Quartetto di Sassofoni

 I cannot fathom how it is that, no matter how many times I type an actual word, my phone doesn’t “learn” it, and persists in suggesting some other word. But if I mistype, somehow the phone “learns” it as a word, and I need to select it for deletion.

Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)

Window on Hollywood:

A producer asked me once, “Can you write a score like Penderecki?” And I said, “No, but I can give you his phone number. You can call him and ask HIM if he can write one.” I should have told him to get on his bike. They’re always asking you to write like somebody else, all this hanky-panky ghostwriting shit that goes on. If you want Penderecki, call him up! I mean, he’d love to pick up some cash here. That’s always the problem when you have somebody hiring you who doesn't know anything about what you’re doing.

I don’t remember the source. New music circles can be a little like that. “We’d perform your music, if only it were just like the music of this other composer that we like a lot.”

On Easter Sunday I struck up a new acquaintance, an old friend of an old friend. He is a saxophonist, an American residing in Finland who had come back Stateside for the holiday. He plays in a quartet, and so I have decided to prepare suitable arrangements for him. Now that he’s confirmed his preferred scoring for the quartet (SATB) I can set to work. I’m planning four arrangements: I Want Jesus to Walk With Me, Nostalgia Ain’t What It Used to Be, Down Along the Canal to Minerva Road and the Fantasia on a Theme of Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Probably will wait until tomorrow to set to work.

Separately, ten years ago today, I rediscovered a one-page piano piece manuscript: Dance Barefoot Amid Dandelions.

Again separately, my review of a Feb 25 Boston Symphony concert.

Further separately, I recently watched The World According to Garp, which I probably had not seen since it was first released, back when. In hindsight, my first encounter with a trans character (Jn Lithgow plays a football player who has had a sex change operation. According to Wikipedia, author Jn Irving declined to write the screenplay because he differed with director George Roy Hill on the treatment of this very character. The rift appears not to have been acrimonious as the author appears in the film as a wrestling referee. The director himself plays the pilot whose plane crashes into the house Garp and Mrs Garp buy. I did not pick up on the fact that Amanda Plummer plays Ellen James, back when I first saw the movie. The movie was an eye-opener in that Williams plays essentially a serious role. The character does himself have a sense of humor, but it is never the free-wheeling anarchic comedy which was Williams’ trademark. Sometime later I read (or, tried reading) the source novel. I’m afraid I find the movie better, altogether simpler and better. I suppose, if I were the author myself, I might resent such an assessment, but there it is.