Jacqueline Bouvier

If Boyfriend and I get a dog, which will probably be never because I mostly hate dogs (okay, with a rare exception), the dog I would like to get is a Bouvier. For one reason only, that I could name her (or him!) Jacqueline. If it's a boy then 'Jack' for short. But boy doggie or girl doggie, that pillbox hat will never leave its elegant head.

The pearls can also double as a dog collar, used for casual strolling, or trots to the neighbors for tea.

Two Congrats: Choirs and Museum Shops

Two shouts-out for this post; one congratulations goes to my boyfriend for winning Denver's 'Best Museum Shop' award in Westword magazine. I'm so proud of A! He is the shop manager of the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, and does a heck of a job making it one of the most fun places to visit. The shop is full of creative books, jewelry, funky gifts, a CD for sale by yours truly, and a giant Tom of Finland XXL book (oh, and the museum itself is pretty cool too).

 (photo credit: Denver.org site)












 Another congratulation to Sigurður Árni Jónsson (Siggi for short) for recording two of his choir pieces in Iceland recently. Siggi and I first met when he sang in a choir for one of my pieces ('Utan Hringsins') on my CD, and we've stayed in touch since I've left Iceland. Well, it's more like I'm unusually bad at keeping in touch, and he's unusually responsive for an Icelander, so we don't have the most frequent communications but they are wordy.

I looked over a couple of Siggi's works for choir and gave him a couple pointers from one composer to another. But all the toil is his own! I'm glad he's got video of them as well as audio. The choir singing looks very comfortable; I've never seen such a relaxed bunch sound so good! The song below, 'Tunglskin' means 'Moonshine'. I'm particularly fond of the secundal-heavy ending of this one.

Nuclear Winter Snowglobe Pt. 2

If you haven't yet been obliterated by a nuclear disaster, well then come on in to Midnight Shoveler's Home for Apocalyptic Souvenirs, and pick up your Sunny Florida snow globe today. Complete with igloos and seal cub!

Two songs about love

Two thoughts about love that I've had stuck in my mind lately.

In listening to Michael Torke's work 'Four Proverbs'; this is the first movement's text: 
'Better a dish of herbs where love is, than a fattened ox and hatred with it.'
I hadn't heard this proverb before, but I really like it. As weird as it is I'm sure this one's going to get added to my everyday repertoire.

In listening to Robyn's 'Body Talk', the track: 'Hang With Me' has the chorus:
'And if you do me right, I'm gonna do right by you
And if you keep it tight, I'm gonna confide in you
I know what's on your mind, there will be time for that too,
If you hang with me.'

I love that the 'con' of the word 'confide' comes on the downbeat of the third beat; not the strongest beat of the measure but it throws off the text just enough that it makes the near-rhyme with 'right' in the previous phrase kind of interesting; in singing the word 'confide' alone, it seems more natural to put emphasis on the second syllable (perhaps because I'm an American-English speaker?) but Robyn's way keeps it confined within the rhythms of the lyrics in that way that only the Swedes can pull off.

Very different genres and thoughts about love, but both kind of romantic, and both pieces quite soothing to the ears. And good for interpretive dance time as well.

Music Spacing

I think my music writing program needs to learn that when I insert measures into the music, I don't want them smooshed all on top of each other, but laid out in a row with the other measures around it. I imagine this music sounds really dense and chaotic, but it's more of a graphic score right now...experimental, mayhaps, but not exactly the piano solo I was going for.

Nuclear Winter Snowglobe

I love the idea of seeing a snow globe on the mantle that shows the effects of global warming or a nuclear apocalypse; maybe even zombie invasion under a seemingly fun and glittery bubble sky. I bet a quick google search would prove these items already exists, but I'm going to pretend that I was the first thinker of this thought. Here's what one might look like for Miami; a lovely beach scene with skyscrapers, and a mushroom cloud in the background ready to decimate unfortunate sunbathers. Let's hope to all that is good in the world that what's captured in this snow globe does not become a reality.

Graduate Preliminary Exams

For my doctoral program, all the incoming students had to take preliminary exams to see where they could 'pass out' of, and which areas of study might need remediation. Post-tonal music was a sure sign for remediation for me, but I'm really enjoying learning things about music that I never learned (or at least never internalized) before. But I still worried about other areas that I thought were fairly solid. It had been over three years since I had even looked at music theory. Almost five years since I took a test on aural skills or ear training. It kind of felt like this (click on the image to make it all big-like):


Everyone is sitting quietly in their chairs, scribbling away, while I'm sweating like a pig and either staring at the page blankly, or writing so furiously that I'm breaking several pencil leads, repeating 'Oh God Oh God Oh God' as if the world's going to end if I don't pass my ethnomusicology test.

Luckily the world didn't end upon completion of all the exams. I didn't need a divine intervention from the Big Man Upstairs, and things worked out okay. And hopefully it will be the last entrance exam I ever have to take- from now on I'm only interested in tests that get you out of things (like comps or dissertations) and not into them.

Big Accomplishments for Nerds

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.