and three piano etudes -- one of them a premiere! With the same pianist for all three, an Uncle Jed. Who was terrific. Though he apparently didn't get the etude to be premiered in time to learn it. So no premiere -- just two tudes with Rick Moody all over them (Rick's Mood, Moody's Blues). The performances were quite good, and I had to give live program notes before each of my pieces, and it was cool. Though a slightly unpredicted SNOWSTORM of significant dimension started just at dusk on that same night, thus presumably keeping attendance down. Besides my pieces, there was the solo percussion piece by Yu-Hui, and a few pieces with large numbers of short movements. So after all was said, done, said, and done again, there was the Piano Concerto Made From Tudes talk, dinner with Morris and his wife Mary Jane at a Neapolitan pizza place, and on Wednesday morning I had tea and coffee with John Costa, who then drove me airportwards. John and I talked about the Boston area (Taunton is his base) and History of Rock and Roll courses. And speaking of Boston, a midsummer day hit here while I was Salt Lake and it was clear but 45 degrees. When I got on my connecting flight in Phoenix (my walk to it being a mere fifteen minutes), the captain said, "... and the weather in Boston is high thin clouds with the incredible temperature of 90 degrees". Wow, I thought to myself, and then said out loud, and then thought to myself again. And I missed it! Seunghee was taking my Theory 2 class and I could only imagine that thus the temperature of the classroom would have been around 100. MWA ha ha I say, and then think to myself, and then think to myself again. So my plane got back just a little bit early, but that earliness was more than made up for by the sl-o-o--o-owness of US Airways' baggage handlers. I have been spoiled lately by United and American, with flights wherein the baggage is already on the carousel by the time you get to it. Not the case now, and my entertainment in the eighteen minutes I stood waiting for the carousel to start (by which time it was on a different carousel than the one that had said "FLIGHT FROM PHOENIX"), there was a guy cursing left and right on his bluetooth-enabled cell phone. Time of plane arrival at gate: 11:13. I got my bag at: 11:47. The walk back to my car was, as usual, epic. But I was in the house by 12:35 and I opened not one, not two, not three, not four, but five windows for overnight. The temperature: 72 degrees. I helped myself to a glass of leftover wine and then checked on our soon-to-be-dead furnace in the basement. Turns out one should never do this while enjoying a refreshing glass of wine. Because there was a mini-stream of moisture leading from the furnace to the sump pump area and an outtake valve was leaking. I flushed the furnace of TEN GALLONS it had overfilled (sigh), put a little thingie under the valve leak, and emptied the flushed water into the kitchen sink. Normally I empty that water into the pine tree area outside, but the smell of skunk made it clear that I may encounter such a thing if I went outside. So.... I made it to bed by a quarter to two, and just barely got out of bed in time to get to Brandeis for my makeup teaching, beginning at ten. And so I did. And there were no floody detours to Brandeis. I saw who I had to saw, came home, and enjoyed the hammock. Friday was Beff's day to drive back, and it was also makeup teaching in the morning for me, so in I went, back I came. I got the cats from their carriers at 12:15 -- which is when Beff got in -- and Beff had to go for one last meeting with the oral surgeon. At 2 she was back and we did the Cast Iron Kitchen. The rest of the day was a Relax Day. And watch the cats go from place to place with even shorter attention spans than is customary for them. Today we went to Staples and Trader Joes and took a brief walk by a pond with a house built nearby. And I got off a MacDowell application for around the Thanksgiving-Christmas time. So there. And wow -- with the many rains and then a summer's day, suddenly the leaves exploded on the trees, and it got green and flowery around here pretty quickly. Meanwhile -- finally, 13 months after it happened, I got from Judy Bettina the recording of the premiere of Phillis Levin Songs by Collage at Longy. One may remember that it happened mere hours after I returned from a residency in Cleveland, thus meaning I had no input into the performance. At the time I didn't like the songs so much, but they didn't outright suck. And I refused to place blame on the performance (it's a buttstik, dontcha know). I had to screw in all my courage to listen to them, since Judy is doing them again in -- whoa, nine days! -- in New York, and she wanted to know what I wanted to change. So, sighingly, I listened. And they do not suck. Some are actually pretty good. And of course Judy is great. We came up with a few things to be done differently, I think, so it should be smashing in New York. Speaking of smashing. Mikronomicon got done by Musica Viva in England, and I heard it went smashingly, even though nobody reviewed their THREE concert residency. Limeys. Can't live with 'em, can't make 'em take out the trash. I also know that I will be at Yaddo from October 4 to November 14, and that I will spend about three months of my leave at the Camargo Foundation, in the south of France, in the spring. Now, in the immortal words of Leejay Hyla, I have to brush up on my froggie. My schedule continue to a-splode, what with Admitted Students Day at Brandeis this Monday, mini-residency at Eastman on Thursday (I'm driving there during the day and returning the next day), Phillis Levin Songs in New York on Monday and who KNOWS when I'll get time to hear a rehearsal of that, and more makeup teaching, and, and ... wow. And of course, we need a new furnace. Sighingly said. And Easter happened, thus Lent ended. And back on Facebook got I. Thus being reminded of why I frequently find reasons to leave it. Today's pix start with yet another example of what is wrong with US Airways. Then a bunch of hastily taken shots from the cloudy part of this morning -- the forsythia and rhododendron, the house by the pond where we walked, old railroad tracks, daffodils, the "new yard area", and two stills of super-Cammy from an iPod nano movie taken in February and just rediscovered. Bye. APRIL 24 missing MAY 11 Breakfast was a potato pancake, orange juice and coffee. Lunch was a chicken vegetable soup and a Buffalo tender wrap at the River Rock Grill. Dinner last night was mahi mahi and chicken burgers. TEMPERATURE EXTREMES SINCE LAST UPDATE 30.9 and 90.1. MUSIC GOING THROUGH MY HEAD AS I TYPE THIS Current Conditions. LARGE EXPENSES SINCE LAST UPDATE New lawnmower (and lawnmower oil) $205 incl. tax. COMPANIES THAT HAVE NOT COVERED THEMSELVES IN GLORY Brandeis University, for holding classes all the way to May 5. COMPANIES THAT HAVE COVERED THEMSELVES IN GLORY Famous Dave's Barbecue in Oakdale, Virginia for the food and the very spicy bloody Maries. PET PEEVE The New Jersey Turnpike. All of it. Every last centimeter. POINTLESS NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE: I sucked as a beginning swimmer. Perhaps I was ... six? In swim lessons for a whole summer all I and one friend got through was rhythmic breathing, #2 of about 15 things to become a certified "Beginner". And of course it wasted my parents' money -- unless that was a free thing from the city, dunno. I finally figured it out at the Island Pond campground's lake, where I floated for the first time, figured out the stroke, and ... started swimming. I went all the way through Advanced Beginner and Intermediate the following summer. Lesson learned: leave me alone and I'll eventually figure it out myself. And waste your money. NUMBER OF HAIRCUTS I GOT LAST WEEK: 0. CUTE CAT THINGS TO REPORT: Sunny batting around a field mouse, Sunny running in from the cedars, Cammy being confused about the tree people. UPDATED ON THIS SITE THIS WEEK: This page, Performances, Home. THIS WEEK'S MADE-UP WORD: snurl, a sound halfway between a snore and a snarl. Not recommended for children under 12. RECOMMENDATION AND PROFESSIONAL LETTERS WRITTEN THIS LAST TWO WEEKS: 11. FUN DAVY FACT YOU WON'T READ ANYWHERE ELSE I like hot pickles. WHAT THE NEXT BIG TREND WOULD BE IF I WERE IN CHARGE: Eye-rolling dancing -- think about it. Now stop. PHOTOS IN MY IPHOTO LIBRARY: 14,646. WHAT I PAID FOR GASOLINE RECENTLY $2.87 in Maynard, $2.79 on the New Jersey Turnpike, $2.79 on the New Jersey Turnpike. WHEN YOU THINK OF TORCHES, DON'T THINK OF THESE sticky gold stars, the corner of the bedroom, some wainscotting I forgot about, a head of steam. Download 2.79 Mb. Share with your friends:
|