30 September 2023

New Piece Performed, Newer Piece Written

Twitter freezes when I try Liking the Dalai Lama’s tweet about International Peace Day. That is all.
Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)

Oscar Levant, Once I was going over the speed limit and a cop stopped me and gave me a ticket and told me what mileage I was doing. I said, “But I was humming the last movement of the Beethoven Seventh Symphony,” and I sang it to him, in its furious tempo. Then I said, "You can’t possibly hum the last movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony and go slow.” He agreed. I didn’t get a ticket.

— Oscar Levant, Memoirs of an Amnesiac

In April, my friend David Bohn initiated a fresh Fifteen Minutes of Fame call, this time: “Fifteen Minutes of Meditation and Contemplation,” for a Japanese instrument, the taishogoto (or Nagoya harp.) I wrote The Welcome Silence Which Means He Will Soon Be Gone. Today was the streamed event. During the after-performance chat, one of the composers asked about future calls. Robert Voisey mentioned a call for scores for saxophone quartet whose deadline is today. As a result, I spent the afternoon drawing up Thinking of Rahsaan for submission. We shall see. In the past, where there has not been a personal connection, I have not had any success with the Fifteen Minutes of Fame calls. But you never know.


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