An Interlude Featuring Apparent Optimism

Massachusetts: Scientists at the Saugus Doo Wop Research Institute today announced the discovery of something which can stop the Duke of Earl.

– Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)

I always suspected that once we started working together, we’d be working together for the rest of our lives, for the reason that we seem to have such a unique chemistry. I didn’t find that with anybody else, and I never have. There’s other people I like working with, but there’s nothing like working with the other Firesigns, when we come together as an ensemble.

— The late, great Peter Bergman

My Triad task of late has been to coordinate conducting assignments, and it is coming along nicely. I am close to having a rehearsal schedule for our first rehearsal on the 13th. Even though I am still waiting on some material and some responses, I want to broadcast a rehearsal schedule Saturday morning, to give folks time to prep.

There’s a Rhode Island chamber ensemble who periodically call for scores. They’ve never selected music of mine yet, so the smart money is on its being wasted effort ... but ... I got a [probably automated] e-mail today saying that the call is still open, even though they [probably] have already received 500 other submissions.

But, heck, I do have new pieces which have not yet been performed, and if the effort be wasted, it is only minimal effort. So I have submitted both The Mask I Wore Before (which went nowhere with the competition for which I originally wrote it, and an all-strings arrangement of Pam’s Labyrinth, which I almost wish that I had retitled I Was a Teenage Lesbian Supremacist for this process.