Gay Mansion

Instead of walking through the other night's activities, which led me to be thrown into one of the more surreal evenings of this year (aside from visiting my bosses' art loft) let me run you through my thought process.

I can't believe I had to take an hour-and-a-half bus ride to pick up sheet music for my piano lesson.
Cool, Ryan is going to pick me up and we'll drive back home together. But first we have to drop off his colleague at this mansion he's staying in for a week during the Obama campaign. Okay.
Wow, this house is totally on the top of the mountain. I bet there's great views. I hear the owners are gay too.
Oh, I definitely want to go in and look around. This could be an awesome place.
Hooray, we got the okay to come in!
Hey this place is totally amazing, and what did you say about the owners being nudists, I mean not that I have a prob--
Hello!
Wow.
I. Uh. Hi. Uh.
Um, is this happening?
Wait, is that a dance floor with its own DJ booth? And all the lights are controlled by laptop computer?
Is that a foam machine?
What a view of the skyline. It don't get much better than this.
Wait, you're naked. And now you're checking your email. No wonder there's no leather furniture around here- too much chafing. Now you're asking me for wine. Well...what the hell.
Hey, thanks for the pamphlet on naturism.
Seriously you guys?
If only I lived in the Netherlands I could have naked lunches all the time.
Four bedrooms? Each one is the size of my entire apartment. This is how I envision L.A.
Not quite my style, but I wouldn't complain about living here.
Of course there's a multiperson shower and separate wet and dry saunas.
Hey, you guys are pretty cool.
I can't help but feel weird for my straight guy friend here. He's a minority in this room. Though he is the one who knows this guy staying here, I'm just the friend of a friend of a friend.
I'm feeling pretty casual from that wine?
We should go.
Thanks for the invite to the pool party. In November.
Oh, it's still raining out, bummer.
Maybe I'll go to that party.
So, remember that time, five minutes ago, when your friend was staying over at that gay mansion? Yeah, that was pretty ridiculous.

Festival of Firsts

In a clever tie-in to Pittsburgh's recent Festival of Firsts, this weekend was full of first-time things for me, and I can almost hardly stand all of the excitement from it!

Cutting to the chase: In rehearsal on Thursday night, I got to meet John Adams. This is HUGE! John Adams is my favorite living composer. I'd say my favorite composer of all time, but that place is hard to say, what with Steve Reich and John Luther Adams and so many other composers working today. But John Adams, I've already written a piece in tribute to him! And he was just sitting in the audience, listening to the rehearsal, and Sally, Kate, and I were able to go up to him and chat. I just said hello and small-talked for a moment, but it was a moment of being in the presence of one's idol and knowing that he's just a cool-seeming guy. A guy who is also living history in the story of great American classical music. His music continues to get better and inspire me more and more, and I hope to talk with him for realz when he returns to Pittsburgh to conduct the choir in January.

Friday day was crazy. A tour group came into work and ate at the cafe without giving us advanced notice, causing me and my administrative colleagues to take up restaurant duty, and as I'm trying to take orders and calm people down, I don't know how to work the cash register, so I'm running to work the admissions desk (meanwhile screwing up my sales reports for Monday), and also worked the shop that morning. Lindsay in Membership is an excellent dishwasher, however.

Then, Friday night, I sang with Mendelssohn Choir to premier a work written for Pittsburgh's 250th Birthday (aka Sesquibicentennial Hooplah and Fireworks Extravaganza). The piece is by composer Derek Bermel and lyricist Wendy S. Walters. There are some really cool textures in the piece, and it is my first time on Heinz Hall stage, first time premiering a large work, first performance with Mendelssohn Choir, and first performance sharing stage space with the Pittsburgh Symphony!

I also premiered a pre-concert song by a friend, Scott Wasserman, with fabulous texts by Julie Brown. So I also played piano on Heinz Hall stage, and my, is that a beautiful-sounding instrument. I savored the moment.

More firsts! Saturday night I played and sang at the Warhol Museum. I accompanied Scott's piece again, and played and sang (simultaneously) a second Wasserman song called "Dirty Spoon". Dare I say I rocked the house with it. It was by far the best song of the evening, being a raunchy blues from the perspective of a kitchen utensil. But it was the best only in part due to my delivery of the lines "I make you come...undone" and "I'm a spoon, mama, caress my curve..." and mostly due to the fact that Scott is an insanely talented composer. Also, Scott is only 20. And also knowing how cool Julie is makes me want to find a librettist with whom I can write a gazillion songs.

Lists of Late

Lately there have been so many things I think about posting, and then the concept slips my mind...mostly because I'm at work. But now that I have a weekend cold, and am stuck sniffling at home while the world frolics in the autumn sun without me, here are some lists.

Things that have been fun:
Mattress Factory work (and first paycheck)
Pittsburgh 250 fireworks
Preparing for the Warhol concert next weekend
leaves turning
morning fog
bluegrass concert
indie band sleepover
reading for fun again

Things that have been annoying:
barking dog downstairs
Sarah Palin
finding a tuxedo
bags of clothes to goodwill
broken washing machine
transferring buses
choir rehearsals

I have to think about these inevitable things:
Doctoral programs?
The next loan starts in November
Rehearsals for recording music to this Drama School play
Retirement account?!

Funny things:
gourds
seeing a man playing two saxophones at once (counterpoint on alto and tenor!)
contrabassoon
It's almost funny that the broken washing machine won't work because it is so jammed-full of quarters. This washer is probably one of the few things in America right this moment that has so much money it doesn't know what to do with it.

Pale Young Gentlemen (and Two Pale Young Ladies)

Last night I had the pleasure of hearing the Madison, Wisconson-based band Pale Young Gentlemen. The cellist in the band, Beth, is a friend of mine from undergrad, and I'm so glad she joined a hip band and isn't stuck playing 'Pachelbel's Canon' at weddings. Instead, she gets to see the country, be signed to a record label, play great music with cool people, and visit friends along the way. It was really inspiring to see a group of people my own age so relaxed about playing music and grateful for the opportunity to play for whomever shows up. All they wanted to do after the concert was enjoy some hot cocoa and apple cider! So, basically I am in love with all of them. To save them a little cash, Amy and I hosted them overnight and they all received an A+ in houseguest manners. What? No coke-snorting, furniture-in-the-swimming-pool, celebrity temper tantrums? Thankfully not present. Though we did talk about freebase spoons, and how they should be used more appropriately. Like for when you want some ice cream.
Composer speak: I think PYG's songs have great promise, and their first album already sounded pretty great (especially the dancey songs), so I'm looking forward to the second album, which came out today! I fully expect PYG to be well-received, especially with good performance conditions, and varied instrumentation of the songs on their studio recordings. Mike's songs have an unpredictably fun quality: a chorus might turn into a verse unexpectedly, or the drums kick in with a sudden dance beat, disappearing seconds later. Cello and viola lines intertwine and then change to bells and tambourine. A craptastic venue like Garfield Artworks in Pittsburgh wasn't exactly ideal for their chamber-music style, and the owner of the place is notoriously difficult, but through it all, their songs had my toes tapping, my diminished chords resolving, and my inner glockenspiel glocking.

This is obviously the part where I say that I hope they become well-loved and well-appreciated by the crowds. And once they get famous (but not too famous that they start throwing furniture out of hotel rooms), I can boast about having two members of the band sleeping in my living room. "...and then, they made me a delicious omelette for breakfast! And they're even cuter in real life..."

Best of luck on the rest of your tour, everyone!

Red Necklace

I made a necklace for a friend's birthday, and it was pretty simple but effective, with some twisted wire, red glass beads, and silver chain. And seeing how she is a contemporary art historian, I thought something modern would do the trick. Turns out it matched the birthday outfit for the evening quite well! And Birthday Girl doesn't have pierced ears, so I'm glad I didn't make her earrings. Again. I made that mistake last year!

Clear the Aria!

Grunehilda in her Broadway debut: Zing! Went the Rivets of my Breastplate.

Art Unnoticed

It's like that old saying... "You know you work at a contemporary art museum when...
...when a giant 12-foot tall, 10-foot wide winter parka is resting casually over the handrail, and no one notices anything out of the ordinary."
Is it a large-scale replica of a winter coat? Part of avant-garde fashion? Or a jacket for giants?

Hazy Collage

I made a new collage! It's untitled, but the inspiration began with the hazy background squares in the upper left. In a way, the work is also a response to a CD that I've been loving, by the artist M83. I just got the CD for my birthday (thanks, Cassandra!) and I love the autumnal-looking nostalgic photography. The new album is called, appropriately, Saturdays=Youth. This collage reminds me of the cooler, hazier parts of summer, and coincidentally, also of my childhood. As a kid, I would play outside in the woods, finding interesting plants and twigs and making houses under the branches of low trees. We have a creek at home and to this day I find old pieces of bottles and mugs half-buried in the creek bed and I save them. Perhaps that's why the cut-out of the ceramic sieve found its way in there. Or perhaps I just needed something white to balance out that hot pink thing.

Some collages that I make for myself never turn out as good as the things I make for other people. But with this work I was determined to just enjoy whatever became of it. I tried to use both torn papers and cut papers together, in geometric shapes and abstract shapes. I noticed that in previous collages I've really stuck with geometry- squares on squares, straight lines, et cetera. Who doesn't love a good grid? But I think I can do more interesting things when I add strategically-placed blobs, or layers of photographs, and underlying layers. There's also some windshield glass and actual pebbles from Boston Harbor thrown (glued?) in there for good measure.

Mattress Factory

I landed a real job! I am now the Administrative Assistant at the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh. And no, we definitely do not sell mattresses, though the building is indeed a converted old mattress factory. I'm excited for the job, which starts on Tuesday, and I'm hoping that I'll settle into it easily and not make too many mistakes. I'm also excited about having health insurance. And dental! Clean teeth are a-comin'. My work hours are the same as business hours, which is good because I can still have weekends and evenings to do my art and music stuff
I'm really hoping that the Port Authority bus system does not go on strike like it is purportedly going to do next week because I'll be one of 600,000 people who needs to take the bus to get to work every day! The commute should be between 40-65 minutes, which is a lot more than I would like, but the transit people tell me there's two ways to get there so I'll see which one is faster and more reliable.
I'm also excited to be a part of this museum because along with their great mission, maximally hip staff, and rotating installations, they also have several permanent works, including this awesome room covered in mirrors, dots, and mannequins that you can walk into (with sock booties on). Why, you ask? Because Yayoi Kusama says so. You've got to see it for yourself.

Goodbye Pencil Sharpener

This weekend my favorite pencil sharpener (Did know you could have a favorite pencil sharpener? Well, you can, so now you know.) broke, and it had been with me, faithfully sharpening #2's since second grade. It was pink. Now the one I'm using is my fifth grade pencil sharpener, which is black, so I hope he's happy now that he's promoted after all these years.
Rest in peace, ol'sharpener! (More like rest in pieces, at the bottom of my trash bin.)

Cartoony Pants- The Sequel

A colleague in the music office liked my collage Cartoony Pants so much that she commissioned me for Cartoony Pants Part Deux! Nothing quite compares to the original, because how can you ever use the same pieces of paper over again when they're all found from magazines and clippings and old books? But I attempted a similar feel, this time with a frame with a depth of about 1.5". I also ran the images over the sides, including a lobster, whose claw you can only see poking out from the left-hand side, and a wierd Hungarian folksong that went something like "if you don't know how fat a mosquito is you are dumb as a horse, dumb as a horse, oh". Snappy tune. I think it turned out pretty great. I love that the pants are leaping over paper clips, and out of its backside comes a giant speech bubble.

As much as feels strange and frustrating to transition out of grad school and into a working world again (though I don't quite know what I'm doing yet) it also feels good to do things other than music all day! I've had more time to read actual books and make collages again. And on Labor Day, I can relax and write this post. I ran into a British man on the street this morning who asked me directions to the coffeeshops near me. He wondered why the streets were so quiet and everything was closed today, and assumed it was a national holiday or something. He doesn't usually get the pleasure of Labor Day, but then again, I don't get the pleasure of Guy Fawkes Night. Or being British, for that matter. Bollocks.

What Technology Refuses, Humans Do

The music office closet where I used to work was previously a copy machine closet. I would joke that the copy machine overheated, so the school put people in there instead. It was almost as if the copier demanded better working conditions. Now it sits in a beautiful, bright, air-conditioned office with plants and a sofa, and four graduate students staff the closet space.
Well, that copier was pretty smart.
I'm at my new job and I continue to enter data mindlessly. I also realized that I'm doing the work which could easily be done by a computer. Except that the computer thought the work was too boring, and spit all the information back out, and told the humans to do it themselves.

First day of temping

This might not have been how the actual conversations went today, but you get the jist.

Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh

I made it through my first "Retreat" practice with The Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh today, marking my first singing with a real choir in almost exactly seven years! It was exhilarating, and I like a lot of the people there. I'm singing some sweet low Bass parts. We also did some Dalcroze Eurythmics. I'm most excited to be a part of John Adams' work, On the Transmigration of Souls, his gorgeous and haunting "memory space" response to 9/11.
Speaking of quotation marks, I also start a new "job" on Monday, as my last day in the music office was Friday. Sniffle...but also, hooray! I don't have to deal with some of those (unnamed) divas ever again. And I will be back to visit, as I'm writing the incidental music to one of the Drama School plays in February.
I start temping for two weeks, and/or until a "real" job may materialize for me downtown, which I'm really hoping will happen soon. But after hoping that I'd have a few days of pseudo-vacation while I look for work, I was psyched up for some relaxing, and I wish I was inside this collage right now! Perhaps I'd be enjoying cucumber sandwiches on a boat in the Bahamas, surrounded by a coral reef of precious stones. While butterflies waft by. That's one good way to enjoy unemployment. I made the collage for Kate, for whom it is totally suited.

In other news, Amy has an amazing steamer/wardrobe trunk in her apartment which she found on the street and it has a tag inside of it from its previous owner. The man, Percival Hunt, checked into the Pittsburgh Sports club exactly 100 years and 10 days ago. That's luggage longevity.

In other other news, I bought for the first time a pair of pants size 32 waist. I've been a slim 29 or 30 waist for 15 years! I think the one pair is a bit of an anomaly, but I can actually notice my body type changing. A little more hip fat, a little more arm muscle, but hopefully no beer belly any time soon.

Cathedral Disturbances

A performance of mine from this summer is now on Youtube, thanks to the Alia Musica director Federico Garcia and his technical prowess. My original idea for the work was the feeling of being in a quiet cathedral, and someone disturbs the peace (i.e. the piccolo, obviously). Squabbles ensue. But as arguing never gets anywhere, all the congregation decides to have a dance party. Or something like that. It's scored for piccolo, soprano and baritone saxophones, violin, cello, and piano. Many thanks to Alia Music Pittsburgh for requesting a piece just for them. Check it out!

Shoveler concert a success!

Saturday night I unveiled the latest Midnight Shoveler concert, featuring some of my favorite musicians, Mark, Sally, Rich, and Liz. My parents also surprised me with a visit! The turnout was awesome- thank you to everyone who came and showed their support. I think my personal highlights were a jazz recomposition of "Papa Don't Preach" with drums and bass; using a megaphone for Sally's voicing of "Let It Be", and the encore, an accordion version of an art song I wrote called "How Can We Hear". The accordion belonged to my grandfather and it's on loan from my uncle, to whom it's willed. I think gramps would have been proud that it's getting some use. I don't think he'd appreciate my song about a one-night stand, though. Sorry, gramps.
The concert hall I played in was really lovely and reverberent, probably a bit too much so, but it also lent a version of the Beatles' "Blackbird" extra gorgeous spaciousness.
Afterward we enjoyed food and drink at a long table of friends, and this weekend my parents and I got to spend some quality time together walking around Squirrel Hill.
Now I'm coming down from the excitement and I have to face the fact that I'm only working for two more weeks and then possibly facing unemployment (well, probably temping, but it's not ideal) and a punch-to-the-gut's worth of loans. Luckily amidst those working woes I have an acceptance into Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh to be excited about, a commission for a two-clarinet chamber piece, typesetting projects for a little extra cash, and music to write for the School of Drama's play next winter! So why am I wasting time blogging? Back to work.

P.S. Anyone have Shoveler show pictures I could post?

Barkfest

This morning I almost put up a sign on my downstairs neighbor's door saying, "I'm so glad your annoying Bichon Frise has stopped its incessant barking! I think its neutering must have done it some good." But I realized it was because it and its owner moved out this morning! Hooray! Now I don't have to deal with its schizophrenic explosion every time someone walked down the sidewalk.
Then, what should happen not thirty seconds later, but a new dog and its owner moved in to a different apartment in my building, and it started barking from the back yard! I don't know what it is with my building and dogs. Will the barkfest never cease? If your dog barks that much, it should not live in my tiny tiny building, in a crowded neighborhood, with no place to run free. I'm praying that someone quiet moves in downstairs and spares me from Dolby 5.1 surround-sound yelping.
Pictured right: The culprit in question. From the I'm-disgusted-it-exists website Precious Pet Paintings.com.

Amy Winehouse

Meaningless celebrity update: I read on CNN this morning that the singer Amy Winehouse is only 24 years old. In fact, she's almost exactly a year younger than I. But why did I think she was at least 35? Oh, right.

Cool Ministers

I subbed as the pianist for two Lutheran Church services this weekend and I chatted with a very cool husband and wife minister team! The husband is totally batty. But in a good drinking buddy way. The female minister and I chatted for a bit in between services and she seems really cool, as she said she likes giving sermons because it gives her a chance to use "guerilla faith" and try and motivate people or inspire them. Well, it's a little sneaky sounding, but I don't think she has any intention of trying to convert me or anything. In fact, she added my name to some list of available musicians for hire within the church world. Maybe it'll result in some side gigs pounding out Joyful, Joyful a few more times. Cool with me.

The lady minister also said another thing which I admired, which was very plainly stating, "I don't shop." Not like "I don't buy groceries" or "I've worn the same worn-out shirt for 37 years" or anything, but in the context of "I don't fall into anything resembling consumer culture". And being a minister seems appropriate to that way of life. I oscillate between wanting to own every book and cd in existence, and then wanting to get rid of everything I own and live with my one book, one shirt, and one drinking glass elegantly arranged on the immaculate floor. But in any case, I think it's pretty awesome for someone in this age to admit without pretention, "I don't shop...I've been to Shadyside once, with all the fancy stores, but it was for a gift for someone."

Part-Time International Male Model

I can't believe I've neglected to mention that I've also become a part-time international male model. Semi-professional, of course. I'm looking for a part-time semi-professional agent.

A while back I posed for some photos that Sally took in an entry for exhibit at Pittsburgh Filmmakers. The exhibit was showcased as 'Uncensored!' and Sally's idea was to take several long panoramic (and vertical) photos and affix them to a spinning cylinder (actually a lazy susan), then encasing the cylinder in a box with a hole cut into it. The piece is titled 'Intimate View' and the viewer can only see a tiny fraction of the photo at one time, piecing together what the photo actually was without ever seeing it all at once.

I've included a photo for scale, and then a tiny photo of one of the interior views. Suffice to say being a show called 'uncensored' the photos were slightly scandalous, and NSFW, so they say on the internets. I, for one, was delighted to be a part of the experience, and I applaud most chances for people to have an excuse to be naked in the name of art. And hundreds of people saw Sally's work, which is great, ahem, exposure for her as an artist and photographer.

Now that the show is over, Sally has the box looming large on a table in her living room, allowing house guests to unsuspecting view my every thing.
I'm available for future photo shoots on a part-time basis, preferably at exotic international destinations.