Beff's semester finishes today, and she is due home after dark tonight. Tomorrow night we take Big Mike out for Chinese buffet
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| Dear reader, as I type this, the second snowstorm of unusual size of the season occurs, and right outside my window! And the other windows, too! And earlier this morning there was lightning and thunder to go along with it. Whoo doggies! Climate change? Yes, climate change from your climate dollar! I don't know where to go with this joke.
I have been to the MacDowell Colony and back. And there, and back. And there, and back. And there, and back. Repeat to taste. For you see, my first two weeks there coincided with Beff's end of classes and exams and all, and I had to come back just 'bout every second or third day to feed the cats. Luckily, weather cooperated, and it's a short drive anyway. At around the three week mark, I did a three day vacanza in casa (that's Italian) for Christmas, and of course there was plenty of beezy house type work to get done, except when there wasn't. Then Beff came up for New Years Day, which we spent near Merrimack, New Hampshire -- home of the Thousand Island mayonnaisy dip for crackers, apparently. And we ate well. And finally, I had to take a two-day leave from the colony so that Beff and I could tabulate all the receipts for taxes. Is the extra two or three thousand bucks refund worth it? Yep. The MacDowell part of the colony hop was more conventional than the Yaddo part -- as I had gotten to Yaddo after it was closed down for the month of September, and it had a smaller group, and it stayed constant for some time. At MacDowell, there were almost twice as many residents, and constant comings and goings and overlaps. I did finally get to know most of the names, and there was at least one composer I already knew anyway --- Alvin Singleton, and it was great to overlap with him by a week. There were also brief overlaps with younger composers, and a week overlap with Rufus Reid, a very well known jazz bassist who was there to write for orchestra. And Alexandra Grimal, a very accomplished jazz saxophonist was there when I arrived and is still there. She did a couple of really fine solo improvisations. For about three weeks, Alexandra and I were the only composers there -- and at a colony named after a composer! As is usual, there were plenty of presentations, and mercifully not overlong. And as is customary, every one of them kicked major butt. I didn't want to give such a presentation, but Marilee, an actress/theater/multimedia type from the Bay area, talked me into doubling up with her one night. We got $114 worth of ingestments and imbibements, and she fell ill. So it was just me. I killed. I had the Monday Music studio, which is one I had the first time (I've also had MacDowell, Watson, Kirby, New Jersey, and Omicron). It's a live-in studio of unusual teeniness, but it was mine. I brought firelogs for my fireplace and only had two fires the whole time -- I left the unused firelogs for my successor in that studio, whoever that may be. Lunches were always more than I could eat, but were very tasty, and dinners were customarily fine. One night the cook Scott roped me into doing pizza, which I did with aplomb. And as to making portions for various people who eat vegan, or are non-dairy, or have food allergies -- I insert the strange metaphor "piece of cake". Before the big snows came, I took plenty of walks along the trails in the woods, and that was about all the exercise that was available to me. I was there to work on a piece for Cygnus, which I had been putting off for some time. It was going to be a Yaddo project, and I'd watched my Flip movies of Bill Anderson with his mandolin, guitar, banjo, and theorbo and listened to Harold's piece Brion and other stuff Cygnus had recorded. And at Yaddo, I punted. I wrote a saxophone quartet instead. Which, by the way, rocks. So finally at MacDowell, I could postpone no more, and I just let the place's magic kick in. I started with some tongue rams on the flute, and other goofy percussion sounds, and sooner than I could shake a stick, there was some actual music in the piece. And on the last day of 2010, I finished the piece. The closest pun on the name "Cygnus" I could get for a title that hadn't already been taken was ZYG ZAG. So that is the name of my piece. Buy a vowel! Yes, I had a guitar with me to try stuff out, and I wrote down some licks and a chord progression for a projected duo with the mandolin -- and when I got to that point in the piece I realized I didn't have anywhere near enough musical materials. So I improvised. Meanwhile, I lent the guitar to Alexandra for a while anyway, since she too was writing for guitar. Now it's back, back, back! In Bangor! Because it's Beff's, and what use do I have for a guitar anyway? Christmas here included the testosterone crew of Beff's siblings -- no sister on Christmas day, who had to run an event at her hotel in Albany. I had to make something for a Christmas dinner, so Beff and I went to Whole Foods and gathered a bunch of nice seasonal things to cook. Whole Foods did NOT have the steak tips I planned on making, so I was strangely able to get them at Shaw's instead. So on the day in question, arrived the siblage, presents were made and opened (I now have two American Express gift cards to use in France -- I hope--), and Matt and Beff and I went to the Wildlife Preserve to do a little walking around. The Visitors Center there is apparently finally open, and it looks like they plan on extending the road all the way to the street on the other side about two miles distant ... as if you cared, dear reader. Beff and I had already exchanged gifts -- she got me red luggage and I got her a Zoom H1 dontcha know -- and we did not get a full size tree this year. Instead, we got a much smaller one for more money. Which, unlike the tree we usually get, can be put into the car. With other things, too! The cute thing about that tree was getting an atomizer at CVS to "water" it. Because, well, and you know. And Beff's sister arrived the day after Christmas, with son, thus beating the Blizzard of Oh Ten by just a little bit. Moi, I was already back at the Colony. I have done scores and parts and have sent them out, and am now just counting up the time until I go to France -- which is on MLK Day. Things to accomplish have also included Toyota 20,000 mile service, the procurement of Euros, dentist and doctor's appointments, and pleading for extra pills for my prescriptions. The dentist appointment had been scheduled for today, but nobody -- nobody! -- is driving today. So it was rescheduled for tomorrow. 1:40. Be there or be square. And my project in France will be a piano concerto. I am just now bouncing those ideas around. I return in mid-April, and then another piece, newly put onto the plate, will be written, me hopes. Then I would really like to spend every waking moment ironically on the hammock. Since this is the oh so belated year end posting, here's the usual lists I put up, and of course they are about ME. TRIPS February to Chicago. Hyperblue, Super Bowl at Gusty's. Colloquium at Nawwestern. April to Salt Lake City. Maurice Abravenel Lecturer, lessons, talk, concert. April to Rochester. Eastman, talk, dinner, licky-faced dog named Mocha. May to DC. Marine Chamber Orchestra. May to Hudson, New York with Beff. Hymn project. June to Vermont. July to Vermont. August to Salt Lake City. Barlow Foundation meetings. Oct-Nov to Saratoga Springs -- Yaddo. (from Yaddo) Oct to New York City -- Tony de Mare. (from Yaddo) Nov to east of Cleveland -- I-Chen and Davytudes. Dec to Peterborough, New Hampshire (MacDowell Colony).
Last half of Current Conditions, orchestra. 2-1/2 min. Etudes #94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100a, 100b, 100. 25 min. Talking Points (Right Wing Echo Chamber) cello and 16 strings 12 min. Preludes #1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. 32 min. Compass, saxophone quartet. 19 min. Zyg Zag, mixed sextet. 17 min.
APRIL 17 Breakfast was raspberries, blackberries, orange juice, and coffee. Dinner last night was Trader Joes dumplings. Lunch was a turkey burger, raw materials procured at Whole Foods. TEMPERATURE EXTREMES SINCE LAST UPDATE -4.4 and 75.2. MUSIC GOING THROUGH MY HEAD AS I TYPE THIS "The Long and Winding Road", uglyass Phil Spector version. LARGE EXPENSES SINCE LAST UPDATE Limo to Logan $120; taxi to Cassis $163; taxi to Cassis (Beff edition) $167; taxi to airport $138; Best Western Marseille (Beff edition) $138; Best Western Marseille $158; limo from Logan $120; gas $31; gas $31; gas $31; accountant $950. COMPANIES THAT HAVE NOT COVERED THEMSELVES IN GLORY Orbitz -- hey, thanks for the five hour layover in Frankfurt Airport, doodyheads; Lufthansa for not putting any monitors with flight info in the Flights to America airport module; L.L Bean, who made the new suitcase Beff got me for Christmas that is already falling apart. COMPANIES THAT HAVE COVERED THEMSELVES IN GLORY Lufthansa, trouble-free flying and nearly-edible plane food; Best Western Marseille for unusually good dinner. PET PEEVE people who say, "Okay, here we go!" and then just stand there. POINTLESS NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE: I was on the JV basketball team my sophomore year in high school, which means we played a meaningless game just before the varsity team played. Thus in the local papers, the last sentence of the sports report on the game was "and in the JV game, Dave Rakowski led with 8 points." Assuming I had 8 points and everyone else had fewer. My last serious asthma thing happened during January of that year, thus taking me out of school for two and a half weeks, and when I got back I quit the team and started to pursue drama instead. My JV colleagues were nice enough to steal my expensive specially purchased green basketball sneakers in my absence. NUMBER OF HAIRCUTS I GOT LAST WEEK: 0. CUTE CAT THINGS TO REPORT: They are back in Maynard, and very needy. Especially at night, as they try to box me in on the south side and then try to be cute by purring loudly. NEW ON THIS SITE THIS WEEK: This page, Performances, List of Compositions, Reviews 5. THIS WEEK'S MADE-UP WORD: driantophobia, a fear of things that begin with vowels. RECOMMENDATION AND PROFESSIONAL LETTERS WRITTEN THIS LAST THREE MONTHS: 14. FUN DAVY FACT YOU WON'T READ ANYWHERE ELSE When residencies begin, I am not slow/It's hip hip hip and away I go. WHAT THE NEXT BIG TREND WOULD BE IF I WERE IN CHARGE: nobody knows the word "Velveeta". PHOTOS IN MY IPHOTO LIBRARY: 15,561 (Cassis photos not yet installed). WHAT I PAID FOR GASOLINE RECENTLY $3.69 in Maynard, $3.79 in Bangor, $3.75 in Maynard. THERE'S GOLD IN THESE HERE HILLS sticky gold stars, the corner of the bedroom, some wainscotting I forgot about, a head of steam. Hop stop. The epic colony hop of '10-'11 is over, and I am back into my routine, in a manner of speaking. In a speaking of manners. Well, there you go again. I was in the south of France for an epically long time, and good thing I had an epic piece to write -- as it took an epically long time to write, too. But lemme splain. Somewhere between this winter's second Storm of the Century and its third Storm of the Century (centuries just got a lot shorter, didn't they?) I managed my escape into Le Pays de Bonne Fromage by using the usual modes of transportation. AAA Limo took me to the airport for about three-fourths the cost of a taxi (so there, smartypants), I waited around until I stopped, I took a plane to Frankfurt and then another one to Marseille. Fair enough. And I apparently saw the Alps on the way, not knowing that's what they were -- hey, snow-capped mountains in January aren't that uncommon, right? In the meantime, I had done various readthroughs of chapters in my French For Travellers book, and while I didn't dwell on whether there should be a double "l" in "travellers", it was mostly a melange of words that made it back into my brain and seeped directly out my ears therein. Or thereout. I had been practicing, apparently for days, what to say to the cab driver in Marseille who was going to get $163.20 of my hard-won dollars (in their pitiful Euro manifestations) -- Je voudrais aller au Cassis, le Fondation Camargo, pres de la mer. By the time I got my luggage (it was, and still is, red), located the taxi stand, and remembered what country I was in, I punted. "Je vais a Cassis". I had been told by people, some of them actually French, that the terminal "s" in Cassis is pronounced, and yes, the cab driver spouted the word back at me with the final "s" pronounced. He also spouted a bunch of other words that were melange soup at the time. Funny how when cab drivers sense a really big fare (Cassis is 50 km from the airport), their eyes literally light up with dollar signs. Here in France, his eyes lit up with Euro signs, and they seemed to be in a variant of Caslon. The image didn't linger long enough for me to inspect the serifs and determine the actual font. Now I had seen the French for "address" given as "addres" in one book, or so I thought, so I mispronounced it when I said "L'addres est avenue jermini un". The Euros in the driver's eyes disappeared, and the eyes obtained a glazed look. (the actual word is "addresse") He uttered, "Cassis. GPS." and off we went. 35 minutes later, I was at the doorstep of the Camargo Foundation, having sat through an utterly gorgeous view on my way in -- down, down, down, down and wow! I said "tres jolie!", and the cab driver agreed. "Oui! Jolie!" And then finally, on being let off, I uttered my first complete French sentence in France. "Pouvez-vous faire un recette pour cent vingt Euro?" And the Euro signs appeared in his eyes again, this time in a Bodoni-flavored font. "Recette" apparently means both receipt and recipe. I'm sure that in context he knew I wasn't asking how to cook 120 Euros. I rang the "office" bell, heard "Oui?", and uttered my second complete French sentence, putting myself in third person: "David Rakowski est arrive" (sorry, don't know how to get the accent aigu on this Windows computer) Soon, Christian, who works in the office, let me in, and Connie Higginson, the Foundation's co-director with her husband Leon, gave me the tour and the skinny. I was installed in a gorgeous little house with a living room, kitchen, bedroom, and above all that, a very big studio with a piano and a large computer monitor. I witnessed a pale imitation of the gorgeous Mediterranean view and the town and the huge rock they call the Cape Canaille -- for it was a bit foggy and cloudy -- and I talked a bit with Connie. Who pronounced "Cassis" with no terminal "s". Then collapsed I in a stupor of jet lag. That same night, though, Connie and Leon invited all the Fellows that had arrived that day -- 11 of the cohort of 12 plus spice (plural of spouse) -- to their place (50 feet from my studio) for a gathering and hand-delivered pizza. And plenty of boxed wine (the boxed wine was to become a fixture, and there were always three of them, representing, according to Leon, the French flag: red, white, and rose (row-zay). Casssis, and Provence, is especially a Rose region). After we all briefly introduced ourselves, described our projects, and milled about a bit, the pizza was served, little French table were set out, and I sat with Connie and Michele. More on all them Fellows later. Or perhaps now. The mathematical formula for the cohort of 12 was 6 scholars (Doug -- annotated translation of a 17thC French text; Sandra -- book about food; Michele -- book about 18thC French travel writing; Min -- 19thC mapping and planning of Paris; Jim -- masks in 19th and 20thC Paris; Wendy -- European road movies), 2 writers (Natalie -- novel, Greek and France; Stephanie -- novel, New Orleans and environs), 2 visual artists (Barbara -- wall collages; Natalia -- video about the Three Maries), and 2 composers (Eric Moe and me). I had met Eric several times before Camargo, but didn't know him well. Though I liked the music of his I heard. Now I REALLY like it, and I got to know him pretty well. And Barbara of that list is his wife. The three of us did several restaurant runs during our time, especially to what we called "Disco Pizza" -- which had, for no apparent reason, a disco ball above the bar. And easily the best restaurant food in Cassis that I had. All the Fellows were required to give presentations on their proejcts, and I went first, on Feb. 1, in my studio. Each presentation also included a reception that included snacks and the three boxed wines, so we lingered quite a bit. My project was a 40-minute piano concerto (my first concerto with a number! No. 2!) for Amy Briggs, and by the time I presented, I had 3 minutes of it that came out pretty much like I imagine gallstones being passed. After 3 days of work on it, I fired up Finale 2011, spent half a day entering the notes, and then optimized systems to taste, and ... one of the optimized systems had a stopped horn note on it, and the indication "Hn. 1" in really, really, really big type. I e-mailed Finale about it, they had a really complicated kludge for it, and I e-mailed them back: "That's your actual answer?" Thus did I take out the Finale 2006 file of Piano Concerto (it doesn't have a number), which has the same orchestra as No. 2 (it has a number), opened in in Finale 2010, deleted the music, and started again. Grr, I would have thought, if I had thoughts in onomatopoeia. Rewinding a bit, I had had a long conversation with Amy (using the telephone) about what kind of stuff she'd like to have in a concerto. We settled on using the texture of Martler to start, in medias res, with references to that texture throughout the piece; Bach-like textures, sometimes, like the Bach keyboard concertos; jazz of various stripes; and orchestra sounds coming out of piano licks like in Points on a Curve to Find. Also, alas, I had a dream the day before I left with highly chromatic Gurrelieder-type harmony with orchestra and chorus, and particularly remember a slow chromatic turn figure, harmonized with half-diminished sevenths and all, with the chorus singing the words "The Postcards are traveling home". And I have a rule about using dreamed music, and chromatic turns are thus all over the concerto. Given that, I hit the ground running -- sometimes as if in quicksand -- in Cassis. The opening part was so hard to write I thought I'd never get the whole piece done in three months, and if I didn't have my 15 bar a day rule, I wouldn't have gotten through it. I would have spent my time, instead, pounding my head against the very beautiful velvet-covered walls in my studio. Incredibly enough, I finished the first movement in about a month, and got to know the -- rather amazing -- work of the other Fellows, little by little, as we had two presentations per week. This pleased me, since I get energy from learning of the work of the others, and it greases my gears. That's a metaphor. Being as Camargo gives you a kitchen and doesn't cook for you -- much -- there were the mundanities of finding the best supermarket (Eric and Barbara already had done that, and told me where to go -- Marche U, with an aigu on the e), doing the Wednesday and Friday morning open air markets, where I bought courgettes and fruits for my own nefarious purposes, and doing the actual cooking. Our living spaces were cleaned every other week, during which time we had to scram, and once a week Christiam drove us into Ciotat to Carrefour, a gigantic Wal-Mart type place that's a department store and grocery rolled into one. On my first such trip, I also had to get ink cartridges for Barbara, and luckily they had them, and she paid me for them. I also discovered what I always miss most in Europe -- good dill pickles! Made by a Polish company, and relabeled for the locals as cornichons au sel. So I was not at want of pickles. Of course we had to bring our own shopping bags, and since the trip was so infrequent, we shopped heavily. Luckily, my cleaning time coincided with the shopping time, so that's how I could scram. So there. A few weeks into the fellowship period, there was a group expedition to see cool stuff in Marseille, and that's when I learned of the bus from Cassis to Marseille, and back, several times a day. Wow! And we saw a Courbusier apartment house (known to the locals as "the Courbusier"), had a nice meal near where the canals used to be, saw ancient layers under the Abbaye St. Victor, and walked to an old beautiful structure that fell into disrepair and was renovated. And saw, of all things, ancient Egyptian art there. Who knew? Meanwhile, Milton Babbitt died, I got very sad, I wrote a remembrance for New Music Box, and retroactively made the piano concerto dedicated in his memory. The second movement is an elegy that gets faster through successive metric modulations until it gets to Amy's much-coveted fast Bach -- which, being a Davy piece, finishes by making the bass into a wild-eyed boogie woogie. Followed by a slow fugue on that chromatic turn, using some texture gimmicks stolen from Gusty Thomas's Jubilee. I was halfway through the slow movement when Beff arrived. I used my new Cassis bus-taking chops, acquired Marseille subway chops and navette-to-the-airport chops to pick her up at the airport, and back to Cassis we went, by cab. This time I knew how to describe where to go (suivre les indications pour les Calanques), and there we were. While Beff was sleeping off the jet lag, I rambunctiously fell on my own stairs in the studio, which limited my mobility for the next week. But that night we went with a group to Disco Pizza, and it was good, brother. Beff was there about 12 days, and we did work during the day, and, while I was recovering, Beff took some walks to the Calanques (steep narrow rocky inlets nearby) and did some food shopping. Both of us wrote not a small amount of music, and Beff did so downstairs with a gorgeous view and the door open. Did I mention the gorgeous weather? January to April was like spring turning into summer -- pretty much Stanford weather -- and coming back to Maynard means I'm getting to witness TWO springs this year. And what did I miss? The worst winter since 1996 -- which I also missed because I was in Rome. MWA ha ha. Beatrice from the office lent me some crutches so Beff and I could do a tourlet of Marseille -- the word for crutches being bequilles, with an aigu accent on the first e. Unrelatedly, the Italian word is grucce. After that day, I got better and better, and we did some longer walks around Cassis, and a day trip to Aix -- the Monet town. There we ate well, did a nice museum, and walked a whole lot (I seriously wanted to find a pet store just to say "This is an Aix parrot!"). And then on Beff's exit day, I misread the bus schedule, and we fell right into a 5-hour gap in the schedule. Thus did we attack the Cassis cab stand, ask for a ride to the airport, which the drivers present didn't do. They did, however, procure Bruno for us, who happily took us there and spoke English to us. Guess what? Bruno thinks France is a little bit screwed up. We did the Best Western, had a really great dinner there, and got Beff to her flight on time. I navigated back, and worked very, very intensely for two days to finish my second movement. Exhausted that night, I went to bed late only to be awakened by my Camargo-owned cell phone. Beff, just returned to Maynard, asking to Skype. I must have looked 80 years old on Skype that night..... More revelry of all kinds happened -- pot lucks, impromptu gatherings. And I started taking longer and longer hikes, eventually making it to the lip of the third Calanque (of eight), and to the top of the Cape Canaille. There are no fences to keep you from jumping off, or being blown off, the edge of the Cape Canaille, so it was a bit ...scary. But way fun. Meanwhile, the third movement of my piece is the jazz movement, so to speak, and with five very intense days of work (more than 15 bars a day), I finished the concerto on my penultimate Sunday in France. Statistics -- it's 42 minutes, and each movement, when finished, was the longest movement I'd ever written. Thus is I. 13 minutes, II. is 13-1/2 minutes, and III. is over 14 minutes. And there's a cadenza with stride piano in it, briefly. For you see, it was written for Amy, the QUEEN of stride. Or if she isn't she'll be so soon (I rigged the election). And with a week left, I finally felt loose and accomplished enough to do more recreational walking. And, on the recommendation of Eric and Barbara, I did the boat tour of the Calanques -- eight of them, stunningly gorgeous, going north up the coast as far as Marseille. And, of course, coming back. Download 2.79 Mb. Share with your friends:
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