Local Musician Meets Local Musicians

 A lady in a business suit and flip-flops flapping up the steps of City Hall Plaza. (Not judging. Just reporting the sound.)

Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)

I’ve got it! We’ll call it The Last-But-One Supper.

— Eric Idle as Michelangelo in the Hollywood Bowl

I met these five chaps on the Wilmington Common this evening. Four singers qua singers and one vocalizing percussionist who go by the name of Ball in the House. Superbly musical and they put on an excellent show. While I dunno if any collaboration may be in the cards (I’m unsure what that deck of cards might look like) I’ve sent the link to the It Might Happen Today video.

Also, I met a couple of enthusiasts of the group who may come hear the Dark Side of the Dance Floor.

This Day on the Greenway

 Henningmusick, advancing minimally invasive composition since 1976.

Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)

I wish you would ask me about the music. I’m a composer. People always ask about the shed…

— Terry Jones as Arthur “Two Sheds” Jackson

Nine years ago today, on not quite so hot a day as we have presently, the fabulous artists Irina Pisarenko & Maria Bablyak, together with the Henning Ensemble performed Sound + Sight, a bravura performance of painting in real time in response to our musical performance en plein air on Boston’s Rose Kennedy Greenway as one event in Figment Boston.

Also. 14 years ago today:

Step off bus at Wellington: check. Board Orange Line inbound: check. Compose 11 measures of Cello Sonatina meanwhile: check. [30 July 2011]

The Day's Modest News

 The vowels of the wolves.

Oddities of the octopodes.

Owls of Derision.

Elefanten i værelset.

A nit of radius porpoise.

No cobras in our cupboards, thank you.

— Postcards From Red Squirrel Trail

I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners--I don’t like them, myself. They’re pretty bad, I grieve over them, long winter evenings.

— Bogart in The Big Sleep

I am thrilled to hear from various friends that they are planning to attend the Dark Side of the Dance Floor program in the Library, and pleased too that Pam Marshall and Alan Westby will tune in to the livestream on Facebook.

I found a most interesting Call whose reward is a commissioning fee of $1,000 to write a new work for violin and cimbalom (8 minutes or longer). The scores I’ve sent for consideration are Dark Side of the Sun and Plotting (y is the new x.)

And: my work eight years since on White Nights.

Here a Livestream, There a Livestream

 Just happened to overhear the phrase “generic popsicles.” It wasn’t so much what the young lady said, as the way she said it. Tommy Lee’s tamales. Nor all the quinoa in Okinawa. Breakfast at Chimpanzee’s.

Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)

Fame is short-lived. One year after this show (The Twilight Zone) goes off the air, they’ll never remember who I am. And I don’t care a bit. My place is as a writer.

— Rod Serling

The Dark Side of the Dance Floor program at the Woburn Public Library on 6 August will be livestreamed on the Library’s Facebook page.

And I learn today that just what everyone was expecting has been selected for inclusion in a 10 November 2025 concert which will be streamed. Details to come.

Just This Week's Spinning Wheels

 I dreamt that my stage name was Elmer. But, then, in my dream, “Elmer” was Spanish for “the sea.”

Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)

Music is movement — its connection is not so much with mathematics as most people think, but with physics, with forces.

— Leon Fleisher

I noted a few days ago having sent For You, Fuchsia and Dark Side of the Sun to a Call for Scores. At much the same time, I learnt of another Call for orchestral scores, but most of the pieces I was considering sending used too many auxiliary woodwinds, e.g. or did not suit the Call for some other reason. I then thought I might send the Elegy excerpt from the Third Symphony. But it turned out that works for strings only did not fit the Call either. In the spirit of lighting a candle rather than cursing the darkness, lo! I found another Call entirely to which to send the Op. 175b Sun Dance. On one hand, as you know, Gentle Reader, from this blog, There’s no knowing if there will be any chance of success. On t’other, I’ve gotten an e-mail confirmation of receipt of the Sun Dance.

Separately, I’ve just had a nice phone call with colleague Robert Gross.

And: the artwork is Irina Pisarenko’s Grand Canal, Venice

Onward!

 Attention, Jimmy Buffett: salt-shaker, salt-shaker. Nobody in the English-speaking world says “shaker of salt.” And don’t say a woman’s to blame for that.

Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)

It could mean that that point in time inherently contains some sort of cosmic significance, almost as if it were the temporal junction point of the entire space-time continuum. On the other hand, it could just be an amazing coincidence.

— “Doc” Brown

It was a week of highly productive Henning Ensemble Rehearsals. And we have now set the date for the concert at the Church of the Redeemer (Friday, 5 Sep) at which we shall repeat the Dark Side of the Dance Floor program, with the added bonus of Jazz for Nostalgic Squirrels. And my colleague Robert Gross has sent me the score of a charming piece he has just finished writing for us, for our October concert at King’s Chapel.

This afternoon, I thoroughly enjoyed my friend Aaron Larget-Caplan’s Bach and Beer program at the Lilypad in Cambridge. I’ve been meaning forever to write something for his New Lullaby Project, and his inclusion of a piece for electronics and guitar to conclude today’s concert has probably pushed me at last into activity on that head. I am beginning to scheme a piece to be called Aaron’s Uneasy Sleep.

Progress, Sweet Progress

 My brother: Blondie invited all the world to call her, but she won’t respond to my PMs.

Me: It’s just no good, you teasing like you do.

Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)

There are no wrong reasons for liking a work of art, only for disliking one.

— E.H. Gombrich

We had an extremely productive Henning Ensemble rehearsal this afternoon, and so quite the opposite of feeling tired from the expenditure of neurological sweat, I find myself energized and looking forward to tomorrow’s rehearsal. Alan Westby’s Quiet Girl is sounding more exquisite than ever and Pam Marshall’s Carvoeira Clifftop Walk has come immediately back to us. As has Down Along the Canal to Minerva Road. We made excellent progress on the new pieces: Dark Side of the Sun and the Fantasia on a Theme by Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Having talented colleagues who are so engaged with and excited about one’s compositions is truly beyond price.

And, separately, (and Lawd knows I do not harbor much—any, really— hope) I have submitted For You, Fuchsia and Dark Side of the Sun to a Call, that is, the two collectively to a Call confusingly phrased—a reading, but they are selecting a composer for a commission?—well, as I have zero expectation of being selected, it doesn’t much matter if I don’t find their Call intelligible, right?