Vacation Bliss

On mini vacation in Western NY. I'm waiting for friends to visit tomorrow night, whence we go to Niagara Falls! I'm excited for "Canada As Adults", because the last time I was there I was a teenager, which was fine, but now I have free will. Having a few days in the meantime to think all by me onesies is great. I'm thinking:
1. I love the quiet of the family's house! I can practice piano for an hour, watch tv, go for a walk, and then come back to the piano...and it's still as quiet as ever.
2. I'm reading a book of writings by the composer John Luther Adams (he works out of the wilderness of Alaska and sometimes writes hour-long works with strings and harps only on white keys; in other words I am completely in love with him) and I am transfixed by his every word. My, how I admire intelligent writing which is still personal and thoughtful. And he gets bonus points for talking about the aurora borealis.
3. Am I at a compositional bench marker? A mini crisis? Now that I'm done with my Master's program I still think my music could be so much better, so much more solid, and yet I don't quite know how to do that yet. I think I'm torn between attempting an ascetic/Arvo Part/"less is more"/spiritual side of me and the funky pop music/minimalism/jazz chord side of me, and perhaps I can find a way to make both sides happy in works to come? 4. I think I'm thinking too much. I should just listen to the stream. Gurgle!
5. This country livin' is a doozy on my digestive system.
6. But the ahi tuna at the fancy Arts & Crafts style restaurant was the most delicious graduation present ever.
7. My parents finally called the piano tuner and he came this morning, and now Wungsten will happen at A440. Delightful.
8. I'm practicing John Adams (the non-Alaskan one) 'China Gates'. I'm going to try to make it happen for real.
9. I've forgotten everything about science and social studies that I learned from 7th-12th grade, as proven by my well-taken notes I've saved. I thought I'd never heard of Mark's quiz-word "regolith", but BAM! There it was on my 8th grade science review sheet about the earth's crust. I am also now re-acquainted with the 5 nations of native Iroquois people, which acronym nicely to SCOOM.

Harp Recital

I played the harp on a three-harp piece at Duquesne University the other night... All but a few lucky parents were priviledged to see my first classical performance debut in Pittsburgh. 'Course, the harp is not my instrument, and I've only taken four lessons, and I was the only boy, towering over the other harptastic blond girls. And the piece was on the program between the principal harpist of the Pittsburgh Symphony and a five-year-old girl who was too short to even sit on the bench. We made a small impact, but it felt good to perform again! And then we got desserts.
Photo: Me playing the harp. Just kidding. Don't I wish. It's King David, circa 1600, on a triple-strung harp, wearing fantastic sandals. But both performances did include a little kid to hold up the music.

Palindromesemordnilap

There are some great palindromes out there. They read the same both forward and backwards. "A man a plan a canal Panama", "Madam I'm Adam", even "Yo Banana Boy!" Sally introduced me to "Sniffum' Muffins" yesterday...but perhaps my favorite palindrome is Avobilhucoiefokniserjaerhobnbohreajresinkofriocuchlibova!
Oh, it has to make sense? Right. Let's stick with Sniffum' muffins then.
(Thanks to Scott for hilarity.)

Fallingwater and Ohiopyle

This past weekend the gang and I went to see Fallingwater, Frank Lloyd Wright's 1930's masterpiece of a summer home for the Kaufmann family. Then we went down the road to Ohiopyle, PA for a fantastic lunch on the river, songs in the grass, and warm rays of sunshine! First, we sandwiched Fallingwater between our heads like a delicious architectural Oreo.

The building is amazing for its cantilevered 'horizahnal lahns' (horizontal lines, as our tour guide told us) but I think it's equally impressive for its snapshot into what was the ideal living conditions for the architecturally radical at the time- claustrophobic hallways lead out to sunlit rooms, which lead out to bright verandas that feel like they're floating on the water. Some of the things that were crazy for the 1930's now seem absurd, like the low ceilings, and mazelike houseplan, but I could see what Wright was envisioning, and with tens of millions of dollars over budget, presto! He got what he wanted. The rooms are quite tiny, but every small detail has been accounted for- even the electrical outlets submerged into the floors. I loved this lower level pool, which looked mysterious and magical. We sang Beatles songs in the grass and wished we were born in better days. As if the 1960's were better days, but we know better.
I stuck my feet in freezing springtime river and Matt got chilly vicariously. It was even a good hairday (or lack thereof) for both of us.
We all appeared in the obligatory self-photo, which for some reason I look like the only comfortable subject:
These pictures remind me of my excursions with another Fantastic 5, this time from TA 46 at Vassar. We took great trips to Dia:Beacon and Storm King Art Center on similarly sublime summery days. We all met up again in Washington DC recently for more fun and frolic! (Does anyone have photos they could send me of that weekend?) Perhaps good things come in fives.

Sometimes you have to make a choice.

Two homonyms diverged in a yellow wood...
and I took the road not shaken?

Kites

I miss flying kites! Every spring my family would go to my aunt's backyard, which was a big open field with lots of wind. Everyone's hair would end up looking really windblown-glamorous for the rest of the day. The winds usually died before the kites got into the air, of course. Or it would be too windy, and all our kites would be torn into pieces. I miss those days.

Lunchtime Chamber Music

I went to a lunchtime Chamber Music Concert today to hear a cool guitar and saxophone duet (called Driveline by David Kechley) and there were three other groups on the program as well, including an amazing flute and marimba duet. I was the only student in the audience. Actually, aside from the two coaches of the chamber groups, and the guy who helped set up chairs, I was the audience. I tried to clap extra loud.

Moby and a Bee

Iron and Wine Review

I just saw Iron and Wine in concert tonight! Iron and Wine being just one guy, Sam Beam. He is fabulously bearded, as seen on the right. But he is also pretty hipster, as shown by the audience demographic. This time he was joined by a full band- at one point there were ten musicians on stage! It was a good show, but I wasn't overwhelmed. It was certainly the quietest rock concert I'd ever seen (no complaints there). Here's my review, in bulletpoint pros and cons.
Cons:
1. These people seem talented. Why aren't they taking advantage of melodic solo opportunities rather than doing the jam-band thing? Feels like an updated Phish concert with better chord structures.
2. Why is the harmony singer/violinist frozen in place? Why is she not smiling?
3. There are two percussionists, and one has approximately 50 handheld percussion items. Why are you stealing the show?
4. Guitarist who's playing the xylophone never plays a single tremolo. I now know too much about music that I can't just enjoy it, I have to expect a tremolo. But come on, this is what the xylophone lives for.
5. I am so tired of people taking horribly blurry pictures on their cameras and phones. Serious, guys, just steal a picture from the internet and print it out as if you snapped the greatest shot ever. You'll be better off, and I won't be distracted by your gadgets and their screens all lit up.
6. No fun stories for the audience?

Pro and Con: Percussionist Number Two: How can you possibly have at your little seat all these things: two pitched wooden boxes, a set of handbells, maracas, guiro, sleigh bells, recorder, chinese singing bowls, cabaza, four different shakers, chimes, bag of bells, steel drum, snare drum, bodhran, congas, bongos, tamborine, crash cymbal, cowbell, four almglocken, bowl attached to a stick, and three kinds of claves, and yet play just the right timbre at just the right moment to keep the music going?? It was just what I needed, right there. And you didn't overdo it. And yet sometimes I can't hear you at all, your microphone is too quiet, and all your efforts are completely lost. Why.

But then the pros, which altogether made the show pretty enjoyable.
1. Sam is really cute, and plays like he loves every minute, every word. His voice is lovely.
2. Piano/rhodes player provides good support.
3. Slide guitar, bassist, and guitarist play well.
4. Guitarist doubles on xylophone and accordion!
5. Great new arrangements of solo guitar music for large ensemble.
6. I'm really glad to see so many instruments on stage. Violin is in tune! Also, banjo and upright bass, and several guitar types. I think playing with combinations of instrument timbres is the future of pop music. It's already here, but there's more to say. I feel inspired!
7. Guy ahead of us is a kick-ass homosexual who writes a text message clearly readable from seats behind him, stating "I don't want to date him, I just want to f*** him".

Small tidbits

I think there is a dead something underneath my fridge. I can't get the fridge out of its nook to check, and my last resort is to look underneath with a flashlight, but I don't own a flashlight.

Also, the noises that an apartment makes are kind of creepy if you listen carefully enough. I think my walls are deteriorating at a noticeable rate.

I looked at my hands the other day and for the first time I noticed I had man hands, and not boy hands. The wrinkles have changed very subtly.

I can't stop thinking about the avant-garde food of Ferran Adria: This is a photo of the scientist/magician/chef, owner of perhaps the most famous restaurant in the world, El Bulli; I think this here is a solid tomato bisque, in ribbon-candy form. He is also famous for creating edible foams, and a fish spun into spiderweb consistency, then eaten like cotton candy.

Abercrombie Suggestive

Gone are the days of the nearly-pornographic Abercrombie Quarterly. Now only billboards remain, with their shirtless hunks, reminding us of better days of old, of times gone by...you know, circa 1999. This was a time when one could convince one's mom to buy him/her a magazine full of naked people, selling clothes by not wearing any at all. Brilliance. The clothes are pretty awful, anyway, so it's better marketing to not show them in the first place.
This is an old collage in tribute of those days. Notice the strategically placed anemone with little bits of text that I found from in a UPS magazine!

Girl With a Squirrel Earring

Everyone's favorite Netherlandish masterpiece. This came up in conversation tonight and I had to make a version of it- I tried to draw a comic of it but a cheap photoshopping does the trick even better, I think. I can imagine the squirrel whispering into her ear (in Renaissance Dutch, of course): "Girl, that Vermeer, he is NUTS."

Sax World

In addition to meeting some cool people this month, and having the orchestra performances, I had the pleasure of hosting the Erie Saxophone Quartet at Carnegie-Mellon. The group from SUNY Fredonia played two concerts, a select performance for music majors, and then an evening concert for the public. Both concerts went swimmingly well! The earlier performance included a premiere of one of my pieces which I wrote specifically for that concert: a saxophone octet! (We're all pictured here on stage.) We also had a composer visit from Norway, the delightful and attractive Peter Edwards, who also wrote a piece for Erie Sax Quartet. It was his first time in the States, and I'm amazed that he found his way to Pittsburgh from Manhattan, on a bus, and was waiting patiently for the quartet in the lounge of the music building!

I've decided that saxophones are my jam: I think the sax and I have a lot in common. We both felt a little left out in our skewed interests about classical music (we're both newbies to the classical world, all things considered) and we both like lots of different things. I like dance music and chocolate-covered pretzels, and the sax likes Miles Davis and Milhaud. We both hate Kenny G. He says potahto and I say mash 'em up with butter...okay, maybe we don't really have that much in common, but I love the sound of the saxophone and I want to keep writing for it! Its sound can be smoky or bright, sexy or stoic, crazy funky or mysterious. And how great is the contrabass sax, or the tubax, which I will probably never see in my life. Though for some reason our high school band had a bass saxophone, which I hear is not all that common either.

Photo courtesy of Peter Edwards, who managed to get all of us without red eyes. Though the magic of stage perspective makes me look less tall here.

Open Chest

A man came to deliver boxes of paper to the office a while back. Good-natured fellow, no complaints. He even helped me lift the heavy boxes of paper off the cart and onto the stairs, where I take them down into the basement. But then he told me he technically shouldn't help...and then he pulled up his shirt, revealing some serious scars. I don't know how you could still be alive with scars that looked like that, because they look ready to burst open at any moment. He exclaimed,
"I've been cut open! Hope you're not squeamish. Doctors told me I shouldn't lift anything, but hey, it hasn't killed me yet!!"

Symphony reading a success

It's over! The Pittsburgh Symphony has now read my orchestra piece, which was a success! The highlights of the performance included some weird power dynamic between the immature bass section and the conductor and the composer in residence, in which the basses (of which there were only 4 out of 9 players present) were asked to raise their dynamic level one tiny notch, and then instead of just very quiet, they played as loud as they could. The harpist was also waving her arms frantically trying to get my attention because her page was taped in backwards. Other than that!... the performance went well, and I'm really glad that the sounds in my brain translated to the music. I was most worried about the climax of the piece, that it wouldn't be long enough, but it was just right! The harp/piano/celesta trio also sounded really lovely and music-box-like, and the soprano sax was just the right haunting touch. Much to my surprise, the brass sections also sounded amazing (no offense to you good brass players); I wasn't sure if their parts would overpower the orchestra, but they didn't!

Though the entire reading session and its luncheon/Q&A were pretty shoddily put together, it was nonetheless a great experience, and I learned a lot about the preparation needed for a big piece. The other three students' works also had really good moments, and I liked most all of them, except for maybe some redundancy in one longer piece. John Corigliano, the composer in residence this year, mentioned that once a composer writes a piece, and hands it over to an orchestra, his job is basically done, aside from very small changes. It seems so obvious, but perhaps it's a good reminder to prepare as much as possible for anything that I could foresee being questioned, and have it clearly marked on the page. The contrabassoonist also made a good point that my piece being sort of slow and ethereal, that performers may have to put extra effort into shaping the sounds of slow notes and textural music, rather than zipping by quick passages, so that it actually makes a simpler piece more difficult to perform.
There will be one "real" concert performance of the piece, by the CMU Philharmonic on the 25th. Rehearsals for that concert begin tomorrow. But after the Pittsburgh Symphony stress, having to talk to the whole symphony on the podium (don't sound like an idiot! don't waste time! don't sweat through your shirt!), speaking to an orchestra of people my own age will seem less daunting.

(To the right, in no particular order: poorly planned photo opportunity with section leaders, student composers, I'm the one guy wearing a tie, conductor Larry Loh, and composer in residence, contrabassoonist).

Pittsburgh Symphony reading tomorrow

Tomorrow morning the Pittsburgh Symphony reads my orchestra piece! Along with three other students from universities in the city, we'll (hopefully) get good feedback on our work, along with a sound from one of the worlds top orchestras, that I'm sure will blow my mind, even if they are just sight-reading. I'm very excited, but very nervous. What if I get torn to pieces because my cues are ugly? Or if I forgot a senza sordino marking? Or what if the third trombone gets annoyed for sitting there too long and gets up in a huff and walks out? Luckily I don't think that will happen, but I'm still nervous. My family is also coming into town to hear the piece, as well as some friends, colleagues, and faculty. All things considered, though, I'm sure it will be a learning experience, and I have confidence that what I wrote is a good first piece for orchestra(!), including soprano sax, piano, and celeste, and some hot crotale action. I'm particularly excited to hear the climactic moment where everyone's really loud (and hopefully appropriately balanced) and the weird solo xylophone at the end, like one last little duck wandering around an Icelandic lake in springtime.
Wish me luck!
(Seen right: Heinz Hall at night, home of the PSO.)

Lose some, win some

The other night I went out to a bar expecting it to be hopping with activity- little did I realize that the gays as a whole are far less adventurous than my friends and I on a cold, snowy night. So I missed out on macking it with anyone (probably not a bad thing, really) but then there was a raffle for a CD that I would have liked to own, and my friend Mark gave me his ticket, which was called! So the end result was -1 makeout, +1 new Goldfrapp album, which I'm really enjoying.

Special Guests

It has been an exciting couple of weeks for this composer, and the end of March is even more filled with fun, with the Pittsburgh Symphony reading my piece, Carnegie-Mellon performing it, and then a student chamber recital the very next day. But for now, I've had the pleasure of seeing and meeting some really great musicians that I've admired, which for some reason I felt I never had the same experience at my undergrad. We certainly had our share of special guests there, but perhaps Pittsburgh's pull for celebrities is stronger, or I've been less shy to go up to someone and shake hands. A while ago I got to meet the composer in residence of the Symphony this year, John Corigliano. He chose my piece for the symphony reading, and he flies in from NYC from time to time for premiers and performances. He turned 70 this year, but doesn't look it. Sally and I got a picture with him, and we're all wearing our thick-rimmed glasses. Bummer that mine aren't red, or we'd be triplets.

Then, I got to see Evelyn Glennie up close and personal, at the autograph signing after her performance at the symphony (John Corigliano wrote a percussion concerto for her which she premiered in Pittsburgh.) I should have known that we weren't going to have a conversation, as she is deaf. And a superstar. The line for autographs was really long. Still, she signed a CD I had of her playing the Macmillan 'Veni, Veni Emmanuel' and she is completely glamorous, and every move she makes is fluid and graceful. Her performance was unbelievable- she improvised cadenzas that I wished would go on and on, using everything from pieces of wood to marimba, timpani, gongs, and drums.


Two nights ago, I got to meet and chat with the composer Ricky Ian Gordon! First I started off as the doorman, but luckily I got to join the party after all the guests arrived. We chatted briefly about a song I used to listen to while I was an undergrad and it really moved me- it was one of those songs you stumble upon at the end of a CD (actually, the AIDS Quilt Songbook), which I was listening to as it also featured a Vassar professor. Ricky's song was last and I copied the music so I could play it myself. I've played that song for years, and he seemed very appreciative to hear that. We also compared striped suit jackets and devoured some delicious petit fours together. The evening was made complete by seeing admired faculty members relax for once and enjoy a glass (or three) of wine, and then everyone gave hugs goodbye. If only we drank wine and then hugged at the end of every harmonic analysis. Hugs would make a Schenkerian "Zug" so much sweeter. Hugs for Zugs!!

There are still more musical guests to come!

Ostrich legs

Did you know that ostrich legs bend backwards?
Well, they do. They don't have this many joints, but I bet bending down from the other direction feels like this, and probably sounds like a squeezed accordion.

Hillary Ping Pong

I had a fantastic trip to Washington D.C. this past weekend! The trip included seeing much-missed friends, catching the Museum of the American Indian (which far surpassed my expectations of it), and seeing Hillary Clinton's campaign headquarters, where my friend Ryan works. I call it Hill HQ for short. My posse and I got a personal tour (not from the lady herself, sadly, I think she was in Wisconsin, but I'm sure she'd take time out just for us to show where the staff does yoga if she could) from Ryan. We stopped on one of the floors, where there's a ping-pong table, a podium (practice debates!), and not much else. To amuse ourselves for a few minutes, how about a game of ping-pong? To which I proceeded to swiftly whack the only ping-pong ball up into the ceiling through an open panel where the tile had been removed. I eventually found the ball with the help of a Hillary Flashlight and teamwork, but thank goodness no one important saw us, or the scene might have looked like this.
On a side note, Mark wondered if the ping-pong paddles had Hillary's face on them. Sadly, no, (though Photoshop could make that happen) but we did decide that "ping-ponging" would be the "flip-flopping" of the 2008 election.