It’s a lovely rainy day in Western Michigan (actual photos taken today with my spiffy new netbook).

I was a bit happier with my playing with the quartet last night.

I made an effort to be more solid and a tiny bit more aggressive. This amounts to nothing more than not following some of the players when they messed up.  I tried to play to the drummer and think a lot about rhythm and tempo as we played. Plus I was much happier with my comping and improvs.

I have been thinking quite a bit about Jazz theory. One thing that occurs to me is the imprecision of the notation. Here I’m thinking mostly about chords and the use of shorthand for complex ideas that often differ from usage to usage. I used to think that Jazz musicians (pianist especially) possessed a kind of preternatural harmonic instinct. I still think this is true of the great players like Peterson, Shearing, Tatum, and the many others I admire. But for us non-virtuoso “working” musicians, it now seems to me that the “code” of Jazz harmony is not that complicated as I used to think. A lot of the harmonies I am using in the quartet repertoire startle me because they are not as far-fetched or intricate as the harmonies of transcribed geniuses at the piano. Instead they relate directly to what I think sounds good and already occurs to me when I play.

My piano trio read through more Mendelssohn yesterday. We’re working on more movements of the D minor piano trio. The slow movement is not hard except that M does some fascinating things with moving back and forth from duple to triple rhythms that interlock better when the entire ensemble is expecting them. That was going much better in yesterday’s rehearsal. Then we read through the Scherzo. This movement will take some doing to learn. But when it’s done we will have a lovely Mendelssohnian scherzo under our belts.

I recently ran across this quote that shows that my understanding of Mendelssohn as a classicist was shared by Robert Schumann.

“He [Mendelssohn] is the Mozart of the nineteenth century, the most brilliant musician, the one who most clearly sees through the contradictions of the age for the first time reconciles them.”

Robert Schumann

Greg Vitercik puts this quote at the beginning of his essay, “Mendelssohn as progressive” in The Cambridge Companion to Mendelssohn, edited by Peter Mercer-Taylor

I did manage to work a bit on “Ebb and Flow,” the music for the Global Water Dance. In addition to just “resting-up” a bit in general I am trying to give myself some “creative” space for coming up with more specific ideas now that I have the structure designed. I’m hoping I can fill it in with ones that I like. This takes some of that stare out the window and watch time “ebb and flow” stuff.

I bought a Kindle edition of a book I am reading so that I can have it on my netbook (I use the Kindle for PC software). That way I could treadmill yesterday and pick up The Brothers Karamazov where I left off in the real book which has a type face I find difficult to see as I exercise. This is my second time through this book, at least. But I like the translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky quite a bit.

I wonder how many people purchase ebooks and “real” copies of the same book like this?

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Ancient Assyrian Dictionary Completed by University of Chicago Scholars – NYTimes.com

“It opens up for study “the richest span of cuneiform writing,” he said, referring to the script invented in the fourth millennium B.C. by the earlier Sumerians in Mesopotamia.

This was probably the first writing system anywhere, and the city-states that arose in the Tigris and Euphrates River Valleys, mainly in what is present-day Iraq and parts of Syria, are considered the earliest urban and literate civilization. The dictionary, with 28,000 words now defined in their various shades of meaning, covers a period from 2500 B.C. to A.D. 100.”

The whole thing is actually available for free online in PDFs!

Oriental Institute | The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD)

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Brain Calisthenics Help Break Down Abstract Ideas, Researchers Say – NYTimes.com

This article reminded me so much of my wife that I sent her the link. She has taught me to think conceptually and intuitively about abstract things like numbers and math.

We are having squirrel infestation. Eileen has battled them over her plants. The squirrels weirdly uproot all strawberry and corn plants they can get their paws on. Eileen finally resorted to a motion detector sprinkler which seems to be helping. But it looks like the turtle is back in the pond which means there are destroyed plants in that area. Sprinklers don’t work with turtles.

Something has been coming through the screen  on the back door to eat seeds Eileen left there. The last two mornings I have gotten up and found holes in the screen. I then proceeded to repair it (in a very half-ass Steve way). This morning it seems to have made it through the night intact.

It’s a lovely cool morning in Western Michigan. The sky is just beginning to light up. I am pretty drained. Still in bad need of some time off, but realizing how lucky I am to be able to be doing so many things that I truly enjoy.

The list includes composing for actual performance, having the new experience of consulting with a choreographer, and playing with a little jazz quartet. Speaking of, we perform this evening at the silly Thursday night Holland Street Performer series.

I continue to love my church work even though I feel a few ticks past burned out right now. At staff yesterday, the boss said we were to take our recently submitted job description and rate things we don’t like doing with a 1, would prefer not to do – 2, like doing – 3. To her apparent dismay, I said it would be easy since I didn’t really want a job at all, I could rate everything 1. It’s not true. But it’s the first thing to come to mind.

I also am playing a wedding Saturday at Hope College Dimnent Chapel. I went over yesterday and registered the music (this means picked out which sets of pipes to play pieces with). I found a note in one of the lovely romantic solo stops that didn’t work. This surprised me. I then decided to strum the grand piano to see how it was doing. It was a bit out of tune (not surprising) but seemed to be in working condition.

I feel like Hope College is hostile territory for me. I know it’s my own subjective stuff. But it’s not without some basis in fact. First of all, they disapprove of gay people and non Christians as a matter of policy. This bothers me. There’s other stuff, but I have decided it’s probably best if I not put it the blog. Better not rehearse other people’s old bad behavior and give them the benefit of the doubt, not to mention a chance to change. Silly me.

The Skinner is a nice romantic organ. I’m not a fan of the genre. But I do like quality organs no matter the design or intent. It was fun to play it a bit, even though they seem to have a new policy of limiting preparing organists to one hour of free time with the idea they will charge for anything over that. I was out in forty minutes.

Eileen and I had a lovely meal at the pub. When we arrived we were surprised that there was no one sitting outside. This changed quickly.

I need to stop and clean the kitchen. I have been ignoring it since I have been so busy.

Very cool. Yesterday I used my alloted Fregal Sony free music downloads to get three tracks I have on vinyl in MP3 form. Fregal allows three DRM free downloads a week.

The record is “The Varese Album.” It’s a two record set issued in the 60s and conducted by Robert Craft. There are ten tracks. I downloaded “Ionisation, for 13 Percussionists,” “Density 21.5, for flute solo,” “Deserts for brass, percussion, piano & tape.” I played these yesterday and Eileen commented that she liked them. They are abstract works and do like them quite a bit.

Varese was a favorite of Frank Zappa’s and I’m reasonably sure that’s how I was introduced to his work. Zappa used to put a quote by Varese on his albums: “The present day composers refuse to die.” I always thought it was a joke. Of course they refuse to die. By definition they are alive if they are in the present day. But apparently Zappa was quite serious about it.

As a young man, Zappa telephoned his idol, Varese, who was living in New York.

Here’s his description from a 1971 Stereo Review article:

“On my fifteenth birthday my mother said she’d give me $5. 1 told her I would rather make a long-distance phone call. I figured Mr. Varese lived in New York because the record was made in New York (and be- cause he was so weird, he would live in Greenwich Village). I got New York Information, and sure enough, he was in the phone book.

His wife answered. She was very nice and told me he was in Europe and to call back in a few weeks. I did. I don’t remember what I said to him exactly, but it was something like: “I really dig your music.” He told me he was working on a new piece called Deserts. This thrilled me quite a bit since I was living in Lancaster, California then. When you’re fifteen and living in the Mojave Desert and find out that the world’s greatest composer, somewhere in a secret Greenwich Village laboratory, is working on a song about your “home town” you can get pretty excited. It seemed a great tragedy that nobody in-Palmdale or Rosamond would care if they ever heard it. I still think Deserts is about Lancaster, even if the liner notes on the Columbia LP say it’s something more philosophical.”

I love that story.

So I met with Linda Graham, the mastermind behind the local expression of the upcoming Global Water Dances. Even before we discussed my piece, I could see that she needed something different for the dance. So I came up with the idea of writing another piece for her dance design.

Now I am thinking of the new piece as a second movement of three. “Easy on the Water” would make a good first movement. I am calling the new piece, “Ebb and Flow.” Haven’t worried too much about what the third one will be because I need to concentrate on getting “Ebb and Flow” written quickly so it can be learned and rehearsed, hopefully with the dancers.  At this writing I have worked out the four sections of the piece the dancers will need. FWIW, here they are:

I. The Dance Begins

Dancers join as the dance moves back and forth.

II. Thought Moment

Individual dancers drop out and freeze and then rejoin.

III. Dance Moment

Individual dancers drop out and dance, then rejoin.

IV. Dolphins Dance

All burst into the water!

I have the first section done. For the other sections I have a measure or two written which I now need to flesh out.

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Wills watching by Michael McDonald – The New Criterion

“Wills” is the author, Gary Wills. “Wills watching” is what the staff of William Buckley’s National Review used to call keeping track of him after he defected from the right to the left.

This is a review of Wills’s new memoir, Outside, Looking In. Though McDonald certainly sees Wills (and the world for that matter) much, much differently than I do, it is an interesting review. I read the introduction and part of the first chapter online. It looks like a good read to me.

I found this little tidbit interesting:

“… [I]n his new book, Wills castigates Buckley for having “poisoned the general currency” of the word “oxymoron.” Buckley, per Wills, thought it was a fancier word for “contradiction” and, as a result, legions of conservatives are now wont to say, as Buckley first did, that an “intelligent liberal is an oxymoron.” But Wills observes that the Greek word means something quite different: something that is surprisingly true, a paradox, a “shrewd dumbness.” Point taken: definitional precision matters.

I didn’t know that about “oxymoron.” Very cool.

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Letter of Hitler’s First Anti-Semitic Writing May Be the Original – NYTimes.com

I find historical research and artifacts fascinating.

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I did something I rarely do yesterday. I showed my composition to people the same day I finished it. I prefer letting a new work sit for a bit. Then return to it and see how it hits me.

Yesterday I put up a midi rendition of it on Soundcloud.

Then I foolishly decided that, what the heck, I was emailing “Easy on the Water” to the dance person, I  could easily “share it” on my web site and Facebook via Soundcloud. The rest of the day I felt like my nerves were on the outside of my body. I was frazzled to say the least.

I also emailed the trumpet, sax and bass parts to the people who have agreed to play them on June 25th.

Then I emailed all members of Barefoot Jazz Quartet with a repertoire list and proposed that we develop a set list for our gigs.

After attending a worship commission meeting at which I failed to keep my mouth shut, I was the typical introvert whose actions had left him feeling exposed and foolish. Ah well. The price of doing shit, I guess.

One of the things about Facebook that I like is how it juxtaposes people from different times of my life and different geographic locations. Two people commented on “Easy on the Water.” One of them now living in Traverse City, Michigan, the other living in Montreal. The first, Mary Jane Cotta, is someone I met when I first moved to Holland in 1987. She and her (now ex) husband were very gracious in welcoming Eileen and me to Holland. They were both involved in singing groups in the area. As the years passed her, I saw less and less of her. Recently, she came and sang in my choir at church before moving away to Traverse City.

The other person, Kenneth Near, I knew when he lived in East Tawas and I lived Oscoda Michigan (in the 70s). He was  a newly ordained priest in the Episcopal church then. Ken had found Jesus in the pit orchestra of a touring version of Jesus Christ Superstar.  He played french horn.  People to talk to in northern Michigan were rare and we became buddies of sorts. He’s still a priest.

Two other people clicked the “like” button on my music. One of them is a musician/film maker living in Chicago that I knew when he was in high school here in Holland. The other is my daughter-in-law living in California.

I think it’s kind of cool that I can keep track of all of these people and show them a recording (however embarrassing) of my work.

Finally purchased the PDF Software 995 suite yesterday. I have been using a free version of part of it for several years. It allows one to use the print function to create PDFs. Very handy.  The 29.95 package contains several other pieces of software, a couple of which I think look handy for converting document formats (Omniformat)

and editing pictures (Photoedit995).

I have found Picassa defies me as a once in a while user. So I’m looking forward to trying another piece of software to edit pictures. It looks like something in between a simple Photoshop and the stupid Microsoft Paint program which I also do not find intuitive.

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Boy’s Death Highlights Crisis in Homes for Disabled – NYTimes.com

This is a heart breaking story of badly managed state health care facilities in New York.

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When a Nobel Prize Isn’t Enough – NYTimes.com

Story of congressional rejection of expert information when they anticipate they will not agree with the results.

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Musicians Protest ‘Quiet Zones’ in Central Park – NYTimes.com

I am conflicted about this one. I like buskers and I like the sounds of nature. Surely there is a compromise in there somewhere.

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At Venice Biennale, a Patina of History on Contemporary Art – NYTimes.com

This sounds like a fascinating show in Venice. They juxtaposed historical and contemporary art.  As a musician, this interests me because it’s something I do all the time: connect with the past and the now in music. Both are necessary. I feel strongly that to neglect a human expression like art and music is to be a bit impoverished and to live an artistic life that could have been fuller. Jus’ sayin’

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AAUP: The Professors, The Press, The Think Tanks—And Their Problems

This is by someone I admire, Eric Alterman. Haven’t finished reading it yet, but it starts out with some of his personal history and then starts talking about two thinks that I have read and am interested in: Walter Lippmann and John Dewey.

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Easy on the water by jupiterjenkins by jupiterjenkins

OK. I hate midi. But here’s a work in progress recording of what I have been blogging about for a few days. Just emailed this to Linda Graham, the dance department chair for her consideration for use.

Once again I popped out of bed early this morning and began working on “Easy on the Water,” the trio for trumpet, sax and bass I am writing. I would dearly love to have it done by tomorrow. I am expecting the Barefoot Jazz Quartet to have a rehearsal tomorrow afternoon. I’m hoping to have a read through of the trio as well if there’s time.

This morning I adjusted the main theme to be a bit more interesting.

I’m happy with the structure and development of this piece. I was surprised at how easy it was to go back and change the basic initial motivic melodic idea and not only NOT do violence to the unfolding of ideas in the piece, but actually to connect them better.

This kind of composing combines intellect with intuition. Often I write something intuitively and then afterwards intellectually see the rationale or coherence. I find that a bit reassuring.

I performed two organ pieces by Healey Willan yesterday as well as his choir/organ setting of “God has Gone Up with a Shout.”

Willan crafts his music carefully. I remember my late teacher, Ray Ferguson, wasn’t enamored of all of Willan’s writing. Curiously I can’t remember if Ray disapproved of the choral and liked the organ compositions or the reverse.

At any rate, I have decided that I like both Willan’s organ writing and choral writing.

Yesterday even as I performed his pieces I noticed little coherent connections that are more apparent to my mind than my ear. In this he is like Bach, working out musical ideas with such care. I find that satisfying.

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Finally getting around to putting a few links in my daily blog. I recommend the following link.

The Death Sentence That Defined My Life – NYTimes.com

Mark Trautwain, the author of this article, has been living with HIV/AIDS for thirty or more buy valium philippines years. But that’s not the thing that impressed me about his article. I liked the idea that he found a more clear and wonderful reason for living not despite his “death sentence” but because it made him more aware of life as a temporary gift. Very cool.

“On that day I walked from the hospital knowing I had “it,” I was given a great gift: the realization that we all dangle from that most delicate of threads and that the only way to live a life is to love it.”

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Our Fantasy Nation? – NYTimes.com

By examining other countries like Pakistan, Kristoff asks if education, health care, security and even electricity should be public or private goods.

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In Book Circles, a Taming of the Feud – NYTimes.com

Jennifer Schuessler discusses literary feuds.

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Lyle Lovett on Theaters With Magic – NYTimes.com

Interesting to read Lovett’s comments about rooms he has played in.

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Ray Bryant, Jazz Pianist, Dies at 79 – NYTimes.com

This obit intrigued me so much that I purchased MP3s of his first album. Good player.

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Abramson Named Executive Editor at The Times – NYTimes.com

Abramson along with present Editor, Keller, are interviewed in this week’s On the Media.

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U.S. Questions Europe’s Using Antibiotics Against E. Coli – NYTimes.com

“This bug has been seen before,” said Dr. Robert Tauxe, deputy director of the division of food-borne, bacterial and mycotic diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. That the strain may have genetic material that makes it resistant to antibiotics, however, is intriguing, he said.”

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Poland – Auschwitz Sign to Hang Indoors – NYTimes.com

What’s real? What’s not? The famous sign that reads “Arbeit Macht Frei,” or Work Sets You Free, now hangs indoors, while a replica hangs in its place. I recently attended a funeral where a recording was played of a woman singing who sat silently in the front row while it played. What’s real? What’s not?

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It’s about 7:10 AM on a Sunday and I have been up for an hour composing. The past hour I have been deep in the “zone.” This means when I look up from work I have to take a second to re-orient myself to time and place.

Oh yes. I have to leave in a bit and go do church.

There are levels of “zone” in composing. The deepest one is when you get a kernel of an idea or even a burst of ideas that fit together. When that happens you can understand how humans use the idea of “muse.” The inspiration does seem to come from somewhere else, that’s for sure.

But right now, I’m working on drafts of a piece. In fact the first thing I did this morning was organize files so that I could easily identify old drafts from current ones. I find that it sometimes helps to return to previous drafts when working.

This morning I am revamping the composition so that it proceeds more logically. Actually returning the beginning to my original idea and then allowing the composition to show the development of the idea. Not terribly original to be sure but I think it might work out.

Woke up at 5 Am with ideas for a trio. Managed to stay in bed for a while despite this attack of ideas. Then got up and and got to work. Just finished a rough draft of an 88 measure piece. I am calling it “Easy on the Water.” It’s scored for trumpet, sax (probably alto) and string bass. I have asked Keith Walker to play the trumpet part,

Jordan VanHemert to play the sax

and Nate Walker to play the bass.

They all agreed.

Hoping this is the piece I can use for the June 25th Global Water Dance at Tunnel Park. I have to talk further with Linda Graham, the organizer of it and see if what I am writing fits the bill.

Anyway, no time to blog. On to treadmilling.

So it seems that the Herrick library resource page was just experiencing a glitch yesterday when Eileen and I failed to access the free music page. Later in the evening we were more successful.

As near as I can tell “Freegal” is a library service provided (sold?) to libraries by Sony Music. It allows library card owners to download three trax a week free. Sony really does have an extensive catalog and much of it (if not all) seems to be part of this service. I recommend you check out your library (if you in the US) and see if your library card privileges include access to this service.

I downloaded two of my weekly three last night. I chose recordings of two Ligeti piano etudes.

I think it’s a clever idea because it limits library card holders to three trax. Three trax are actually not very many. At that rate, it would take several weeks to download an entire album. In the meantime, their music is on your machine. Which to my way of thinking it the best kind of advertising and distribution. Consumers (for that dear reader is what we are the eyes of Sony and other recording companies) will be prodded to “consume sound commodities” when they are attracted to it. How will they be attracted if they cannot hear it?

Little extracts are not enough. How does the piece begin, proceed throughout and end? I find myself liking something and then being disappointed in how it is worked out. On the other hand familiarity in music does not necessarily “breed contempt” and is often an integral aspect of how we enjoy music.  So that sometimes I find myself more drawn into music after a few repetitions.

I also started exploring the public library online databases access. Camio stands for Catalog of Art Museum Images Online. Again one is required to have a library log on and then one has access to images of several musuems’ online collections including the Detroit Institute of Arts.

Lynda.com is not just for library users. It is a fascinating collection of online information videos a good number of which are free to anyone who goes to their website.

It began as a software tutorial project and expanded into other interesting, even technical, instructional videos. I found several on the music mixing software, Pro Tools. wow.

I found Lynda.com in my libraries list of databases.

I also found these two:

Amazing really.  Both of these are search engines but also include access to numerous entire articles. Again I say “Wow.” I’ve linked in information sites on both of them. You will again need to access them via your library.

So after looking at this stuff my head was spinning. I spent the rest of yesterday giving a piano lesson, playing with my piano trio and practicing organ and piano. Lots of Mendelssohn yesterday for some reason. Just in the mood.

Ended up the day by making a nice supper for Eileen and me. Made blueberry cobbler, grilled fish and veggies and made fresh lemonade. Not bad.

Then laying in bed, read Debating the Value of College in America : The New Yorker out loud to Eileen until she asked me to be quiet so she could read her own book. Heh. Still. I recommend this article highly.

A little slow getting going this morning.  Got up and made coffee and started goofing around with some left over unread articles from yesterday beginning with David Brooks: What’s the big idea? | Books | The Guardian. In this article, David Brooks the NYT columnist surprisingly describes himself as a “socialist,” admittedly with some qualifications.

This article mentioned the fact that Brooks is unusual because he likes Trollope’s novels. As do I. This led me to begin downloading some free ebooks to my new netbook. My old one was full of them. I began with the book that the Brooks article actually mentioned: “The American Senator” by Anthony Trollope (link to free download page for this book).

I went ahead and downloaded it in the Kindle format because that’s already installed on my netbook.

After noticing on the Writer’s Almanac page that today is Thomas Hardy’s birthday, I pulled down a collection of his poetry, “Time’s Laughingstocks,” and read the first poem, “The Revisitation.”

My wife has been talking about the web resources available through the local library. I tried to check it out today. But it frustrated both of us that I could not quite get their free downloading of music page to work.

Then I went to the ebook page and decided I should try that out.  This led me to download and install the free  Adobe ebook reader software.  This reminded me that U of Chicago had released an interesting title for their free ebook of the month.  I was reminded because it is Adobe ebook format. So I pulled that off their site and even stuck it up on Facebook because I thought it might interest several  “friends” on Facebook, including my beloved nephew Ben who is a bit of history buff. This book seems up his alley.

Interestingly, I had a “friend” comment who seemed to think this book wasn’t worth checking out. Hm. I found myself a bit defensive and tried to respond without sounding too reactive.

Discovered that the digital New York Times subscription does not include its crossword puzzle. I wonder if that will  raise the likelihood that fewer people will do crossword puzzles. I know in my case it is just a mild annoyance that I can’t do the puzzle without paying an extra 40 bucks a year and completely kills my own motivation to do New York Times crosswords which admittedly was pretty weak anyway.

When I google “free online crosswords,” I get over 5 million hits. Hmm.

I was pleasantly surprised to read on Susan Tomes blog yesterday that she also sees Mendelssohn as a sort of classicist. I wonder if this comes from the fact that we both like and play the D minor piano trio and other piano works by him (she’s a pianist).

I’m about halfway through Sensation by Nick Mamatas. I propped my netbook up on the piano last night at auditions and during the inevitable “hurry up and wait” periods read it. Very funny.

Not sure this “book trailer” makes much sense if you don’t know that the book is about wasps and “spiders” taking over bodies of people and animals.
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Ratko Mladic: The West’s failure to confront Serbia prolonged the violence. – By Christopher Hitchens – Slate Magazine

Interesting background on this dude.

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One Set of Study Data, but Many Translations – NYTimes.com

Some practical illustration of how one communicates results affects people’s reaction and actions .

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A Conversation With John Paul Stevens – Bill Barnhart – National – The Atlantic

I think this retired Supreme Court Justice’s upcoming book might be a good read for history and court fans.

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A Good Night’s Sleep Isn’t a Luxury – It’s a Necessity – NYTimes.com

Jane Brody strikes again. I own and frequently consult several of her nutrition/cookbooks.

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