fam safely arrived in Beijing (I hope)

 

AA.Flight.187.status

As near as I can tell, my daughter Elizabeth, her husband, Jeremy, and my grand-daughter, Alex, have just arrived in Beijing after a long trip (It’s Friday evening in Beijing). I hope their planes were on time and the trip home wasn’t too grueling. I admire their stamina and appreciate the trouble they take to keep the families connected.

Much to my delight, I discovered the string parts online to the last movement of Bach’s Cantata 142. I counted measures to see how well it fit the anthem I want to have the choir sing on Sept 20th (their first Sunday). It was an exact fit.

Image result for i love the internet gif

I think this unresolved aspect might have been part of the reason I had choir nightmares the night before last.

My violinist was unable to come to our rehearsal yesterday, so Dawn, the cellist, and I went through the music for the 20th.

We decided on two lovely piano trio movements for the prelude and postlude: one by Mozart and one by Haydn. We read through the Haydn in its entirety. They are both pretty doable and shouldn’t require extensive prep.

The missing note on my organ’s pedal board had not been replaced as of yesterday. I hope he gets to it soon. The organ music I scheduled for the weekend needs some rehearsal, but it doesn’t work very well without that note.

I stumbled across a band yesterday. As I sometimes do, I clicked on music that other people are listening to. i can see this list on my Spotify software. A Hope College student who has good taste and is a musician himself was listening to this group.

I was intrigued to see that they not only had done originals, but did a cover of Radiohead (Kid A) and included two classical pieces on their album: Passepied by Debussy and a Scriabin piece.

Later when I was exercising I stopped reading the paper long enough to listen closely to see if they did a straight transcription of Debussy (I was exercising to their music). It’s originally a piano piece and one I like and practice. I was weirdly pleased that they did a straight transcription, albeit loosely and musically played with the melody, counter melodies and accompaniment tossed back and forth  between their different instruments.

See for yourself.

Thinking about anger and distortion on Facebooger, here’s my quote for today.

“The ability to analyze others’ arguments can also serve as a yardstick for when to withdraw from discussion that will most likely be futile.”

Ali Almossawi, An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments,
p. 4,

I have pretty much decided not to argue with angry people on Facebooger but at the same time not to let their misinformation and hate go completely unchallenged. Tricky balance.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.