Midnight Shoveler

Big Accomplishments for Nerds

2012-02-18T12:00:00.000Z

It's a big day when normally quiet, academic folk get up the guts to be social and attempt a little flirtation. But sooner or later they return to their comforts.

From Meteorology to Music

2012-02-17T18:16:00.003Z

A scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research wrote about my work 'Chinook', which is being premiered on Wednesday! His blog entry is here; it's a fun read. One of the things I love most about being a composer is an opportunity to collaborate, and this piece definitely a fun collaboration. I spoke with Jeff Weber, a meteorologist, about weather patterns in Boulder, and his graphs helped me plot out a lot of the musical structures in the piece. It was also a pleasure to film the piece up at the NCAR site, in their gorgeous 'backyard' of the science facilities!

Perhaps in the future I'll be writing a string quartet based on real-time data of hurricanes, the arms of the storm turned into varying pitches and timbres based on wind speed, rain, and pressure. Scientists have developed a program (originally for the sight-impaired but curiously useful in other ways), that turns weather data into musical tones! Right now it sounds like crude MIDI but I think I could elaborate this into a fully-formed work. The perfect string quartet for this would of course be Tesla Quartet, with its scientific and electrical connections. Commencing brainstorming: now.

Chinook premiere, gym bag

2012-02-12T10:30:00.000Z

The video for 'Chinook' is finished and ready for its grand debut. And thanks to the help of Anna Vreiling, who spent hours putting in footage and editing four separate videos, we'll have a great premiere on the 22nd (in the ATLAS black box in Boulder, CO, if you're available). Here are a couple basic screen shots from the four-panel video. Eventually I'd like to have each square have its own separate television, and play all in a row simultaneously, but this is a good first step. The sound is beautifully edited by Will Dyar, and I think it will come across nicely over projector.
Also, those bird whistles I bought are being put to good use, fo' real.

I made my sister a gym bag for Christmas out of my dad's old raincoat from the 70's that didn't fit him anymore. It was the first project I've made like it and I had to make a mockup of it first. I even managed to use the raincoat's original snap closures as the closure to the bag. It's very 80's and fun. The only thing is not being breathable my sister's gym clothes might get a little moist in there. Let's hope she washes them regularly. But she liked it as a gift nevertheless.

In other news, I'm taking a Post-Tonal Theory class as part of my doctorate (essentially, learning about how music as made after 1900 until about 1945ish-1960). Many sentences in our textbook/assignments make me think I was back in high school calculus class or college physics. "Each of these sums is an index number. For each sum there will be two common tones under TnI for that value of n" and "because of its internal symmetries and redundancies, the hexatonic collection has a limited subset structure: see the inclusion lattice provided in example 3.11." But as I've always lacked this area of musical knowledge, and really need to posses it to be more well-rounded, each class is very illuminating and a new challenge. Being more and more able to recognize atonal groups of pitches is kind of awesome. "That is such an '014'." "Oh, that is totally part of Octatonic 1,2" and All. That. Jazz.

2011 Reflections

2012-01-12T17:00:00.000Z

Two thousand and eleven was one of the weirdest years I've ever had. And likely one of the best! I spent most of it living in Iceland. That just takes the cake right there. It's hard to really find 'highlights' in a year that included weekly mind-blowing events like hundred meter waterfalls, volcano ash, foreign languages, björk, and hot spring caves. But here are some personal faves, in no particular order.

-Definitely the hot spring cave.
-Having about 15 visitors come to Iceland and stay with me!
-I released my first solo album, but chock full of collaborations and help from friends around the world.
-I moved to Colorado to start a doctorate in music.
-With a lot more spare time, I read 28 real books, including novels! I also perused 10 art/photography books, and read 2 books in Icelandic (albeit very choppily and slowly).
-After no luck dating in Iceland (though a lot of fun trying), as soon as I get back to the States I meet a great man and he keeps impressing me every day.
-Singing in a choir for Beethoven 9 for the grand opening of Iceland's national concert hall. I'm the only non-Icelander in the choir and honored to be part of the shows.
-A trip to the West Fjords, where I had some amazing photos taken and great memories with friends.
-Swimming pools! Hot spring tubs! Lots of them.
-Having an Icelandic choir- no, two of them- sing pieces that I wrote. I have never been more moved.
-Filming a percussion quartet up in the mountains in Colorado
-Meeting too many interesting and amazing people to count!

I don't know if I have any 2012 resolutions; perhaps one might be to not sell myself short, and to not put up obstacles that might stand between me and success/paychecks, even if they are opportunities I might not have thought of as My Current Path. If I learned anything from 2011, it's that I should say 'yes' more to things that randomly get asked of me, because it will often take me to very amazing places.

'Chinook' recording

2012-01-11T20:15:00.000Z

Some photos that I don't think I had a chance to post yet, of the filming of my percussion quartet 'Chinook' up on the mesa of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. The piece is a site-specific work about weather patterns in Boulder, and the film will eventually be shown on four separate (but interlocking musically) screens or projectors.

Goodbye Stan, Sexually Ambiguous Cockatiel

2012-01-09T20:00:00.002Z

My childhood pet bird, Stan, died while I was home for the holidays. He was a cockatiel and lived to be 23 years old--probably much longer than most of his colleagues would ever dream of! While he was more like my mother's pet (I never had much emotional attachment, as he was no fun to play with) Stan always lived in the living room, listening to me play piano and squawk when the music got really intense. A few times he squawked so much that I had to take his cage into another room so I could concentrate. But mostly he was pretty inconspicuous. He'd take a flight around the house about once a day, and everyone in the family would duck as he flew around.

Toward the last years of his life, Stan's flying became erratic and he was more like a dive-bombing bird- he'd fly right into a corner of the room, slide down the wall unharmed, and then toddle out on the floor looking around, waiting for someone to come pick his disoriented bird self up and put him back on his cage. The last few months of his life were less flight-bound, mostly shivery and sneezing to himself, a little bird flu.

Around New Years, Stan took one last daring flight and landed behind a heavy bookcase cabinet and my mom and I looked everywhere for him, unable to find him hiding under a chair or in a corner, or perhaps in a potted plant. I finally located him because of his old-age bird-wheezing, and managed to pry the bookcase away from the corner. I've come to think that this was Stan's last flight of honor, wanting to die in peace and quiet, like some animals who find a hiding place to put their heads down to take a final rest. But what do you know, my mom and I had to go make a dramatic Intervention out of it and tell Stan that he still had so much more life to live!

Stan's best quality should have been his mellifluous chirp. Stan was originally bought thinking he'd be a beautiful singing or talking bird, which the male cockatiels are especially good at. We didn't know why he didn't learn to repeat anything we said; he would only hiss loudly like a cat when anyone approached, and did a sort of bark when a car came in the driveway- our very own watchbird. But after owning Stan for twelve years, he laid an egg. Stan was technically a girl. We tried briefly to call her 'Stanette', and use female pronouns, but to no avail--Stan remained Stan. The gender dysphoria and sexless life without a bird companion could have been enough to drive Stan to madness, but he didn't seem to mind.

Stan's faithfulness to our family will always be remembered. Sometimes we'd accidentally leave the door open in the summer, and Stan would never fly out to greet his cardinal and blue jay friends. Thanks for stickin' around as long as you did.

Dreams at Home

2011-12-30T13:10:00.001Z

Whenever I'm home at my parents' house, I dream more. I'm sure I dream many dreams while I'm in my own apartment, but for whatever reason--my mind is more free, or the sounds are different in the quiet of the woods, or perhaps I sleep differently--I remember my dreams more often.

The other night I dreamt that I was teaching my usual Aural Skills class (one might call it a 'musicianship' class for those who snicker at the word 'aural'), but instead of my normal class of 15 attentive students, I had about 50. They were packed in like sardines. And instead of my normal classroom with piano and staff-lined wipeboards, I was stuck in a chemistry classroom, complete with a periodic table. Not helpful. My students continue to pour in, line the walkways between seats, fill up the doorway, and spill out into the hall. I try to teach the few students who are even paying attention, but it's hard without even a piano. My course advisor leans in the doorway to check on me, unphased, and I give him a look of death. A few students get up to leave in boredom, and most of the rest check their phones for text messages.

Thank goodness my teaching situation is far better in real life. I don't ever want to have to make up melodic phrases based on the element numbers of the noble gases.

Now I return to the quiet of home to play piano, eat some christmas cookies, and await the coming weeks of meetings and exams when classes resume.

Vassar music nostalgia

2011-12-02T20:30:00.001Z

Ah, the holiday memories keep a-comin' back to me. I love nostalgia!

I recently listened to the recordings of my senior recital from undergrad, which was about seven years ago. I listened to the pieces without making judgments about the mistakes I heard. I didn't say, oh, that should have been voiced differently; I wish the clarinet had come in on that entrance. Okay, maybe I heard those things but that's not what came to mind.

What I thought was, where did those ideas come from? Thankfully they haven't stopped so far, I think I'm doing something right.

It all seemed so easy then. I got over 30 people together for rehearsals of chamber works! I'm sure some of them couldn't make it to every rehearsal, but we all lived on campus, so we're all within 15 minutes walk of each other with not much else to do but geek out about music. Gosh, if I ever get money to just give away, most of it will go to the music department at VC to thank them for letting me have so many key permissions.

Vassar was an institution rife with hidden wonders. I had access to multiple harpsichords and a portative organ! I had a key to the percussion room where I could experiment on the vibraphone all by myself, for hours. I remember that day so well, I was in heaven. I had faculty play piano on several works and I didn't have to pay them.

I wrote a piece scored for friggin' six voices, harpsichord, vibraphone, cymbals, and bongo drums! That was pretty awesome. Probably won't ever get performed again, but I am so delighted with the ideas in that piece. Never say never, I suppose.

I can hear some things in the music that I still love to work with today. Rolled chords. Using tonality in unexpected ways. Long pedal chords. Minor 9ths.

Some ideas I now know came from direct sources, perhaps a little more subconsciously buried at the time. Ryuichi Sakamoto's 'Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence' is in there. Anuna's Irish choral harmonies are in there. There's even a snippet of an Aural Skills exercise that we had to memorize for class. Wait–I remember doing that intentionally, that was clever.

I can hear my professors (especially Richard Wilson) telling me to put an eighth rest in the music here...and here. I'm thanking him now for it; he taught me more than I realized at the time.

And some of the music I have no idea where the rhythms came from and how I decided to do what I did. These are moments almost like looking at oneself in a recording and not quite recognizing your face.

Things are different now, though I'm back in school, this time as a doctoral student and not an undergrad. Access to instruments is more limited at a giant institution. Though talent is certainly better. Recordings sound crisper and are so much more easily available; I can remember having to take my recital, recorded on some undefinable size black tape, to some department on campus and have them convert it to a CD for me. Concert opportunities are probably greater. I've gotten to check off some major dream items off my list: living in Europe! Having an orchestra play my piece! But my writing time now seems somehow limited, and I am an 'adult' in the sense that I have part-time jobs, responsibilities to teach, worries about how to pay for rent during the summer (any suggestions?). I still live by the academic schedule but holiday breaks are no longer my playthings, but my time to do work.

There was a holiday semester in Scotland, singing ancient carols with a Scottish choir at some embassy (France, maybe?) and playing the harp; my year not so distantly past in Iceland, where Christmas was more about some bright lights in the window to banish the darkness, and gatherings of friends with lots of food (and drinks, of course). A snowflake-making party in Pittsburgh, PA. It's really incredible that the best memories about the holidays don't involve any commercialism. It's time for me to write my annual holiday "cover song", perhaps this year will be "Baby, It's Cold Outside" as it just dumped quite a lot of snow here in Boulder, though yesterday it was 60 degrees.

I can remember the snow falling so beautifully on a silent campus. Most of the kids had gone home for the holidays but some of the music majors had exams on the last possible time before Christmas break began. I walked to the Chapel one dark snowy night. The doors were open but the building was empty. Large silent Christmas trees (real pines!) were lit up in white twinkly lights all around the old stone building. I played Christmas songs on a grand piano, lit only by tree lights, and sang for my art gallery boss. A concert for one but beautiful moments for two.

'Weekend' Film and Gil Sans love

2011-11-12T09:00:00.000Z

Tonight I saw the new movie 'Weekend' and enjoyed its minimalist, dialogue-heavy look into the intimate weekend of two men in Britain. Highly enjoyable, and it satisfies my desires in films for 1. gay characters 2. colorful items, 3. beautiful languid shots of people looking at stuff and each other and best of all 4. elegant use of typography.

I knew right away the film would be enjoyable because of the use of nicely kerned Gil Sans! At least I'm hedging my bets that that is good old Gil Sans, known also from my old museum Mattress Factory. In light weight and medium, I believe. Lovely! It was an excellent typographic choice to fit the film, so kudos designer Sam Ashby. A great complement as well to the candid-style shots for posters by Quinnford & Scout, who seem to be counted among the gay bearded young men that I do enjoy so much. A personal message to the guys in this whole design and artistic realm: let me know if there's ever any music you need for anything, I think we could work well together...our beard powers combined.

Side note: this poster for the film Fay Grim is probably my second favorite contemporary movie poster ever, which lovingly uses the typeface DIN and it soon started my DIN obsession.

Boulder Fall

2011-10-24T20:00:00.000Z

Autumn in Boulder, Colorado is beautiful! Even with a power plant in sight. A and I went to a pumpkin patch that was basically picked clean of pumpkins, but we did get to walk around in the beautiful day, see a working steam-powered tractor, and then crunch in some leaves. We found a lopsided pumpkin but still enjoyed carving it. Well, I enjoyed carving it, but made A scoop out all of the guts. It's just never been my thing.
I'm still so surprised here at how dry it is, and how infrequently it rains. In Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Boston, Iceland- almost all the places I've lived or visited, it has rained fairly frequently, and in some places, so frequently that it makes sense to carry around your umbrella with you. Here, I look at the forecast and they're rarely rain even predicted, if so, it's a tiny scattered shower.

The leaves here are mostly turning yellow; it's not the red and orange New England fall, but it's wonderfully colorful all the same. There are lots of crunchy leaves on my walk to school, so I am in a good mood to start teaching. It's even been quite warm here during the day, enough that I'm catching some rays mid-day as I eat lunch outside! Try that in Buffalo, not likely.

I've finished the percussion quartet and am moving on to a chamber commission from the Trillium ensemble in Pittsburgh- flute, clarinet, and piano. Meanwhile, I still have one percussionist to record, and filming of the percussion piece outdoors at the National Center for Atmopheric Research. Here's hoping for continued beautiful autumn weather as we head out of October and into the 'wintry' months.

Sigurður Sævarsson: Missa Pacis

2011-10-13T08:34:00.001Z

The Icelandic composer Sigurður Sævarsson has a new album out, and his ‘Missa Pacis’ blossoms with harmonies for choir, organ, cello, and percussion. I heard ‘Missa Pacis’ in concert with Hljómeyki choir during the ‘Dark Music Days’ music festival in early 2011; the piece was performed at Neskirkja (a church in Vesturbær) under dimly-lit altar lights, rows of candles, and a perfectly-hushed audience. Finally released as an album, the mystical mood of the live performance is faithfully recreated in recording. ‘Missa Pacis’ takes up where Sigurður’s last CD ‘Hallgrímspassia’ left off, with minimalist gestures and haunting melodies, changing and growing from one movement to the next. ‘Kyrie’ begins the work (it is a Mass, after all), and is one of the most striking pieces on the album, a Requiem-like death march. But it seems that this feeling is short-lived: the death-march fades into an overall serenity (hence 'Mass of Peace') that carries throughout the album. The ending of the ‘Hosanna’ movement sounds a little like Beethoven meets Stravinsky, executed as only an Icelander could do. The percussion often takes the place of a whole orchestra, with its large tympani and bells. If there were one thing that was lacking in ‘Missa Pacis’ it is that the instruments don’t get to show off their full potential; I wanted a solo movement for cello, some virtuosic playing for the organist. But being a work primarily for the choir, the instruments often provide splashes of color that wake up a somber chorus. The highlight of Sigurður’s CD is its strikingly beautiful sections of vocal writing, carrying the torch of the Icelandic choir tradition that goes back centuries. The Latin text throughout the work is always clearly heard and understood- very rare among works for a large ensemble. Sigurður invents moments for voices that that shine like bells, chiming in and then fading out to a near-inaudible whisper. Best of all, there are surprisingly hummable melodies, especially in the ‘Sanctus’ and ‘Miserere’. I found myself singing sections of ‘Missa Pacis’ as I took a walk outside, realizing that it’s not too often that a Latin Mass gets stuck in my head on the way to 10-11.

(A portion of this review is/was slated to be published in Reykjavík Grapevine newspaper, though publishing date is still unknown. I wrote the review at the end of my Fulbright in July, and haven't seen it published yet, hence the availability here first. Should the article appear I'll of course link to that too.)

Percussion Quartet

2011-10-07T18:29:00.000Z

My new work in progress is a quartet for percussion based on the 'Chinook' wind patterns of Colorado. I even met with a climatologist to get data for it! I had my first rehearsal for it today and it was quite successful. I've never written anything for a group of all non-pitched percussion before, so I was a bit nervous about getting interesting rhythms. Not to worry! I do have a *tiny* bit of pitched material in there.

These came in the mail today, the final part of what I needed for the quartet. Last year in Iceland I ordered handbells, in rainbow colors, for people to play outside. I even had them shipped overseas I wanted them so badly for a piece. The year before I ordered make-your-own music box kits and amplified them. So naturally this year I had to order something interesting, and that would be terra cotta bird whistles. They're awesome.

You Dehydrate Me Part II

2011-10-03T01:57:00.002Z

Even on a grand scheme (like the solar system), it's not gonna work out. Sun here is silent and brooding, just like she always is. Luckily Earth verbalizes her feelings; good job Earth, you're really making progress.

Katy Perry Vacuum

2011-09-27T09:43:00.000Z

Sometimes I really love being out of the pop-culture loop for a while, because I'll hear a song that is kind of catchy and cute, and wonder who it is, and it turns out to be some huge sensation of six months ago that I completely missed. The good thing of ignoring some trends is being able to find music amusing without being supersaturated by it everywhere. Cases in point: most of Katy Perry's existence, and cover songs from Glee. I'm thinking to myself, this is kind of a fun arrangement! Or, neato, this song sounds like a good summer song, one-song dance party time! But really, that song happened way back in May, and it's almost October. Or it happened in May of 2010 and I really missed it. I was probably on a glacier somewhere, not knowing a thing about new music besides Icelandic jazz and Eurovision. Still not really that bothered. There's always the youtubes.

You Dehydrate Me

2011-09-23T21:49:00.000Z

See, here's the thing...it's never gonna work out between us.

S, M, L, XL schools

2011-09-16T20:44:00.000Z

I realized the other day that I have attended four universities, all of different sizes! Small, medium, large, and extra large. And here are some size-queen thoughts about college.

Small schools like my undergrad are so great. For me at least, I like the homey feeling where most everyone you need to know, knows you back, and you get personal attention. I know it's not for everybody, but I highly recommend a small-school experience. Vassar was a great school for this. It was an arboretum, it had teeny-tiny teacher-student ratios, and on-campus housing all four years. It's also a bubble, for better or worse- sheltering students so they can learn, but then again they never get out into the surrounding community unless they really make the effort.

While at Vassar I took a semester in Edinburgh, Scotland, and studied some music at their 'state' university there. I'd call this a large school, as I never saw most other departments and felt pretty anonymous, but then I was also plopped down in a foreign country so I felt generally anonymous. Payment for class was somehow done the same way since the middle ages, where basically every single student in the university formed a giant thousand-plus person queue to hand one lady a check or a credit card. However, there was something redeeming about a university within the urban setting, you could just walk outside the music building to a café next door! And my 'meal plan' was more than generous in the nearby cafeteria, so I was able to feed some homeless people on my extra lunches.

Moving right along, I went to Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, which is more like a Large School but feels like a Medium School. It was relatively self-contained, but the music/arts building was grand and I felt very important being able to learn there. The spaces I worked in and had class were also small and kept to few students, so it maintained a medium-size environment. Though I can't say the same thing for their bigger departments like computer science, where I don't know if I'd ever meet all the students in my own department.

Currently I'm in Boulder, Colorado, whose university is like the destructive goatweed that someone thought was a good idea to plant along the highway. The university is a giant-XL-supersized megalomaniac and taking over everything in its path. During some football games, there are so many people and cars and bicycles that the streets are closed and the libraries close, and I avoid campus altogether. It is almost too big to walk across (though you could do it, if you had all afternoon) and there are bus routes that cut through the campuses. I don't think I'll ever step foot in 95% of the buildings there. During the first weeks of school, the university bookstore set up temporary cash registers and a queue for book pick-up; there were 35 cashout stalls to be corralled into. But the pros of this 30K student body are in the infrastructure of the campus; there are tried-and-tested plans for transportation, dining, electronic systems that really do work for people's benefit and efficiency. I get emails for every book i check out from the library. And each department is sort of its own separate entity; I almost forget that I am not just at the College of Music but part of this city of students. Comforting as well is while many of the other students at CU are here basically just to ski and snowboard, and 'oh wait, I guess I have to take this quiz ugh'; the music students are as hard-working as ever, and are more likely than my tiny undergrad to escape out of the safe walls of campus and into the big world. And once they get out into town, they find conveniently close to campus boundaries: the marijuana dispensaries.

Orchestral recordings of works

2011-09-10T19:39:00.003Z

My man Nico Muhly has a great entry on the impossibility of getting recordings from orchestras who have played composer's works. For all the composers I know out there, I know they have experienced the same frustrations! Check it out at http://nicomuhly.com/news/2011/i-want-to-get-specific/.
I had a similar experience when the Pittsburgh Symphony did a reading of my work for orchestra, Lake Mývatn. The result of the reading was that I learned a lot, but there was no possibility to take a recording home with me to share with my parents, to discuss with the other composers, or to learn from it.

The catch with the Pittsburgh Symphony is an ironic one- they make a high-quality recording of the reading session that you can go to the administrative offices and listen to, but they will not let a reading session of this nature out into the public for any means, no copies made, etc. I sort of wanted to drag my whole composition seminar to this tiny listening station and make the staff really annoyed at us all standing around listening to my piece one by one. But it's not the admin staff's fault. Like Nico said, and others have commented on, the musicians' union that creates these strongholds on music dissemination does it for the musicians' own good, and sooner or later something will/should/must change, we just have to figure out how to do it and how to make a compromise with larger rule-making organizations that govern orchestras.
Much like other composers, I'm less interested in the orchestra world now and all of its bureacraZy and more focused on writing music for real people in real places and listened to in a non-cutthroat setting. I have little desire to have my works scoffed at or eye-rolled by 60 professional musicians, some of whom care a lot about my work, but some who'd rather never play a note of music that was written after 1905.

Now that I'm a few years and projects beyond my first work for orchestra, I can evaluate what I got out of the project. I had two performances of the piece, the professional playing and the student-orchestra performance. Interestingly, probably due to more rehearsal time, the student version of my piece actually had a lot more heart, and it was the one I enjoyed hearing more. Technically imperfect, a little under tempo, but very colorful.

The Pittsburgh Symphony's version was technically precise, but a bit cold. I could set that aside and listen to the professionals play the music. But then something went horribly awry during the 'performance' of the piece. During my reading, some of the members of the double-bass section had some kind of tiff going with the composer in residence or the conductor at the time, and basically ignored his direction for 'just slightly louder than ppp' and instead played fff. This pissed the conductor (and the composer) off, and they had to stop the piece mid-performance. Then the conductor basically told the bass section they were acting like children, scolded them, gave a big sigh, and the piece started again, but lost its magic, its continuity. Still, polite golf applause at the end for a good work.

When you are a professional player, you are getting paid for playing. I expect you to treat me with some dignity as I am a lowly student who won a competition, I am a good composer! And I have my year's worth of work on the line, being played just 1.5 times for about fifteen minutes, and that's my prize. Oh, and I do get some snacks afterward, thank goodness because I was about to pass out from nervous anxiety.

I do not appreciate having my hard work being taken so lightly that performers would purposefully mis-play the music and the conductor has to stop and scold them. As much as I think the PSO is one of the best orchestras I've heard, I haven't forgotten that about that moment, and how angry I felt. Thankfully that was one hair-pulling experience around a slew of other chamber music performances that were so personal, so cared-for by the performers, that I mostly remember only the best moments. I've heard the PSO play other students' works nearly flawlessly and think sometimes, why did that moment have to happen to me? But it seems pretty inconsequential in the scope of other works and recognitions (hello, year in Iceland) that I've gotten since.

That is my rant about orchestral bureaucracy, better left for its own post and not in Nico's comment section. I'm going to go work on my percussion quartet now.

The Origin of the Sun and Moon is here!

2011-09-02T02:07:00.005Z

After much hard work and anticipation, my second album (actually my first solo album, the first was a duo album) has just arrived! The Origin of the Sun and Moon was written in Iceland this past year on a Fulbright Fellowship. The album is a collaboration with Mark Mangini, a writer and poet from Pittsburgh, PA. Mark sent me texts that I would use for musical inspiration, and then I sent him back sonic responses. He'd send me more text in response to that music; this went back and forth for the whole year. The album is a document of our working process as well as a diary of my year in Iceland, sounds and music I recorded on my travels, and helpful and inspiring people I met throughout the year. There are 11 tracks (well, possibly more...if you buy or download it there is definitely a surprise at the end!) and beautiful photography throughout, and Mark's texts for each piece really shine. It's crazy to see all the albums in one box, lined up together!

You can buy securely and easily online from my website HERE in regular CD format, digital download, or a fancy limited edition. You can listen to all the music online before you buy.

Or, you can even send me an email and we'll do it the old-fashioned way involving checks, mailing addresses, and homing pidgeons with tiny leg straps carrying CDs to your open windows. Don't I wish. That method of delivery would definitely be in the limited edition package if I could afford it.

At the very least, do go and 'like' my bandcamp page, which posts to your facebook.

Hope you like the music!

Some Sights around Colorado

2011-08-26T22:31:00.005Z

A few things you might see if you came out to the Boulder/Denver area:

The National Center for Atmospheric Research is in Boulder, CO, and does work of all kinds on weather, climate, global warming, and obviously, the atmosphere. There is still a surpringly large amount we still don't know or understand about the atmosphere- no one is yet able to predict weather with 100% accuracy. There are these things called 'blue jets' in the sky that pilots often report seeing, giant flashes of blue laser-like light shooting out from the TOPS of clouds into outerspace, and yet little is known about them. The building for NCAR is very modernist but surprisingly sensitive to its environment. It was designed by I.M. Pei, of the Louvre 'Pyramid' fame. Inside NCAR there is the equivalent of a science museum, but it's mostly about the properties of weather. However, there is also a supercomputer inside the building that takes up a large part of the basement. That computer is Super!

In Denver, about a half-hour drive away, you can find the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver. It has a great rooftop cafe and a terrace garden which is my new favorite place when I'm not back at Pittsburgh's Mattress Factory café. There is currently an art piece on the roof that shines light down into the stairwell and bounces sunlight off of a sucession of mirrors, all the way down to the basement several floors below. A complicated take on a skylight, but a beautiful study on light and reflection. (To see it work, best visit on a bright sunny day.)

There are beautiful rock formations at The Garden of the Gods, which is actually about a two-hour drive from Boulder but close to Colorado Springs and definitely worth the drive. A strange outcropping of sandstone and red rock among a lot of granite and harder rocks around it.

The top of Pike's Peak is barren and treeless, but beautiful (except for the tourists and parking lot part). But the view is still spectacular. At over 14000 feet, it will literally take your breath away. Maybe the view isn't really that great, it just feels like it when your body's not getting enough oxygen and you feel dizzy and dehydrated.

There are lots of rock collections in Boulder and Colorado- it is a geologist's dream here (except for maybe Iceland, if you are a volcanologist!). A surprisingly large amount of geodes and sparkly crystals come from Colorado!

There are also lots of ye-olde-America buildings too, some dating back to the Gold Rush, when communities near Boulder sprang up overnight. This also led to a lot of abandoned towns and many ghost towns, when the money ran out (or never materialized in the first place). I can't wait to visit some of these old remnants. For now, I see mostly tavern signs and western facades of storefronts. And lots and lots of buffalo iconography, for the famed bison of an America long ago.

'The Origin of the Sun and Moon' in production!

2011-08-16T01:48:00.006Z

Great pleasures await you (and me!) as my upcoming CD 'The Origin of the Sun and Moon' is nearly complete- and should be out by early September. I will keep you posted of course, but a sneak preview will be that the album features about 45 minutes of music written over the course of my year in Iceland, sound collages, collaborations with a Pittsburgh poet, Icelandic landscape photography, and even is going to be made in two editions: a run of the regular few hundred copies, and a limited edition with fancy poster and other secret goodies. You can also download it online, for those who don't like the physical, and prefer the ephemeral. But at the same price (sans shipping, I suppose), you might as well enjoy the hard copy and give to a friend.

Here's the cover and back as a treat, and two unused shots from the photo shoots with the fabulous artist Nicole Pietrantoni. Now I'm just waiting for the manufacturer to ship me back a few boxes, and then it will be like Christmastime in my apartment, and then in your ears!

Bedazzled Denim Jacket

2011-08-13T23:38:00.000Z

A friend of mine came out to his family recently (which went very smoothly, thank goodness, and also congratulations, M!) but I was wondering for a while what their reaction might be. M grew up in a Roman Catholic family surrounded by brothers, likely giving each other noogies and wedgies and wrestling all the time. Thankfully I didn't have to deal with hyper-testosterone world, having only one younger sister (I was more likely the one tormenting her, until we grew out of it and became BFFs).
I envisioned either one of two coming-out outcomes. One, some sadness, awkward silence, plus some interjections about God, then slow acceptance. Or two, the complete opposite:

'Mom, dad, I'm gay. I'm done dating women, and I want to date dudes.'
'Oh, thank heavens. We're so happy for you! We had hoped this day would come so we bought you this bedazzled denim jacket just in case you had good news for us. I just hope it still fits.'
'Gee, thanks.'

(exeunt stage right and the whole family goes out to a disco.)

I guess it didn't go in the direction of God or the bedazzler, but I'm still glad there's love and acceptance in another American family.

Boulder, Colorado

2011-08-08T14:19:00.001Z

The move has been made! I am no longer living in Iceland and I've moved out west, about 1700 miles west of my hometown, to the town of Boulder, Colorado. For those of you who read the blog for the Iceland posts, you may be disappointed that I won't be posting much more about glaciers or Icelandic grammar. But for those of you who like landscapes, pictures of travels, observations about silly hippies and elk and pine forests and weather patterns and my random comics, then you will be delighted to know that I intend to keep up with all of this.

Colorado has the most different feeling of anywhere that I've ever been in the continental United States. Today I went to the Center for Atmospheric Research (fabulous!) and there were cacti growing out in the wild. There have been heat-lightning and thunderstorms in the distance almost every night. And on a short trip up to the Rocky Mountains, I saw my first moose.

The landscapes here share a bit in common with Iceland, strangely. But the culture does not, that's for sure. Up in the highest altitudes of the mountains, above the treeline, the plant life looks remarkably similar to Iceland, with its windswept and snow-covered peaks, a fragile alpine ecosystem. The air is crisp, and both places are surprisingly arid. There are even hot springs in Colorado, just like Iceland. But up on the top of the Rockies the air is noticeably thinner! I have to drink a lot more water here, and cook with high-altitude rules. And while Iceland was full of mostly families and fashionable worldly types, in Boulder the town seems to be filled with earth-loving types, from startup company execs to hangers-on anarchist hippies and street performers, along with the 30 thousand students from the university (I suppose me included) all vying for the least rat-infested affordable apartment. While Iceland, everything happened word of mouth, Boulder happens via Craigslist. Both places are unsurprisingly exorbitantly expensive, but then you also get a lot of what you pay for in terms of stunning backyard views. I think it will be a good place for me to be, to keep working and thinking.

Overheard in Missoura

2011-08-04T03:55:00.002Z

Three things heard in Missouri, the most boring state I drove across from New York to Colorado (except for St. Louis, it's cool!) with also the fattest-looking Americans. Also, this was at an Applebees, so not exactly the harbinger of fine taste.

"Do you want smoking or non?" (Didn't this stop in most states by now, at least in family restaurants?)

"Do you want your burger pink or not pink?" (I'll take medium, thanks.)

"If you're tired, you can just rest here, or maybe lay a nap." Lay a nap? New phrase!It reminds me of the Pittsburgh 'needs fixed', whence I have a moment of nostalgia for yinzers, and then we're back on the road.

Northern Iceland: Húsavík, Akureyri, and Far North

2011-07-20T12:00:00.001Z

As a last hurrah, I traveled to the north of Iceland with a visiting friend from Italy who is currently living in France. And he speaks four languages. Intimidating! But luckily I'm the one who knows a little Icelandic, and can find my way around here well. We took a long drive and racked up about 2000 kilometers, saw a lot of places I had not seen before, and of the places I had seen, I'd either visited last in September about 10 months prior, or over the winter when everything was snow-covered and usually closed for tourists. So this was a lot of new experiences!

We visited Akureyri and I finally got a nice shot of the mural there (click for a larger view). It's a lovely town and I wouldn't mind spending a decent amount of time there! Sadly we only stayed for dinner, a swim, and then a short walk.

On the walk we noticed that some kids had somehow gotten themselves onto this jankety wooden raft, and had basically floated into the middle of the fjörd. Whether is was on purpose or just random I don't know, they seemed to be kind of obnoxiously goofy and nonchalant about the whole thing. But then they went through a lot of effort to paddle themselves back with some plywood paddles, and when they approached the shore, angry parents/onlookers and the police were waiting. Akureyri drama!

We drove across the fjörd in the morning and by some stroke of amazing luck, the museum I have wanted to go to for ages was actually open. Safnasafnid, or the Museum of Museums!

It houses a collection of Naive and Folk art from Iceland, a small permanent collection, research offices, a tiny café, and rotating exhibits, all in one beautiful open-plan house. The museum's mission is not so much focused on one field but to promote the creation of connections and thought between disparate fields and interests, perhaps why I love it so much. My favorites were the cabinets of curiosity- named after Renaissance-era collections of unexplained objects for perusal, the cabinets house a well-placed collection of really really random things. This particular cabinet photographed housed collections of dolls from all over the world.

Driving further west, we visited a couple places near Myvatn that I had not been to before, including sites near Krafla geothermal fields. There is a beautiful implosive crater called Stóra-Viti and several steaming lava fields and mud pits, which were bathed in beautiful weather. Strangely Stóra-Viti still had snow in it, even in the middle of July! But is has been unseasonably cold in Iceland this year (even for Iceland).

Heading then up north we stopped for the night in Húsavík and our guesthouse owners were kind enough to tell us about a free hot pot up on top of a beautiful flowery field, with a great view. I soaked it all in.

Almost too tired, but not willing to give up, we then managed to drive to the very farthest northern point of Iceland, Hraunhafnartangi. The weather was so gorgeous that it would have been a shame not to go, being so close. And if I couldn't make it to Grímsey, which crosses the arctic circle, then I am happy to be so close at this point! It is a lonely and desolate point for sure, with the midnight sun shining on a small lighthouse at the edge of the world. Nothing between here and the north pole!

Fulbrighty Thoughts about Iceland

2011-07-17T16:03:00.000Z

The Fulbright requests an end-of-term grant report online, which has many question and answer fields. I thought I'd share with you some working versions of my responses.

What was your project? My original proposal for the Fulbright was to create a 'multi-media installation combining live performances and found sounds gathered throughout Iceland, exploring the connections between Iceland's people and their landscape. This was a little high-falootin', and the first section about the multi-media part ended up being nearly impossible due to funding and resources. The second section was easier, as it just involved watching a lot of people and how they live in a city or in the country, and the things that people do on a day-to-day basis. Multi-media installations aside, I was still able to write and perform new works live, as well as record music which will be released shortly as a full-length album of works from Iceland. My projects also included choral works, and I had two of them performed. One piece was professionally recorded.

What did the Fulbright provide for me in general? The Fulbright afforded me the time to meet and get to know many artists and musicians, as well as the time to travel, write, read, collect materials and recordings, and experience what being a full-time artist is like. I was able to work more closely with the ProTools recording software. I discovered that Sibelius software isn't all that much better than Finale. I took a lot of pictures, made some jewelry, made some collages. I learned a lot of a new language! I interviewed many composers, I attended concerts, and participated in events. And first and foremost it was time to be able to absorb another culture and get to know its inner workings.

What kinds of public speaking did I do? I gave a series of short concerts at the National Gallery of Iceland, which allowed me to interact with visitors and guests to the gallery. I also spoke to a young girls' choir, and to my own choir of local amateur singers. I was invited to perform in an 'artist's salon' evening and met many people in the performance-art field, which was very enlightening and they were very receptive to my work. I also wrote a review article for the English-language newspaper Grapevine, about the classical music festival 'Dark Music Days'.

What about affiliations? Unfortunately the Academy of the Arts in Iceland provided me with little assistance other than a key to access practice rooms. My requests to do a guest lecture there went unreplied, and requests to borrow equipment which is available to students was denied. This being said, other orgz (I didn't say orgz of course in the official report) were more helpful. I was able to take away many Icelandic scores from the Music Information Center at a super awesome 'composer discount'. The Music Museum of Iceland was a dark horse; they offered me lots of creative resources, gave me a long personal tour, and they even interviewed me! In the future I'd have them be my affiliate. If only I'd had discovered them months earlier in my grant!

How does one get the best access to research in Iceland? Much information here is held in the brains of only several individuals and you have to get to know these heads of 'power'. Most work and communication is done on a personal and mouth-to-mouth basis; email is rarely used and a phone call is often essential to remind people about outstanding requests.

How did I adjust to a new culture? What were difficulties? One of the best ways I adjusted to Icelandic culture was to join a choir shortly after moving here. It helped to have a handful of other American colleagues around to share these comments with as well. Being forced to interact in a choir also helped me adjust to a different speed of working, the long days or long nights, and the lack of communication from many professionals in my field that I had hoped would be more helpful. Most of my problems arose due to my lack of patience with the slow pace of response of Icelanders in general, music colleagues, or businesses. However, I personally grew (and learned to relax) with every trip outside of Reykjavík, seeing new things and recording new sounds. Every day there seemed to be at least one thing that I was impressed and very moved by, not ever having seen anything like this waterfall, art object, sunset, style of music, land formation, etc. before. And then without doing anything, friends popped up in unexpected places and in unexpected ways, surprising me with generosity.

Things I Will Miss About Iceland

2011-07-15T10:00:00.000Z

Some random things I will miss about Iceland:

A national database of everyone's health records that can be called up in any physician's office! How nice would it be to go to any doctor's office in the US and they know what you're allergic to, what your immunizations are, and when you last visited. But nooo, I currently have to have immunization records sent from three different states to a new physician, so I can be cleared to attend graduate school. This is a huge waste of time and money.

Also related: universal health care. A no-brainer, it's just better.

Appreciation for artists and composers as a legitimate career unto itself. Nuf said.

Creamy delicious milk and dairy products, including the famous skyr. And I don't even really like yogurt much, but I love skyr.

The drunk pig logo of Bónus grocery stores. Drunk with savings, amiright?

Giant suspiciously-large apples that provide me with about three servings of fruit. I have big hands and this is a full handful for me.

Spontaneous choir singalongs on the street, even in four-part harmony.

Nationwide legalized gay marriage. The gay pride parade in Iceland, and Pride Week, is the biggest-attended festival in all of Iceland, all year. Something to be very proud about indeed.

Books read/pool addenda

2011-07-14T11:42:00.000Z

Books read while in Iceland: 28
(Normally my book/novel number is about 13 per year, but you can see I had some extra time to be a bookworm.)
Some highlights:
Just Kids, by Patti Smith
Secret Historian: A biography of Samuel Steward by Justin Spring
Begin Again: A biography of John Cage, by Kenneth Silverman

Perhaps there were a trend of biographies this year, as I also read three of the '20th Century Composer' profile books by Phaidon press. I'd never really gotten into biographies before, maybe it was time to delve in!

I perused a lot of images from photo books as well, which don't quite make the cut of 'books read', but I would also say that the 'Altars' book of Robert Mapplethorpe, and the fabulous new book of artwork 'Undir Ros' by Icelandic artist Katrín Gunnlaugsdóttir were on the top of the list.

I'd also like to amend my swimming pool list, as I went for a short trip to the north of Iceland as a last hurrah, and found 1 amazing hot pot on top of a hill, and also swam in the public pool at Borgarnes, both of which I highly recommend!

Things I Won't Miss about Iceland

2011-07-14T00:12:00.003Z

The last bus that runs anywhere stops running around 11pm, sometimes even 10pm. What happens when you have a dinner party? Or you are somewhere you can't walk? Or if you don't live downtown? You walk 20 kilometers home? You pay an expensive cab? Huge inconveniences, and perpetuating the necessity of car culture. Also, buses not starting to run until after 9am on a Sunday, sometimes even 10am. Sometimes I gots places to go. The mass transit generally goes to places that are convenient, just not late enough.

Breaking bottles/smashing glasses/throwing your trash on the street in a drunken stupor. The late-night dance parties are awesome, but for now, I am done with the frivolous waste of resources. Also related: while you have all the water you could ever need, the same rule doesn't apply to recyclables. I love recycling, and hate to have to throw glass/aluminum/plastics in the trash! Even in Pittsburgh I could leave bottles out on the street once a week for pick-up, and they wouldn't have to be walked several kilometers to the recycling center (which of course, the bus doesn't run to).

Thetta reddast. Sometimes it won't work out. And sometimes you gotta do something about it right here and now.

Nearly 100% white people. Somewhat related: I miss diversity in my religious freedoms too.

Not being able to find dried cranberries, and sometimes black beans! Random, right? Luckily there are all the honey nut cheerios I could ever want. Nom nom nom.

A roomful of people not speaking your native language, and you're the only one who's not getting the joke. This improved greatly over time, but would still take me a long time to become fully fluent. I am much more conscious now about making sure everyone in the room feels comfortable (and has a language in common with others, not being left out).

Buying most items for far greater than their actual cost. $28 pop CD's? Gas at 10$ a gallon?

Bottom line: Living in a place is give and take. I've learned to forget about the problems that bother me when I know I'm in it for the long haul. I realize what I love about a place, what I don't like, what I won't tolerate, what I can't live without, and how to work with what I've got to make my little personal bubble the best it can be! Next post: the flip side, things I will totally miss about Iceland, and what will eventually bring me back again.

Thorsmork, or Þórsmörk

2011-07-10T16:24:00.000Z

With the help of a small employee discount from a friend's mom, I was able to travel to Thorsmork for the day and see a part of the country that's really only accessible by giant 4x4 or super jeep. It was a beautiful day for travelling...well, it was rainy on the coast but the Thorsmork area tends to have much nicer and calmer weather as it's sheltered by mountains and glaciers. There was a breeze, however, that kicked up ash clouds from nearby volcanos, familiarly called Ejafjallajökull and Grímsvötn. I'm glad the bus didn't stop here as it looked like a sandstorm on another planet. This area was basically inaccessible for about a year, with all of the ash mounds blowing around.

We took this enormous monstrosity into the park, which is about 1.5-2 hours from Reykjavík. We didn't really need such big tires...until we did. The last 30km or so were so bumpy. And the many strong and deep rivers we crossed would never be cross-able without it.

There used to be a beautiful glacial lagoon here, but now only the tongue of the glacier remains and a lot of wet quicksand-like soil. This guys, is Eyjafjallajökull! The base of the volcano that caused so much trouble last year. It looks so quiet now, mostly just dirty.

The actual park part of Thorsmork is divided into three parts, a summer-housey bit, a camping and hiking bit, and a gorge. We did two outta three, and checked out the camping bit, hiking up through a forest (one of the few very lush places in Iceland) and out to some cool-looking rocky (of course volcanic) outcroppings.

Then I wanted to check out a fairly strong river. After chatting with a nice musician from Denmark named Thorbjorn, we walked together a bit and discovered that the park people had wheeled over a cool bridge for hikers to cross the river. Brilliant!

We hiked into this beautiful green gorge called Stakkholtsgjá. The bus driver/tour guide even told us about some edible plants along the way. He was a cool guy- I asked him if he ever got tired of leading tours after working on them for over 3 years, and he said 'only sometimes'. But I think I distracted his boredom by my surprising him with speaking Icelandic, we chatted about music a little bit.

The gorge gets narrower and narrower until you finally come to its source, a waterfall hidden up underneath a rocky outcropping. You can scramble into it and see the waterfall, and it was a little tricky but totally worth it!

One week left in Iceland

2011-07-06T16:56:00.003Z

This almost-year has gone by quickly. Or so it seems. I have just over a week left in Iceland and still there's a list of things I wanted to do and see, but many of those things will have to wait until next time. Small attempts at staying longer in Iceland didn't pan out this time, but there are now good connections made that make me think I'll be back again!

I wanted to write a few posts that summed up some of the things I've noticed over the past year, but that's sort of hard to do. Describing what it's like to live in a place for a longer period of time is difficult to encapsulate in a few sentences. And that's a good thing- I prefer thinking of a place in all its complexity, rather than getting the sugary tourist version of only a few days of all the best parts.

One of the biggest things that the Fulbright Fellowship stresses is about making connections between the US and other nations. I think one of the things I contemplate most is the comparisons and contrasts between the United States and Iceland, and what I admire (and then also perhaps find disturbing) about both nations. I came to Iceland thinking it would basically be everything good about life and culture (music! nature! universal health care!), but there are things that I end up appreciating about America that I never thought I would (fresh produce! cheap stuff! ethnic diversity!). Perhaps more on that later.

I'm particularly proud of my accomplishments in learning Icelandic and trying to use it frequently. I think I gained a respect for learning languages and now hope to brush up on those years of French that have gotten dusty! And I hope to somehow use Icelandic in the States...maybe it will work into some doctoral dissertation, or count as my second-language requirement for doctoral studies. I should be so lucky.

More soon.

Swimmin' Holes

2011-07-05T11:06:00.000Z

Number of city pools and their hot pots I've swum in throughout Iceland: 10
Additional bathing areas: 2 lagoons, one geothermal river, one geothermal beach, one oceanside hot footbath, and one hotspring cave.
Times I've swam in the ocean here: 3

Degrees of said ocean: 7, 11, and 12 (Celsius, though even in Fahrenheit it's still darn cold). And then right after that I jump in the hot water by the beach, otherwise I don't think I could do it.
I hope to add a natural countryside hot pot in here before too long! As long as it's not too green and slimy, that just kinda freaks me out.

A Man Ate a Shopping Cart

2011-07-02T10:47:00.000Z

A conversation between visiting friends.
"Did you know that a man once ate a shopping cart?"
"No way. I don't believe that. Let's look it up."
"Yup, well according to the internets, his name was Michel Lotito and he apparently ate 15 shopping carts."
"That's embarrassing."

I guess eating 15 shopping carts in your life is hard to bring up in casual conversation with your parents.

Things I've Made and Ate, Summer Edition

2011-06-29T22:29:00.001Z

Here are a few more non-musical, non-sight-seeing things I've made and ate lately.

J & B came for a visit and they made me a delicious polenta! I enjoy polenta but have never made it for myself, and now I know just how easy it is. And the light hitting those vegetables was just beautiful this night.

I'm continuing some jewelry work as well, it keeps me sane here. The last few things have been getting twistier and more lava-y, even more than these two examples. I think I'm going to include some more bright, possibly even fluorescent, colors soon.

I'd really like to make more things out of fish skin leather, but the market for those things is limited...it takes a special and daring person to want to wear fish skin, but the texture of it is just so cool. Perhaps it will be a hit in my upcoming location, which should be Boulder, Colorado.

I'm guessing my crowning domestic achievement whilst in Iceland will be the creation of my first sweater. I crocheted it from Icelandic lopapeysa (thick wool) yarn, without a pattern!

For not having a pattern I think think I did a decent job! I wanted something that was form-fitting and not baggy like the traditional lopapeysas are. I also wanted a shwoopy neck. I think the shoulders could have been bigger, and made the armholes bigger up at the top, which if I made another sweater I will try to remember that. But on the plus side, the sweater also makes my butt look nice. No, just kidding, I don't need any help with that! Just a good ol' contrapposto pose, borrowed from the 16th century.

Marching Band

2011-06-25T15:01:00.000Z

As I've posted about, this past June 17 was a giant celebration in Iceland, celebrating the country's freedom from Danish rule in 1944, as well as 2011 marking the 200th birthday anniversary of Jón Sigurdsson, the country's original fighter for independence.
What could be more a signal of independence than the sounds of a marching band? These guys passed by me on the street during the festivities, and all I could think of was Charles Ives. It reminded me of playing the clarinet in marching band in high school...and also how awful it was. But it built character, I guess. Mostly I was either just sunburnt or waterlogged. These kids seemed to be having more fun than I ever did.

Origin of the Sun and Moon: Mastering

2011-06-25T04:48:00.004Z

Here's a quick note to everyone who may be anticipating a new album from me: music for my first solo album, The Origin of the Sun and Moon, is finished, and has been sent for final mixing and mastering! This is probably the most exciting part of the process for me. I hand over the music in all of its giant files, sound bites, and fade folders, and I get sent back more polished versions for approval and final tweaking.

The fabulous Will Dyar (of the 'band' Hills and Host Skull) has accepted the task of smoothing out the rough edges on 12 tracks that are a travelogue of experiments in sounds and music from Iceland. Will has a great ear for what I like (read: more more more handclaps!) and I can't wait to begin this part of the process. Hoping for a release date somewhere around August 1.

Independence Day Sights

2011-06-23T15:20:00.001Z

T made the best use of his Independence Day by eating some CandyFloss (as cotton candy is called here). We also went with friends to my favorite coffeeshop, called C is for Cookie, and had some amazing desserts. I thought the flag of Iceland was a nice touch to this meal.

I also got my first peek in Fríkirkja, the 'Free Church' in Reykjavík. It's right downtown, next to the museum, but for some reason I've never seen it open for visitors. And I haven't known anyone to perform or get married in it, so it was nice to see something right downtown that I hadn't before!

I heard the Independence Day song of Iceland three times, in three different versions. One was from a marching band, and then I heard it sung by this male choir, all duded-up for the occasion in their tuxes, sunglasses, and beers. It's actually kind of a sad but beautiful song.

Directly after the choir performance was an electronic-dance jam version of the Independence Day song, which was pretty great to hear such a far-removed version from the original hymn. I wondered how many people 'got it', or if they just thought, oh, here's a bunch of hipsters playing around with some funny sounds.

I actually think that the coolest thing I saw all day was this chess game. There was a life-size chess game set up in one of the parks in town, with some cute kids playing with chess pieces the size of their whole bodies. But next to that were two rows of tables set up and a line of people waiting to sit down. On the tables were rows of chessboards. Chess is huge in Iceland, it's practically their national sport! So, you could wait for a turn and play chess here. But the catcher is that you could play against a young chess champion, and he was playing all the games at once- one guy playing 12 games sinultaneously!! It was really fascinating to watch, people of all ages joining in and having a good smarty-pants time, and the star of the show was super relaxed and casual about it.

Independence Day in Iceland

2011-06-20T17:07:00.000Z

There are too many things to see on Iceland's Independence Day! I wanted to take a picture of everything. The whole city takes a break to come downtown and celebrate with bands, parades, performances, vendors, and lots and lots of live music.
Flowers were laid at the statue of Jón Sigurdsson, as well as at his gravesite after a parade led people up to the cemetary.

We saw a performance of these brides all dress in white doing some choreographed dance down the street and in the windows of a historic building. I didn't know exactly what it was but perhaps as so many performers are dressed (or painted) in white today (a symbol of independence, I'm assuming) they could represent the 'mountain women' of Iceland, the fighters and real strength of the country.

Street performers entertained the kids (and still surprise me to this day...how do they not fall down, and what do their calf muscles look like.)

There are two stages in plazas for people to sit and enjoy music throughout the day.

There's also this guy, acting super manly whilst holding a tiny tiny dog.

Summer Sunsets

2011-06-17T12:27:00.001Z

The sunsets in Iceland can last for hours...and at this time of the year, it never gets darker than sunset! I can still read a book outside now. I went out to a bar this past weekend and didn't stay out too late- I left for a party around midnight, just as the sun had disappeared on the horizon. Then when I got out of the bar at 3:30am (a relatively early weekend for Icelanders, due to the national holiday that closed the bars a bit early), the sun was already full up and shining over the mountains! Strange to have gone out for the evening and it never gets fully dark, as if I had skipped over an evening of sleep and time-warped into the next day. Luckily I was tired enough that it now doesn't matter how bright it is, I can always nap.

There was an amazing sunset the other night, this taken out my apartment window. The dark clouds hovered at just the right spot to make a fiery blaze on the horizon.

Choir Trip to Snæfellsness, Part III

2011-06-14T13:03:00.000Z

Phwew! Even more to tell about, but our trip was winding to a close.

We stopped for a delightful piece of chocolate cake at Hellnar, this fantastic tiny café on the coast near Arnarstapi. It was great to see the whole choir on the porch, wrapped in blankets as the warm June summer hasn't quite warmed up yet. Well, here is just me, everyone else was avoiding the picture, apparently.

Dinner that evening was decent, and certainly I couldn't beat the price as the choir is subsidized by the church, which pays us a little bit every time we sing for Masses. Having a fixed grant income with the Fulbright, I really appreciate being able to see so much for so little! After dinner, I was even more surprised that the choir gathered to thank me AGAIN for the piece I wrote, and gave me a beautiful book of poems, with signatures of the choir in the front of the book. They also let me pick my favorite song for everyone to sing, so we did this great work by Bára Grímsdóttir called 'Ég vil lofa eina thá'. It's in various meters (mostly 5/8), and it took the choir ages to learn, but it's paying off- they're really getting into it now!

There's something very special about the Icelandic choir-singing experience. People can recall long and complicated works in four-part harmony, and bust 'em out at a moments' notice (often to the surprise of dinner guests, who, at least in Iceland, clap and sometimes sing along enthusiatically). This guy at a bar later in the evening was really enthusiastic about joining us. I love this operatic expression I managed to catch in a split-second.

The morning after my friends and I wound our way back to Reykjavík, but not before visiting the light tower at Stykkishólmur, climbing up the little 'mountain' at Helgafell, and sneaking up on some seals at a seal beach on the coast.

It seems like this trip went on for a week with everything I've covered, but it was really just 2.5 days! No wonder I was super tired and took about three naps yesterday. I'm back to work, and wrapping up the time here in Iceland. I plan on entering a doctorate at the University of Colorado Boulder in the fall, but be certain that there will still be lots more adventures to be had in the months to come as I try to scramble to do all the things I haven't done...climbing Mount Esja is on the list, as is maybe one more trip to Akureyri, entertaining some more guests, and hopefully seeing the interior of Iceland as well! I can fit all that in, right?

Choir trip to Snæfellsness, Part II

2011-06-12T12:27:00.001Z

Off on a sight-seeing extravaganza!

Here's a couple photos from the northern peninsula of Snæfellsness- Svörtuloft, the cliffs with birds nesting, and crashing waves.

We stopped at a village of a couple hundred people called Rif, where we toured a salted cod factory, and then sang for the two people giving us a tour! If I could have understood the technical terms about fish processing, I'm sure if would be really interesting, but I was plenty amused just by noticing that all of these giant tubs are full of cod, packed in with salt. And as it's a cured process, you can just handle the fish and put them back in the salt...I think in the States everything would be overly-hermetically-sealed, über-rubber-gloved, but this way is a bit more hands-on, like at least I know a human has looked at this and not just giant impersonal machines hacking through the oceans.

Today is also Sjómannadagurinn, or Seaman's Day! Lots of activities in coastal towns when the fishermen return to play games, have country dances and balls, and party into the night. We saw a game of tug-of-war here in Rif.

We stopped at the Rif café for some delicious Indian-style cod soup. Then we of course sang again for the people in the café! It was so cozy inside, like an old farm-house. I think the building is just from the 1950's, but it feels like an update from an old house in the early 1900's. Complete with lace curtains and porcelain teacups!

Then probably the coolest thing of the trip, and definitely the darkest thing I've done- the choir donned hard hats and descended 100 feet into the Vatnshellis cave! It was full of cool rock formations (that don't photograph well using only hardhat light), glittery bacteria that looked like silver, and several large chambers to explore. And somehow there's a giant spiral staircase inside that allows visitors to descend into the insanity (with a tour guide, of course). And a fabulous tiny door which is the entrance to the whole thing, kind of Alice-in-Wonderland style.

I also finally saw Snæfellsjökull (the glacier) in the sun! I'd never actually seen it completely before, always covered in fog, snow, or rainclouds.

Choir Trip to Snæfellsness Part I

2011-06-10T12:35:00.002Z

My choir for Neskirkja took a little weekend trip to enjoy our company as a group and sing in various places around the Snæfellsness peninsula. It was a great combination of musical fun and sight-seeing, not exactly a 'tour' but not just a vacation, either.
We stayed at the lovely Hotel Stykkishólmur, which is quite the step up from the hostels I've stayed in throughout Iceland. But then I remembered that I'm one of the youngest people in the choir, and everyone else enjoys traveling quite comfortably. This place even had towels and shampoo, English-language stations on the TV, and a giant breakfast spread. Lap of luxury!

Our big 'performance' for the trip was singing a concert of songs in the church in Grundafjördur, town population of just a couple hundred. Seemed like 10 percent of the town was there, but that only amounted to about 20 people in the audience, but still, it was a good concert. It was a nice semi-casual performance and I think the choir sounded about as good as they ever have, maybe there was less stress for these songs than for our bigger works like the Fauré Requiem or Handel 'Messiah'. The highlight of the concert for me was that the choir performed a work that I wrote for them, music set to the poem 'Thytur í Vindi' by Mattías Johannesen. Along with soloists for songs in the concert, the choir gave me a toast afterward, and gave me a white rose (perhaps intentional and very thoughtful, seeing how the poem I set mentions 'and the white roses that bloomed in my soul', and I got a nice blurb in the programme as well. Maybe the piece will have life in Iceland after I'm gone!

We made an emergency stop on the bus, on the way back to the hotel. Someone said, 'we HAVE to sing here, it's so beautiful!' and the bus driver slammed on the brakes. We hopped out of the bus as the sun was low in the sky (though here it's almost 11pm) and sang a couple songs for each other, posing for pictures on the beautiful harbor.

The evening following the concert was fairly quiet for Icelandic weekend standards, but a few hotel-room parties were hosted, and more singing erupted. I was a bit tired, and thought about going to bed, but then I heard my song being sung from down the hall in the hotel room. I walked slowly and quietly and just listened from the hallway. I was very moved- how great of an experience to hear your music being sung by people who appreciate it, without my own instigation. Quite the honor.

Tomorrow on the trip we're headed around for some Snæfellsness sight-seeing local-style. I was really curious to see how Icelanders would sight-see. I'm just the foreigner, so basically everything is new to me (I'd been in Stykkishólmur once before, in September, but just for one night basically to see the Library of Water.) We'll soon find out how much more there is to see!

Reykjavík Arts Festival

2011-06-07T13:19:00.000Z

Reykjavík has a long arts festival every summer, featuring numerous bands, artist performances, gallery shows, all gathered into one. I noticed that there was a free performance outdoors which kicked off the festival. The performing company was La Fura dels Baus, who rigged up the town square by the Parliament with zip lines, construction equipment, and a music-dance-performance work. The piece itself seemed fairly abstract, but the execution of it was pretty amazing! It also included renditions of Bizet and Handel's 'greatest opera hitz' as well as some snappy electronic music.
The drama began with the stars of the show being brought into the square on fork loaders, and throwing out things to the audience, like balloons and fake money. Then an opera singer descended from the Church on a zipline, and let loose a bunch of feathers.

A third girl was sort of 'birthed' from this bizarre contraption filled with water, suspended from a crane. Then everything kind of came together when another crane lifted a bunch of people in the air and they did this sort of choreographed apocalyptic air-dance, all strapped onto this metal cage, but moving in sync with each other. The streamers were flying, it was quite beautiful.

The best moments of the piece were the finale when 42 Icelandic volunteers (and Spanish dancers of the troupe) were harnessed into these cables and then lifted into the air by a crane, and then they all did this dance, way up in the air.

It looked like a combination of modern dance, rock climbing, and nuclear radiation cleanup. They poured glitter out from their suits and into the air and then expanded and contracted their bodies into great shapes.

Certainly an impressive start to the festival, and a giant crowd assembled to enjoy the performance, and soak up the new summer sun!

Music and Nature Conference

2011-06-03T16:57:00.000Z

I attended my first musicology conference ever the other day, Music and Nature. Strangely, it was the first of its kind in Iceland, perhaps as they are just so used to music and nature being very intertwined (or maybe just lack of funding). It involved a lot of collaborations between many organizations, so I'm glad it came together so well (and everything was in English, which was super duper for me.)

The conference was held over three days in Salurinn, a small and acoustically lovely concert hall in Kópavogur, a neighboring city to Reykjavík (but just a couple minutes away by bus). I only attended the last day of the series as I had other events to attend the first two days, but I still got to hear six lectures. Here's a sample of only some of the topics, and what I gleaned from them in my non-musicologist but interested-composer way.

Lolita Furmane from Latvia discussed nature as an 'energy', and ties between Latvian music and folkloric traditions and other Scandinavian sounds. She made an interesting point that Icelandic cultural traditions never had much of a problem allowing for pagan rites right alongside Christian beliefs, but in Latvia, Christianity is directly opposed to paganism. She also played a sample from a Latvian composer named Santa Ratniece called 'horo horo hata hata' that I desperately want to get my hands on a recording of it. It featured singers acting as an 'owl chorus' and later a 'deer chorus'. Heaps of awesome.

Andreas Waczkat and Birgit Abels (both from Göttingen) discussed an analysis of Sigur Rós's 'Heima' documentary/music video in cultural construct terms. Foucealt was mentioned several times. There was a great point about Sigur Rós defending nature and protesting the building of a new power plant, as they played outdoors in acoustic concerts--while at the same time the video was partially supported by the Icelandic Tourist Board. Also, the very companies they're protesting do allow them to have the electricity for their plugged in megawatt-shows. But then an annoying guy in the audience, perhaps a previous day's presenter, asked an overly complicated question that was hard for everyone to know if it was even a question or that he just wanted to hear himself sound smart. And then that lecture was over.

Øyvin Dybsand (from Oslo) spoke about Johan Halvorsen’s music and his work for scoradatura traditional violin and orchestra called 'Fossegrimen'. His lecture was a bit all over the place, but I would be interested in hearing more of that piece. He also made a point about how many opening statements of 'nature' works (especially works about waterfalls) open on a quiet setting and soon grow, and then end by receding into the distance. This could be an analogy to the viewer coming upon a natural sight/site, as well as the sound of the waterfall itself growing as we approach it. However, it could equally be that our relationship to the piece grows more and more complex, just as our viewing of a natural site becomes more sophisticated the more we walk around and explore nature. I shall have to think about that idea for future works.

The last presenter was Árni Heimir Ingolfsson, who's probably the smartest person in Iceland no djók. He's the program director of the national symphony as well as having a choral ensemble that he directs, and he's published a giant biography of Icelandic composer Jón Leifs (sadly only in Icelandic, though I continue to push him to translate it, in of course, all his spare time). He spoke of Jón Leifs adopting a nationalistic 'Icelandic' style that he used in his compositions, much of them inspired by nature and folk-song traditions. Leifs is a bit like the Icelandic Bartok, if there ever was a comparison to be made. Sadly Leifs' music was highly disregarded (and really, quite dis-liked) even until the 1980's, many decades after the works were written.

But I think the award for my favorite/best presentation of the day goes to a musicologist from the Academy of Arts, Reyjavík, Thorbjörg D. Hall. We have the same last name, I forgot to mention that to her! She made a short presentation on rock and pop documentaries from Iceland and how they portray Reykjavík city life; in turn, through the years they tend more and more to focus on bands that might not be so popular in Iceland but have international appeal. She had a great point that could probably only come from a local, which went something like 'foreigners tell about what Icelandic music is, and we Icelanders are all too happy to apply that to ourselves.' She also mentions that the Icelandic landscapes shown in the pictures don't reflect the everyday lives of locals here, which I personally can relate to. But then again, shots of my tiny one-bedroom apartment and my 5$ IKEA desk for two hours while I click on ProTools sound samples would not make a very exciting documentary, so let's stick in a few backwards waterfalls and some lava fields for good measure.

I don't know if I could have lasted for three days of the conference, that's a lot of topics to discuss! But I was certainly eager to hear more from people, and having a fairly strict time-limit on your presentation certainly keeps things flowing. For being outside of the academic work this past year, this kind of conference was certainly up my alley. Perhaps I'll submit something for it if the conference is held again, a presentation based on my Fulbright research and writing, and a great excuse to visit again.

Uht Oh

2011-05-30T12:05:00.000Z

We've heard the phrase Uh-oh, as in, uh-oh, I slept through my final exam! And we've even heard Ruh-Roh, as popularized by Scooby Doo. When K and N and I were traveling around Iceland, we decided that a more formal way to 'uh-oh' is to overemphasize the end of the first syllable by adding a previously unheard 'T'. It's very distinguished now. Proper for even British royalty, or perhaps BBC detective series. Here is an example of its new use.

Competitive Yachting

2011-05-27T20:27:00.000Z

In this crazy over-botoxed blingety-bling world, there's no sport that doesn't have its ultra-elite crowd. Golfing can be for the common man, and can also be the most upper-class event you can imagine. Hockey games have regular old seats and then the fancy owners and corporate people have their champagne box seats. Yachting was made for the elite. Here in Iceland thankfully it's too cold for bronzed beauties to be sunning themselves on their boats (instead they just get drunk on Fridays and Saturdays and go to the clubs wearing next to nothing while meanwhile it's snowing out), but I can imagine the boats themselves being really snobby. Kind of like a miss america pageant for the sea-worthy.

(click on the image for more bejeweled yacht admiring.)

Harpa Harp

2011-05-25T17:19:00.001Z

I had the very lucky pleasure of playing a real orchestral harp again, it's probably been over two years since I've had the chance! Gosh you guys, I love the harp. Hearing the sound from your own person playing it totally makes your whole body vibrate. It's not just pretty, it can also be kind of badass. It takes super strong fingers to play well, and it's no joke that it's been called the most difficult instrument to play (Along with the french horn, I think they about tie).

The principal harpist let me play through a few ideas on her harp, as I'm working on sketches for a harp and percussion piece for her and her colleague to play. And I got to play the harp in the almost perfectly soundproof practice rooms in Harpa, no less! Harpa harp. Here's a little clip of me noodling, just for grins. I liked this pedal combination a lot.

Westman Islands (Vestmannaeyjar)

2011-05-23T12:50:00.001Z

I took a trip last week and took my chances in getting to a ferry that would shuttle me and two visiting friends to the Westman Islands off the south coast of Iceland. We arrived just in the nick of time. It was totally worth it, and completely breathtaking!

A short ferry ride brings you from the south coast of Iceland to the big island of Heimaey, in the chain of the Westman Islands, or Vestmannaeyjar. I say a short ride, but that's if the weather is good, if there's not too much silt in the bay from shifting sands, and if the ferry is leaving from Herjolfur. Otherwise it could take you 2.5 hours. Luckily it was one of the most beautiful days I've seen in the whole time I've been here. Less than a half hour later we arrived in our seemingly exotic location. My friends and I both exclaiming how tropical the cliffs looked. But there are also sheep grazing on the tops of those precarious peaks!

The view from our room at the guesthouse had a mountain top on one side and two volcano cones on the other. Wild.

We took a walk around town, which has a sizeable 4000 people on it, including shops, restaurants, bars, grocery stores, everything a city needs. It would probably be more inhabitants were it not for the remote-ness of the place, previous volcano that pushed a lot of people away, and the relative closeness to Reykjavík, where all the kids are likely to escape. We saw the most stunning location for a soccer field ever- how distracting to play here with such landscape in the background! Not that I could ever EVER attempt sports, but if I did, I would blame all my bad plays on the scenery.

We then hiked up the main volcano! It was one of the strangest experiences I've had. The 'path' was little more than a slightly flattened area of lava stones. I think the volcano had cooled since a few years ago (when you could still feel the heat radiating) but I didn't want to go all the way to the tip for some unrealistic fear that the soil might be thin and I fall down into a magma-filled portal to hell (obviously). And there was high wind and blowing dust. That's a better excuse. It looked like Mars up there!

Luckily the last eruption was in 1979...though it was quite dramatic. The island gained about 25% more landmass from the volcano, and created a tranquil bay for boats, and fortunately everyone was evacuated safely and not a single loss of life. It's still very easy to see the new volcanic area versus the old farmland areas.

But even in the most inhospitable-looking locations, sometimes there's a little life.

And, after the hike down the volcano, and several glasses of water later (all the volcanic dust makes one thirsty!), it was time to cue the beautiful sunset.

Summer arrives in Reykjavík

2011-05-21T16:49:00.000Z

After much anticipation, it seems that summer has finally arrived in Iceland! It's a shame that it was so dreary when my friends were recently visiting- it even snowed on the first of May. But I suppose that's the chances you take with weather! And this lucky streak of warmth and sunshine may be fleeting, but I'm still going to run outside and play in it. Everyone else has the same idea!

The atmosphere in the city totally changed. It feels like a different country. Tables and chairs were pulled out from storage and now the streets are lined with coffee-drinkers and diners.

The trees have the first tiny leaves popping out, and the grass is getting very green again too! Though it will still be some time before the countryside and colder areas of the country see the green.

And Esja looks incredibly clear and bright without fog or rain getting in the way.

The light here is now really intense and direct, and long-lasting. I have to use both sets of my blinds to sleep, as it gets quite bright really early in the morning. Though it's not quite the 24-hour brightness yet, which should arrive in a few weeks, it was still quite pretty and sunset-like last night after 11pm!

Several people i know got sunburned from being outside lounging too long- something I thought would never happen in this nordic country. But that sun is a sneaky guy. Welcome back, vitamin D, good to have you in my life again! Just don't get too hot, Iceland, 'cause I sure didn't come here to get all sweaty.

Music projects, a list

2011-05-18T14:54:00.001Z

Sometimes it seems like I don't do a lot of 'work'. I spend a lot of time here thinking, or reading, or chatting with people, or listening to concerts. But then I look back on the last 9 months and realize that I've done quite a lot of things! Here is a list of random projects I've been working on, because I love lists. And it doesn't even count the random sweater I'm trying to make, the collages I've cut and pasted together, and the fish-skin creations that I've constructed for sale at Mattress Factory. It really does help me put my Fulbright time into perspective; I don't know how much I'd be able to accomplish, or learn about, should I have had a full-time additional job.

11 potential songs/works for a new album
2 electronic landscape sound collages
3 choir works, 1 recorded already, 1 to be recorded and sung in Grindavík in June
1 piano solo
1 organ solo
performance of outdoor choral work with 6 singers, soundtracks, and performance artist collaboration
5 short concerts of my works
1 piece on music festival program
1 piece performed at an artist's salon evening
1 piano lounge gig
4 choir concerts at Neskirkja
singing at several masses and confirmations
3 performances of Beethoven 9 in choir for opening of Harpa
1 organ assistant gig

And still there are two months to go! I have some more recordings to finish, a CD to create (should all go well), and I'm always writing something, so I'm sure I'll be plenty busy for the summer as well, meeting random people and stockpiling fun experiences. But I'm also leaving some time in there to catch up on some sun-soaking. Gotta stock up before next winter!

Jökulsárlón in Sunshine

2011-05-17T22:54:00.006Z

I had seen the glacial lagoon Jökulsárlón twice before, but both times were either cold, windy, rainy, foggy or a pick-2-or-more combo platter of bad weather. But this time it was miraculously springtime warm, sunny, windless, and the clouds were amazing! I saw things around the lagoon I'd never seen before. Hello, mountains! Why I never even knew you were there. So nice to see your glacial features in such beautiful dreamy light!

Even more strange is that I was the only car seeing this sight tonight- during the day the parking lot can be lined with buses and vans, but somehow nobody was visiting at this time of the evening. What a nice memory to have to ourselves.

Here's a panorama, should you want to click and enlarge for fuller effect. I still use my trusty old 2004 3 megapixel camera, but it still seems to captures the moment just fine.

Harpa Inside-Out

2011-05-09T15:45:00.000Z

Three concerts for the grand opening previews of Harpa Concert Hall & Conference Center are completed. And I didn't fall off of the risers! Though I was precariously perched high on the topmost ledge, singing in a giant choir for Beethoven 9. The hall is beautiful, the sound rich. I don't think there's really a bad seat in the house, at least sound wise! This picture was my first rehearsal with the orchestra, before I was moved to dead-center (and then was too intent on singing to remember to bring a camera).

I took a couple pictures from inside the lobby so you can see what Iceland will have to offer many a visitor in the upcoming years. The ceiling is covered in mirrored panels, with two layers of windows forming crystal-like facets on the outer wall. It's a hexagon-lover's paradise. The main staircase seems to come from an invisible point on the horizon and then open up like a wedge; it's a really cool optical illusion.

Some parts, even the day before, looked very much under construction:

But then at the last second, beautiful things appeared, like fountains outside, pavement, bridges, a store, furniture, shiny floors and walls. It was pretty incredible the transformation.

On the way out of the building after the final concert, I was just in time to catch an incredible sunset on the horizon. It seemed like luck to catch the light through these panes of glass but it was totally intentional, and brilliant, on the part of the artist and architects who designed the building's layout! Harpa looks so different in various times of day and light, and will certainly look different throughout the year as the sun changes angle dramatically. It will soon be the kind of place that stops people dead in their tracks to go oooo and aaah. I think even more fancy technical work is planned for the facade and interior of the building, to be completed in the months to come.

A grand opening weekend of celebrations is planned for Harpa, and you can check out the schedule and more information at harpa.is.

Unexplored sights on the Golden Circle

2011-05-06T13:34:00.003Z

There is much to see on the Golden Circle trip, as I've written about in the past. But as someone who's lived here for a while, I've taken the trip a few times and it's nice to include new sights each time, keep things fresh. I had some friends from home visit this past week and we took a few detours that I had not seen before!

This cave, or series of caves, at Laugarvatnshellar, were inhabited by a family until 1974!! I couldn't believe it but then I saw that their cave-home had a wood frontispiece and a door, and looked like it could have been made slightly homey inside. Still, it's a small cave. Apparently the family would make goodies to sell to visiting hikers and tourists. Now it just shelters sheep and helps with farming.

I had never been down to the edge of Gullfoss yet! The times I've been there it was either with a tour group (no time), or in the winter (too much ice). But this time it was dry, and VERY dramatic. I don't think I've ever felt this close to a roaring waterfall, like I could get sucked over the edge!

We drove out closer to Landmannalaugur, closer to the highlands, than I'd ever been. The road got a little rough but it was worth it- there are so many geological features I'd never seen the likes of yet. The area on top of this mountain was a flat, barren floodplain. There was a mysterious monolithic dam up here, and a lock, that was part of a power plant. When you crossed a bridge over this crazy, eerily silent and lifeless floodplain of black stones, you could see a sign that says 'Caution- area may flood rapidly and unexpectedly, with strong currents.' Not a place to wander off of the main road.

On the bottom of this mountain, however, was a recreated Icelandic homestead, based on the first archaeological site that was explored by researchers. It was awfully picturesque, but sadly the doors were locked. There was a great sign outside of this monument too, though.

The trip this day was horribly windy and rainy at times, but on the way back home, a burning red sunset made it all better. It looked like the mountains were on fire all Lord of the Rings-style. Sauron's territory, perhaps? Keeping watch over the lava fields.

Harpa Concert Hall

2011-05-03T18:00:00.000Z

I'm honored to be singing as part of the Choir for Beethoven 9 in the grand opening concerts of Harpa, the national concert hall of Iceland. I even think I may be the only non-native person in the choir to be singing, so I feel extra special (and also slightly nervous that I might sneeze on national television or something).

I had a sneak peak at the current state of the building, as the three opening concerts begin tomorrow, but there is much to do. Still, the building is already very impressive, and I think it will be a great landmark in the city's architecture.

The building is really curious, it looks quite different from all sides. As it's based on Icelandic rock forms, and the curtain-like waves of the Northern Lights, one would imagine that there's a lot of complex geometry involved. The windows of the building have been the cause of millions of kronur of stress and frustration, but it's gonna be amazing when the construction is completed.

Here and there are colored mirror-like windows, which look really transparent from the inside but from the outside also reflect passing cars-- I don't know if this was intended but the moving reflections look like gemstones turning, their facets sparkling.

On the back side of the building are windows in even more colors- the 'green room' area had green, yellow, and orange windows.

Inside the concert hall is bathed in a beautiful red wood (sometimes crappily installed, but that will be invisible soon) and state-of-the-art lighting and acoustics. The choir for Beethoven 9 never sounded better. There's a great resonance without it being boomy or complicated. I could finally hear myself sing!

And the view of Esja in the distance, and the harbor, is simply amazing. I'd come to concerts here just to watch the midnight sun from the top of the staircases here. You'll have to scope that view out for yourself!

More pictures to come after the opening, as we are obligated to not reveal too much until the concerts have begun.

West Fjords, Part 2

2011-04-28T15:40:00.000Z

Phwew! We made it out of that tunnel alive. Thank goodness. Now we just have to worry about avalanches in Flateyri. Well, not really. This area had some serious avalanches in 1995, which caused the deaths of scores of people in several towns, so the area has been heavily protected with avalanche walls and relocation of homes. There's just not much place for those homes to go, being nestled on these little spits between a mountain and the fjord!

Flateyri is a really cool place for a population of only 200 people. There's one restaurant-slash-bar-slash-community hangout, and in the summer there is kayaking, hiking, and lots of historical-iceland fun facts to read about. If you're looking for a great, reasonable apartment to rent short-term, check this out, where we stayed! But for late-april, it's a quiet town in the middle of nowhere. I took a long walk around town, recorded some water noises, and went up to the top of the avalanche wall, which now has a lookout point on it and a playset built inside it. A little creepy and slightly perilous, but a little exhilarating too.

Nicole and I took some shots for my upcoming album, hoping we could get a cover shot for it. I haven't decided on one particular image yet, but I have a couple great non-serious outtake pictures in the wind. It got pretty stormy in the fjord that night, which I can't say wasn't all that inappropriate for the album, being written in many a crazy location throughout Iceland.

We went to check out Ísafjörður again and see the rock festival 'Aldrei Fór Ég Sudur', or 'Never Went I South'. It's a free music festival! (If you can get there.) It was cool, and I love the spirit of everyone just coming into this tiny town, and sharing the good music with their neighbors, no matter what the weather. This band is Soley, before the place filled to the brim with music fans.

There was also this small art festival going on and I saw some graffiti-based work that was a little dated, but also some hilarious comics and cool paintings. I went to buy a teeshirt as my weekend's souvenir, but didn't have cash on me, only debit card. But the worker gave the teeshirt to me for free! Thanks, dude, whoever you are. Now I can say, 'I went to Ísafjörður and all I got was this awesome, totally not-lousy free tee-shirt!'

Winding back along the coast toward Reyjavík, we passed a small town with a geothermal area that feeds a random pool, hotel/apartment, and a couple small buildings. I took a picture of a quintessential Icelandic moment here. A baby, inside a baby carriage, taking a nap while its mother is inside the building, keeping an eye out but also probably having a coffee. Carriage next to a grill. Grill next to a geothermal steam vent in the ground that just popped up unexpectedly, dangerously hot and steaming, but covered for 'safety' by some big rocks. Wind blowing fiercely outside. Life as usual for the West Fjords.

West Fjords, Part 1

2011-04-26T16:19:00.000Z

I went on a three-night trip to the West Fjords of Iceland, and it was indeed full of fjords! But also a lot of other majestic, sometimes exhilarating, sometimes curious things. I thought I'd share some stories and photos about it.

We drove up to the West Fjords thinking that we'd take a drive all along the coast, up from the south section, cut through the west side and see the big waterfall there, and then over to Ísafjörður on the north, with the excuse of having the 'Aldrei fór ég Suður' rock festival to see. Then we'd head back eastward, over the north part of the fjords and back again. It didn't quite work out that way though.

On the way the road was rough going. Unpaved roads, lots of potholes, some intense climbs through the mountains! But some unbelieveable views, too. Rows of waterfalls, calm fjords with blue mountains covered in snow. Then other times, purple-y plants and red rocks, changing to snow-covered deserts that you couldn't even tell the difference between snow and sky. I can see how people might need this antarctic-looking emergency hut.

We reached the cut-through pass only to find that the road that had been open a few days prior was now closed to snow, and there is no other road that will connect between the two parts of the fjords, you have to go all the way around. So with some last-minute phone calls, we found a place to sleep for the night a change of plans.

Thankfully, this was kind of a fun and funny experience! The owner of the farm/guesthouse we stayed at was talking on the phone with us while herding some sheep around. The whole family was visiting, so we shared the space with some cute rugrats. The ocean was steps away, and I haven't had an oceanfront bedroom view like this in a long time. The milk offered to us was straight from the cows on the property.

The next morning we were not defeated so we went back along the rocky coast to where we could cross, and then on to the northern part of the fjord roads. We stopped in Holmavík for food, but while there we were lucky to find the Museum of Witchcraft and Sorcery open!

This was a peculiar place indeed. Iceland has actually had a long history with witchcraft, but all the witches accused were men (except for one woman). The owner of the museum was a quirky guy who gave us free coffee, and I had tea made from Icelandic moss (tastes better than it sounds).

We saw the exhibits including the 'necropants', a replica of what would have been a a real skin of a human body that a sorcerer would step into, feet and legs and genitals and all, and presumably receive special powers and abundant wealth. I won't include an image here, it's not great for the kids. We also saw runes, a stone used for Viking beheadings, and read a lot of great facts about strange rituals of olde times. And then it was so nice outside that we got to sit out on a stone table and eat a picnic lunch! I made a chow-down panorama.

The weather report called for gross rain and wind (we'll get that later, don't worry), but today it was warm and sunny, and made for a quick and much more pleasant drive. This side of the fjords has the biggest 'town' on it, Ísafjörður, with 2500 people, so the roads are quite well-kept. Still dangerously close to plunging into the ocean, or be caught in a rock slide on the other side, but still very well-maintained.

We arrived in Ísafjörður, which indeed feels like a booming metropolis after driving for several hours past hardly a building or two along the way. There's a grocery store! In fact, there's more than one! There's a swimming pool and museum, library, and a small airport. The mountains of the fjord are so close you could almost taste the snow on their caps...or something delightful like that.

I'll leave this post at about the half-way point, en route to our sleeping place for the next two nights in Flateyri, a small town near Ísafjörður. Which to get to you have to drive through a one-lane tunnel, about 4km long. But, here's the dramatic catch: the tunnel is not one-way. You have to pull off to the side in strategically-marked pull-off points to let the other direction pass you. One of the strangest and most unusual experiences ever: driving down a dark, dripping, seemingly endless one-lane tunnel through a mountain and having a car come straight toward you. We stopped our car and waited for another to drive by in the other direction, and I recorded the eerie buildup of sound of the passing vehicle.

Even weirder is that the tunnel splits in two different directions, right in the middle of the tunnel. Just a simple turn is all it takes, no lane divider, no extra stoplights, still one-car wide, just a sign illuminated in the dark saying: turn right for Suðereyri.

100 Composers Under 40

2011-04-22T16:51:00.000Z

NPR put out a list of public-recommended '100 Composers Under 40', and once again, the list reminded me just how strongly I desire to be considered among this community of people, and my uncertainty about my position in it.

I've been working on many creative projects, and sometimes I feel like I'm doing the right things and that I work with the resources available to me. Then sometimes I feel like an elusive 'fame' or 'recognition' or the lovely 'ability to pay the rent' is just beyond my grasp. And as to how people reach this upper echelon of supporters or recognition, this is elusive as well, and may be even somewhat of a mystery to the composers themselves.

Fame and fortune in a 'classical composer' sense is a tricky subject. There's rarely much money involved for most projects until you get bigger commissions or grants. Usually very little PR, and few star-studded red-carpet events. But there is a certain level of flexibility, of name recognition, that one can have, knowing that somewhere, people have heard of you (or ideally, have heard, and/or enjoyed) your music, and know who you are. Rue the day that an unknown 'fan' comes up to me and says, 'You're Nathan Hall, I love your work!', because you will probably get an unexpected hug, and then your picture will be taken, and then the picture will mailed to my parents with a note that says 'Hey mom! A stranger knows who I am!'.

In Iceland, I feel ever closer to being a part of the 'right' circle of people, who do similar things as me. While in Iceland, I have had the pleasure of meeting, five of the musicians on this NPR list! And hearing works by one other as well. Iceland seems to have an unusually high number of composers in the mix; two of them are in Sigur Rós and four of them are involved with a great music studio/label/company/think tank called Bedroom Community. I am completely am on the Nico Muhly/Daníel Bjarnasson/Kjartan Sveinsson cheer squad, or I don't think I'd be on this Fulbright in this wacky place called Reykjavík. I wanted to see why Iceland nurtures this kind (I'd like to think 'my' kind) of creativity. But usually I end up as the participant, the audience member, while others get the limelight. I wasn't born here, I don't speak fluently, and I haven't known anyone here longer than 8 months. Some events here have made me feel like I'm in fifth grade again, where I wasn't allowed to talk to the cool kids because I wasn't dressed appropriately or something (in this case, it was wearing dress shirts, suspenders, and ties, just like their dads. The 90's were weird like that).

It seems that half of the list lives in New York City. I've probably met five additional people on the list, all in NYC. And then one or two others I've met across the States. But I'm a little sad that New York still is THE place to make your big break. I thought the world was a little flatter by now. I love New York, but there are so many other amazing places for culture and landscape and ideas in the world!

Okay. Now I took a day away from this post and I've come back with a positive spin, rather than me just throwing a little pity party for myself.

1. I can hope that the light at the end of the tunnel is fast-approaching. I'm still creating interesting works and continuing to work, no matter where I am or for what media. Just keeping on doing work is the most important thing.

2. Some of these people on the list, well most of them, have such different life experiences than me. I can't expect to model my life after someone whose childhood, upbringing, education, location(s), was so different than mine.

3. This list was pared down from over 800 names! There are probably limitless talents out there that didn't make the cut either. Sometimes I wish the general listening public was more interested in breadth of knowledge, but it's hard in this keyword/tagging/twittery world to have good name recall like that. Even I find myself just flipping through to names of people I recognize, rather than checking out the people I don't know. This I should change!

4. There's no use being jealous of other people's fame when they're people you either really admire. Owen Pallett, I've never met you, I'd love to though, you were about 10 feet away from me at the Warhol Museum once in Pittsburgh but you had a cold and I didn't want your germs, sorry. But girl, you work so hard and tour yourself crazy, I could never play show after show like that. And so many concerts are probably for little to no money. I wish I had 10% of the cool opportunities you have, though; talent seems to flow forth from you! While still being humble and funny and extremely good-looking, too.

5. Daníel Bjarnasson, on this list in fact, told me that most of his big projects have all happened in his last five years. As he and many of these composers are a couple years older than me, I'm going to think that my big projects may be just beginning, that at 28 I'm still on the 'young' end of 'young(ish) composers', especially by classical music's standards. I think the more colleagues I meet and chat with, the more I'm strangely reassured that I've got a good thing going, and I'ma keep doin' it.

Meet Egg Cup and Timer

2011-04-21T15:27:00.001Z

Two new friends! Thanks to MG and RB in Ireland, I am now acquainted with the world of soft-boiled eggs in egg cups. And thanks to LC, I now know about the English way of chopping up toast into strips and dipping into those the egg like a little sponge. So many ways to enjoy those chicken embryos.

I also found a beautifully-designed egg timer at Tiger, a store in Reykjavík which I believe is Norwegian, but is basically about the cheapest thing around for cool small items. The sand timer is exactly three minutes, just long enough for the soft-boiled egg. I love the lucite square that the hourglass is trapped inside of, it seems very modern and fancy but less than $3 USD. That is a nice little gift for myself.

I've admittedly had so many eggs at various times of the day that it's no longer a breakfast item...if soft-boiled eggs were less messy and easier to carry around, I might carry my egg cup with me on my travels! But alas, that would just make me look like a lunatic, eating a runny egg and toast outside in the middle of a park or something, so Egg Cup and Timer can patiently wait at home for my return.

Also, speaking of eggs, my mom sent me the most amazing Easter package in the mail- a giant 'egg' that she collaged herself (I think covering a balloon, and then letting it dry, before popping the balloon) and filled full of candy and healthy goodies. The top is even 'cracked' like an egg, and the 'shell' is made of maps of Iceland, cut into strips. Mamma Midnight is a genius! I put it on a candleholder here so it won't wobble around--you don't want this egg to crack open at the wrong time either.

The Pink Rose

2011-04-19T14:07:00.001Z

I collaborated with a performance artist friend of mine, Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir, on a new work in Hólavallagarður cemetery in Reykjavík. It was also a piece that, from its inception months ago, almost did a complete turn around from its original idea, changed to something else entirely, almost got canceled, and then surprisingly was reborn close to the original concept! It forced me (in a good way) to be very flexible about form and organization, and try things that I haven't done before.

Several colleagues from my choir at Neskirkja helped me in walking around the cemetery with bells, singing fragments of a song I wrote for them; we came back together and sang the song as a group, and also shared some stories and special moments. It was quite a magical effect; the evening sun even poked through the clouds and onto the trees a couple times. The weather forecast suggested it might snow, but it held off for the evening.

This was my first piece with a more open form for the musicians as they walk around- I had written a piece for Brass Quintet with the players marching a short way, but their music was all written out ahead of time. This piece created more of a mood, an atmosphere. I heard lullabies being sung, folk songs, people chatting intimately, and calling out of the names of people in the graves and on the stones. It was a bit of a thank-you work to the cemetery, as I've walked through it so many times now and find it quite inspiring. And it was a bit like a call to springtime- let's hurry up, Reykjavík, I'm ready for some warmer sun!

This was also the first time I've composed pre-recorded music for the performance, and had multiple CD players playing the different tracks facing different directions. The wind would carry sound snippets through the cemetery, and you'd hear some melodies colliding, and here and there some bell-chimes, and birds in the trees.

Ásdís looked pretty fabulous as well.

Even my microphone got a new outfit. It now has a fuzzy Russian hat to wear to protect it from some the breezes.

Some More Random Observations about Iceland

2011-04-17T12:00:00.000Z

Icelandic Lutheran Confirmations are huge events. Bigger than a sweet 16 party, the child might even get an iphone or something ridiculous as gifts. It is also an occasion for the teenage girls to wear the tallest high heel or wedge shoes they can find.

Easter is a much bigger holiday here than in the US. There are free gift-wrapping tables set up at the mall! And rows and rows of giant chocolate eggs at the grocery stores.

It is very difficult to find dried cranberries here. I thought black beans were tough, but now I've discovered two stores with them. But cranberries, not so much. Lots and lots of dried figs, raisins, and prunes, though.

Even by this time in April, I've noticed the ever-widening daylight. It's bright and sunny by 8am, and still quite light after 9pm. It's only getting more and more bright every day.

There was a parade of musicians the other day when the Symphony Orchestra moved into their new concert hall, Harpa. I'm sad to have missed it! But the new hall looks exquisite.

The Icelandic word for tuxedo is 'smoking'. But I don't know what the word for 'smoking jacket' is. Maybe 'tuxedó.' The Icelandic word for 'again' is 'aftur' but the word for 'after' is 'eftir', and I keep getting them confused. I see an 'a' and I think 'After', the spelling is much closer, but this is not right. It will have to be one of those devices like 'the correct answer is the opposite of what you think it is!' brain tricks that one tells oneself when learning language.

South Coast of Iceland

2011-04-13T12:40:00.000Z

I took a two-day to the South Coast of Iceland, and if anyone is looking for somewhere to go around this time of year for just a short time, I'd highly recommend my journey! N & T and I took two days to travel from Reykjavík to Jokulsárlón and back, staying overnight in a 'Farm Holidays' residence near the famed glacial lagoon. Not too many tourists (yet, just wait until July, so I'm told) and the weather was intermittently horrible, but also sometimes intensely sunny and beautiful.

Our first stop was a new one for me, tipped off by another Fulbrighter. We stopped at Raufarhólshellir, a 1-km-long cave! It had several openings in the 'ceiling' where snow was piling in, and it was really rough going with lots of geometric collapsed rocks everywhere. But when we finally got to a point to go no further, the hike was well worth it- all of these ice formations greeted us with eerily stillness. The whole cave was dripping and melting, and you could even hear icicles crash and shatter from inside the cave.

I of course, was nerdy enough to bring a set of handbells, and T and I played them in amongst the icicles. It was an amazing experience. I recorded part of it- this is a section of the improvisation, without any other modifications- no audio tweaking or anything. I'm sure these sounds will get used for some other bigger work soon.

We stopped again by Seljalandsfoss, which never stops to be amazing that you can walk all the way around the waterfall.
I saw Svínafellsjökull for the first time, and was almost more impressed by these colors and patterns than at Jokulsárlón; the ground up sediment in the water in contrast with the milky blue of the glacier, slowly melting into this lagoon, is really incredible.

We stopped at Vík í Mýrdal and checked out the basalt cliffs and the beautiful coastline there. Man, Iceland loves its hexagons!

We ended up at Jokulsárlón, where the weather wasn't great but the glaciers were still amazing. We stayed at this farm-house converted into nearly a hotel, which was right on a 'beach'- more like a lake where a sandy embankment protected the coast from the pounding ocean waves.

A pretty amazing view for under US $30 a night! Though we did sleep in rooms next to fifteen 12-year-olds from France. They were surprisingly well-behaved. In the morning I had a breakfast as if I were a kid again, in a lion mug with some chocolate milk (and other healthy foods too, of course!)

The glacier views around Vatnajökull this time were much better- in September when I saw them last, there was so much rain and fog that I hardly saw anything! Now I could see all of the glacier 'fingers' coming down the mountain from the big parent glacier which takes up a good portion of Iceland's land on the south coast (and influences the weather for the country!). And, a rainbow.

We stopped at waterfall I had not seen yet, Skógafoss! Legend has it that there's treasure buried behind the waterfall, and someone managed to grab it once, but only could hold onto one ring off the chest. Now that ring is in a museum. I could believe the tale- It feels like you should be able to float through the mists and find a hidden cavern behind the falls.

Another peek at Vík on the way back, this time from a high-rising landmass called Dyrhólaey. The winds were intense up here but the views were incredible. It kind of felt like Aslan territory. That's a Narnia reference right there, yeah, I went there. The sun was shining on these huge ocean waves, all white and foamy, and they crashed on huge black rocks, and the winds could nearly blow you off your feet. It was the edge of the world.

Knot and Burl

2011-04-10T12:03:00.000Z

Too much time on my hands. I was looking at the wood grains on the floor the other day and tried to draw their outlines. I thought they looked a little like country shapes, or islands in the ocean. A friend said they looked like dead animals. But then I invented dialogue for them too. It made perfect sense in my head, of course, that a group of knots and burls on the ground would be chatting with one another, likely in a southern accent, discussing things like who gets to buy beer next, or where's the best skeet-shootin' in town. But now that I write it, it seems a little silly. Knots wouldn't have a southern accent at all. It would probably be Norwegian.

Lopapeysa Couple

2011-04-08T13:26:00.000Z

I was recently invited to a dinner party at an undisclosed suburban location, which looked pretty much like every Icelander's 'American Dream' house, fit with designer furniture, multiple bathrooms, and giant ceilings. The only thing missing was a three-car garage, and the Icelanders who actually inhabit the house. Unfortunately it was also situated in an area of Iceland that was hit by the financial collapse, with half- or quarter-built houses sprawling around it, piles of dirt and timber everywhere, and general folly of human greed. What a delightful start to dinner, right?
Well, the interior of the house wasn't that bad, and it was about being with friends and having fun anyway. The houses ended up having some totally hilarious delights that I just had to photograph. Like this!
Husband and wife painting with flying fish! Or maybe they're tossing fish for good luck. And this!

The most amazing embracing lopapeysa (traditional Icelandic sweater) couple you'd ever see. It's like the Icelandic version of those little Christmas statuettes- charming and sweet but strangely anonymous. I'll call them Siggi and Sigga. Siggi works on the farm, and Siggi takes the wool to be processed, and then they both spent a few warm winter nights knitting their sweaters by the fire. (Knitting used to be a man's job in Iceland, stemming from the sea man's skills at knots and nets, and needing to make and mend very durable clothes for themselves. Fun fact!)

The bathroom was trés fancy and had built-in starry lights above a jacuzzi! You could have a starry night whilst in your bath on a cloudy windy winter night, or pull the blackout blinds closed in the middle of the summer, and you have fake night to try and fool yourself into thinking there isn't 24-hour daylight.
Look, some of those stars are even blue-shifting. Maybe they are in the Andromeda galaxy. Just kidding. It's just LED's, silly.

The baby room left a little to be desired, at least in the way that I would pamper my child. Not through monochromatic color schemes. Someone is perpetuating gender stereotypes right here, I think. Or perhaps they won an inclusive baby package from a giveaway, and that's just what they ended up with. Unlikely.

Soon dinner was ready and I quickly forgot about the pink-radiating room; it was time to sit down to a delicious home-cooked lamb with new friends and great conversation. Then off to the city for evening drinks and dancing. What more could life have to offer? Only one thing. And if you said a gay version of lopapeysa couple, you'd be right.

Joanna Newsom

2011-04-06T10:08:00.000Z

I did a little creative exercise and listened to a couple Joanna Newsom tracks from her latest album (the amazing Have One on Me) while drawing some shapes that flowed along with the music. They seem very appropriately Joanna Newsom-y to me, don't you think? But they also reminded me that I once did the same kind of thing in a music class in fourth grade! I hadn't thought about it in years. We used to have a fun listening skills exercise that the teacher would play something on the piano and we would draw shapes that sounded like what we were hearing. I think she even played a recording of Beethoven 5 once, and I had big orange circles for tympani, and little pencil lines for the violins. I think this would be a good exercise even for adults in a music appreciation class or an intro music course. Now that I 'get' what it does, it still amuses me to play around. It gets you thinking about the form of a piece, what ideas repeat, the shape of the sound, orchestration, so many things...and you don't even have to know much about music- you just have to like to color.

(Screen shot from Disney's 'Fantasia 2000', which, with its older 'Fantasia' counterpart, basically lets adults do the same exercise, but then get paid for it, and we watch it as entertainment.)

Poll/Sascha/Renn Wenn Du Kannst

2011-04-03T13:00:00.002Z

I saw three German films during the first-ever German Film Festival Days here in Reykjavík, and each film was amazing. I can safely say that they were some of the best films I've seen in a long time (and they all had English subtitles). Curiously, I chose the films based on their plot summaries in the brochure, but they all ended up featuring musicians in one way or another, in major character roles! Let's talk briefly about showing music in new German films, shall we.

Now, professors can make a whole degree-program of this stuff, so I won't go into too much detail about diegesis or music theory, and I know very little about film theory, but I thought I'd highlight some musical tidbits that stood out to me.

The first movie I watched was 'Poll', the opening film of the festival. Thanks to Annika Große, the amazing organizer and much under-credited founder of Þýskur Kvikmyndadagur, for the free ticket (I felt very fancy). 'Poll' is epic. Gorgeously shot. Totally dramatic, riveting even. And, there is a lot of clever use of music. Folk songs, chamber music, live bands playing- there may have been almost as much music on-screen (the characters can hear it = diegetic!) as 'scored' music (non-diegetic, background or extra-diegetic). Even in the trailer one may sense that the light classical ditty in the background mix will be featured in stark contrast with the violence and darkness of a family torn by war. And then the war drums enter for real. (Sorry about the trailers, I couldn't find them all with the english subtitles).

There are a couple scenes in particular that use lighthearted jolly music in direct opposition with tense visual scenes- it heightens the violence of what you're watching all the more. A boy in the film has his fingers crushed as punishment for lying, and then he's forced to play a song on the accordion. At another family gathering, the heads of the house play some little chamber ensemble piece together. Meanwhile, we the audience unravel the interplay between the characters- infidelity, lies, deceit are flying around the room, very cleverly shown through unspoken camera shots and quick glances (and historically appropriate salon style interaction). I could imagine that there was a lot of communication between the musical team of the movie and the director.

The most potent musical scene in 'Poll' occurs when the wife of the house plays a solo cello piece while her abusive husband's life's work explodes into flames in the background. Take that for indifference. Her cello playing also opens the whole movie, and basically closes it as well- musical bookends of the same sad solo.

The biggest problem with the cello is that it looks great on camera but it's really hard to fake like you're playing it. This film (out of the three) gets the lowest grade for fake-playing realism. It doesn't bother me so much that say, the fingerings of the cello notes aren't always right. I sure can't play the cello. A violin could have even hidden that fact a little better, it's smaller and the finger positions are subtler. But even weirder, the actress plays a low solo, and even furiously bows some low open strings, but she's shown playing on the highest string of the cello! Definitely Not Possible. DNP. Maybe she thought it was like a left-handed guitar, strung backwards. No, probably not.

Our second film today is 'Sasha' or 'Sascha', depending on which country the film is playing in. Actually, correctly: 'Saša'. This crowd-pleasing film stars a piano-playing young man who prepares for his piano audition into conservatory while also having a huge-ass crush on his male piano teacher while also wanting to come out to his traditional family. Some hilarity ensues, but mostly tenderness, frustration, a little scariness, and real-world kind of emotions, especially in culture clashes of Sasha's family from Central Europe and their lives as emigrants to Germany.

Mostly I loved the film for this scene, I wonder why.

I forget that American movies with gay characters or plots often shy away from even showing shirts off (unless it's for comedy) let alone a hot makeout scene and a romp around in bed. Even more un-american is the teacher-student relationship theme, which is usually pretty taboo. But this is a German film, and this is the 21st century, thank goodness. One of the best-made sex scenes I've seen in a long time, tasteful but also not shy.

Back to the music! I was distracted by pectorals for a second there. Sasha plays piano for much of the film, mostly a Beethoven Sonata. His mother at one point plays 'Moonlight Sonata' which is awfully melodramatic, but it works well to tie in the relationships between Sasha and his mother, her sacrifices for her child, the family's unraveling, and Sasha's 'hidden identity'. If Sasha doesn't actually play the music in the film, which he actually may, the editing is extremely careful and stylish and doesn't look staged. The hands are in the right spots. There is a lot of live-playing, which sounds particularly interesting to hear the same piece on different kinds of pianos throughout the film. Using a Beethoven sonata is a bit symbolic too, it lends an air of culture, of education, a 'better life' for an immigrant family's child. But this is also brilliantly contrasted with pop music from the family's home culture, and club music from the nightclubs in Germany. There are also long stretched of mostly Classical-era music, and then BAM! We're in a gay club and hear some serious sexed-up club beats. It made me laugh out loud at the absurd contrasts of music in the scene cuts, between this nerdy piano kid and the adult gay world he's about to enter. Well-done on the picking of trashy music, director Todorovic.

The final film I saw for the festival was probably the most 'artsy' and symbolic, but also the most interesting in terms of human emotions. 'Renn Wenn Du Kannst' (Run If You Can) involves a young paraplegic man named Ben, his able-bodied assistant-friend Christian, and a cello-playing girl Annika that they both fall in love with.

The movie's full of dark humor and curious philosophical-themed dialogue; I would suspect like many brooding Germans, the topics of death and mortality and existentialism come up more often than in say, Idaho. The actor who plays Ben acts his handicap with brilliant precision- he drives a car like a maniac, gets angry and hurts people's feelings left and right, and wields an equally sharp sense of humor that rides a fine line between hilariously bizarre-sarcastic, and sad and lonely. Sadder still is the fact that the trailer doesn't have subtitles, but we can all gaze upon the beauty of the three main characters, and watch a bust of a composer fall out of a window and hit the hood of a car.

Wow, Ben (the actor Robert Gwisdek) is gorgeous. Well, everyone's pretty attractive, I'm easily swayed by color pallets.

Annika plays the cello, though for most of the film we see her with an acute version of stage fright, and she can only squeak out the first three notes of a Brahms piece. Brahms is also played in their car, on the stereo, and in the symphony (perhaps it's Brahms's head that comes crashing though the window, we never find out). For acting like she's not even able to play the cello, the actress kind of does a B+ job, but redeems herself to A- with good-looking vibrato at the end of the film, when a beautiful solo emerges (I won't give too much away). Thankfully, the overdubbed sound that emerges in said performance seems also that of someone around the same skill- not too brilliant, not too juvenile, so there's a good match.

Annika may not have great hand positions, but at least she's not playing the opposite end of the instrument. Or conducting the orchestra. Don't get me started on the conducting, which is NEVER good. It's either edited out of the actor's control which makes him look like an idiot, waving his arms about to no beat in particular, or no one ever bothers to even look in a conducting book for a basic 3 and 4 pattern.

All I can think about when actors begin to play music on video is 'don't ruin it for me'. It's really difficult to overdub sound of live classical music playing, but harder to be a musician watching a movie of actors playing musicians (unless of course, they're Adrian Brody and have some sort of weird piano genius inside of them). If you're going to fake it really badly, I might as well just watch you play the highest part of the piano, and have the lowest, darkest, clangorous sounds come out of it. Or maybe someone playing a trumpet, and then an oboe timbre comes out. That would be very curious. That being said, I was still able to take myself away from the nit-pickyness of my viewing and escape for a bit. The cello bothered me less and less as the film went on. The piano sonata became all the more powerful, the Brahms more elegant and heartbreaking. I want to be transported to a world where people walk through their dreams, where the little guy wins, where CGI can built an impossible house out of some sticks and stones propped up in the ocean. A good movie, like any of these three, can put me in this sort of magical mood all the rest of the evening, where I just want to go for a long walk and think about life and light and color. In their best moments, these films had some quiet revelations. Watch If You Can.

(All images and trailers copyright their individual films and websites, I make no claims to the images but to show screenshots for examples and promote the films in my small way.)

Borehole

2011-04-01T15:41:00.000Z

Sometimes Iceland can be such a borehole. Haha, get it?

"So what is this crazy place?"
"Oh, you know, just some scientific drilling for geothermal energy that mysteriously exploded, and now steam and water and minerals come boiling out of the earth. No bigs, just a borehole. I'm hungry, got any chips?"

I Made That Shirt

2011-03-30T11:36:00.000Z

Here in Iceland you may end up putting your foot where your mouth is, sotospeak, if you aren't careful about what you say, where you say it, and to whom. Everyone knows everyone, shops at the same stores, goes to the same bars. It can be comforting in a weird way. But the moment you want to criticize something, be careful. There isn't the same kind of removed constructive critique of artwork that I've found in the States--which is usually a blessing, to try and do whatever you want, learn as you go, but it also puts a lot of weird crap into the world, sometimes without much forethought.

Me: "I love this shirt, but it was printed kind of crappily. And the tag is sewn on badly."
New Friend I'm Trying to Impress: "That's my best friend's shirt company, she made that."
Me: "I, uh, well, the design is great, that's for sure."
Thankfully the shirts have indeed gotten better since then. So all is right in the world.

Beef Sticks

2011-03-28T11:32:00.001Z

It's been a while since I posted comics! There are a few coming up soon.

A while ago I met the American ambassador in Iceland, at a fancy party at his residence. There was delicious food, and nice drinks! Unfortunately there were beef sticks, which I love and they were delicious, but they were a bit hard to chew. It looked a bit this this.
People would come up to me and I'd have a beef stick in my mouth, and how do you act casually about that? Hold it in your hand like a lollipop? Eat the whole thing in one bite? It's not like a deviled egg that you can just pop in your mouth, or a cracker that you sort of hold onto. In any case, problem solved: I ran to a quiet corner and devoured my hors d'oeuvres like a caveman, nam nam nam nam! Then returned to civilization as my charming self, oh how DO you do, sir, it's a pleasure to meet you.

Isklenska 4

2011-03-26T14:17:00.006Z

I am the proud owner of a certificate completing Icelandic course Level 4 (of 5 offered). I don't know if I'll take 5 yet, but I'm proud of my accomplishments thus far! Til hamingju...mín? Congratulations me? I don't even know if that's correct, so maybe I do need to go back to school.

More Icelandic Grammar

2011-03-26T13:26:00.003Z

I saw about the longest compound word I've ever seen in Icelandic, which was in the program notes at the Symphony, talking about how Steve Reich was once the principal tympanist at a filharmonic orchestra. In icelandic, Steve was was the 'pákuleika Fílharmóníuhjlómsveitarinnar í New York'. And for most people something like sinfóniuhljómsveit (symphony orchestra) is enough to wrap their brain around, let alone make it a possessive word and with a definite article.

There is a website for Icelandic sex toys and lingerie called Pen.is. Clever, eh? But it's also a play on words! 'Pen' in Icelandic also means 'coy'. A+ for you, Icelandic Penis website!

I've also been collecting Icelandic words that have originated in English slang, but are respelled phonetically (and often conjugated/declined accordingly) into the native language. Here are a few!

Stæl =style
Kúl =cool
Smart (but with rolled R) =well-dressed, very proper
Djass =jazz
Djók =joke
Hringitónn =ringtone
að Djamma =to jam (in a band)

Grammatical nuts will also enjoy the fun fact that while most people here say 'Facebook', using English pronunciation (and almost every Icelander is on Facebook), one can also say 'Fésbók', which is also literally 'face+book', and I sort of prefer the sound of 'fésbók'. After all, in the States I often called it 'Fa-ché-book', as if were some fancy Italian invention. And then there is also 'MySpaché.' But that's going off the deep end of pronunciation, really. There comes a point where I need to reel it in.

Keflavík and Reykjanes Peninsula

2011-03-24T10:29:00.005Z

This past weekend I took an afternoon trip with friends to Keflavík and around the Reykjanes Peninsula (more commonly known as 'the area with the blue lagoon and the airport'.

We first stopped at Duushús, which could be considered one of the only 'cool' places in Keflavík, being the town that sprang up to service the US Army base that was in Iceland for decades (from about 1942-2006). Duuhús houses a multitude of things, count 'em: art gallery, restaurant, cafe, model ship museum, photo museum, theatre, army artifact gallery, and possibly other hidden surprises. And it's free to visit! I loved this model desk of the army base, here I am making a very important phone call on a 1990's phone. I'm not even sure if you should be sitting at their installations, but there's nothing saying you can't reenact some top-secret conversations about nuclear warheads, the cold war, and whale meat.

We saw an art exhibit of printers from Reykjavík, among them my Fulbrighter friend Nicole Pietrantoni had a few great prints on glass, which when light was projected upon them, would show their images as shadows on the walls.

And here is a recreation of the American foods that came to Iceland. It's all a little strange, as it's quite familiar for me to see these products, but really out of their natural context (i.e. in Iceland, where we don't even have a McDonalds, thank heavens, but thankfully we do have Honey Nut Cheerios).

Near Duuhús was a little cave-like thing attached to a coastal rock cliff. I wandered over to it and it turns out to be the home of a literal giant- one named Sigga who is definitely involved with Christmas celebrations. But the best part about the interior of the cave was this:

A million icicles; we must have discovered the cave at just the right time between freezes and thaws, and the light coming in was beautiful!

We drove on to see several lighthouses around the coast of the peninsula- I had been to the Blue Lagoon before and to Seltún's hot spring area, but never in the other direction on the coasts. It has been snowing a bit lately but the weather was quite beautiful for a drive.

The southmost coast of the peninsula has the most dramatic rock formations, and you can see the bird-filled island of Eldey in the distance from here. These cliffs are known for their bird colonies all swarming around- it's not yet crazy bird season but it will be soon! This will be a beautiful place to hike in the summer, and perhaps reenact a little Sound of Music. The hills will be alive...with the sounds of gannets.

Music Museum Iceland, Tónlistarsafn Íslands

2011-03-19T13:32:00.001Z

I visited the Music Museum of Iceland today. A bit by chance, I glanced through a book of cultural attractions in Iceland and noticed that there was a music museum, that I had somehow overlooked! It was also right next door to the art museum that I planned on going to anyway, so I stopped into both.

What a delight! I was treated like royalty by the staff and got a personal tour of the exhibit by Guðrún, the curator. I was also the only guest that day, so I guess she was happy to show me around. The staff was really excited that I had learned so much Icelandic in seven months, so we could basically talk about the exhibit only in Icelandic (mind you with a lot of simplification, and me asking questions, but still it was a proud moment). Here is Guðrún next to her life-size poster ancestor Sveinbjörn.

The Museum of Music in Iceland is more like an online collection of scanned documents and recordings for use on the internet, but it has a small exhibition space that changes based on funding and as time allows. Tónlistarsafn Íslands is one of the only places that researches the physical artifacts of Iceland's mostly-oral musical history.The current exhibit is on the composer of Iceland's National Anthem, Sveinbjörn Sveinbjörnsson. There were letters and artifacts from his life, donated by his granddaughter, texts and scores of his music, and a couple particularly cool items including a blanket from Sveinbjörn's bed and a solid-silver piano sculpture, given as a gift.

Sveinbjörn was one of the first composers in Iceland, though originally trained to be a priest and later a performing musician. As there was no rigorous academic training in music in Iceland until later in the 20th century, Sveinbjörn moved to Leipzig to study with Reinecke, and eventually to Edinburgh to work and raise a family (I'm sure a really crazy idea at that time, nearly impossible for the average Icelandic citizen to do, just up and move to a foreign country and become successful). The king of Norway and all his entourage attended the premiere of one of Sveinbjörn's works, but unfortunately, his music was constantly panned...'well, he's no Greig, that's for sure.' Sveinbjörn's music certainly isn't much in the way of originality or daring avant-garde, but the music is pleasantly Mendelssohn-y. He received a lot of accolades in his life, like a pension from Iceland, much fame in Canada (some of his family ended up moving there), and the Order of the Falcon (Iceland's version of Knighthood). There's a cool picture of Sveinbjörn's funeral procession, with hundreds of Icelanders parading down the street in the rain to show tribute to the man, their black umbrellas all a-bobbin'.

It was only recently that the melody that Sveinbjörn composed became the 'official' Icelandic national anthem, which was a setting of 'Ó Guð Vor Lands', a poem written by Matthías Jochumsson (side note: it's rare for Iceland, and I would say for anthems in general, that it's basically a poem to God, and not to nature or the landscape or the people). Matthías was reported to have heard the premiere of his poem and hated it, he thought his own words were terrible, but then again he was also severely depressed. In any case, the national anthem became common to sing in Iceland, though very few people that the museum surveyed actually knows who wrote it or who wrote the lyrics. They also say that it's very hard to sing, and requires a big vocal range, which I could say the same thing about the national anthem for the States as well. (America's is 'The Star-Spangled Banner', and was written by Francis Scott Key, a poet, but set to the music of a drinking song by John Stafford Smith. I must admit that I didn't know the drinking song fact about the Anthem. I would think most Americans, if they remember Francis Scott Key, would side with me and say that he wrote the music as well. Right?)

There are also several verses of the Icelandic anthem, but people only sing one--much like the American anthem, which has up to five giant verses but people only sing or screech or mess up the first. There's also debate of getting a second anthem, or making a more populist anthem that really gets the country all patriotic-like. Some countries have two anthems, why the heck not.

After the Sveinbjörn chat, I was also showed several other projects the Music Museum is working on, including digitizing of documents, receiving donations of instruments and memorabilia, maintaining Iceland's giant musik.is website, and I got to see a couple of old wax cylinders made by Jón Leifs (the Bela Bartók of Iceland, if you will, who went around Iceland recording traditional melodies).

Certainly I did not expect a dance remix of a folk song to enter the conversation at this point, but this is where we break it down, now. I listened to a wax cylinder recording of an (probably crazy) old man singing this folk-song 'game' (the first recorded sample on this Icelandic page). The story goes that the Devil tests someone to sing this difficult song, and each time sing it up a fourth, hardly breathing, and if you can pass the test, then I don't know, maybe you won't be taken away by the Devil or something. This old man passes the test. A composition student heard the piece and used the recording, and worked on it and it actually is quite successful (and hilarious) as a dance remix! It was even on Icelandic radio and everything. To top it off, the remix was then found by a class of children, who choreographed it into a hot dance jam. Musical dissemination through the generations at its finest!

Hafnarfjörður

2011-03-17T12:51:00.000Z

I took a small excursion to Hafnarfjörður today (pronounced a bit like 'Hap-na-fyor-thur' but definitely not like 'haf-nar-fa-jar-dar'), and boy, was I in for some hits and misses. For one thing, every museum there happened to be closed (and there are about four in town). One museum is definitely open all year but happened to be closed in mid-exhibit transition. There are a couple really cute bakeries and coffeeships, but both churches I peeked into were also locked. It was snowing out and pretty quiet on the streets, so I thought I'd find a hidden gem of a harmonium somewhere to play and revel away some winter songs, but also no luck with that either.

But then I noticed this lookout point on a hill, and decided that I was already walking around in the snow, why not have a dramatic view to boot (or should I say boots, I put on my heaviest boots today). I was not disappointed by this! There were even some trees up there, how delightfully big they were.

And on the way there and back I saw some of the things which Hafnarfjörður is known for- it is a small 'town'(essentially now a 'suburb' of Reykjavík's urban sprawl) full of old, charmingly detailed houses, neat architecture, and small harbor. The town is also sort of hillier than anything else around it, which felt like another country, maybe Switzerland (though I've never been there) or some alpine village, where many of the streets are joined with staircases and the houses are built a bit precariously on the edge of cliffs. Many of them have the old-style Icelandic detailing, like 'gingerbread' of Victorian homes, sprucing up the tin-clad walls of the historic timber houses.

There was a really bland building which I still kind of liked for its moderist repetition:

And this ominous-looking school (or so I think it's a school) on the hill:

I bet it was an amazing gargoyle of a building once, until the town sprang up around it.

At the base of the lookout there is a crazy Viking hotel/restaurant/souvenir shop/tourist trap.

I didn't go in but actually this one looked far less hideous and actually kind of fun, compared to some of the ones in the city. The architecture of this building is also intense, I might shop there just to see what it looks like inside. Is that a traditional rooftop decoration up there, or did someone just take a Viking ship prow and adapt it for the roof?

On my way back, I stood next to some 11-ish-year olds who asked me for cigarettes; they were disappointed that I didn't smoke. They also couldn't stop spitting every approx. 3 seconds. Really, who has that much saliva? It's just a competition at that point. Icelandic teen angst at its finest. Even in a sleepy little harbor town, there's plenty to be angsty about. Like having to wait until June until the museums open. Ptew.

New Album in Progress!

2011-03-13T10:18:00.000Z

I'm pleased to announce that I'm going to be releasing an album! With a tentative release date of August 1st, 2011, my plans are to release works I've been experimenting on here in Iceland which I'm been making since September in collaboration with Pittsburgh writer & poet Mark Mangini. Mark sends me texts, and I send him musical 'responses' of various kinds. Then he sends me a poem, or words, or a story in response. It's like The Postal Service, except one of us is doing music and the other is writing, and we have yet to physically mail anything. Okay, it's not like The Postal Service at all. Maybe it should be called 'Gmail:Send!'. Nope, that's a bad idea too.

'Course, there could also be extra treats on the album too, we'll see what happens in the next couple months. One very interesting thing about my working process(es) here in Iceland is that my work has been more about the process of making music and experimenting than really knowing what the finished product is going to be. Or caring, really, for that matter. It's not like I want my work to be crap, but I've rarely made music just for the experience of making it- in the past it's always been about a particular end result, how do I get there, gotta have it done by this time, gotta be for this ensemble, etc. These Iceland works have really been evolving more organically, much different than writing my previous chamber music (more like writing music for Music of North Side Spaces, where each site or place called for a different way of working). But that's a good thing for me, I get bored doing the same thing the same way every time. Except for minimalism, heh heh.

I'm certainly excited to put some more material out there in the world to be listened to. Perhaps a small record label will be interested in picking it up. I hope whatever the finished project turns out to be, it includes some delightful gems for your lovely ears!

Bolludagur, Sprengidagur, Öskudagur

2011-03-12T15:25:00.000Z

Three little holidays, all in a row, lined up for this past week's entertainment. Bolludagur involved lots of moms making puffed pastries, and families gorging themselves on whipped cream. Then Sprengidagur was the following day, literally 'bursting day' as one's stomach explodes from eating too much salted lamb and bean soup, with potatoes and carrots. And a lot of water to drink, to combat all the salt. And then you spend the night alone with some Tums as your date, but it was worth it, gosh darn it.

I went to IKEA on a little adventure for Sprengidagur, not because it was a holiday but because I hadn't been yet, and this is supposedly the biggest IKEA in Europe. It also snowed quite a lot (a bit of a rarity here) and it was doubly adventurous to wade through some small snowdrifts to get to bus stops, and try to act casual about slipping a lot on ice. Just kidding you guys, I planned to do that! Whoahauoh!

Little did I know that IKEA would be having a Sprengidagur feast in the cafeteria, and I got a heaping plate of lambakjöt and potatoes, carrots, and soup, for only 2 kronur. That's right folks. That's practically free! Apparently in the past it was totally free, but maybe they now need a head count so they charge two pennies, essentially. I didn't really believe the sign until I went to the cashier. My Bolla, the cream-filled pastry, was 155 kr (about $1.40US) and the meat and beans were 2 kronur.

Best deal ever at IKEA, and I didn't even buy any furniture. Then I bought some sparkling pear juice and I was satiated all day.

The day after that was Öskudagur, or 'Ash Day'. Traditionally, maybe only 10 years ago, children would sneak around and try to pin little bags filled with ashes to people's backs without them noticing. A bit like France's prankish 'April Fish Day', which I always loved the title of. But nowadays it's more like Halloween, except that the kids in costumes go from storefront to storefront, asking for candy. I saw some great costumes today including ghosts, cowboys, glamour girls, and some very creative throw-everything-wacky-together costumes. The kids also sing songs for their candy! At least there's a certain amount of talent involved, rather than sugar-induced begging and pleading.

(photo credit: Stefán, visir.is.)
A bit more on the holidays can be found on the Grapevine.

Iceland National Symphony, Part II

2011-03-09T15:30:00.000Z

I went to what could easily be a horror-of-horrors concert for my personality type, the "Family and Young People" concert on the Iceland National Symphony's program. It was full of classical excerpts all pertaining somehow to trolls, goblins, fantasy, and magic. What in the States is usually a feeble attempt to rally children into thinking "classical music is fun!...Right?!..Anybody??...!" here was really a fun and delightful little program that kept the Icelandic kids (and myself) totally entertained.

Icelandic-raised kids seem to have a higher standard of musicality (choirs, festivals, sagas told in song-rhyme, holidays devoted to singing, music schools in many towns), and they grow up learning that 'classical' music can be enjoyed in the same ways that other genres of music can. Thus as adults, there is less of a stigma that the classical repertoire is something highbrow and elitist, and frankly uninteresting to the masses. I have yet to talk to anyone here that's asked, 'so how do you plan on making a living, when classical music pays nothing and nobody listens to it?', a question I'd often get in the States. With relatively few of them around, many composers in Iceland can actually make a comfortable living writing music, and be admired for it.

What made the kids' concert so enjoyable (besides the sound of the orchestra, which is good as always) was the completely engaging host, who talks to the kids between every song. She's kind of an Icelandic character actress, so I'm told, and appears at various cultural events and wears a red nose, jumps around and makes jokes, tells really fabulous stories about the classical pieces you're about to hear, and even keeps the kids engaged with little group activities ('raise your hand if you've seen a troll!' and 'we have to help the clarinetist play really high, everybody blow real hard!'. Also, her level of Icelandic is just simple enough that I could understand most of it, especially good when I understand a joke! She loved picking on people who were coming in late- at one point she jumped off the stage and helped people to their seats as they couldn't find their way. Those people won't be late to the symphony again.

The best moments of the music concert included (surprisingly), hearing John Williams' 'Hedwig' theme from Harry Potter, in which several tiny kiddies sitting around me hummed along with the theme with scary accuracy (the melody is not exactly linear, it has a big weird interval jump and chromaticism throughout it). Then during 'Uranus' from Holst's Planets, the boy next to me pretended to conduct, and at one point imitated playing the tympani, again with scary accuracy of the rhythm happening on stage. Then he stood on his chair for a better view, took out some cheese puffs from his mom's bag, and ate them loudly. All in a day's work for a cultured five-year-old.

(image from sinfonia.is.)

ASCAP SHMASCAP?

2011-03-06T15:35:00.001Z

Four times in the last month have my music-related questions led me to dead ends, or frustrated me to the point of giving up (until the next wave of ambition hits).

I'm a member of ASCAP, the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, which should more often than not be called 'Throwing Your Time Into a Black Hole if You're Not Famous Yet'. (TYTIBH-YNFY). Not quite true; I did make a couple bucks two years ago, but the rules have changed since then so now I won't be making anything until I reach a certain 'royalty limit'. I do register all my works with them, though, in the slim case that one piece might get played somewhere random that I don't know about (only slightly >0% right now).

Classical music 'business' with ASCAP is kind of a mess. It's easier if you have music on the radio, for example. X number of plays of your work, multiplied by a formula, = your royalties. But with classical music, someone, a literal person from the ASCAP team, has to happen to go to your concert and write down that you had a piece played, and then I imagine he or she takes it back to an Apple IIE somewhere and plunks in a composer's information, to see if you get any credits for your performance. Otherwise, you have to physically MAIL them copies of your concert programs, to prove that you exist. No printed program exists of your concert? TOO BAD.

Let's not even talk about the design of their registration pages, which really grosses me out. There's like, several font colors and sizes and graphic styles trying to vie for my eyes' attention! And it still manages to confuse me every time, or I end up composing something that is an exception to all the drop-down boxes you could possibly choose from.

This is sadly not even the part that frustrates me. Twice now I've sent ASCAP questions, and have received no response. There's a weird rule about not getting any royalties for having works performed in academic institutions. But what if one can rent out a college concert hall for one's own concert? I once asked this question, and did get an actual human response, but it said, "I don't know the answer to this, but let me forward your email to this guy whose job it is to handle this."
And then I got no response from guy #2. Way to go!

Any advice for me from the networld of readers out there?
I'll give myself some advice. 1. Take a deep breath. 2. Have a snack. 3. Keep working on music and don't worry about it right now.

I also want to know about copyright boundaries. I've written works that are sort of like cover songs (known as 'derivative' material, in copyright-speak), but also including original material. They're like arrangements, most of the original melody is there, but I've changed the underlying structures of the pieces. Where does a song's copyright end, and my material begin? I've emailed two copyright lawyers now, and big surprise, no response. Any music copyright lawyers out there willing to send me an email?

The 'industry' or whatever is constantly changing, I know, I know. I would almost go about my business in pleasant naivety about copyrights, royalties, stealing blatantly from pop musicians, if it weren't that I was trying to be one of the few better-informed artists out there. Maybe this is all part of the learning curve?

Lastly on my tirade about the minutiae of things that don't really matter right this second, are websites that make me sign in twice. ASCAP is one of them, and being able to add more funds to my phone through my phone company is another. Seriously you guys, I already signed in to see my balance, why do I need to sign in again to add to my balance? I don't. Game over. I win. I BIWIN.

Velvet Goldmine

2011-03-04T10:07:00.004Z

I know I've mentioned Christian Bale in previous posts, in fact all the way back in 2006 he was in a collage I assembled, and then one sweaty summer he was my role model for looking good whilst shiny.
This is another post that I mention him! I recently saw 'Velvet Goldmine', in my quest to catch up on a few movies that I've heard about but never got around to seeing. The movie had its moments, and some fun glam scenes, though I was in general just a bit whelmed by the whole thing (a bit indifferent, not overwhelmed, not underwhelmed, just whelmed). Ewan McGregor plays a fiercy Iggy-Pop character, Jonathan Rhys Meyers plays a David Bowie-esque lead, with plenty of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and Toni Collette.

However, one thing kept my interest through the whole movie: Christian Bale's lips.

They look good in every scene, and apparently in every decade! Though his current mustache and beard hides the top points of the lip which I think are the defining part of his face. And that's too bad as I usually love beards.

I regret not being able to find an IMDB image of him wearing his glam-rock makeup and giant gold earring. But you can imagine it was broodingly captivating.

25,000 views, Glumbær, Harpverk

2011-02-22T22:49:00.007Z

400 more views, y'all, and someone is going to be the 25.000th viewer to this blog. What an honor! It could be you! I want to know who it is. I remember MW was the 10.000th, maybe she'll refresh her page so many times that she's the winner again! If you let me know that it was you, you could get a prize from Iceland. I'm surprised that I've lasted this long; since 2006, just over once a week, gosh.

I did a couple random things lately that I thought I'd share with you.

I went to this random-ass museum in the middle of the 'ghetto' of Reykjavík, and by 'ghetto', the locals just mean that there are mostly children and immigrants living there and there aren't any designer boutiques within spitting distance. It's really quite nice otherwise; the pool has a hot-pot moat that you can lounge in underneath the lookout tower, and two waterslides. Anyway, the museum was a sort of civic-center/cafe/children's museum/doctor's office/cultural house, and it had these fabulous 'exhibits' (are they even? is it for kids to play on? is it about learning? I still can't figure it out, but I guess that's not the point) that combined a wall of clocks, a dragon that you could climb through, sound installations, a room of green felt hands, boots, wall carvings, runes, and a wall of TVs. And a giant stuffed dog the size of a small car.

In the basement of the museum were offices, but the treasures lay outside! There were these amazing displays of old icelandic postcards from as early as the 1900's, and shelves upon shelves of old children's toys, categorized by themes around Christmas.

I went to a concert of Harpverk, a harp and percussion duo. It was pretty amazing! There were some great moments, some very ideomatic works, some not-so-interesting and/or badly written moments, and then a couple REALLY wacky pieces that pushed the boundaries of the categories 'harp' and 'percussion'. Like this one, by Jesper Pederson, which looks bizarre, and indeed sounded about how it looked, but it actually was quite effective and fun. The percussionist put a blinking light on his head--the blinks were generated from a signal generator in a computer--and every time it blinked, he'd slide ball bearings down a tube which made quite a fun sound. The harpist played her new electric harp in a mostly textural way.

Another piece involved a cardboard box with a demon face in permanent marker on it, with some duct tape. I'll leave it at that. I think the eclectic mix is what makes it a really good show! Very profesh the whole time, but relaxed as well, not taking themselves too seriously. I left wanting to write something for them really badly. That's always a good sign.

Changes of Light and Weather

2011-02-22T16:27:00.006Z

A lot of life in Reykjavík involves regrouping. Change of plans! Change of schedule! Last minute curve-ball! Re-thinking the course of projects. And also spontaneous fun! Perhaps a lot of that stems from the weather, which seems to change quite quickly here, much more than in the States. Sunshine one minute, hail the next. Cloudy and rainy one morning, windy and snowy by lunch, then sunny by sunset.
Only a couple weeks ago, it looked like this outside, sort of gross:

And then within minutes it looked like this, kind of Swiss-ly sunny and bright. And then it would change right back again.

Now, I can see the sun, poking real rays of light around the buildings. The other day I got direct sunlight rays into my apartment! It's been a while since I've seen you little buddies, welcome back.

With the sun suddenly showing its big fat fés, the whole city looks different. The streets appear wider. The sky is much bigger. The days are more open to long walks, and people's attitudes get a little chattier. Long, lazy sunsets are returning!

I also discovered the joy of the best-kept-secret in Iceland- a footbath! It's a giant rock, right on the ocean, with a carved out hole in it, that has constant hot freshwater pumped into it. Don't believe me? Here's my leg in it.
You could fit about four happy foot-bathers in here (but nothing more than feet or perhaps a tiny person might fit.) I walked out to it the other day and dipped my toes in, in between snow squalls. The view I got from the footbath was breath-taking. Check out those contrasts- dark black sea rocks with the snow on Mount Esja in the distance. The light and air were so clear and bright. Amazing!

More Things I've Made and Ate

2011-02-19T13:34:00.007Z

Here is another chapter in the saga of Things I've Made and Ate in Iceland. This one's just about as random as chapter one! In no particular order:

A necklace out of sea-glass from the Reykjavík coast, it could be quite nice for a bride's dress or something summery and formal. Potential brides: cawl me, we'll tawk.

Some no-bake chocolate-oatmeal-peanut butter cookies, and a Pittsburgh favorite (thanks, Mark!), sage and carmelized sugar-coated pecans.

Icelandic lamb, two ways! I splurged one week and bought Icelandic lamb, and one medium-sized steak was enough for several meals. First it was a lamb masala! The mix was from a jar but it was some of the best out of a jar I've had. I used potatoes, chickpeas, and onions for the veggies. And then made a collage that day too. Then came steak salad, with leftover veggies. Really quite good- the lamb is fatty but not greasy, so it kind of melted, it wasn't chewy at all. Absolute yumsh.

Bracelets made out of fish skin leather! I made four of these beauties and they should be on sale at Mattress Factory in a bit, for those stateside people that want some elegant salmon and spotted wolf-fish around their arms. And don't it look lovely.

Also in the meat family, some beef curry. Maybe the winter has influenced me into making a lot of stews. They're certainly easy and I can also leave them while they simmer away. This curry came with some bamboo shoots, but I added the rest.

And finally, two small collages of Mount Esja in two seasons. I just worked on these this weekend and they're simple but I love them! I hadn't collaged anything in months, and it was about time. I also don't really do figurative things or landscapes, but being here and looking at the mountain all the time, it's hard not to at least use a mountain shape. The works are on silver paper too, which has a really shimmery glow. I'm really happy that I found a piece of magazine that had colorful stripes in it- I think it's a picture of the pavement, but it works really well for imaginative mountain layers.

Listening with fresh ears

2011-02-17T17:09:00.000Z

I'm discovering a ton of sounds and samples in Björk's 'Vespertine' that I never heard before! How could I miss them? It's like paying a visit to an old friend, having a nice cup of tea, and then you look up and discover she has a different hair color than you remember, and it's always been this way, nothing's really changed. Surprising and refreshing, but still the same friend. Listening with fresh ears (and headphones), it's almost too many good sounds to handle.

Also, I wish I had discovered (or paid more attention) to David Lang's music, which is now on the forefront of my playlists (currently listening to: The So-Called Laws of Nature). He, along with Michael Gordon and Julia Wolfe, founded the contemporary-music group Bang on a Can. I had his older piece 'Cheating, Lying, Stealing' on an old 8th blackbird CD from around 2000, but I hadn't ever really listened to it before. I then bought his 'Little Match Girl Passion' which is a Pulitzer-Prize winning work for motet-like voices that double on percussion. Lang combined the seemingly-incongruent texts of The Little Match Girl story by Hans Christian Anderson with the Passion of Christ, and they work beatifully together: cold, crystalline, and indeed passionate.

Now I have several more works of his- I have to admit that watching the movie 'Untitled' was sort of the gateway into his other works- perhaps listening in a new place, a new context, was all it took. I love the minimalist rhythms, but also the rock music influence that one can hear nestled into the music. He has works for bells, pieces of wood, flower pots, nearly movement-less voices, bass clarinet...The man knows how to work rhythms into something fascinating that I only hope to aspire to.

Anti-Valentines

2011-02-14T10:12:00.002Z

Three short and sweet images that are the opposites of pink hearts. I used to send black squares in the mail, sometimes with nothing even written on them, but I've sweetened up a little bit since. Now at least I sign my name.

A Lot of Free Time

2011-02-13T20:16:00.010Z

Funny things happen when you have a lot of free time on your hands. For me, I've always been an admittedly excellent manager of my time. Even when I had a day-job and wrote music on the side, I got a lot of my own work done. But in Iceland, with only my creative side to tend to, I also see that the apartment is cleaner. I don't ignore writing emails or calling my friends (as much). I write more music, I listen to more music, I get to read. I do some exercises 5 days a week (read: mostly interpretive-dancing around my room, interspersed with push-ups. No judging. It seems to be working, and making me happy too), and I get to swim here more! But then other things start to pop into my head, really unrealistic things.

'But I still have so much work to do!' My unrealistic side replies.
My relaxed half replies back, 'but you set your own schedule here.'
'But I need to DO ALL THE THINGS!! I need to do everything there is to be done!' (much like this fabulous comic here). I need to go to all the museum shows! I need to go grocery shopping! I need to see every concert every day! I need to hike up the mountain! There's not enough time to do everything!! I need to write all the music I will ever write ever because when will I have this time again??

This guy had time to write, I should be slaving away, too, preferably by candlelight. Oh wait, he's dead. Composers in past centuries aren't really good role models for today anyway.

I'm not fluent in Icelandic yet, and I've been taking lessons for SEVEN MONTHS!

I haven't gotten famous yet and sold a million copies of my still-in-progress contemporary-classical album, why aren't I getting on this??! And I'm not hanging out with the cool kids every minute of every day. And I still haven't had sexy babies with my new Icelandic husband yet, WHAT'S WRONG WITH ME.

Then, I step outside for a walk. Or do something different that day, and I realize... duh! Relax! It's only because I don't go to work to an office every day here that I feel like I'm not doing what I'm supposed to be doing, it's just what I'm used to doing. I've given five concerts here already, and performed in two others! I've written three choir works, lots of collaged music, I've made freakin' bracelets out of fish skin leather.

I hear in my head these outside pressures, that are really not meant for how I operate well. What's more, I'm learning language plenty fast enough. I'm doing work that is outside my normal boundaries, and challenging myself in countless ways. And certainly no man no friends nobody, will want me to freak out Jessie-Saved-By-The-Bell style over nothing. Though I still love that clip, it's pretty timeless...right?

Sorry, Mugison, I had to use your face as the ideal Icelander on this post (I believe the photos are by Páll Stefansson, or possibly Oddvar, I forget) Í alvöru. Though frankly you're still pretty awesome; I have it on record that most people who watch you perform swoon over you, no matter what their sexual preference is. For the record, my prerequisites for husband material are not limited to beards, fishing boats, reindeer pelts, and life in the fjords.

Short trip to Akureyri

2011-02-12T11:20:00.005Z

The fantastic Fulbright organization of Iceland paid for a short trip up to Akureyri this week, the 'capital of the north' of iceland, at 17,000 people. Seven of us drove up to hear a fellow Fulbrighter's dissertation in geophysics, and we got a free trip out of it, a free night in a beautiful guest house, and a delicious fancy dinner to celebrate our team of nerds! But the best part of all was that the following day we had some time to drive to Mývatn, which I have only been to one time (in September), but this was the winter glimpse of some of the most spectacular places in Iceland.

Akureyri is a totally beautiful town! It's a tiny version of Reykjavík, in its own way, with a lively bar scene on weekends, all the shopping and entertainment you need, and some great architecture to boot. It's on the end of a fjörd and the mountains on the other side are even closer to you than in Reykjavík. The airport is also right out on the water, and the planes look like they're going to make a water landing...until a stretch of runway juts out right into the fjörd and saves the day.

We made it only a couple minutes late for J's defense, as the weather was really quite something along the way! There was a beautiful shot I got in the countryside while standing to stretch my legs (in the rain):

But soon after the landscape turned totally to snow, as far as the eye could see- it was this amazing monochromatic whitewash without much definition...where does the mountain end and the sky begin.

Akureryi was supposed to be a snowy wonderland, but it had melted a bit in previous days. Still, the views were beautiful.

We had dinner in Hof, the new concert hall/meeting center of the north, and it was totally gorgeous and very me inside, lots of concrete and stone, dark wood and ambient lighting. And the food, based on Danish smørrebrød, was delicious. I got a sampler of fishies.

Then, we all had wine, coffee, desserts, which were equally beautiful! I also liked the clear/monochromatic table at this particular moment.

We swam in the evening in Akureyri's luxurious public pool, which sort of puts Reykjavík's older pools to shame. We kvetched about being Fulbrighters, as when we're in Reykjavík it feels like we should always be doing "work" of some sort, rather than "experiencing", but when we get out of town, immediately we all go into vacation mode.

The next morning we were off to Mývatn, only about an hour away from Akureyri. We drove past a shimmering, wintry Ljósavatn (perfectly named: 'Light Lake').

I saw a couple areas of Mývatn that were new to me, and a few familiar sights now covered in snow and ice. The lake itself was incredibly beautiful and still, with a few birds fluttering here and there. Dimmuborgir was under several feet of snow, so we pounced around on snowmounds around the lava formations. I might have seen a Yule Lad as well- they've only recently come back to live here after Christmas.

But my favorite sight was something new, and it blew my mind. We drove into a nondescriptly-pretty area with some cool rock formations, and walked around for a minute. But then one Fulbrighter's husband said, 'it's over here, bring your towels!', and he disappeared into a hole in the ground! We followed suit, entering a cave-like rock fissure, and inside it, underground, was a natural hotspring that we swam in! I've never done anything like that in my life. It was a little scary, a little crazy, and a whole lot of exciting. The water was so clear, so mysterious, and just on the border of too hot but tolerable (as really, it's just hot from some magma under the earth, heating it up. No bigs.)
The only light came in from a small opening, and the rocks all around may fall at any moment. These dark and shadowy rocks are right over my head.

But they didn't fall. Instead, some lucky artists and scientists got to swim together and laugh about how insane/lucky/humbling it is to be here, in the winter stillness, inside of a fissure in Iceland.

Grapevine Review- Mýkir Músíkdagar

2011-02-05T18:19:00.006Z

I have my very first piece of writing published in a newspaper, it feels like a milestone. It's a music review of the Dark Music Days Festival, which was a contemporary music creezycrazy weekend. I ended up seeing 12 concert total from Thursday night to Sunday night. Not every concert made it into the article, as I knew in advance that I would have to chop it down into something digestible for print. Luckily all that was changed were two semi-colons, or if there were more edits, I really can't tell the difference.

I did have to leave out the story where I wasn't told that there was an intermission to a concert, and I was asked to be a stage crew hand, so I wandered out right in front of an orchestra taking a bow, leaving me to look hilariously stupid, standing in front of a sea of violins trying to move around me. But that's a story better left for the blog. I doubt that anyone but me remembers who the weirdo volunteer guy was. Well, now I just gave it away. Next time I'm not volunteering to do more than help with programs and set up chairs, or even better, just be the guest composer who has a piece on the program. That's more my speed.

The published text is pasted below, or you can read it at the Grapevine's website; it's from Issue 2 and turning to page 22. Fancy!

Dark Music Days
Nathan Hall

Reykjavík’s ‘Dark Music Days’ Festival is a bit like Iceland Airwaves, if Airwaves catered mostly to hip classical musicians, threw in a ton of contrabass instruments, and was operated entirely by about four people. This year, the usual multi-week festival was squashed into three-and-a-half days, exhausting my ears in the same way as Airwaves did, only this time with more sixteenth notes and fewer earplugs.

THURSDAY

Dark Music Days kicked off with a grand concert by the Iceland National Symphony. Daníel Bjarnason’s conducting of György Ligeti’s ‘Atmospheres’ squeezed out of the double bass section a low sustained note more fantastically vulgar than I’ve ever heard in orchestral music. Steingrímur Rohloff’s ‘Clarinet Concerto’ could have just given me the parts of the piece featuring growling, didgeridoo-like squeals for the bass clarinet, and I would have been perfectly content. The composition, and Rúnar Óskarsson’s performance as soloist, particularly showcased the bass clarinet as well-balanced against the forces of the full orchestra.

Daníel conducted his own ‘Birting’, the crowning achievement of the evening. Daníel’s work was full of primordial shifts of light and darkness, mysterious and unexpected sounds at just the right moments. I went home comforted.

FRIDAY

The onslaught of events began on Friday at lunchtime, with one-hour events placed at roughly three-hour intervals until late in the night. At Kristín Jónína’s lecture, Þorkell Sigurbjörnsson mentioned that for years he had to have an unlisted phone number after receiving threatening calls—apparently nothing made Icelanders angrier than his hosting an avant-garde music programme on the radio during rush hour.

Sigurður Sævarsson’s ‘Missa Pacis’ was hauntingly beautiful, performed in the darkly-lit Neskirkja. The restraint of the vocal writing made the work’s deliciously full moments shine even more. It is soon to be a Hljómeyki Choir hit when it’s released on CD.

The electro-acoustic performances at Hugmyndahúsið in the late evening included several works featuring altered found sounds. Ríkharður Friðriksson stood on stage for his piece, writing out computer code that propelled the work in real-time. Strangely enthralling.

SATURDAY

The highlight from Hnúkaþeyr Wind Octet was ‘Andar’ by Anna Þorvaldsdóttir, containing ideas ‘under the influence of breathing and tidal waves’. It was also a perfect nod to the sounds of pounding waves of rain on Kjarvalsstaðir’s roof. Dark Music Days this year was sponsored by Iceland’s worst winter weather: wind, rain, slush, and snow coming at you from all directions.

Kira Kira’s late-night concert at Norðurpóllinn was…eclectic. I bet that she could leave out the heavy reverb and echo effects and still have interesting pieces left over. For most of the evening I thought to myself, if I would feature all these low-sounding instruments: double basses, cornet, contrabass clarinet–I’d definitely have a tuba as well.

SUNDAY

Pulling myself together after a long night (it was the weekend, after all), I took a bus to CAPUT’s performance of Atli Heimir Sveinsson’s ‘5-hjóladrif’ at Norðurpóllinn. The two dancers on stage sadly only performed during 20 percent of the work, but Atli Heimir’s multi-genre, vigorous and virtuosic (read: ‘crazy’) writing held my interest. After the concert, I got a ride back seated next to a sexy Danish opera singer-slash-rock-theatre-collaborator. Ah, how I love Scandinavia.

The final concert of the festival was held at the National Museum (Listasafn Íslands), an acoustically dull but obviously artful venue for the Reykjavík Chamber Orchestra. Hlynur Vilmarsson’s ‘Héxié’ for piano, strings, and low-frequency pulsing electronics conveyed a stillness that resonated the best through the museum’s space. Arnold Schoenberg’s ‘Verklärte Nacht’ was the final work on the programme, with intense anguish that melted into sighs of romance, and finally into an uplifting spiritual breath. It was also the bookend to the symphony concert a few nights before; it tied together many of the works over the weekend that seemed to explore inhalation and exhalation, the passions of simply being alive.

These kinds of festivals are a rare opportunity to hear so much contemporary music for such a reasonable price. Much like I experienced at Airwaves, I found it best to just be a ‘sponge’, soaking up all of the highs and lows of new classical music in Iceland today, and taking them home to ponder.

Nathan Hall is a composer and artist on a Fulbright Fellowship to Iceland this year. He can be reached through www.nathan-hall.net.

Judd Greenstein, Alex Ross, Julia Cameron

2011-01-26T15:51:00.005Z

Just a couple quotes that I've found recently in reading which are nice little tidbits for my own compositional life:

On the compositional process, from an interview with the esteemed Judd Greenstein. I had a piece of mine premiered on a concert that his work was in as well, in Brooklyn. My piece was okay. His was pretty awesome...

"If you do something three times, in your head you've actually probably done it a hundred times, and most of those different ways that you tried to work out the rhythm or the harmony never made it in, but, god, do we really have to do this a third time because haven't we done this enough already? Well, no. In the context of the actual piece, we haven't, but in your brain you've done it way more than enough and so that's a challenge.

I need to want things to stay in play longer than they actually do. I want to be disappointed anytime something stops happening. If something changes, I want to make sure that the thing that happens is even more engaging, for whatever reason, than the thing that has just left."

I've done this so many times in my own work, and then regretted not repeating something, because it changed too quickly.

From writer Alex Ross, on new music, particularly about the composer George Fredrich Haas, who I know nothing about, but will inviestigate ASAP!
"Perhaps audiences are finally beginning to approach twentieth-century music with the same open-mindedness that they have long accorded twentieth-century painting."

My only comment to this is, well, we are now in the 21st-century, in fact about 11 years into it, and folks are finally warming up to music written 40 years ago. But I suppose that's good. If Ross senses a trend into audiences finally enjoying this kind of music-making and artful performance, then that may bode well for me as an 'established' musician later in life. I guess it takes the masses a long time to warm up to new ideas (ahem...civil rights...ahem...gay marriage, cough cough...).

And finally, from Julia Cameron's 'The Artist's Way', which makes me feel a lot less guilty about having beacoup de temp to myself on this Fulbright. It makes me think more and more that it is time well-spent on growing and thinking, reading and writing, pondering new ways of working.

"One of the great misconceptions about artistic life is that it entails great swathes of aimlessness. The truth is that a creative life involves great swathes of attention. Attention is a way to connect and survive."

Bad Hostel Art

2011-01-26T15:49:00.006Z

Here are a couple quick sketches I made of some great/horrible art in the hostels I've stayed in around the country. Disclaimer: I don't claim to be accurate in scale or even three-point perspective. And one picture is technically a 'still life' of two lamps on the table. But those lamps just had a certain '70's-design charm that they were almost as great/horrible as the needlepoint sailor; they just had to be given a small tribute.

New Music Wednesdays at Listasafn Íslands

2011-01-26T13:49:00.005Z

Today ended my four mini-concert stint at Listasafn Íslands, and I must say I have never been so pleasantly surprised at the results of a small event. Well, even these small, intimate concerts had a fair amount of prep work, as I wanted to have special guests for most of the concerts.

Two of the concerts featured Magnús Trygvason Elíassen on drums. He's amazing, I hope to work together again. We did two pieces together, one almost freely improvised, and one more traditional pop song. Here is the best recording of 'Dust', the free improv piece, that we got from the live concerts.

Two of the concerts also featured Luciano Becerra, a singer and musician from Argentina, who lives in Iceland. He sings in my choir and has a beautiful clear voice.

This last concert was packed with special guests; Hörður Torfason sang a song he crafted many years ago, and I rearranged his guitar part for piano, in my own particular style. He sang and his crisp tenor rang through the museum. There is a clarity in his singing that so effortlessly reveals texts. No wonder he has released 22 albums of his songs.

I also performed a workshop of a piece that Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir and I are working on for an outdoor spring performance. She spoke Icelandic texts while I played and sang. The work is full of color imagery and we tried to dress colorfully appropriately.

One of the most moving performances was by Karítur Íslands, a young girls' choir. Several of the girls sang a song that I wrote when I first moved to Iceland. The poem was written by a 12-year old girl, and is simple but moving. The girl is now around 30, and she didn't think she's be able to come to the concert, but she surprised me by being there! I hope she didn't freak out when I gave her a hug, I wasn't prepared. The performance was also hauntingly magical. Here is the recording of the rehearsal, the piano is a little loud but that's what I get for only bringing one stereo mic.

One of the reasons I wanted to take time and live in Iceland was that I thought my music would be better appreciated here. I'm certainly inspired by being here, and I have lots of time to think and listen to music here. Perhaps it's in my particular musical styles, or that I pick certain themes or demeanor about working, that I hoped my works would resonate with Icelanders, on par or more than with American audiences. I think this may indeed be the case. I have gotten a lot of positive feedback here from relatively larger audiences than I've had in the States, and for works that most people would consider 'classical' or 'experimental'. It's great to see everyday people show up to concerts to which they don't even know what to expect. This is a great sign; it gives me a little extra boost that I'm making good decisions, and continue to be happy here.

Grey Hairs Cometh

2011-01-21T19:25:00.003Z

It was inevitable. And the time is now. My first grey hair has multiplied.
The first one was/is in my beard. You can't even quite see it most of the time, it blends in with the other sort-of-blonde hairs I have.

But let's take a close-up.

Nope, definitely not blonde. It has a funny texture to it- it almost points directly out sometimes, pointing like a finger mocking me from the inside of my body.

There's another hair I spotted on my head, and this one has a little curl to it.

I even spotted one on my shorter-trimmed side-head hairs.

I know there are some on the back of my head, but those don't exist in my mind yet because I haven't seen them. Obviously if I can't see it, it doesn't exist! Just like the atom. Or possibly also evolution. Or anything that I can't Google.

Well, I joke as if it's a crisis but really I'm actually quite fine with the grey hairs. I am looking forward to a really sexy speckly beard full of them. And having grey hairs reminds me of two things. One, that I still have lots of hair left! And my default look of the future is sure to please: robust beard with crazy glasses. And Two, every hair I do lose on my scalp gets re-rooted onto my back and chest; I pretend that it's a system that my body is using to keep itself in stasis. My hairs formerly on my scalp are emigrating to a new country (apparently called 'Shoulderland') and they notice along the way that they have some new grey buddies who are along for the ride.

Detox Hotel, Car Accident

2011-01-18T20:55:00.002Z

This past weekend was a whirlwind of activity.
I had lunch and coffee with a great Icelandic musician named Hilmar Örn Agnarsson, formerly of the punk band Þeyr, and currently a multi-choir director and all-around happy, intelligent, and helpful person.
He played the bass in þeyr, and thus got to wear a cool hat and glasses.

Thru Hilmar, literally several hours later, I was invited to play a gig out in Keflavík by a man named Ragnar, who used to be the 'mayor' of sorts of the þingvellir/Gullfoss/Geysir area. Now, he's the co-owner of a Detox Hotel/Spa out by the Airport, along with an Iceland celebrity, Jónina Ben. Ragnar wanted me to play some live music at the Hotel this weekend in exchange for some free healthy meals and a night in a comfy hotel, hot tub, massages, etc. I said, what the hell. Jónina picked me up and I found out she was the person to bring aerobics to Iceland in the 70's/80's. That's pretty great. These are her fancy exercise balls.

I played a few songs at the detox place, where people come from around the world to stay for two weeks and eat only fruits and vegetables, lose some weight, exercise, and get pampered. I had some weird meals and a breakfast that included sweet potatoes, onions, and carrot juice with garlic and beets. No sugars, no shampoo, no chemicals anywhere, and for sure no chocolate. But I did feel refreshed when I was done. Or maybe it was from getting a massage by a hot Russian named Sebastian.

I thought I'd be in for a strange weekend when I saw my room, not much to see here.

But then the room turned out to have a very soft big bed. And I ended up having some of the best chats I've had here, finding out about Ragnar's time as 'mayor', his bringing cool musicians to Iceland to work with Hilmar Örn, and all the escapades that are involved when one works on large music projects. Also, I danced a traditional dance with some people from the Faroe Islands. And, went to Keflavík for the first time and ate some delicious dinner that was full of wonderful things like sugars and carbs, completely the opposite of my detox-hotel stay, and those carbs were amazing.

But on the way back to Reykjavík, Ragnar and I were the first car to respond to a pretty bad car accident on the road, involving 10 people. It was probably the worst accident I've witnessed in my life. I obviously didn't take pictures while it was happening, but I tried to get a quick snapshot of the two cars on the side of the road after help had arrived.

One car slid on some ice, striking another on its side, and there were two cars full of screaming children and a very bad-looking mom in the driver's seat. She was covered in blood, windows smashed, and the jaws of life later needed to come and get her out of the car. Ragnar was a complete live-saver, on the phone with a nurse and calling the ambulance, and talking to the injured woman, keeping her alert and calming the situation. I stayed with the kids by the side of the road and gave a couple hugs as everyone waited, shaking and scared. Ragnar and I left after the ambulances got there, and before the TV crews arrived...not the way I wanted to get on television. Later I read everyone was taken to the hospital but no one was seriously injured. Let's not repeat that event again here, shall we?

I also met two of Ragnar's friends at the Kjarvalsstaðir museum, and they might help me promote my music a bit. One of them had a very interesting day-job, currently importing socks from France, and also working with the American-French alliance here in Iceland. That's kind of bizarrely fascinating. I want some French socks!

Then, I went to a play-party with Hilmar Örn, which was really difficult to translate, but I'm glad I went. The evening was a sort of one-woman play-lecture about humor and health, including a lot of jokes. It was all in Icelandic, most of it colloquialisms, and I got about 25% of it. I did meet another composer my age, though, and got a free box of chocolate cookies, so the evening really turned out for the better. I was finally able to verbalize, (in Icelandic!), that I am in sort of a difficult place with my language acquisition, where I don't understand everything, but don't want to use English all the time just because it's the easy way out. It's sort of like being in between two languages- one you don't want to have to use, and one you can't quite use fully.

Hilmar also invited me to a rehearsal of his girls' chorus, which I may be writing music for, and they may sing one of my songs next week at Listasafn Íslands for my last concert there in this little music series. But that didn't happen within the weekend, so maybe I'll tell about that another day.

Meeting of the Worlds: Parents in Iceland

2011-01-12T21:50:00.002Z

Worlds collided this past week when my parents came to Iceland. I was glad they were so enthusiastic about their trip, even though half the time one of the three of us was queasy or tired, and the other half of the time the weather was too bitterly cold and windy to really have any fun in. They also brought me magazines from home, lots of hugs, and music notation software. And wine, from the duty-free. Bless them.

The 'rents were surprisingly adventurous on their visit here, and I was happy that they were still interested in taking road trips considering that once you got to the sights, most of the dramatic views in Iceland look so different than the summery, green pictures of the tour books. But no less astonishing! I took them around the traditional Golden Circle, with Geysir, Gullfoss, þingvellir. Everything was windswept, icy, and frozen.

We also went around to Reykholt, Hraunfossar, and Barnafoss, which I had last seen only in the fall. The sights are still totally stunning in the winter- monochromatic, sometimes like black-and-white photos. The waters from Barnafoss are even more milky blue in the winter from all the glacial runoff.

Even Deildartungahver looked quite stunning in the winter- frost on one side of the hot spring, and red rocks on the other, with blue sky and green moss. Four quandrants of color and textures, y'all!

I had never been down on the Reykjanes Peninsula (excepting the Blue Lagoon) and it was totally beautiful; we stopped at Kleifarvatn, a very calm, still lake which is dropping at a rate of about 1cm per day due to volcanic activity in the area. It's also a supposed home to a sea monster. That sea monster better get out to the ocean soon before he's left with a puddle.

We saw Séltún, or Krýsuvík, which is a geothermal site that looks like hot springs, but is in fact the remnants of a geothermal bore-hole that exploded inexplicably a few years ago, and left in its wake a bubbling pit.

The area around Krýsuvík is also one of the best I've seen so far for the rolling, slightly mossy lava fields that could easily be homes for the elves.

I enjoy using the Icelandic skills I've gained to sort of show off for my parents- even though half of the things I say are gramatically incorrect. Still, I can order fish dishes for them or get a taxi and have a little chat, and I don't have to use English. The cute receptionist at the Blue Lagoon and I had a nice Icelandic moment while my parents had a 'huh?' moment. I helped explain the process of Icelandic showers to the parents, and we had a rejuvenating swim in hot waters while the freezing air icicled up our hair.

At the end of my parents' stay, I had my second concert at Listasafn Íslands, or the national Art Museum. It went really well, a short lunchtime concert featuring special guests- in this case, Magnús Trygvason Eliassen and Luciano Becerra. The program was a mixed but well-balanced bag of piano solos and piano with drums. In Luciano's case, he sang 'Amarilli mia Bella' by Cacchini and I made an interior-piano plucked-string arrangement of the piece. I sang a brief song about leaves falling, and cooincidentally, all my pages blew off the piano. Luckily I had most of it memorized. I also had fellow Fulbrighters come and videotape, and some staff of the American Embassy came to listen. How fancy. I was glad my parents got to witness all of it. It was great to see them and I'm sad to see them go, but I've got more work and fun to do here which is already keeping me busy.

Music for One

2011-01-05T10:34:00.004Z

One of the sometimes-frustrating parts of being a random foreign composer in another country may turn out to be one of the best reasons I am here.

In the last four months, I haven't been able to actually make working with many people materialize. It's not like I haven't met anybody. I've met three symphony players, three composers, the program director of the symphony, a drummer, a pop violinist, several fine artists, and a lot of community choir singers. I'm impressed with that! But making plans with any of those people and actually making a recording has been much more difficult than I anticipated. Optimistically, my 2011 plan is to not worry 'bout that crap anymore, and just see what happens naturally.

Much to my surprise, I seem to manage to be making some interesting things on my own, and with the people I do know who step forward to help. I started in September making some simple piano works, and then used recorded sounds around the country to make some sound-collages. Before I knew it, I had some interesting new pieces with spoken texts in different languages, whale noises, pianos, organs, and nature sounds! (If you can see the music clip below, click the link to my blog or website, where you should be able to hear them there.)

I think the only other electronically-manipulated works I'd ever done were two exercises in college. Being in Iceland gives me a change to experiment with sounds in my own way, and to take time to explore what I think might be interesting about them. I didn't expect to have such little contact with sheet music when writing these works! But the process still involves a lot of decision-making about combining sounds, timing, dynamics, form, textures- so many of the decisions I normally make in chamber music. Here's a sample of a sound-collage I like to call a Quick Tour of Iceland. Sounds from around the country in four minutes or less.

One project I am loving more and more is an ongoing collaboration with Pittsburgh writer Mark Mangini. He sends me texts that are inspired by music that I write, and I send him back music based on his latest texts. It's correspondence-based, but so far doesn't use the old-fashioned Postal Service/Pósturinn. This is a clip of a current work.

I've written a couple choral pieces, and they are in Icelandic! This also gives me a chance to try and set texts in another language, which I think I've only done once in high school (that was a long time ago). There are a lot of differences to think about! Syllable-setting, stress of certain words, which word to accentuate, &c. I'm hoping something gets sung here, but I could probably take them back to the States and do something with them as well. 'Cept I'd probably have to create an Iceland-pronunciation guide to accompany the sheet music.

I also wrote a piece for Irish artist Rhona Byrne, for a project called 'Friday Morning Balcony'. My piece will be released in a limited-edition audio-book/box in which different artists' sound pieces can be played from different sides of the box.

Not so bad for having one sort-of-broken laptop, one portable microphone, and basic ProTools. The quality of the sound in all the works might be varied, but such is the nature of working for five minutes in a graveyard here, ten minutes in a church there, maybe even a minute in a cave over yonder. I'm hoping that some mixing and mastering genius will be able to take care of smoothing out the various room sounds.

I'm about at the halfway point now, and though things are very different musically than what I thought they'd be, I'm looking forward to continuing!

I'm planning on releasing an album of the works with Mark Mangini in late summer, possibly including other Iceland works as well- do look ahead for that!

Gleðilegt Nýtt Ár/Happy New Year

2011-01-01T16:47:00.006Z

Happy New Year from Reykjavík, where everything is sparklier than the rest of the world.

New Years' celebrations here seem to last for a week! This is just what happened last night.

I went to a bonfire down by the seacoast. It was enormous. It was a giant pile of all the wood that's being trashed, and a sort of philosophical 'throwing away' of all the bad mental junk that accumulates in one's life.

That's a perfect tie-in to my goal for 2011- not quite a resolution, but my goal is to stop worrying about goals! Seriously, I always obsess about what's coming next that I sometimes don't get to enjoy the process of getting there. I'm hoping that whatever happens in the next year happens more organically, and that I will try to enjoy the results of my normal hard work and times in Iceland.
Back to the bonfire, where the whole damn thing was doused with some gasoline and up she went.

I went to my friend's mother's apartment to watch the annual TV show that mocks the year's events in Iceland, in a sort of SNL style. There were a lot of jokes involving 'Inspired By Iceland', the clever marketing campaign to get tourists to come back to Iceland after the volcanic eruption. We lit some sparklers and then it was off to the main event.

The view of a gazillion Icelanders lighting off thousands of fireworks is a sight not to be missed. Thankfully the kids watching have protective eyewear. There is no company that lights a show from a particular place- instead, the whole city is ablaze with individuals setting off their own fireworks.

My friends brought some champagne, some sparklers, and we joined in the fun!

Next in the evening (yes, there's more) was a drink at the Danish Pub, where we met some random Welsh people who just decided on a whim to come to Iceland for New Years because they Googled 'Top 10 Things to Do for New Years' and 'Go to Iceland' was apparently Number 1. I met up with other friends after that for a drink in a fancy loft apartment, then to end the evening and settle in to one place, I attended a fabulous party at Barbara and Trúno, the two gay bars in the city. The crowd was good and there were thankfully few screaming teenagers, and I got to dance to some hot jams. Before i knew it I was pretty drunkxorz and it was near 5am. Time for bed, indeed. Now that the next day has passed and I wasn't completely useless or hungover, I can say that the New Years in Iceland was totally worth it! Fits right into my 2011 goal of enjoying every bit of it fully.