Studies and Tropes

From the Archive :: 22 Sep 2009

One or two borderline quackly moments in the performance of the Studies [i.e., the Studies in Impermanence] . . . but overall, I am very pleasantly surprised at how well I managed to play the piece. (Yes, that means that I shall need to try again to better it, but still . . . .)

One thing is, I didn't feel that I was 'lagging' at all through the course of the piece; nor that any pause was 'trending pregnant'. Pace felt good, and I felt that the audience was 'with' me. Bottom line, though, is that the performance ran just over 24 minutes.

The Tropes on Parasha's Aria from White Nights, though, got to a strangely deliberate start. It works, but it feels a little dirge-ey.

Little-known fun fact: I used (i.e., sang) the Tropes on Parasha's Aria for an audition for the Trinity Church Choir once. (It was fun, finding the text from Stravinsky's Mavra, to plug it into my adaptation.) So, I do not think the piece intrinsically funereal.  The above was my report at the time of a performance in the West End branch of the Boston Public Library.

This composer needs to inquire a bit more actively after possible venues for The Band to play, well, all the music which we essentially already have tamed. Not genuinely tamed; never genuinely tamed. But near enough, that refreshing them will not require an extensive rehearsal schedule. So, I have sent a message; and I need to follow up with a query yet elsewhere.

Separately, I am dizzy—not literally, of course not literally—at the realization that less than a week from now I shall attend a performance of Those Legends of the Firesign Theatre, at the Library of Congress.