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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| The recordings of "Current Conditions" et all arrived during this reporting period (this is the piece I wrote to steal Beethoven's Fifth), and three renderings are evident to the left in dark blue: a runthrough, the dress rehearsal (apparently with a "cover" first trumpet, since the guy they usually have never makes a mistake), and the performance itself in which much audience noise is evident. The other two blue links have to do with Stolen Moments 1 with a full string section. Because I'm worth it.
Other stuff in the future: writing, going to Vermont, going to LA, going to Vermont, going to Utah, going to Vermont, coming home. Smiling. And my birthday lunch will be in Vermont at the Vermont Brew Pub in Burlington. Will you be there, dear reader? I didn't think so. This week's pictures start with the holes in our backyard where the tree and shrub used to be -- the second one with Sunny for comparison. Followed by our cats not liking the local red cat that occasionally saunters through. Then, me in my office with my "Huh?" stamp on commencement day, and me with Sarah Mead before marching out. Bye. JUNE 7 Breakfast was Shaws lite rice link sausages with 2% cheese, orange juice, and coffee. Lunch was a chicken sausage sandwich. Dinner last night was fast food crap at a rest area on the Massachusetts Turnpike. TEMPERATURE EXTREMES SINCE LAST UPDATE 50.5 and 95.0. MUSIC GOING THROUGH MY HEAD AS I TYPE THIS imaginary future licks for etude #99. LARGE EXPENSES SINCE LAST UPDATE Remainder of new furnace cost, $9744, Finale upgrades $238, hotel room in Hudson, New York, $125. COMPANIES THAT HAVE NOT COVERED THEMSELVES IN GLORY Staples, for having no straightforward laptop stands in stock -- all they have is the pads with fans that suck power from your USB port. COMPANIES THAT HAVE COVERED THEMSELVES IN GLORY The bookstore in Hudson that has great beer on tap, especially for giving us a free one when we had to wait because there was so much foam. PET PEEVE Cars that drive in the passing lane equal to or slower than cars in the travel lane. POINTLESS NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE: When I was 7 or 8, we availed ourselves of some sort of discount skiing thing at Madonna Mountain in Jeffersonville, Vermont. On Saturday, a bus took us to the ski area, there was a chaperone, and a group skied together, normally on the beginning and advanced beginner trails. Toward the end of the season, two chaperones came, and the group was allowed to split in two, and choose to do an intermediate trail or an advanced intermediate trail. I took the harder one, natch, along with only two others of the group. I remember taking this trail because it was deep in the woods instead of being open, because of a few sharp turns in it, some pretty rough parts, one or two moguls to deal with, and at one point I obviously misjudged something, because I recall going headfirst in two somersaults and strangely landing back on my skis -- at a considerably lower speed. It was coooool. NUMBER OF HAIRCUTS I GOT LAST WEEK: 0. CUTE CAT THINGS TO REPORT: Cammy's pathetic little meows when he is very sleepy. UPDATED ON THIS SITE THIS WEEK: This page, Compositions, Bio. THIS WEEK'S MADE-UP WORD: sturlex, a hybrid subtance used in fake gems used to decorate pens and sneakers. RECOMMENDATION AND PROFESSIONAL LETTERS WRITTEN THIS LAST TWO WEEKS: 5. FUN DAVY FACT YOU WON'T READ ANYWHERE ELSE I play euphonium and tuba almost as well as I play trombone -- which lately is hardly at all. WHAT THE NEXT BIG TREND WOULD BE IF I WERE IN CHARGE: The spelling "ledger" lines suddenly disappears from all music notation programs and music notation texts. PHOTOS IN MY IPHOTO LIBRARY: 14,695. WHAT I PAID FOR GASOLINE RECENTLY $2.73 in Maynard, $2.77 in Hudson, New York, $2.69 in Maynard, $2.79 in Cambridge, New York. CAN BE MADE PERFECT WITH ENOUGH TRIAL AND ERROR sticky gold stars, the corner of the bedroom, some wainscotting I forgot about, a head of steam. Well, stuff happens, even for me. And there is plenty to report, so I'll skip the dada doodoo and get right to the point. When last our intrepid person typing in third person was viewed here, it was the day after graduation with a big sabbatical as far as the eye can see. Well, as far as the naked eye can see. The metaphorical eye, that is. The metaphorical naked eye. Metaphorically naked. The metaphorical metaphorically naked eye can metaphorically see. Or metaphorically "see". Let me start over. Graduation is over. Sabbatical here! Two weeks less of it remaining than last time I wrote in first person, but time is like that. And that's not even speaking metaphorically. So the ground was hit by me, running. My first bigass project is to finish the etudes. Even though the finished thingie will be in ten books and 700 pages, I'm now thinking of the etudes as one really, really big piece -- which can be excerpted in performance -- that happened to take a bit more than twenty-two years to write. You can tell it's an important piece because "twenty-two" is spelled out, just like in the New York Times. Hmm, though their music writing is hardly what I'd call serious ... I digress. So to return to the original, miniscule, point, the first project is to finish the etudes. And since graduation, I wrote a very, very difficult one, #98, that was very, very hard to write -- based very, very loosely on the very, very difficult Chopin "Ocean Wave" etude, Op. 25 #12. So it goes up and down tempestuously in tempestuous ways and has a few gazillion notes in both hands. It may be the hardest tood yet (and the urge to go "MWA ha ha!" here is great). MWA ha ha! #99 is just under way today, and will also be hard, but at least for once I have a title before it is finished: Mano War. It's up to you, dear reader, to imagine how such an etude behaves. However, much working time has been usurped by traveling, doing stuff, and traveling back. That, and sitting by while the old furnace was dismantled and a new one was installed, in addition to a new water heater and a new radiator for the upstairs bathroom. Understandably, during the three days that the jobs took, the cats spent most of the time under the couch, where I understand it's quite dark. The most impressive part of the job is probably the new vent that was installed for the gas furnace -- to increase the efficiency, the venting goes right straight outside the house instead of into the existing chimney (the old chimney is now nonfunctional -- we will be renting it out for very, very teeny, and dark, parties). The outside manifestation of the event looks like a travel hair dryer, and is not much larger than one. But a big hole had to be drilled through the house for the vent, and that was noisy, noisy, noisy, and took quite some time. The last part of the job was the new radiator, which was going in as I left for the BMOP concert. More on that at the jump. Hi! How are you? Did you enjoy the little bit of white (or light blue) space? Good. So I went into BMOP, parked, walked around the Pru and Newbury Street, had a Sam Adams Brick Red Ale at a pub (apparently not available in bottles yet), and then had dinner at Conor Larkin's with John and MJ. We skipped the pre-concert stuff, since it's always packed with the same questions ("Tell us about your process" "How did you get the idea for the piece?" "Why is this so different from your other pieces?" "Do these contact lenses make my eyes look fat?"), and beer is much nicer, and pointful, than such things. The group of us sat toward the back of the balcony, and were very, very impressed by how good BMOP sounded, and how everything sounded -- in the compositional sense. There wasn't much music for just *some* of the orchestra, though (note to self: a substantial part of the evening listening to *fat* orchestra sound is very tiring) -- though Steven Stucky's piece did manage quite a bit of variety. John and I started counting, on our fingers, the number of orchestral cliches in some of the pieces, and we ran out of fingers. The concert concluded with Marty Boykan's symphony, which was great -- and finally a chance to hear bits of the orchestra instead of all of it. The opening piling of fifths returned at the end of the last movement, and there was much low harp. Everything in between was pretty. Meanwhile, Beff was excused from being around for the furnace installation because she availed herself of a gig that we both had -- various concerts (three!) having to do with the Phoenix Concerts' Hymn Tune project. We both wrote short piano trios based on hymns, and were on the Wednesday preview, the Friday NYC show, and the Saturday runout in Hudson, New York. I stayed at home to babysit the furnace people and hear Marty's piece live, but got to drive to Hudson, stay with my own lovely wife in a hotel, cruise the street of Hudson, have fancy beer on tap in a bookstore ("The Spotted Dog", I believe), have a nice Japanese dinner, and walk into something called an "Opera House" to hear our trios played live. The concert format, when explained, sounds really lame: ten composers have written piano trios on or around specific hymn tunes. Two women (Gilda Lyons, who runs Phoenix Concerts, and another woman) sing the referenced hymns unaccompanied, followed by the piano trio that references the hymns. It worked extremely well, however. Though I got to remember how much I hate "The Old Rugged Cross" -- the tune itself. Danny Felsenfeld had a nice piece based around Amazing Grace that ended on "now", Beff's was very pretty, mine was oddly aggressive (surprise!), and there was a nice one by Roger Zahab, too -- who was at the concert. So in the end, the concert was pornographic -- in the sense that I can't tell you why it worked, but I knew it when I heard it. The next day, which was the day before Memorial Day, we up and scooted out of the hotel early and drove south -- not very far south -- to a tourist attraction called Olana -- the house of the 19th century painter Frederick Church. The grounds are nice, the views cool, the architecture inspired by a weird early form of multiculturalism, and in a way it reminded me of Yaddo but with actual taste. We took the first available tour with a guide who was strangely (and creepily) knowledgeable about everything anyone could think of to ask. And then, in separate cars (because, you see, we'd arrived separately), we up and drove back to Maynard, arriving late afternoon. Beer and dinner was had. Then we had to get ready to drive to Maine! For you see, Beff, newly 50, had to have her When-You've-Turned-50 procedure, and in Maine since it's where her health insurance is. It's not the sort of thing you have without health insurance. And so there was special diet for Monday -- Memorial Day, by the way. We drove through a bunch of haze that was strange considering it wasn't humid, which we later learned was smoke from Quebec wildfires -- and then on Tuesday morning, I drove her the half-mile to the Eastern Maine Medical Center, waited around, drove her back, and then rested. For that night, the two of us were to have dinner with her colleague Chip and Chip's wife Charlie. Which we did, at a very nice restaurant that served me a great, great Bloody Mary. I had salmon and Beff had chicken. And then on the next day, we drove back to Maynard. The weather, by the way, was strangely striped again. It was clear but cool when we left, but very hazy, cloudy, and smoky on the way down, but clear and dry back in Maynard when we got back. And the cats must have been angry, being left by themselves for 52 hours ... two little barflets had to be cleaned up. And, meanwhile, and finally, the New York New Music Ensemble performance recordings of the Phillis Levin songs arrived, and those recordings replaced the Collage ones in my webspace -- and referenced in to the left in red. Meanwhile, I jacked up the levels on the Current Conditions performance and left only the performance, even with all the damn noise, on the blue link to the left. So, and, for -- it got hot, and humid, with bigass thunderstorms passing through, especially at night ... and I finished #98 and gave it the title "Mosso" --- kind of the long way around a not-pun. Since Chopin's etude was called Ocean Wave, mine is about waves, too, which in the sea reports within the weather reports in Italian newspapers were forecast as "mosso", "poco mosso" and "molto mosso". It's not much, but it's all I have. Don't hate me for being beautiful. And with that finished came the thinking for #99, about which you know, dear reader. But wait ... there was yet another trip to take! Way back in October, and then in November, and then in January, I tried to write a cute 3-4 minute piece for 4 cellos for Rhonda Rider and whoever she could talk into playing it. But I wrote a 6-minute thingie which didn't seem to stand on its own, so I added two movements to balance it, and, and ... it's fast, has lots of counterpoint and antiphonal passing of notes in long lines, and the MIDI sounds like Joe Liebermann talking. Well, Rhonda runs this subset of Music at Salem (in New York!) called The Cello Seminar, wherein ten very good cellists aged 21 to 25 spend a week on a farm rehearsing, playing in groups, playing solos, taking lessons, eating, and playing silly games in the evenings. She programmed my piece (called "Cell'Out", by the way) with all ten cellists and herself, with David Russell conducting. Wow. While, on the same day -- I got together with Bill Anderson of Cygnus to make little flip videos of his plucky instruments (guitar, mandolin, tenor banjo, theorbo) for fuel for an eventual piece for the group. He had us meet at the house of one of his friends in New Paltz, out in the country, and for two hours we talked. That was after three hours of driving, while on the radio I heard of a tornado watch for the area ... but when it was over, I then up and drove to Salem where the cello seminar people were -- at a lovely big farmhouse and various surrounding buildings -- and had dinner. And then at nine o'clock, in the upstairs part of a converted barn, all the cellists got together and rehearsed my piece. Understand, dear reader, that the space was a bit small for this group, and hard for me to do anything but marvel at how enormously BIG the sound was -- but also at how good these cellists were, and how even the hard passagework, even in sections of three cellists, was hearable. It was also. Very. Hot. In the room, so I didn't make a lot of comments. So then we up and played a silly game that, like the Hymn Tune Project, sounds lame if you describe it, but is much, much fun when you actually do it. Basically Dictionary with first lines of imaginary romance novels. And then I was given "rustic" accommodations in the same room where the rehearsal had been. And it rained much. Yesterday, the day of the gig, was a bit of breakfast in the morning, lots of warming up for the cellists, a drive to the concert venue -- which was two towns away, in Cambridge (also in New York). There was a bit of rehearsing of my piece, and then the concert. Each cellist did a solo turn, or a duo with piano (the Great Judy Gordon), followed by a Saariaho piece for 8 cellos done by 11 and conducted by David Russell, my piece under the same constrictions, and finally an arrangement of a D minor chaconne of Bach for multifarious cellos. There was no professional recording made, but one of the cellists had a Zoom which recorded some of the concert, and I recorded the big stuff from in the audience on my Edirol. Understandably, the hall is a bit echo-ey, and the size of the ensemble is vast, so it's hard to hear the details in the fast music. But I have put up the performance of the slow movement -- which at least moves slow enough to hear some of the musical things, save some imitative stuff in the middle voices, which gets swallowed in the echo. I have described this experience as Why Have One Chocolate From the Box When You Can Have A Whole Vat -- 'cause, like you know, it was a very, very big sound. And in rehearsals and performance I heard just about every detail of what I wrote. And so far I'm not convinced it's a good piece. Save the slow movements, which has some nice things in it. Which is why I'm letting you, dear reader, hear said slow movement -- see red link above and on the left. It's totally fresh! And one of these days I'll hear it with a third as many cellos, plus a fraction of a cellist. And -- oh, by the way, every piece was by a composer who worked in the 20th or 21st century. No warhorses! And of course after said concert -- by the way, there was some great playing and some really nice music I hadn't heard before (Harbison's Abu Ghraib, Joan Tower's Tres Lent) -- I drove home, which involved reacquainting myself with how slowly they drive in upstate New York (we're talking 38 in a 55 zone, people), and making two wrong turns because the "turn this way for Route 22" signs were obscured by tree limbs .... And today, life begins anew with no trips until ... Friday! when we go to Vermont for a couple of weeks. And who knows, maybe ETUDES FOR PIANO will be finished in Vermont. Or not. Also on Friday I give a little "class" for the Brandeis Alumni College, but I'm not letting that turn my smile upside down. For you see, my reward at the end of the class is getting to go to Vermont. Well, that and retrieving two hissing cats from under the couch, who now sense when they're going to be in a box for three and a half hours. And what other things? The Maids clean the house tomorrow! The new furnace gets inspected Wednesday! We finally file our last will and testament, health care proxy, etc., with a lawyer at the end of the month! They finally come and take our old oil tank away at the end of the month! And Sunday is my birthday! We used to do wings at the Ground Round for my birthday whenever feasible -- but last year and this, it'll be the very juicy wings, and beer, at lunch, at the Burlington Brew Pub. Beff will be driving. Coming up -- L.A. and Utah. Writing music. Going to the bathroom. Changing minds. All of this week's pictures except the first were taken with my cell phone. First we have the house hole made by the people installing the vent for the furnace. Next, four shots taken of, and from, Olana. Then the view of the haze and smoke on the drive back from Bangor. The last four involve the cello seminar: the farmhouse where we ate and the converted barn where my rehearsal was and where I slept; the eleven cellists setting up for my rehearsal in the cramped space with angled ceilings; cello cases lining the wall at the performance; and the audience for the event, just starting to arrive, on risers. Bye. JUNE 26 Breakfast was nothing. Lunch was a mozzarella pizza from Shaw's. Dinner last night was fried chicken, deviled eggs, noodles, dumplings, and beer from a can. TEMPERATURE EXTREMES SINCE LAST UPDATE 46.2 and 92.8. MUSIC GOING THROUGH MY HEAD AS I TYPE THIS Current Conditions. LARGE EXPENSES SINCE LAST UPDATE New tire $142 incl environmental impact fee. COMPANIES THAT HAVE NOT COVERED THEMSELVES IN GLORY Hannaford's in Burlington for discontinuing the decide-your-own-marinade for the salmon they sell. COMPANIES THAT HAVE COVERED THEMSELVES IN GLORY Farm House Tap and Grill in Burlington, despite the overpeppiness of the wait staff, for a great meal done right, and not overly expensive. PET PEEVE Cars that drive straight to the E-Z- Pass lanes and then realize at the last minute they don't have an E-Z Pass. POINTLESS NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE: My first job interview ever was at Columbia in 1987 -- I didn't get the job, but Walter Winslow did -- and at my job talk I played my old Elegy for Strings. Impressive, sad sounding piece, with a complicated chart. The whole thing was about all-interval tetrachords (which I used because Joe Dubiel had once said it was impossible to write a harmonically varied piece using them), of which there are two (0146, 0137). The whole structure was based on phrases that begin with one of them and cadence on the other, then more chorale-like stuff that isolates one kind, then the other, then back to the alternating of the two kinds. Clever, huh? And still it sounds like Barber and Berg with whipped cream and a cherry to boot. So at the job talk, immediately Suzie Blaustein said -- "that first chord is 0137, not 0146 like the chart says." Sound of structure deflation. She quickly added, "that's okay. Just change the number on the chart." More structure deflation. NUMBER OF HAIRCUTS I GOT LAST WEEK: 0. CUTE CAT THINGS TO REPORT: Cats being very curious and perturbed by cat sounds on Ann's cell phone. UPDATED ON THIS SITE THIS WEEK: This page, Compositions, Bio, Reviews 5. THIS WEEK'S MADE-UP WORD: pardluree, a transparent extension for rugs and fingernail clippers. RECOMMENDATION AND PROFESSIONAL LETTERS WRITTEN THIS LAST TWO WEEKS: 0. FUN DAVY FACT YOU WON'T READ ANYWHERE ELSE I hardly use them, but I own lots of font-making programs: TypeTool 2 and 3 for Windows, Fontographer 4.7, Fontographer 5, Font Lab, and Font Lab Studio. WHAT THE NEXT BIG TREND WOULD BE IF I WERE IN CHARGE: I'm the new me. PHOTOS IN MY IPHOTO LIBRARY: 14,863. WHAT I PAID FOR GASOLINE RECENTLY $2.84 in Burlington, Vermont; $2.84 in Burlington, Vermont. SAY THIS FIVE TIMES FAST sticky gold stars, the corner of the bedroom, some wainscotting I forgot about, a head of steam. I was there, but now I am no longer there. I am now here. Film at 11. "There" can be Brandeis (yes, I promised I wasn't going back until the sabbatical was over, but there was Alumni College to do, more shortly), and it can be Burlington, Vermont, or even St. Albans. So lemme splain. When last I was intrepid, I was embarking on that all-important penultimate tood, #99, with a predetermined name: Mano War. Tee hee. Embarkment, that was done, and I got a few days in on it. Then, on the 11th in the morning, I did a bunch of service for Brandeis -- during reunions, various faculty teach proto-classes and take questions for alumni, and I retooled my old "Rubber Bands" teach-in -- about tension and release in music. The idea was to show tension and release at several levels in several kinds of music, be it in repeated patterns, in delayed cadences, or even in frustrated key schemes (I don't know what that is either, but it was fun to type). As is customary for classes in music, several were far ahead of the others, and had good, penetrating questions that were probably above the heads of most of the others, but you know, you run with it. One attender even noted that a Schumann song I played had an "unresolved tritone" at the end,and ... well, I answered as best I could. I had a microphone and was talking to an audience of 60, but I went without the mike whenever was feasible. I had played a Machaut example as a different kind of tension and release, and I got a complex question about why fourths and fifths were used earlier than thirds for harmonization, and OOH! the complicated answer ensued, even though it was even sketchier than the Readers Digest version of the answer. And, and ... the people running the various classes gave me a travel mug, and I drove home. Almost immediately after which we retrieved the cats from their hiding places under the couch, boxed 'em up, and drove, with lots of stuff, for a two-week stint at the place in Vermont. We chose the Route 3/Everett Turnpike/Route 293 spoke off of 495 since it's shorter and usually faster, but some dumb clucks (or something that rhymes with clucks) decided to have a breathtaking accident right in the construction zone, and just shy of some toll booths. So the 20 minutes that that route saves was eaten up by the delay the dumb clucks caused -- incidentally, we did get to rubberneck and see a car that was exactly upside down, with one wheel completely gone. Beff, just 10 minutes behind me, though, was subjected to an hour delay. So I got to the place considerably in advance, which is probably good, since I had the cats. The cats were fine and recognized their occasional summer digs, and of course wanted cat treats right away. When Beff arrived, just after 5, we split up the duties: she cleaned and installed us, and I went to the supermarket for staples et al. That night, dinner was salmon filets marinated in a garlic dill marinade. And we saw that it was good. When feasible, we tried to time dinner around the time of the local TV news -- even though that made it almost 3 hours before sunset -- because, of course, it was nostalgic, in a certain way. A whole hour of local stuff -- who can resist that? But our last connection to our glorious pre-middle-age past, Marseilis Parsons, was not in evidence either as a newsreader or reporter. Beff found out later that he had retired just this year. And so all that is left now is a folksy crew either without regional accents, or mightily suppressing Vermont accents. The field reporters, however, kept theirs when feasible. Even for weird stories like snipers that shoot at horses in the pastures. We had scheduled some people to come and visit, but some didn't come due to ... marital strife. But there was a lovely hot weekend day when the Feurzeig family, all of them, came for lunch, swimming, and a trip to the dog park (luckily they brought their dog). David Feurzeig is the new composer at the University of Vermont, and of course composers tend to stick together (and laugh at the same dorky jokes). We got to experience the having of four kids thing, except that when the day was over, we were back to zero. Whew! That was a close one. I like kids that come with a reset button. There were a few trips to local restaurants, all of them fantastic, and one of them quite new. Locavorism is strong in the area, both the pretentious and the unpretentious version, and we got to experience both. Locavorism in Burlington means there is alway an available entree of two, three, or four different Vermont cheeses, as well as "grass-fed" beef burgers. Cows eat something besides grass? How will I remember the spaces on the bass staff? Pretentious was the Bluebird Cafe a fairly short drive from where we were, but I must say the garlic aioli (redundant, since the "ai" on "aioli" means garlic) that comes with their fries is pretty durn special. If filling. Their steak tartare was good, too, but the texture and color was not unlike something' I et 'n' lost. The Hill something IPA we got was great -- and they had it at another place we went, too. And that place was the Farmhous Tap and Grill, a very new and trendy restaurant in the space taken for a long time by McDonald's. They have 25 great beers on tap, the cheese plates, and the same kinds of nice starters, and of course locavorism. We got local fried zucchini, for instance, and a local cucumber salad, and yes, I got grass-fed beef. Some Cows Eat Grass. Plus, lovely beer. However, even BEFORE all that happened, we had a two-restaurant day. Why, Batman, why? Because it was my birthday, and in Ye Olden Tyme, we would do my birthday as Buffalo wings at the Ground Round -- we had a less developed sense of irony at the time. So I insisted on some wings at the Burlington Brew Pub, since I like their peppery sauce and they make their own beer -- but since it was a Sunday, Beff wanted to do dim sum, too. And the Sunday after she would be at U Maine doing Chair stuff. So, okay. Dim sum at the Single Pebble was great, and then we stretched out a bit. Beff went to a stupid meeting of the Association of the summer camps of which the Wiemann camp is a member, and on it dragged. Finally I got my wings. And sated was I. As to more and more wings -- we also ate at a restaurant very close by, which was under new management, and the wings were ... okay. And after we had done a 12:15 showing of Toy Story 3 (great!!!!), we moseyed to Buffalo Wild Wings in the Shelburne Road Plaza, a sign for which we had seen on the way to the movie. I liked that, too, and we lucked in to 50 cent wing Tuesday. Because, you see, it was Tuesday. I liked it a lot -- I got the hot Buffalo, out of a choice of 16, and Beff got the Asian something wings. And salad, too. So there. And finally -- I drove to Warner's snack bar in St. Albans for lunch on one of the days Beff was in Maine. It was awesome. Or not. But how many times can you go to your first job, with the same bosses, 34 years later, who recognize you? That's right: once. But we did do things besides eat -- and do Facebook updates. To wit, we brought our working 88-key keyboard and set up, and Beff worked on music for trumpet, cello and piano -- for a recording! Myself, I finished etude 99, then started and finished etudes 100, 100a and 100b. Yes, the etudes are done, done, done for all time! (unless I start writing pantoozlers), and I went out with a metaphorical bang. At the Buffalo wings dinner on my birthday, I told Beff I wanted to do a four-hands etude to end the set that was also two different two-hands etudes that could be played together or separately. Without pause, she said, "Call it 'Two Great Tastes'". Brilliant. So the two constituent toods are called Erdnußbutter and Cioccolato -- one on chromatic scales in compound time, one on repeated chords that crescendo and diminuendo, in simple time. And two-thirds of the way through, they bleed into each other. In Erdnußbutter at that moment, there is the indication "you got cioccolato in my erdnußbutter!" Similar story for Cioccolato. I was also writing these for Adam Marks and Amy Briggs, so there are also quotes from toods associated with them, and -- of course -- the ending of #100 is exactly the same as the ending of #1: lowest two black keys played with fist. Woo hoo! So there, smarty pants. So that next weekend Beff had to go to U Maine -- six hour drive -- for Chair type stuff, and while that was happening I was going onto the next thing -- which made me very glad to have installed the Finale 2011 update. On Jason Fettig's nudging, I arranged all of Stolen Moments (string quartet, woodwind quintet, piano) for chamber orchestra with a full string section and double winds. The new features in Finale made it much less cumbersome to do the arrangement over the top of the original scoring -- though there is so much music there -- 25 minutes and four movements -- and so much that had to be reconstituted that the arrangement took six full working days. But hey. I've got another orchestra piece without all the chocolate mess! Woo hoo! Meanwhile. Sunsets in Vermont. Awesome. Our last full day in Vermont -- yesterday -- included our first actual bike ride, the arrival of Beff's sister Ann (a co-owner of the place), packing up, and attending a huge barbecue at one of the other places in the compound. For that we had to provide a side dish, which was various dumplings and stuff from an outdoor vendor in downtown Burlington. None of the others understood that as a side dish, so we pretty much helped ourselves to all of them .... And today was outta Burlington day (How could we be outta Burlington? Didn't we just buy more?). We got up before the alarm, which was set to 5 -- since Beff had to be at U Maine at around noon. We collected the cats and other various stuff, and I drove back to Maynard -- arriving even before the post office was open, so I didn't immediately get the held mail. Beff, meanwhile, was and is in Maine. Back here I unpacked, transferred various files to my main working computer, mowed a buttload of lawn in the humidity, turned on some air conditioning, took two brief constitutionals on the hammock, and, well, here I am. So, coming up is lunch with Hayes at MadCowell (typing error intentional), a visit to a lawyer's office to get our wills and health care proxies, and a company coming to take $350 of our soft-earned money in exchange for taking out the old oil tank and bringing it with them. Then, next weekend, quick trip to L.A. and back for the Music Teachers Association of California Bash, and then ... uh, back to Vermont. With yet more pieces to write or find excuses not to write. Plus, entertain. Today' pictures are all from Vermont. First, my working area in the downstairs; a view towards New York state from the beach; Cammy in the window; the sketch for Etude #100 in a very bad reduction; a breakfast I made; sour freezer pops; two views of the amazing June 20 sunset; an earlier sunset closeup; and the cats being very curious about the cat ring tones Ann played on her phone. Bye. JULY 7 (il compleanno, l'anniversaire, geburtstag, of Amy Briggs) Breakfast was an egg, bacon and cheese sandwich on a whole wheat bulkie, orange juice and coffee. Lunch yesterday was absolutely nothing. Dinner was the salmon salad at the Blue Coyote Grill in Maynard. TEMPERATURE EXTREMES SINCE LAST UPDATE 50.7 and 99.9. MUSIC GOING THROUGH MY HEAD AS I TYPE THIS The piano break of Stolen Moments. LARGE EXPENSES SINCE LAST UPDATE Parking at Logan Airport $72. COMPANIES THAT HAVE NOT COVERED THEMSELVES IN GLORY Airlines that charge extra for luggage and onboard food -- which is all of them; and whoever designed LAX Airport. COMPANIES THAT HAVE COVERED THEMSELVES IN GLORY Whoever employs the airline scanner people at LAX -- Zoom! And MTAC for the fun, fun conference. PET PEEVE People who obsessively list their pet peeves. POINTLESS NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE: When I was in sixth grade, I was considered, for whatever reason, to be a good enough trombonist to be inserted into the second trombone section at the high school district music festival held at BFA. I'm not sure if we still have any pictures from that event. Somehow, a reel-to-reel of the entire concert was procured, and I absconded with all my second trombone parts. And obsessively, I played the band portion of the tape and played along on the second trombone part. My poor parents. (it was worse, of course, when I started writing music, which I had to do in the living room, because that's where the piano was -- and there was this one piece that had an ostinato in parallel fifths and octaves that my mother absolutely hated ... MWA ha ha). NUMBER OF HAIRCUTS I GOT LAST WEEK: 1. CUTE CAT THINGS TO REPORT: The quality of their meows when it is this hot. UPDATED ON THIS SITE THIS WEEK: This page, Compositions. THIS WEEK'S MADE-UP WORD: spickle, a seldom-used plastery substance cured in vinegar and brine. RECOMMENDATION AND PROFESSIONAL LETTERS WRITTEN THIS LAST TWO WEEKS: 2. FUN DAVY FACT YOU WON'T READ ANYWHERE ELSE I can pronounce msinairatnemhsilbatsesiditna. WHAT THE NEXT BIG TREND WOULD BE IF I WERE IN CHARGE: Food stains on your shirt means you're really cool. PHOTOS IN MY IPHOTO LIBRARY: 14,867. WHAT I PAID FOR GASOLINE RECENTLY $2.66 in Maynard. THERE'S A KIND OF HUSH sticky gold stars, the corner of the bedroom, some wainscotting I forgot about, a head of steam. It's another one of those I was there but now I am here weeks, and that doesn't bode well for the future, unless it does. I could splain, and I probably will. But first let me note that both air conditioners have been going full blast for some time now, and are having a devil of a time keeping up. There. As advertised, I noted that both air conditioners have been going full blast for some time now, and are having a devil of a time keeping up. And the cold water pipes in the basement are sweating, which is usually not their wont. As to whassup. Lotsa stuff. The most time-consuming task, possibly, during this last reporting period was being an external evaluator (or evaluatrix, as I like to call it) for an academic promotion (who? I can't say. Literally). Otherwise, it's been lazy summer days with sweat-machen chores, shopping, and a little bit of bouncing up and down to do. The best things in life are free. Life is an anagram of file. And dagnabbit, it's the time of year when plenty of requests come in for similar external evaluations. Dear reader, I do not always say yes. So soon after this last update, I produced a whole mess o' stuff to send to Peters, including all of Book X, and some suggestions for some excerpted editions of them. We'll see if out those pan. Also some other scores to print and send out, etc., ad infinitum. At the post office they call me "David" because that is my name. Actually, they don't call me anything. They don't know my name. I don't need to be where everybody knows my name. On the day we left Vermont, we had split screen existences, briefly. As Beff had to do U Maine stuff and I hunkered down here in Maynard. There was plenty to accomplish in the first several days back, and it began with a Monday at MacDowell -- uh, driving to MacDowell, that is -- to have a nice lunch with Hayes, who is there, and of course visiting the NH State Liquor Store for severely discounted wines and the Ocean State Job Lots for severely discounted who the hell knows what they'll have TODAY? Well, at Job Lots it was baked beans and Steaz iced tea ... and at the liquor store it was Ballet of Angels wine, which Beff and I have had a lot (this batch, sampled later, pretty much sucked as big as big ones get). And, incidentally, on the way, I stopped at the health food store in Groton on the way up, and got TWO varieties of "Real Pickles", which I always like, and which are really hard to find -- dills and garlic dills. They fit the description of "just what Davy needs, when he needs it". As to Hayes, it was good to see him and talk to him and hear the organ prelude he was about to finish. He is in the Watson studio, where I was twice, and ... oh yeah, we ate at Noney's. My first CHEEZBORGR PLATTER in many years. Uh, or probably at least since I had it in the same place with Sarah Manguso in 2007. But am I dropping names? Yep. That night, back got Beff, but more was to be accomplished. For you see, we finally got our acts together, as aren't-you-old-yet people, to file our wills, health care proxies, and other important legal documents. This included a drive to West Concord, a commuter rail train, a subway, a bit of around-farting, a massive document-signing session, a subway, an Asian fusion lunch in Porter Square, the purchase of two new sound effects toys and a birdsong book, a commuter rail, and a drive back home. And we made sure to include a few nonprofits in our wills as beneficiaries -- namely VCCA, MacDowell, Yaddo, and BMOP. So there. That night we had the Ballet of Angels wine with our swordfish dinner, and it ... well, it sucked. The swordfish, though, was good. Ah, pesce spada. Five letters in each word. And the day after that! Even more! For as new owners of a gas heat furnace, we were required by law to get rid of the old oil storage tank within one year (otherwise it is classified as "abandoned", or so we were told). Well, for just $350, Tanks-Away, or something like that, came in, drained the tank (didn't let us have the $240 of old oil, though), disinstalled it, and cemented the holes where the filler pipes had been, and took everything away. All they left us was a hint of heating oil fumes, which dissipated within a couple of days. Fascinating. At the end of the week, we did dinner at the Cast Iron Kitchen for the first time in several months, and the sound effect box certainly came in handy. I mean, who wouldn't want to SEEM to press on a nipple and get ... applause ... audience laughter ... rim shots ... cash register sounds ... For the record, I got the ziti, again, and it was VASTLY improved over the last time I had had it. Mostly because I am a big fan of garlic. Meanwhile, embark I did on the next project, which is solo cello, for Rhonda Rider. Non ti merdo when I tell you it has to do with a residency at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon (I don't know if "south rim" gets the initial caps, but I decided to give it the respect it is due, if any), and a bunch of composers are writing for her loosely (very loosely) based on the Big Ideas of the Grand Canyon. Of those Big Ideas I chose water (water is big, right?). And in several hot or not so hot morns and afternoons, I have been writing that piece. Which is not, so far, finished. FWIW, in the course of about 75 measures, I have slowly descended from the high register to the middle register of the instrument. The C string is not yet in evidence. Dear reader, I'm sure you have been clonked on the head with how the metaphor being belabored in this piece. On to the next paragraph. Incidentally, I grew up listening to the Grand Canyon Suite by Ferde Grofe (five letters in each name, hmmm...). But what I really mean is I grew up being in the room when my parents listened to the Grand Canyon Suite. I made a conscious decision not to quote any of it in my piece. It's a hard decision to make unconsciously. Being that we had been gone to Vermont for two weeks, there was plenty of mowing -- all of it, in fact -- to be accomplished when we got back, and that is very tiring and time consuming. I didn't mind, though. Since that mow, very little has grown back because of the heat and humidity and the total lack of rain -- indeed, the Browning of the Yards is in full swing. So in the course of my career I've progressed from brownnoser to brownyarder. On top of the mowing, there has been much consumption of freezer pops, normally sugar-free. For it is the hot part of the summer. Hottest, in fact, in the ten years we've been here (nine years eleven months, but who is counting?), as you'll note by the temperature extremes. I was pleased, in fact, to be absent for three of those stratospheric temp days, but I was beezy with my own stuff, as will be learned shortly. Lawn mowing will happen in the darker portion of the day, as long as it's not like yesterday, in which the temp was still 93 at sundown. It should be no surprise to note that there are Heat Advisories up. And places as far north as Winooski were 100 degrees yesterday. And meantime, I've been to Los Angeles! I'm back! Yes, sunny California, except for ... uh, when I was there. But backtracking a bit is to be done by me, and here, and now. The Music Teachers Association of California commissioned me for intermediate level pieces for four hands, which I fulfilled last July. Fulfilled, that is, by writing seven miniatures for piano four hands, calling it "Etude-Fantasies", and then sitting back waiting for the glory to wash over me. I worked with Cathy O'Connor, who has some important role within the MTAC and its foundation. Peters made some lovely bound scores and made them reasonably priced. So over the Fourth of July weekend, the MTAC held their annual conference at the Airport Marriott in Los Angeles -- which involved turning banquet rooms of various sizes into concert venues, practice rooms, and a giant exhibitor room. It reminded me of the Midwest Clinic from 2004, except maybe about a quarter of that size. My job: blow into town, coach three duos who have learned the Etude-Fantasies (ranging in age from 9 to 16), listen to a student composer concert and comment on the pieces I've heard. So on Sunday flew I, directly, into LA, and there was Kate Vincent, a violist whom I know from the Boston scene. I asked what brought her to LA, and she noted that she now ... lives there. Even though apparently she's still a big-time Boston gigger with BMOP, et al. Talk about a hell of a commute. And by the way, the scenery in the last two hours of the flight was very nice, thank you very much. Clear as a bell, not a cloud to be seen, north rim of the Grand Canyon, maybe .... until we got to LA, where there was a low overcast, possibly fog, and it was cloudy-feeling. Until it burned away and there was a hazy feeling. Getting to the Marriott was no problem, and neither was eating at the sports bar (the California avocado chicken sandwich) within the Marriott. After a nap, I found Cathy O'Connor, and we did a little beer. She had been putting on concerts of all the 24 commissions prior to mine, and was ready to relax, natch. Others involved in the process were nearby. Later, for dinner, I went back to the sports bar, had Buffalo wings, and all was right with the world. The clouds had cleared and I could see Downtown LA w-a-a-y in the distance from my hotel room on the 12th floor. I could also see, on the left, planes landing and on the right, planes taxiing to take off. They don't call it the Airport Marriott for nuthin'. And then came the coaching with the three duos, who went in order of age (youngest to oldest), and who gave little speeches before they played. Looking over my pieces, I thought there was quite a bit that would seem difficult to young players, but I was wrong. All six students nailed it in their own ways -- and played it differently from each other, which I liked. And there was a bit AV setup -- two Jumbotronish monitors surrounding the stage, and cameras set up to film the hands and the scores. It was fun, and slightly surreal, hearing my pieces and having all the eye candy whenever I wanted it. One of my miniatures, called Horizons, was in 7/8, and of course all the players thought it was tricky, but did it sound hard? Nope, even sounded a little like Summertime. And I had a microphone and did a bit of mugging for the cameras, and tried to keep it lively. Afterwards, a small eternity was spent autographing scores. Then Cathy and I had a beer. After that was a concert of young composer prizewinners, ranging from film scores to serious to be bop, and each one was quite sophisticated. My job was to lead something like a masterclass with the composers afterwards, and I did the best I could -- seeing as I was at a lectern and was amplified, and they weren't. Some of these composers are, or will be, studying with people I actually know. So there. Then Cathy and I had a beer. And were joined by a bunch of people for dinner. At the sports bar, natch. And carousing until we stopped. Then, bed, early trip to airport (LAX traffic is tremendous at 6:15 am!) and ride back. I got in just in time for Boston rush hour, which was ... unimpressive! The car thermometer said it was as hot as 102 in some of my drive, and what it is, too. But it sure was hot, and even the air conditioned rooms were not terribly air conditioned. So it was 6, and the idea was to go to an air conditioned place for dinner that wasn't too fancy. Hence the Blue Coyote. And I got that salmon salad thing and Beff got onion soup followed by a salad. And we saw, and tasted, that it was good. Sleeping last night -- just fine. I had, meanwhile, gotten an e-mail that the New England Philharmonic has programmed my Marine Chamber Orchestra piece "Current Conditions" for its February concert (I'll be in France) and how much would parts rental be. While I was in my hotel room, I was looking at my list of publications on the back cover of the Peters Edition of the Etude-Fantasies and ... oh, there's Current Conditions, Edition Peters 68305! So it was an easy answer: "I dunno. Call Peters". Woo hoo, I say, and sometimes say it backwards. Oh, ow oo is an anagram of woo hoo. And now, mid-day here in swelterville, we are eating cold stuff, drinking cold stuff, and mostly staying in the rooms with air conditioners. We did laundry in the morning, and the dryer seemed not to be able to find any dry air with which to do its task. So our, uh, do they call it "analog air dryer?" (drying rack, yes, I know) was put into service for a little while. When Sunny went out, he put it into service, too. And now we're just waiting for it to cool down (good luck on that) so we can muster enough energy to complain about how little energy we have. So, a little bit of lawnmowing to do before we return to Vermont at the end of the week. There will be the dance of packing and trying to fool the cats into thinking they're not going to be put into boxes (that part gets harder and harder), the driving, and ... the land of no air conditioners. Lawdy. This also means the next update here is some time in August. Deal with it. And during that time ... the trip to Utah! the trip back from Utah! Not to mention the trip from Burlington to Boston to get the plane to Utah! And the trip back to Vermont from Boston! I haven't been taking pictures, so not much to look at this week. Admire two shots -- from my cell phone -- looking in two different directions from my Marriott hotel room -- and the display of etude-fantasies for sale at the convention. Followed by as much outdoor cuteness we can muster in the current temperature -- Sunny and the drying rack. Bye. JULY 30 Breakfast was nothing. Lunch was the chicken Caesar wrap at the Halfway Cafe. Dinner last night was slight Buffalo wings and a chicken pesto panini at The Alchemist in Waterbury, Vermont. TEMPERATURE EXTREMES SINCE JULY 7 UPDATE 56.1 and 95.7. MUSIC GOING THROUGH MY HEAD AS I TYPE THIS First movement of Stolen Moments,only because I was checking a link to it. LARGE EXPENSES SINCE LAST UPDATE Lawyer stuff $1487. A year of car insurance $994. COMPANIES THAT HAVE NOT COVERED THEMSELVES IN GLORY Duffy's Pickles of Waterbury, Vermont, for not showing up to the Waterbury Farmer's Market. COMPANIES THAT HAVE COVERED THEMSELVES IN GLORY Duffy's Pickles (which we bought from another vendor) because they be so good; Buffalo Wild Wings for the free wings. PET PEEVE Left-turning cars that leave no room for traffic to get by (again!) POINTLESS NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE: Two things I improved at when I was 7 or 8 were for mere financial gain. My mother promised me 10 cents per typing lesson I would type up from her college typing book; and 10 cents for each new piano piece learned from my older siblings' method books. One day Mom owed me like $1.80 for piano pieces, so she changed the reqirement to memorized pieces. I still made ou like a bandit. NUMBER OF HAIRCUTS I GOT LAST WEEK: 0. CUTE CAT THINGS TO REPORT: Cammy's need for attention at all hours, yet his mysterious disappearance to we know not where when we have company. UPDATED ON THIS SITE THIS WEEK: This page, Compositions, Performances. THIS WEEK'S MADE-UP WORD: sonoli, a frozen bakery confection that didn't catch on. RECOMMENDATION AND PROFESSIONAL LETTERS WRITTEN THIS LAST THREE WEEKS: 3. FUN DAVY FACT YOU WON'T READ ANYWHERE ELSE I have a blog. Truth be told, that info is on Jim Primosch's blog. But nowhere else. WHAT THE NEXT BIG TREND WOULD BE IF I WERE IN CHARGE: Food stains on your shirt means you're really cool. STUPIDEST RECENT THING DONE BY DAVY I put my hand on the lawnmower's air filter when it was very hot. PHOTOS IN MY IPHOTO LIBRARY: 15,135. WHAT I PAID FOR GASOLINE RECENTLY $2.63 in Maynard, $2.67 in Burlington, $2.81 in Waterbury. YOU CAN'T GET THERE FROM HERE sticky gold stars, the corner of the bedroom, some wainscotting I forgot about, a head of steam. Dear reader, I am back from Vermont while not actually being from Vermont. But first, a nonsense sentence. Whinty prine farlet gimpse in das prinstipoozie buff. Now that we know that what do we do? But first. We went to Vermont! We've been there for three weeks! And we did things. Things were done by us! Beth put the finishing touches on a piece for her trumpet colleague Jack, for trumpet, cello and piano; and started a new ensemble piece. She also drove TWICE to and from the U of Maine for things relating to her chairmanship and to the summer music camp they hold there. Whoo doggie, pardners. We got there while the Big Heat was still on, and sleeping was difficult even with two fans blasting. But finally the heat broke. And things started feeling more normal. And some nights, even, we used ... a ... blanket! The cats lik it when we sleep with a blanket. When I say "the cats", I mean Sunny. As for me, I wrote the rest of a solo cello piece for Rhonda Rider, capping out at about six or seven minutes, on the theme of water, for her residency at the Grand Canyon. At last check in this space, I hadn't used the C string yet, having started very high (play with puns on THAT one, smarty pants!). Once I did get to the C string, I used it just as much as I wanted to, and often in double stops. With the G string, of course, silly. Double stops with the C and D or A strings require a four-dimensional bow. And broad strokes, blahdy blahdy, and back to the higher register for an abbreviated recaps. I do a lot of abbreviated recaps. Does that make me a ... soupir ... one-dimensional formalist? In due time (before it was due, time), I sent it to her. As to the title, Glitter and Glisten (you know, the sun on pools of water, etc.) were just silly and kind of funny-tasting. So I looked them up in the online Italian dictionary. Settling on "Luccicare". To glisten. Now I am closer than ever to that Italian translation of Winter Wonderland! Snow is glistening? Neve luccica! Now that didn't take that much time at all, did it? It turns out now that when I am slow to rev up on a new piece, or stuck in one, I no longer write piano etudes. Heck -- would you? This is because, and duh, the set of etudes is finished. So proclaimed Davy, with his official proclaiming stick, also fond of referring to itself in the third person. But will the proclaiming stick? Well, so far it has. And so when Luccicare was finished, and Beff was gone for four days to Maine, instead of getting right to the next piece (cello and 15 strings), which I wasn't ready to start, I ... started a blog! I started a blog! Called zio davino, apparently, don't know. See the "Blog" links twice on this page. There are currently ten entries, including one about dreaming music, one about how many friggin letters we composers have to write for other composers, one about writing simple music, one about music copying in the old days, three about Sound Effects toys, etc., etc. The rate of new blog posts will slow considerably, and there is already a blog entry apologizing for that, too. So. I figured out how to get YouTube movies into the blog posts, including movies for only the blog -- turns out I can make movies on my YouTube channel unlisted. How 'BOUT that? Though I can't attach sound files, alas, to illustrate any of my points. I will soon figure out if I can sneak some into YouTube movies or something. Alas, Jim Primosch discovered my blog pretty quickly, and blogged that I was now blogging. I mean, talk about circular referentiality. Which I do, a lot, Oscar, and you will, too. I'm keeping the blog secret to only the low two figures who read this thing here, and whoever finds it or is recommended it. Because, you see, and I say this not at all in Italian, I am worth it. Mostly (except occasionally, like will happen soon) there won't be much overlap between this page and the blog. So in Vermont, work did get done, and I did eventually start that cello and string orchestra piece -- I have about three and a half minutes that feels like it is still introductory, which is tragic considering it is supposed to be ten minutes max. When last I worked on the piece, I was working on building a big upbeat to the "meat" of the piece. Which will be, wow, maybe four minutes in. Meantime, there was also plenty of entertaining to do. On separate weekends, and both while Beff was in Maine, we (I) were visited by Jared and Vivan, and later John and MJ. That involved some trips into Burlington for eating and shopping, some grilling at home, a drive down Route 100 for rusticness and the like, plenty of eating at very good restaurants, and water sports. Which means I should bring up now ... Kayaks. The place owns two of them, with cheap plastic paddles. I was initially resistant to the idea of going out in the wavy lake with a watercraft with which I had no experience, while hardly being able to grip the paddle because of the sunscreen -- plus, Beff didn't tell me about the leg bracing thingies -- where you brace your legs inside the kayak so that you are firmly attached thereto. Ah, once I found out about THEM, there was stopping me! But not much of it. I went out a few times with Beff, then once on my own, and again for a longer spell with Beff, and I now enjoy it. Witty comment of this period was on Facebook, when I Status Updated "...kayaked for the second time in his life". Augustus Arnone commented "98 more times to go." So John and MJ kayayed several times while I went swimming several times. Jared swam, and Vivian drew and/or slept. A longer visit, and the last one of this summer, was Beff's colleagues Liz and Denny, with whom we did NO water sports. But we did do the Farmhouse Tap and Grill with them, which was spantaculicious. And once all the entertaining was accomplished, of course we got back to work. But in my case, only for a couple of days because I am back here in Maynard, for reasons soon to be discussed. Beff, meanwhile, will begin the 2010 iteration of the Vermont Youth Orchestra Camp on Sunday. Then she will continue. Then it will stop. I go to Utah on Sunday. So I am in Maynard today, after being away from it three weeks, to deal with bills, lawn mowing, and all that jazz. Then I get back Thursday, return on Friday to Vermont, and come back to Maynard, again, on the following Monday. Then, no traveling for a while. On Monday of this week, I drove 290 miles, most of it on non-interstate roads in Vermont, and it was for a good cause. Karl Larson, whom faithful readers may have recognized as the page turner on the I-Chen Yeh YouTube tood videos, is a performance fellow at the Bang on a Can Summer Institute at the Mass MOCA. He and I-Chen are both DMA students in the contemporary performance program at Bowling Green State in Ohio, and apparently it's a Heavy Davy department. As in, everyone does toods. Plus, it's just FUN to say "Heavy Davy" over and over. I hadn't heard him play -- I just saw him turn pages and point a microphone, so I was delighted to drive to North Adams and hear how completely wonderfully he played toods #84 and #85 -- both of them premieres. I even forgot about, almost, the completely clueless long construction delay I had to endure on the way. It was a quite informal setting within the galleries of the museum -- with a solo cello piece and a solo glock piece goin' down in a big room, followed by my toods and a John Zorn piece in another room. The two toods Karl chose were related, intentionally -- both starting with repeated D's and ending with a C#-D-E sonority. The slower one turns out to be harder, according to Karl. See red "Hairpinning" and "Diminishing" links up to the left. Last night we went to Waterbury for the Farmers Market. Rick Moody had found some jalapeno dill pickles in Johnson when he was at the writer's conference there, and told me they were called Duffy's and were made in Waterbury. Internet research showed that Duffy's sold at said Farmers Market, so we went in and decided to do dinner there, too, at a brew pub called the Alchemist. Duffy's, however, was a no-show. Luckily, the woman selling lamb and chicken had Duffys for the sandwiches she made, and she offered to sell me a jar. I bought it. As well as other things from other vendors. And the Duffys -- I recommend them. I also got the jalapeno relish up the road. For the future... Meanwhile, a parent of the third duo who played the Etude-Fantasies in LA put a video up on YouTube, so one can hear them -- red Etude-Fantasies link up there. If you really look hard on UToob, you'll also find me coaching the same two -- I myself can't watch it, 'cause, like, you know, it's me. Ewww. So here I am after driving back this morning, Beff and I skyped the bill paying info, I went into town, hammocked a bit, and mowed some lawn before the lawnmower overheated. Stupid me put my hand on a very hot part to see if it was still hot, and the answer was in the affirmative. This paragraph was typed with only my RIGHT hand. So here comes Utah, there goes Utah. August is serene, mostly, with dentist visit, checkup, etc. but no traveling of which I am aware. More RELAX. And that makes Davy not a dull boy. This week's pictures were, unsurprisingly, taken in Vermont, and are what they appear to be. The one in front of a house and tree -- that's the house in which I grew up. My sister used to jump over that tree. Bye. AUGUST 13 Breakfast was fake eggs, orange juice, and coffee. Lunch was Cast Iron Kitchen leftovers -- blackened swordfish and sticky rice, in my case. Dinner last night was salad and Buffalo wings at the Halfway Cafe. TEMPERATURE EXTREMES SINCE LAST UPDATE 54.3 and 93.6. MUSIC GOING THROUGH MY HEAD AS I TYPE THIS Double Fantasy -- just ripped it from a CD just arrived from Phoenix Concerts. LARGE EXPENSES SINCE LAST UPDATE Not much beyond the usual expenses. COMPANIES THAT HAVE NOT COVERED THEMSELVES IN GLORY US Airways, just 'cause. Because like all other airlines except Southwest, bags and food are extra. COMPANIES THAT HAVE COVERED THEMSELVES IN GLORY US Airways for punctuality, helpfulness, and for my finally discovering that one could park rather close to the counter at Logan Airport. PET PEEVE Lawnmowers that conk out three months after you buy them, and the repair people who presume it's because you didn't baby yours enough. POINTLESS NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE: Way back when -- I was probably 12? 13? -- my father brought home a stray black and white tiger cat that had been found in the paper mill where he worked. The cat was a little skittish, but when it was petted, it purred loudly. So I suggested we name it Percy, after the purring. We did. NUMBER OF HAIRCUTS I GOT LAST WEEK: 0. CUTE CAT THINGS TO REPORT: Random meowage. UPDATED ON THIS SITE THIS WEEK: This page. THIS WEEK'S MADE-UP WORD: flageolimi, a ragged generic shape. RECOMMENDATION AND PROFESSIONAL LETTERS WRITTEN THIS LAST TWOWEEKS: 3. FUN DAVY FACT YOU WON'T READ ANYWHERE ELSE bendy thumbs that are also perpetually crackable. WHAT THE NEXT BIG TREND WOULD BE IF I WERE IN CHARGE: Trampolines for everybody. PHOTOS IN MY IPHOTO LIBRARY: 15,155. WHAT I PAID FOR GASOLINE RECENTLY $2.67 in Maynard, $2.75 in Burlington, $2.66 in Maynard. THE LOGARITHMIC SCALE SKIPS OVER THESE sticky gold stars, the corner of the bedroom, some wainscotting I forgot about, a head of steam. When last this space was filled with new verbiage, the verbiage was new, though the world was still very, very old. Much older than you. Much older than me. Much older than you and me put together -- presuming that was even possible. And now these words -- these very words you read right now. Are newer than the older words. And the world is still very, very old. Second verse, same as the first. When last there was intrepidness in this space, I had burned my palm on the lawnmower and I was soon to embark in a westerly direction, going two time zones earlier. Because of the lawnmower stupidness -- I had no suitable vehicle for transporting the existing (yellow) lawnmower for warranty service -- I up and got another (black) one (they are so inexpensive nowadays!) at Aubuchon Hardware in town, and they delivered it! For free! Just like they delivered the grill! For free! And with much sweating aforethought, the rest of the lawn got mowed. And the big pile of bills got paid, just like they are supposed to so that we can continue to cook, heat, compute, make phone calls, and play with our dimples. And then I made an early, early drive to Logan Airport to catch the 6:25 am for Phoenix, with a plane change there for Salt Lake City. I hadn't noticed before that there is a separate path to "Parking for B terminal", where US Airways resides, so I took that and parked and got on the elevator. Lo and behold, when I exited the elevator, the US Airways counter was about thirty feet away. Excellent, so my nefarious plan is working. I did the stuff everyone else has to do to be certified airworthy. On the way out to Utah, I sat next to small people, which meant I had plenty of elbow room if I needed it. And I was going to Utah for a four-day sentence, to do the beezness of the Barlow Prize and Barlow commissions. The beezness end of what we did, and how we got there is private. The composition of the advisory board is public, though, and there were two new members this year: Todd Coleman and Stacy Garrop. I was to meet Todd at the Canyonlands Transportation desk in the airport for our ride to the Snowbird Ski Lodge, where all the beezness takes place, and that I did. Snowbird is a sprawling complex of at least four large buildings, trams, sports, trails, etc., with a ton of shops and restaurants. And our meals were covered, and very good. It was easy to gain several pounds per day from the eating alone. I went from a full breakfast (Monday) to none (Thursday), and had lots of good food. Plus, I got in one long walk along one of the trails on site. It was three days of hard work, a brief Thursday morning meeting, and off we went, not to be seen in the same configuration again for another year. And we will, Oscar, we will. During my time at Snowbird, not much else got done beside e-mail and eating. On the trip back, I sat exclusively next to very wide people. It was fun, and sometimes scary, to view the manifestations of the monsoon effect in that part of the country, which was manifesting itself earlier than is customary -- large, high, billowy clouds in abundance -- and landing in Phoenix when it was overcast! The view for the nighttime landing in Boston was nothing less than spectacular. What was LESS than spectacular was paying $7 for a snack plate filled with $1.08 worth of cheese and grapes. Oooh! Upon my return, I drove home and arrived in my own house at 12:20 Friday morning, slept until I stopped, and then drove back to Vermont. Since that's where Beff was still working for VYO, and where the cats were, and all my stuff. That Friday night I fended for myself for dinner, since Beff went out for dinner with the staff; on Saturday we had a full meal, using up as much of the fridge food as possible, and on Sunday morning we embarked Maynardwards again. And I had the cats. That ride was uneventful, since I beat the vacation traffic by several hours, and reinstalling my clothes, computer, food, etc., took as long as expected. And then we were resettled. Beff, however, embarked on Monday for Maine, and I reinstated my regiment of bike riding, discovering some places I hadn't seen yet, since bits of the Wildlife Preserve are closed to the public for road construction. Poop. Which is dood spelled upside down. It always has been. It always will. So what have I been doing this week? Bike riding. Relaxing. A LOT. And entering the cello and many strings piece into Finale. And writing an epic blog entry. Actual, several blog entries, two of them arguably epic. Beff was back Wednesday, which was our twenty-first wedding anniversary, and we celebrated with a walk to, and dinner in, The Cast Iron Kitchen. It was lovely. Plus, the picture from our wedding that I posted on my Facebook wall got like twenty comments. Yesterday's adventure was to see, IN THE THEATER, Inception. A two-and-a-half hour thriller about dreams and dreams within dreams that was very entertaining, very expensive, very much bite-sized, and nearly without humor. Apparently the entertainment rags are all abuzz with ideas about just what is reality and what is dream in the movie, and caring about that is not done by me. So the movie was a 25-minute drive away, at the Solomon Pond Mall (a very wise and wet place, apparently), and we went without lunch in order to take in the 12:30 showing. Thus, upon our return, we went to the Halfway Cafe for dinner, and I got my Buffalo wing fix. Beff got one of the SEVEN FOR SEVEN meals (seven meals priced at seven bucks) -- swordfish kebabs -- which was really quite good. And we walked home, until we stopped. After dinner, I began an epic blog post that I finished at lunch time today, while Beff was getting a filling done at the dentist. So we had leftovers from our anniversary dinner for lunch, took a nice bike ride, and here I am. Doing ANOTHER blog post. But this one is different. For this one has no reflection in a mirror. Coming up -- eye doctor, checkup, teeth cleaning all lined up this month. But I am at home, hardly at all mobile, until I go Yaddowards in October. And it's been seven summers since I indulged myself with some extended relaxing time, and here it is. Here I am. Relaxer, c'est moi. The only thing keeping me from relaxing on my own hammock is -- posting this update. Dear reader, you are worth it. This week's pictures include the pickle et al haul from Vermont, several Utah pictures, the last sunset from our Vermont time, a lovely cruet I got at Bennington Potters in Burlington (Jared got a similar one), and the nearby Ben Smith Dam showing evidence of how dry this summer has been. Bye. AUGUST 27 Breakfast was orange juice and coffee. Dinner was a Lean Cuisine steamed chicken thingie and salad. Lunch was two Trader Joe's salmon burgers. TEMPERATURE EXTREMES SINCE LAST UPDATE 50.9 and 90.3. MUSIC GOING THROUGH MY HEAD AS I TYPE THIS Starting Something, or something like that -- a Motown tune that was playing in Whole Foods. LARGE EXPENSES SINCE LAST UPDATE Every time I go to Whole Foods; a year's worth of contact lenses, $160. COMPANIES THAT HAVE NOT COVERED THEMSELVES IN GLORY Acton Ace Hardware, holding on to the broken lawnmower more than two weeks now, without a peep; and the supermarkets (Whole Foods, Donelans) who aren't currently stocking anything but generic large things of ice tea. COMPANIES THAT HAVE COVERED THEMSELVES IN GLORY Trader Joes, for all the instant breakfast stuff I could procure. PET PEEVE Wacky summer New England weather. POINTLESS NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE: In my senior year of high school, David Smith used to drive us to the two nearby I-89 rest areas to root through the trash for his beer can collection -- for a minor, he had quite a sizable collection. Besides the usual Canadian beers (LaBatts, Molson, O'Keefe), we occasionally scored truly unusual ones, such as Tooth's KB Lager, from Australia. NUMBER OF HAIRCUTS I GOT LAST WEEK: 0. CUTE CAT THINGS TO REPORT: Both cats napping on the double-wide cat scratchers. I suppose they like the texture. See Cammypic below. UPDATED ON THIS SITE THIS WEEK: This page, Compositions. THIS WEEK'S MADE-UP WORD: trazzic, the state of being for a blade of grass no longer using chlorophyll. RECOMMENDATION AND PROFESSIONAL LETTERS WRITTEN THIS LAST TWOWEEKS: 4. FUN DAVY FACT YOU WON'T READ ANYWHERE ELSE ear hair -- where'd THAT come from? WHAT THE NEXT BIG TREND WOULD BE IF I WERE IN CHARGE: Everything except garlic tastes like garlic. PHOTOS IN MY IPHOTO LIBRARY: 15,232. WHAT I PAID FOR GASOLINE RECENTLY $2.66 in Maynard. WHEN YOU HEAR "THUD", YOU DON'T THIS IS WHAT MADE IT sticky gold stars, the corner of the bedroom, some wainscotting I forgot about, a head of steam. Dear reader, the weather is very nice and very dry outside, and the vagaries of New England weather have been creating all sorts of havoc -- not just the one kind that you and I are used to. More on that as it becomes available. Wait -- it just did. It has been a mostly dry (as in, nearly rain-free) summer, and that's meant a few interesting things now being made manifest. The quince tree, normally producing four or five fruits per year, is a-bursting with issue, and some of the leaves are turning. That is, changing color, not changing direction. Plus, there are lots of brown or bare spots on the lawns, and there hasn't been much need of mowage. That changed with an old sock-er-oo from a summer Nor'easter (still don't know why they take the "th" out of there, but you know). Them what make had first predicted a day of light rain, and then when it was actually upon us, a second day of drizzle as the storm moved slowly. The final edict was for it to linger three days and dump five or six inches of rain -- half a summer's worth! -- including about three hours of a steady downpour on its third day. On the fourth day, it rested. And on that fourth day, it cleared up spectacularly -- indeed, in a mere three days a lot of us had forgotten what it was like for it to be sunny (we are so spoiled). And as the air squeezed the humidity out, two things that affected ME happened, and things that affect ME are all I care about here. Yesterday morning -- which was that fourth day -- as I was entering notes into Finale, the smoke alarm by the front door went berserk. It kinda hurt my ears as I unmounted it and took out the battery, thinking it might be a battery malfunction. I put in a fresh one, and the alarm again went berserk. I trolled the house for sources of smoke, finding none. So I brought the detector into the porch and put the battery in -- berserk. I took it into the back yard -- berserk. I took it into the garage -- berserk. So I just put it down. Yesterday evening, I put the battery back in, and it was back to normal. Meanwhile, I was unable to start the grill to cook my salmon burgers -- the spark thing made the noise, but no fire. It smelled icky, so I figured there was gas. So I used a fireplace fire starter to start the fire, and all was well. Later in the afternoon I tried again, and it started up just fine. So by using logic, and boringness, I figured the supreme wetness and the sudden dryness caused those wacky things to happen. Beff and I took several bike rides in the GOOD weather, and none in the downpours. Beff was going to and from Maine, anyway, for such lofty things as Chair Retreats and Open Houses. For such a thing we went in to town on Saturday, I got stuff at the Farmers Market, and Beff got an eye exam. Because of this Open House thing, slated to last all day, I suggested Beff get a wide-brimmed hat to shield from the sun. I also agreed to get a somewhat wide-brimmed hat for myself, for lounging in the back, so we could be parallel. Beff got a nice sun hat that actually makes her look like she went up by one or two pay grades. I got a hat that makes me look more like, say, a fly fisherman, or Stanley and Livingston. But I am worth it. I only wear it inside and in the back yard, though. The hat purchase saga was followed by our only meal out in this reporting period: Buffalo wings, quesadilla, swordfish skewers at the Halfway Cafe. There were also two very productive creative bursts in this period, during one of which I read a great deal of Rick Moody's new book The Four Fingers of Death. Great read, very fast read, and it's a great book. Rick, by the way, had recommended I read some Richard Brautigan, and I ordered some books from amazon. I have just started reading some, and enjoy it, in a different way. Apparently my writing style in my blog reminded Rick of Brautigan. Bring it on, I say. Then, I burp. Meanwhile, the school year has started, and giving a flying fig about that is not being done by me. Mindy Wagner, though, will be coming in and probably staying Sunday nights for the school year, since she teaches at the 'Deis on Mondays. Therein will be a new pattern. And there promises to be a fair share of giggles. And I continue to write a hard piece for tanti archi. And taking bike rides. On the middle of the three days of rain, Beff and I drove to Gloucester for lunch with Rob Amory, and an almost completely new experience happened. Rob served Duck Trap smoked trout. I hate trout. It's fishy, and I've never liked it. But I LIKED the Duck Trap smoked trout, even having some seconds. Woo hoo! So after my cleaning at the dentist this morning, I stopped at Whole Foods and got some. Plus, it being Whole Foods, I didn't stop there -- mahi mahi burgers, lowfat chicken sausage, tuna burgers, pitted olives with hot peppers ... if there's a way to get even one more item into the freezer, I don't know it. Coming up -- more of the same. I blog on occasion. I don't blog on occasion. I'm on a 15-bar-a-day regimen, which, given I'm writing fast music, isn't a whole lot in terms of time. But, I tell you, and I tell you with all meritriciousness -- it's deep. And kind of tall, too. With a few green flecks that glint in the light. What's up with that? Yearly checkup on Tuesday. Our birthday dinner for Beff, on the 16th, will be at the Nashoba Winery, dig that. Other than that, not much. Woo hoo! This week's pictures: Cammy on the cat scratcher, a burnt out bulbup close, the Ben Smith dam again with accumulated smelly green stuff, the quince tree, the early fall colors, and an isolated turning leaf. Bye. SEPTEMBER 10 Breakfast was orange juice and coffee. Dinner was a Lean Cuisine turkey breast entree. Lunch was aTrader Joe's Margherita pizza. TEMPERATURE EXTREMES SINCE LAST UPDATE 54.0 and 83.5. MUSIC GOING THROUGH MY HEAD AS I TYPE THIS Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It). LARGE EXPENSES SINCE LAST UPDATE Whole Foods, $93. COMPANIES THAT HAVE NOT COVERED THEMSELVES IN GLORY Acton Ace Hardware (again), holding on to the broken lawnmower more than four weeks now, without a peep. COMPANIES THAT HAVE COVERED THEMSELVES IN GLORY The companies that Beff got us new t-shirts from. PET PEEVE Funny industrial smells emanating from nearby businesses. POINTLESS NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE: Margaret made me a ruffled shirt and a cummerbund and a bow tie for her prom my senior year.They were nice (pic below), though alas it meant plunking down plenty of the parents' money to rent a tux to contextualize them. For my own prom, I wore a leisure suit. I mean, didn't everybody? NUMBER OF HAIRCUTS I GOT LAST WEEK: 0. CUTE CAT THINGS TO REPORT: When both of them stare outside from the narrow window where Beff sits at breakfast. UPDATED ON THIS SITE THIS WEEK: This page, Compositions, Recordings, Performances. THIS WEEK'S MADE-UP WORD: arosco, an arid section of deep woods. RECOMMENDATION AND PROFESSIONAL LETTERS WRITTEN THIS LAST TWOWEEKS: 4. FUN DAVY FACT YOU WON'T READ ANYWHERE ELSE The only fingernails I don't bite are my index fingers. WHAT THE NEXT BIG TREND WOULD BE IF I WERE IN CHARGE: Words with double e's now have triple e's. PHOTOS IN MY IPHOTO LIBRARY: 15,232. WHAT I PAID FOR GASOLINE RECENTLY $2.59 in Maynard with Shaws five-cent discount. AT THE BIG TOP, THEY NEVER GET AROUND TO SAYING sticky gold stars, the corner of the bedroom, some wainscotting I forgot about, a head of steam. As the sabbatical continues on apace, I continue to say "on apace". I'm on apace to write a whole bunch of music this year. MWA ha ha. Download 2.79 Mb. Share with your friends:
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