The Good, the Dubious and the Imponderable

 A fellow commuter boarded the bus wearing a sweatshirt with the legend: “Winning isn’t everything but the will to win is.” And, Lord save me, my first thought was John Cleese as the Black Knight.

“Come back! I’ll bite your legs off!”

Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)

Later, at the bar, Jock said, “I made Beaver pay for a drink.”

“He can’t have liked that.”

“He nearly died of it ...”

— Evelyn Waugh, A Handful of Dust

Splendid Aardvark Jazz Orchestra concert at Arts at the Armory in Somerville. I may not have been there since my Annabel Lee was sung there.

My friend John has asked for the demo for The Mask I Wore Before, for although he is not involved with any chamber music these days, he’ll inquire with a few people who are.

We’ve gpt two more rehearsals in the book for the 14 Oct concert.

Greta will in fact be available for the April King’s Chapel date, so we can plan for a quartet, after all.

It may possibly  simply be a degree of exhaustion talking after  the effort involved both with the Henning Ensemble concerts and last night’s Aardvark Jazz Orchestra concert, but one member of the quartet expressed reservations over the ambition of the October concert. One has expressed actual reservations, but is the third to note that the program is ambitious.  I’m holding off any decision (obviously) until we actually sit down to rehearse on the 27th, but there’s the odd chance we may feel the need to defer a piece or two until April.

The remaining items are not genuinely imponderable. Indeed, I ponder them e’en now:

Having done with Moose on the Loose, I have a couple of Christmas scores to rebuild. I shall start with Joseph and Mary, which may not actually need absolute reconstruction, since I feel I served versions of the piece both at First Church in Boston and Holy Trinity in Danvers. The Op. 60 Reflections on a French Carol, however, looks to be more labor-intensive, as the only document I have is a corrupted or otherwise dodgy PDF file.

My thoughts are still fluid regarding Aaron’s Uneasy Sleep. Part of me wants to get that settled in time to see Aaron at his performance in Newport, Rhode Island, and perhaps I shall, but let me get a jump on Christmas first.

Hearing the Aardvarks is always musically beneficial, albeit often as a kind of musical catalyst. Hence I have a fresh idea for the Simple Music notion in back of mind. Also yet more notably, I found myself reminded of that Lost Piece of mine which I most regret losing: Ambiguous Strategies. For April, I am thinking of Son of Ambiguous Strategies to work both for the quartet at King’s Chapel, and for the full sextet after.