Yes, I think I can tell a green field from a cold steel rail.
— Postcards From Red Squirrel Trail
Now don’t crowd me lady or I’ll fill up your shoe, I am a sweet bourbon daddy and tonight I am blue.
— Bob Dylan
I noted here that I might set the text No One Has Time for Anything But Life for unaccompanied choir and so I did, and thus was born the Opus 215. Triad alumnus Julian Bryson has responded positively. And another fellow composer writes: Looking at the score, what a delightful economy of means to make your musical and spiritual point.
Excellent Henning Ensemble rehearsal yesterday, another tomorrow.
Seen on Twitter:
My husband purchased a world map and then gave me a dart and said, “Throw this and wherever it lands—that’s where I’m taking you when this pandemic ends.”
Turns out, we’re spending two weeks behind the fridge. — Postcards From Red Squirrel Trail
If you need drugs to be a good writer, you are not a good writer. — Rod Serling
I’ve now composed the three last (id est, numbers 8-10) of the Op. 214 Inconsequentialities for toy piano. My loose plan is one day. We shall see.
Jayaprakash Satyamurthy (author of the tender text I set for When, has a new chapbook coming out soon, No One Has Time for Anything But Life. Some of my recreational listening (suggested by my friend Luke Ottevanger) has been Medieval and Renaissance choral music. It has been a while since I’ve composed for choir (no longer having one I work with) but having that sound in my ear, and knowing former Triad colleagues who have choirs they work with, the back of my musical mind has been angling towards setting JP’s title. Today we had an excellent Henning Ensemble rehearsal in which we heavily workshopped the Rahsaan Roland Kirk Fantasia. So I’ve just begun tinkering with this notion.
Seen on Threads:
Me, to my 8yo: “Did you eat that cookie after I clearly said not to??”
8yo: “Look, I am focused on the future...” — Postcards From Red Squirrel Trail
I’m goin’ back to New York City, I do believe I’ve had enough. — Bob Dylan
Day before yesterday, I chopped out the first of the projected ten Inconsequentialities.
Improper use may cause hazardous condition — Postcards From Red Squirrel Trail
I don’t knock my country for what it is — I knock it because I share the dream of so many of us as to what it can be. — Rod Serling 1970
While listening to Louis Couperin, I learnt what I wanted to do for Simple Prelude № 6. Also, I have learnt that I am happy to leave the Opus 211 as a set of six.
I was unsure just what to write, or even if I wanted to write anything. My friend Luke obliquely inspired me to just noodle at the piano. Of course, I am not literally “at the piano.” I do not own one, and my left hand is not yet fit again for noodling. I decided to write them for my friend Carolyn Ray, without leave and certainly uninvited, and this was another reason to keep the pieces simple, for although she is of course a proper pianist, I should have no business writing an uninvited ambitious piece of music which would be an imposition of time and effort.
So there they are: six slight pieces.
I dreamt last night that I was talking to someone about a set of pieces I was proud to have written. this miasmic set seemed to mirror the Op. 211, only it was a set of ten pieces, all of which had actual titles. (The Simple Preludes have only tempo designations.)
So, I have decided to write a set of ten short pieces for toy piano, Ten Inconsequentialities.
Postcards from Dreamland: I was explaining to someone the difference between Patrick McGoohan and Patrick Macnee. Also, my wife selected a cologne for me with a very nice scent and in a distinctive purple bottle. The name of the cologne was the peculiarly monarchic, and not-at-all-masculine ER XIII, and Macnee was its celebrity spokesman.
What’s cheese for the mouse is a snack for the rat! — Philip Proctor as Hemlock Stones in The Tale of the Giant Rat of Sumatra
Excellent rehearsal Monday (was that only yesterday?) of the Henning Ensemble. First run-through of the Magnificat, also of the expanded One for Ahmad. Refreshers of the Cape of Good Nope,Simple Music and the Rahsaan Roland Kirk Fantasia. Some tightening-up still needed but in very good shape a month before the concert date.
I know it would have been a distraction from plot development, so I’m not proposing any change to the movie, but am I the only one to wonder, on seeing the self-driving cars in Minority Report, if they still run on gasoline? — Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)
The readiness is all.
— Hamlet
Sixteen years ago this past Friday: 18 Sep 2010 Just booked my flight to Rochester for the première of the Viola Sonata opus 102.
There have been non-musical activities enough that there has been no brooding, as such, but there is no denying that the months following the April King’s Chapel concert have shown me my limitations as a forecaster of what I might expect. That said, while the process of getting from A to B was mostly an experience of bewilderment, in terms of Henningmusick, at least, the program we are putting together for 28 October is just what I wished. I am not pleased that circumstances forced me to disappoint fellow composers who have furnished pieces whose performance I feel we have to delay, and I wish we might have found a second date on which to repeat the program, mais c'est la vie.
The most important facts, for which I have ample occasion to be grateful are firstly, that I enjoy the privilege of working with excellent colleagues who are unfailingly enormously supportive. And secondly, that the Woburn Public Library is so welcoming to our making music in their beautiful space.
First rehearsal tomorrow. I mean, not absolutely the first rehearsal, as we've read a couple og the pieces a vew months ago, but it’s the first of our freshly linked tranche of rehearsals now that we have a firm concert date.
