I was sifting among the zillions of interesting musician sites this morning, checking the usual suspects  I enjoy reading and learning from when I ran across something that seemed to be directly related to some of the stuff I have been thinking about recently.

It was a description of a recent concert given by the National Orchestra Institute. What caught my interest was the fact that after receiving the assignment of performing four major contemporary works the entire concert was designed and rehearsed by young talented college-aged orchestra musicians attending the four week festival in Maryland.

The students could do what they wanted but the organizers asked them to derive their innovations from the suggested repertoire. This led to stuff like the string quartet playing this video of them rehearsing Kirchner’s latest string quarter before performing it. Since this week of the festival was dubbed “New Lights” by the organizers, I especially liked the fact that the young musicians came up with an ensemble called  “No Lights” Ensemble, eight musicians (trumpets, viola, tuba, harp, and horn) . This group began the second half of concert inviting the audience to participate in an improv. Apparently this really worked.

I also liked the addition of pieces by the Decemberists, Yes, Journey, one original song and a last minute addition of Billie Jean by Michael Jackson due to his recent death. These pieces were performed by “marimba, acoustic bass, guitar, discreet flute, drums (or more precisely a drummer drumming informally on what looked like a wooden box), and finally, but not least, a bassoon, which took major solos, with a sound that could have been a slightly shadowy sax.” (quoting from the article I read).

The writer of the article seemed especially pleased how Eliot Carters Eight Etudes and a Fantasy (excerpts) didn’t “sound stiff” when programmed after the above popular music.

I have been  thinking a lot about the museum aspect of the great music of the past. I also think about how to program and perform music in my little venues (church, one local coffee shop, and sometimes on the street).

I was especially interested to hear that wonderful Carter didn’t feel jerky after music by the Decemberists and Michael Jackson. Recently, someone complained that the musical choices I have made for communion music were too jerky. Going from quieter reflective refrains to loud in your face gospel or what-have-you. I think this is a comment that sounds suspiciously like the “church of good taste” from the past history of the Episcopal church.

It’s not that I think that the older ideas of having a church service unified by style and with carefully modulated (literally and figuratively) progression from one thing to another. It’s that I think that it does not reflect the rest of the experience of our lives which are more often than not subjected to brutal shifts in tempo and content. In fact, I think this fragmentation is part of the contemporary mind by now in many cases.

Speaking of more conservative understandings of music, I ran across musoc.org today. It lists its reasons for existence:

§1 To repudiate cultural relativism in music
§2 To provide a cultural oasis in the arid sands of global Pop
§3 To campaign for a 100% state-funded, ad-free national FM or digital radio station (non-internet) dedicated solely to Art Music in every country in the world
§4 To campaign for much greater state funding for the sustenance and promotion of Art Music
§5 To campaign for the illegalisation of all Pop ‘Music’ (i) in public and work places which aren’t licensed music entertainment venues, and (ii) used in children’s television and other media
§6 To provide free, high-quality, unique educational materials on Art Music
§7 To promote the use of the term ‘art music’ in preference to ‘classical music’

Cute, no? This is from their FAQ. These are just the headings and are explained more thoroughly there. I find it fascinating in a repellant way. I especially like the “illegalisation of all Pop ‘Music’ (note the quotes around ‘music’ when used in the phrase Pop Music. Good stuff, heh.

Call me shallow and uncouth (if you read the last post, you understand that I am beginning happily to accept these attribues in myself) but this sounds a tad fascistic to me. Heh.

In the comments to the original article about the NOI concert, Lyle Sandford made the following observation:

“Sometimes classical concerts have the feeling of presenting music as gorgeous butterflies pinned just so under glass. Your write up suggests this music was fluttering all around the hall and lobby with great vibrancy and vitality. ”

This image connects to my struggle with music of the past. I do find it gorgeous and beautiful and necessary. But at the same time, the music on the street compells me. Ultimately, I will include both the gorgeous butterfly under glass and the living breathing one fluttering through the lobby into our lives.

Thinking this morning about museum music versus my own tastes. I happen to like museums. And I like museum music (classical, jazz, old rock, the Beatles, whatever). As a musician my interests are wide ranging. I spent time yesterday carefully comparing two recordings of Miles Davis (which I happen to have scores of) trying to figure out why they varied the chord changes from recording to recording. But I don’t mistake this kind of music for the excitement and necessity (in my opinion) for music and art that helps me connect to the confusing time I live in, i.e. music that is truly “contemporary.” The Varese quote that appears on many Zappa albums is “The contemporary composer refuses to die.” I thought it was a joke, until I read a bit and understood that Zappa had a deadly serious side that wasn’t all that sophisticated. I thought the joke was that if a composer died (as Zappa now has) he was no longer contemporary.

I had a disturbing conversation with a highly educated musician yesterday. This person surprised me by displaying a sterotypical academic attitude towards music which I quite like and actually play. I tried not to be an obnoxious conversational partner but came home with my head reeling.

I struggle with other musicians who seem to find me and my approach to music a bit uncouth. I also am having one of those weeks where I feel like my musical skills are substandard and am tempted to the ugly response of self pity (instead of my usual anger and resolve to improve). I think I have managed to come through this little bit which is probably more about my stress levels than any reality.

I found an interesting group online yesterday. I was reading the New Yorker article, Serendipty by Sasha Frere-Jones. It’s about a group called the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble. As I checked out their youtube offerings, I found myself totally charmed. Eight brass players and a drummer pumping out hip-hop lines on the street. Fuck me. Cool.

As I flipped through, I thought about my academic friend and decided that maybe I am uncouth. No biggie. It’s who I am. I do like this group and I do like and play all kinds of music that academics sometimes find offensive. So be it.

Yesterday Jordan and I played an entire movement of Milhaud with the metronome clacking away our ears. This is not normally a procedure I go for, but it doesn’t hurt once in a while. Playing with a metronome forces the musician to absolute regularity in his/her playing. This is a skill that I have pursued in my life.

I have rattling around in my head ideas about perfection versus the beauty of the flaw or the human. Playing with a metronome arouses some of these. I have a picture of Beethoven discovering the recently inventend metronome and immediately carefully notating the etempos of his music. Then later returning to these same decisions and revoking them in ire, insisting that the metronome was not consistent. Of course, it was the genius of Beethoven and his emotional music that was inconsistent, not the machine.

Erik Sanko has written a song called “The Perfect Flaw.” It’s on his solo album, “Past Imperfect, present tense,” which I greatly admire.

Is it the hairline fracture that parts the glaze?
That crooked smile meandering across her face,
Is it that lonely note that helps punctuate
how she erupts with laughter when she is late?
Did I fall too hard? Did I break the law?
Have  I fallen for the perfect flaw?

Also rattling around in my head are ideas I have read about tempos and perfection. Ideas like the desirability of having each measure of classical music be a slightly different length from the others, like the fact that there is nothing less musical than a metronome.

Whether one is thinking about the breaths that groups of singers normally take at the end of a phrase interrupting the perfection of the tempo or the idea that any phrase will disturb the precision of the beat if even at a micro level, flaws and variations in music do seem to insist on having a place in my aesthetic.

I wonder how this relates to the use of click tracks in recording. Click tracks clack away precisely as performers lay down their part. The tracks keep all subsequently recorded sections precisely together. They are indeed metronomic. But this is not how I perform. I suppose some types of music which are driven by a steady pulse may resist the idea that there is a bit of life and breadth to the line and the music, but actually I doubt it.

Chopin’s concept of rubato was to “rob” some time that would be compensated later.

This is tricky in organ playing when you have no real ability to accent a sound other than with slight delays (agogic accent). It’s also no mean feat to keep a steady beat. At least for me. I do work with metronomes and pay attention to my own steadiness.

In one of Beethoven’s piano sonatas he is on record that each of the many sections of the piece are taken at a slightly different tempo, although he indicates nothing like this in the score. This is the second movement of Opus 10, no. 3. Charles Rosen says in one of his books that B. said the “pace should change 10 times but only as to be heard by the most sensitive ear.”

And that’s really the key. When changes in tempos or other distortions draw attention to themselves they have failed as ways to communicate the music.

But in this day and age, when technique is so valued and recordings are constantly edited to reflect breathless and unreal performances, it is really the opposite that is more likely for listeners. Music performances that are pristine and flawless can have an odd effect on this listener.

But of course one of the appeals of music to me is that there is always room for improvement. So I guess that means one reaches for perfection, but in reaching remembers one’s humanity.

Whippy skippy.

I was listening to the BBC program Start the Week this morning, when one of the people on the program mentioned Kant’s idea that one should treat people more as an ends than a means. For some reason this struck me as applicable to many dilemmas in my own life. The first thing I thought of was working with people at church who are more used to being used than valued. Maybe that stretches the Kantian thing but I also think that my own attempts at not controling the people around me could fall somewhere in that arena.

Or maybe my brain is just tired. I have spent quite a bit of time recently trying to get all of my Mom’s stuff out of her apartment. For some reason this has been not only a physical effort but a complicated one. Right now I’m waiting for the woman who bought my Mom’s couch, tv, entertainment center and table and chairs to move them out of the apartment. Tomorrow is the deadline since it’s the end of the month. My car is full of stuff to take to charity shops. I also have to move boxes of dishes sitting in the apartment. That’s all that’s left. Yesterday I broke my own little rule of resting on Sunday afternoon and worked my little ass off getting the last of the stuff from my Mom’s apartment to my house.

Now my house smells vaguely of a charity shop and there are tons and tons of things to sort and organize.

It makes my brain tired.

I also have to compile and work on my Mom’s medicaid application for retroactive benefits for my Dad’s nursing home care before he died. Then have the attorney make copies and send it off to the Department of Human Services.

I feel like all of my energy, physical and mental, is being drained by these tasks.

On the treadmill this morning, I read the first chapter of Mont-St.-Michel and Chartres by Henry Adams.

I have long admired the fact that Adams wrote his autobiography, The Education of Henry Adams, in the third third person.

Recently I visited St. Michaels Mount in Cornwall, UK.

At the time I vaguely remembered there was a corollary island with a church on it in France that Adams had written a book about. A quick glance at a map confirmed. Curiously I found no reference to the French St. Michel at the Cornwall St. Michaels, but the French one is the original.

Apparently, the English St. Micheal’s Mount was erected a year after the famous invasion of the Normans. Here is what the wikipedia has to say about this:

In 1067, the monastery of Mont-Saint-Michel gave its support to duke William of Normandy in his claim to the throne of England. It was rewarded with properties and grounds on the English side of the Channel, including a small island located at the west of Cornwall, which, modelled after the Mount, became aNorman priory named St Michael’s Mount of Penzance.

So there you have it. Two very similar places on either side of the English channel: islands that can be walked to on foot when the tide is low and must be approached by boat when the tide is in, both named after Archangel Micheal. Both seem to be French in origin though you would never know it visiting the one in the U.K…… or maybe I just missed that plaque.

I like this sentence in today’s NYT:

The death of Mr. Jackson was the latest Twitter-enhanced luminary spectacle that is specific to Los Angeles, with the customary body-slamming paparazzi, weeping celebrities, grim-faced officials trying to maintain dignity and tourists seeking their succor along Hollywood Boulevard, where the police were forced to place barricades on Friday to hold back the throngs seeking to peer at his star on the Walk of Fame.

Medication is a Focus of Jackson Inquiry by Jennifer Seinhauer

Marque Cornblatt – Steampunk Transhuman Artifacts from Media Sapien on Vimeo.

I like the art in this video. I hope it embeds properly.

Copernicus on Vita brevis

Escape from New York…. a family visit entertainingly chronicled by Fredösphere a blogger I read with some regularity

You know, one of the reasons I think I love the internet so much was years ago, my priest had some IT consultants show his staff some really cool software based on the Tennyson poem, Ulysses. It was full of links (the internet wasn’t that up and running then….. late 80s) to definitions and videos of various great actors reading the poem… also a video of Ted Kennedy famously quoting it on the senate floor. Anyway, I think my imagination awoke to the idea that linear associations were giving way to the idea of networking links.

I started work on this blog early this morning but didn’t publish it. Now it is late in the afternoon and I have spent the day hauling shit from my Mom’s old apartment. My body aches but I can now see the light at the end of the tunnel. So I’m putting on some Miles Davis and sipping a martini. The heck with practicing.

I am resting a bit in front of the fan after doing the treadmill.

Last night I realized that I was reading a book of poet’s letters (John Berryman’s), had by my bedside a book of poetry by James Richardson and a fictionalized story of the poet Enderby. Hmmm.

I seem to be concentrating on my Mom these days. Starting to panic a bit about her old apartment full of stuff. Yesterday I skipped the treadmill and moved some of this stuff instead. Gave up looking for a tea pot my niece wants. It’s probably sitting on my porch right now in one of many boxes. I’ll get to it. The people at the local charity shop seem to be recognizing me as I drop off more and more of my Mom’s buy diazepam in spain stuff there.

I also created recovery disks for my Mom’s new laptop, unpacked and set up her printer and wireless mouse and installed and customized the browser she is familiar with (Mozilla). I fired up her old computer and imported links and set them up with the automatic logons. Then at the end of the day I discovered that her ATT modem seems to be secured. Oy. So while her fancy dancy new lap top worked nicely at my house I couldn’t get it to work last night. Will probably work on this today.

My Mom did get her new cell phone. She (and I) ordered her a jitterbug.

Nice to get a comment from the daughter in England (previous post). Hi Sarah.

I’m still feeling a bit grumpy but somewhat less overwhelmed. My mood lifted yesterday after I forced myself to go buy my Mom a computer, mouse and printer.

Here’s the link to the review about it I put up on facebook.

I brought it to my home and did some tinkering to help Mom when she uses it. Like put the Mozilla browser on it (this is the one she is familiar with).

Right now I am creating recovery disks. It doesn’t come with disks so this seems wise. The lame Geek Squad at Best Buy apparently will do this for you. For a fee. I’m just hoping I have enough CDRs laying around to do this.

After I do the recovery disks, I wil hook up the printer I bought and make sure everything is working order. Then deliver it to Mom later today.

I also helped her order a Jitterbug cell phone.

Am hoping this will have good reception here in Holland. There is a 30 day return policy so I guess we’ll just return it if she drops calls.

I spent a good amount of time messing with my Mom’s apartment yesterday. She sorted stuff while I went through boxes trying to find the goddam tea set with the flowers on it. Last week I had one of my helpers put all the stuff that was stored in my Mother’s hutch into boxes. Then I found out that my niece wanted a certain tea set. I found the cups but not the tea pot itself. I went through four or five boxes yesterday unwrapping carefully wrapped silly stuff looking for it. No dice. I called Jordan (who is the guy who put things in boxes) and he remembered the pot. So I know it’s there somewhere.

I also took a load of shit to Bibles for Mexico. These people were nice enough to come and get Mom’s queen size bed and box springs. She thought she had sold them last week when I had people helping me move out the big stuff. Found out later that the person did not want to buy it. Anyway, it’s now at the charity shop.

Eileen and I had a nice relaxing meal at the pub last night. We sat outside. It was pleasant despite the heat. We came home and hooked up the air conditioner to help Eileen sleep last night.

Today I am back at working on Mom’s apartment. I would desperately like her out of there totally by next Tuesday so we don’t have to pay rent on an empty apartment for a THIRD month.

Somewhere in there I need to practice. I have scheduled hard music again Sunday. As well as trying to learn some sax accompaniments.

Gotta skate. Just got a message from Mom’s computer that it needs more CDRs than I have handly. Screw it. Off to buy DVDRs.

I have until next Tuesday to clear out my Mom’s apartment. She is still sorting through her clothes. I am planning to take her over there this afternoon. It’s unrealistic to expect her to work at this more than an hour or two a day. Yikes.

I am also looking at picking out a laptop and printer for her to purchase and use in her apartment at the nursing home. She has said that she finds comfort in the furniture we brought over last week. Good.

The violin teacher from Hope College emailed me that he will not be able to play a violin part in a Bach cantata movement I have scheduled for August. I still have some ideas up my sleeve.

My basement has gone from flooded to damp.

My saxophone player opted out of rehearsal yesterday.

I think I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed for some reason.

In my dream last night, I was talking to a woman about an old song called “The Song the Wind Sang,” I wrote years ago.  Here are the words to the bridge.

with flowers for hands
the snow dance man
begs me to follow

o you snow dance
I will follow if I can

On looking at a woodcut I did of the snow dance man, my father remarked to me once that he had pictured the snow dance man much differently, more realistically, I guess.

I was surprised he thought of the snow dance man at all. I have written dozens of songs. It feels weird to have all this work stuck in my drawers and brain.

So I woke up thinking about an old song. My body is sore from cleaning the basement (flood). The coffee tastes good as I flip through today’s spam. I always thought that my conversation with robots would involve the cosmic stuff of the philosophical ones in Blade Runner.

Instead I get email from robots about Viagra and Car Insurance. At least they shoot off comments to me. I delete them and rudely don’t respond I guess.

I decided to perform Bach’s little piece on “Wer nur den lieben Gott lasst walten” BWV 647 this Sunday. The gospel is about the woman who reaches out and touches the hem of Jesus’s robe. I relate to the people in the gospel who are the outcasts. The first line of this German chorale seems to me to be slightly appropriate:

Wer nur den lieben Gott läßt walten
Und hoffet auf ihn allezeit,

Whoever lets only the dear God reign
and hopes in him at all times,

Georg Neumark, translation by Francis Brown

I know this is subtle, far too subtle to expect anyone to pick up on. But whippy skippy.

This story makes me think of Blind Willie Johnson classic:

I Know His Blood Can Make Me Whole (link to stream of this song)

I know his blood can,
know his blood can make me whole,
I just touched…(the) hem of his garment.

Blood of Jesus,
blood of Jesus,
I just touched (the) hem of his garment.

Well his blood has,
well his blood has…
I just touched (the) hem of his garment.

I was a gambler just like you,
I was a gambler..

I just touched (the) hem of his garment.

Oh his blood have,
well his blood have..
I just touched (the) hem of his garment.

I was sick and I couldn’t get well,
I was sick and I couldn’t get well…
I just touched (the) hem of his garment.

Well his blood have,
well his blood have..
I just touched (the) hem of his garment.

Jesus blood can…
Jesus blood can…
I just touched (the) hem of his garment.

Ohh his blood have,
well his blood have..
I just touched (the) hem of his garment.

I was sick and I couldn’t get well,
I was sick and I couldn’t get well…
I just touched (the) hem of his garment.

I didn’t really get a chance to composer yesterday. Today I have a ton of things to catch up on. I have to take my Mom to her old apartment and make sure the stuff that family wants to keep is taken to my porch and stored. Mom is supposed to sort through her belongings and decide what she wants to keep and what she wants to discard. I need to finish her medicaid application take 132 and mail that off. I really should pick out some more hymns for upcoming Sundays and write the bulletin article for this Sunday as well.

Instead I think I’ll listen to pomplamoose

I fear that their song, “Beat the Horse,” might be a shot across the bow to people who think music, art, and information wants to be free:

Don’t you like what’s on your plate, it’s not free
shaking fists at this debate,  woe is me  woe is thee

it’s all for show so please bake me cookies.
The stage lights glow and we stare like rookies.

Take your cause and pass it around.
Take one down and pass it around.
I’m not fair and you’re not sound.
Pass it around now you’re not sound.

Take your turn in beating the horse.
Take him down now take him down.
Gee I hope we’re not off course.

Take him down now take him down.

Don’t you like what’s on Tv? It’s not free.
We’ll agree to disagree. Woe is me. Woe is thee.

It’s all for show so please call this number
You’ll never know. And you’ll always wonder.

Okay. Okay. I still like this song and I will BUY your dang product. And continue to beat my own horse.

My two little organ pieces went pretty accurately yesterday. I have found that rehearsing even pieces I can basically play pays off. I had two parishioners come up to me and caution me to think twice before I schedule so many hymns with references to water (“Come thou fount,” “I’ve got peace like a river,” and “Eternal Father strong to save” The last hymn is also known as the navy hymn and the first three stanzas end with the phrase: “O hear us when we cry to thee for those in peril on the sea.”). This is a reference to the flooding we have been experiencing in western Michigan.

I came home and rested. My wife, Eileen, had worn herself out removing wet carpet and stuff from our flooded basement. After my rest I did the same. Wow. Wet carpet is heavy. There’s still more to be done today.

I had a phone call from Elizabeth and a skype chat with Sarah. Ostensibly for Father’s Day.

Both of these people realize that I think Father’s and Mother’s day are pretty bogus diluted hallmark moments. But it’s nice to chat with them anyway. Sarah’s skype was working because her partner, Matthew, had managed to finally get it working on her laptop. Skype is pretty important when you live in the U.K. Elizabeth called me from an airport in St. Louis as she and her partner, Jeremy, were waiting to fly home to NYC after attending (actually Jeremy officiated, heh, but that’s another story) a friend’s wedding. It sounded like they had fun catching up with their friends in St. Louis where they lived for a while.

Eileen and I settled down and watched the DVD, “Doubt.”

I checked on Wikipedia this morning and confirmed my suspicion that this movie was adapted from a stage play. The movie was not quite successful in its attempt to illustrate the nature of trust, doubt and certainty. The script seemed pretty strong. It made a couple of errors that the astute Roman Catholic person might pick up. Like having the priest step out of the pulpit in 1964. Twice. The second time, the choir sang the Taize piece, Ubi Caritas.  If one did not remember that this piece was not being used at the time, all it took was a quick google search this morning to find out it was copyrighted (in the U.S.) fifteen years later in 1979.

But these were not the glaring weaknesses of the movie. It seems the director could not decide if Meryl Streep’s character, Sister Aloysius, was two or three dimensional. Occasionally a real human character peeked out of Streep’s performance. When this happened a strong foil to Hoffmann’s performance as a typical dopey priest from the time was hinted at.

The story I got out of this movie was one of doubt and certainty. The simple plot of sexual overtones in the relationship between Fr. Flynn (Hoffmann) and the altar boy, Donald Miller (Joseph Foster) may have increased the box office of this flick but it seemed to me to be not so important.

In the opening scene, Fr. Flynn’s sermon on doubt draws the viewer’s attention to the idea of doubt. At the same time, Sr. Aloysius prowls the student filled pews poking and prodding children into proper attitudes at Mass. The movie seems to have both of these characters moving from their intial stances of doubt (Fr. Flynn) and certainty (Sr. Aloysius) to understanding if not embracing the polar opposite emotion.

This is what interested me.

The directorial flaws are the costumes of the nuns (unrecognizable but possibly authentic weird habits that look more Amish than Catholic)

and the moments in the film when Sr. Aloysius seems more like the Wicked Witch of the West. As a director, John Shanley does not resist having wind and rain assail his characters in ways that made them more cartoonish than real. Especially the moment when Sr. Aloysius is caught in the wind and leaves. Very Wizard of Oz. Very dopey.

Also the author of the script, Shanley makes a different kind of mistake. After the movie I reflected on my own experience of how the Bishops of the church handle parishioner and nun complaints about priests. I have only seen them support priests. Thus the idea that Sr. Aloysius can initiate events that cause Fr. Flynn to be transferred is a thin plot development. Shanley seems to be aware of this and does not show us much of how Flynn is actually transferred. Aloysius sees it as a triumph, but also alludes to the fact that Flynn’s boss, the Monseigneur,  doesn’t believe her accusations.

My impression is that even though Shanley did both the play and the movie, that this might have worked better on the stage than in the cinema.

I was thinking this morning how the majority of the gay people I know are in the closet. Yikes. This makes me very very sad. But flattered that they come out to me, anyway.

After blogging and exercising yesterday, I went into my basement to discover a few inches of water covered the floor.

I waded over and made sure the drain was clear. Oy. By mid-day about half of it had drained away. This morning all I have is damp floor. It’s still a mess needing to be cleaned up (there is carpet over most of the cement floor that will probably have to be taken up and discarded).

One of my my many unrealistic summer projects was to clean out all the crap in the basement. Throw most of it away and organize what is left so that when my kids come home they can see their stuff (and hopefully deal with it).

So a flooded basement speeds me on my way.

I worked a bit more on my composition project for the Roman Catholic group.

Rehearsed with Jordan. Yesterday we finally did a bit of the Desenclos sonata I have been thinking about compositionally as well as tasted Lars-Erik Larsson’s Sax concerto and John C. Worley’s Sonata for alto sax and piano. I find Larsson’s writing engaging and Worley’s writing a bit hokey. (Remember this comes from an old guy who not only bought sheet music for the “Theme from Peter Gun” and “Perry Mason,” but has ordered a book of Queen music)

All of this material is new to me. It comes from the world of saxophone and I am finding it fun to get a glimpse into how a bunch of new music works.

Oh yes. We decided to work up the third movement of Milhaud’s Scaramouche (suite for sax and orch) called “Brazileira.”

Brahhhhhzilllll. Oh. That’s a different piece. Anyway, this is a very cool little samba and will do nicely for the offertory in a couple of weeks at my church.

This morning I am playing two little elegant pieces for the prelude and postlude.

The prelude is a trio based on NETTLETON (Come thou fount) by Aaron David Miller. “Come thou fount” is this morning’s opening hymn. Very appropo actually due to the fact that the church along with half of western Mich had seriously flood damage this weekend.

The postlude is the toccata from a piece by Wayne Wold based on MELITA (Eternal Father, Strong to Save). It’s a bit tricky in places. I am hoping I can perform these two pieces a bit under tempo and do them accurately. That way if anyone bothers to listen, they make a bit of sense.

I have discovered a new poet. Or at least have been introduced to one.  I recently had lunch with two composer friends of mine.

One of them I was meeting for the first time, Tim Schrems, and when he discovered I liked poetry he launched into a description of the poetry of a man named James Richardson.

I bought a collection of his poetry used called “Interglacial.” This is the first poem. I like it.

Anyway

The way an acre of starlings towers and pours
rapidly through itself, a slipping knot,
landing so few feet down the furrows (the whole skywriting
like a secret no one knows they have given away)
is one of those breathtaking wastes
(sun and the seeds they feed on being others)
in which something senseless, even selfish, absurdly magnified,
becomes grandeur (love is another).
Sometimes the flock, banking in unison,
vanishes an instant, like a sheet of paper edge-on
(a secret, anyway, is the illusion
confessing it would make a difference).
I watched this happen once – two seconds, hours –
till I understood no kindness, not a shadow or stone.
And they did not come back,
though I waited all evening (and it was you
I waited for). Though the sky turned black.

by James Richardson

I managed to get my internet connection working better by simply restarting everything, including the two modems between me and the internet. It’s still working a bit weird but I find in the wonderful world of computers there are so many variables it’s hard to know what’s causing pages to load slowly and for some links to automatically pop me into TDS’s search engine. The latter I find particularly annoying.

Got up early yesterday and went and practiced organ. Spent the rest of the day moving big stuff out of my Mom’s apartment.

I think this book looks interesting:

I know this sort of thing isn’t for everyone (sheesh… like so many of my own interests), but I have read both Hiss’s and Chamber’s books about this story and have found these two characters pretty interesting.

I found this book on Arts and Letters Daily, one of the handful of sites I check pretty regularly.

But when I tried to click on the link, boom! TDS (or some internet god) decided the link was broken and that I needed to see a list of links from their stupid stupid search engine. Oy.

I managed to find the book and then go over to my library site (again with the broken link stupid TDS thing but it went away on the reload) and interlibrary loan a copy.

My Gmail is acting funny too this morning. It refuses to completely load in the standard view. Good grief.

Man, I’ve got a bad feeling about this. In the last twelve hours, my web service provider (T.D.S. Metrocom) has failed to load pages, decided that common links are broken, and popped me into it’s own search results. Crap. Also, it doesn’t like to stream online radios as much as you used to with regular interruptions every thirty seconds or so. Just now I couldn’t even get Michigan Radio to work at all. I hope this is just some sort fluke and not something they have adjusted to monitor activity from their customers.

And every page seems to take a new addition 20 seconds or so to load. Bah.

I’m up early listening to the Michigan rain. I have hired three men and truck to help me move some stuff out of my Mom’s old apartment. I do like the rain but it will probably make today more miserable. Yesterday, I managed to sit down with my Mom and pin her down on just exactly what larger pieces of furniture she wants to move and what I can give to the local charity.

I had a nice chat with my boss. It turns out U2charist was her brain storm idea (see the previous post). Oy. Anyway, it doesn’t look like I am going to have to be the main music guy on this idea and that is my main concern. I feel a little bad because even though she was the source of this idea, I was pretty critical. She said she had in mind outreach to college age students. I pointed out that most of them were not born before U2’s the Joshua Tree was released. Hey, but what do I know? Maybe the local college students are all closet Bono fans.

Ironically, I ripped my U2 CDs to my hard drive last night. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get “Rattle and Hum” to rip. I like live albums. I managed to rip Joshua Tree and Zootropia. I know. I know. Ancient history. But I still like some of this stuff.

I mentioned to my boss that I had a conversation about music with a local Gen-xer that very day. I told her I would have felt odd discussiong U2 with him in the same breath as Vampire Weekend and Fanfarlo.

I continued working on my choral composition for the Catholic composer group. I’m kind of doing an bad Arvo Part setting just for the fuck of it.

I pulled the oboe part from Bach’s BWV 84 movement 3. This is the one I hope to have performed at my church in August.

This morning I am thinking seriously of going over to the church and practicing instead of treadmilling. It’s early and it’s going to be a long day. I’m afraid at the end of the day I might not have the energy or motivation to do some badly needed organ practice. I have once again scheduled music for Sunday that I need to rehearse.

I have invited Jordan to play at my church a week from this Sunday. He sounded a bit weird about it on the phone yesterday saying that we would talk about it today. (He is one of the three men I have hired to help me move).

I purchased copies of the themes for “Peter Gunn” and “Perry Mason” online yesterday. These are two tunes my bass player mentioned that he thought would be fun to do. Also ordered a used copy of a collection of Queen tunes. Both Nate the bass guy and Jordan seemed interested in covering some Queen. What the heck.

I now have a soprano, an oboe player, a harpsichord player and a cellist (all amazingly parishioners) for the bach thing. I have emailed the best violinist I know but haven’t heard back from him. I figure he will be off doing important college professor things this August but wanted to at least invite him to play on this.

I’m off to practice.

I woke up feeling numb and dark. Yesterday was quite a day for me. I accompanied my lovely wife through a colonoscopy procedure. First let me say for  interested parties who might read this, that Eileen’s colonoscopy came out totally good. No polyps.

It was tough to watch and assist yet another member of my family go through medical procedures. The watcher is the helpless one. But Eileen is doing great now.

I went from her bedside to a staff meeting.

Our church has “launched” the daycare service that it has sponsored for years. This means that in the next week or so the daycare will move to a new facility and space in the church plant will be freed up. So the staff seemed almost giddy as people are looking forward to having more room to do their work. Nothing is changing for me, but that’s fine.

It now looks like I am going to have enough parishioner/musicians to perform at least one movement of one Bach cantata this August.

I have a singer, an oboe player, a harpsichordist and a cellist. I only need a violinist to complete the group. As I told the oboe player yesterday, since I have this many parishioners willing to commit themselves, we <will> find a way to do this. I can always hire a violinist if I can’t find a parishioner willing and able. It is an extraodinary group of people in my community and it is kind of amazing that I can even think of doing a Bach cantata movement like this with just parishioners.

I spent a bit of time at the organ yesterday. I am back to learning William Bolcom’s setting of “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child.” It is difficult but getting easier. I am thinking I might want to learn more of his “Gospel Settings.”

One of the staff persons contacted me yesterday and asked me questions about doing a U2charist at our parish with live musicians.

She never did ask me what I thought of the idea. I wonder if anyone will. My first notion is to notice that this sort of thing is never about the kids or the musicians.

It seems to be about using music in an odd way to create a buzz in church. I think of it as sort of Sister Act meets the Blues Brothers.

But I also think it’s sort of a boomer wet dream.

But at my church we refer to the young people who go through a sort of passage rite as “celebrities.”

Oy. It’s all very depressing to me. But fortunately I will not have to be the primary dude for this one. At least I hope I won’t. Please God. We have a bunch of talented musicians young and old at my church, but I don’t seem to connect well with them.

As I was doing my treadmill yesterday I began to work on a little project for the Roman Catholic composer group I met with recently.

I am their token atheist/protestant, heh.

We decided to set a ritual text from the recent rites in their church. I think I have a finished rough draft which I am planning to mess with today.

I’m also planning to start to pull the instrumental parts out of that Bach cantata movement.

I can hear birds singing this morning. Maybe this mood will pass.

No coffee this morning because I am fasting for a blood test. Yesterday I chose three Sundays worth of hymns and emailed them to my rector for approval. Did some score prep for today’s rehearsal with “Small Rain.” I am not finding enough time to actually write for these players and it’s a shame because it is an opportunity to compose and then instantly put the work into a rehearsal. I have found this process valuable and fun since I was about 16 years old and had some talented tolerant musician friends in high school.

My college colleagues were not always as interested in my composing as the guys in high school. One college violist snootily told me she couldn’t tell if my unaccompanied viola piece was worth learning. (I don’t think it was probably that great. I still have it somewhere. But what a comment.)

But thankfully there were enough people in my colleges that I often got my work enthusiastically performed.

And that’s where “Small Rain” is also I think.

Right now I’m reviving some old pieces from the 80s just so we can have some original material until I (or someone else in the band) can come up with something fresher.

I also rehearsed organ quite a bit yesterday. I am back to working on William Bolcolm’s setting of “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child.” He has dedicated this piece to the great Motown artist, Marvin Gaye. Marvin Gaye was apparently murdered by his own father. So this irony is probably not lost on Bolcolm as he chose this wonderful African American Spiritual to write a Motown eulogy. I say Motown because to this performer Bolcolm successfully employs an ensemble of Motown sounds on the organ (electric bass idiom in the pedals, rhythmic staccato electric guitar afterbeats in the accompaniment, and tight jazzy complex handfuls of harmony with the melody). All of this is the nasty little key of Eb minor. Nasty to me anyway.

After taking supper up to Eileen (our last supper until the blood fast… we are both having blood drawn this morning for the usual check up tests), for some reason I ended up once again on the organ bench. I guess I have missed practicing organ. Hah. Between vacation and then having it be out of commission while it was repaired, I haven’t bothered with too much organ prep.

Anyway, I played through several settings from Bach’s Orgelbuchlein.

I do love this little work and yesteray it took on a new life for me (this is the way much of this style of music works with my little pea brain… I keep returning to the style of Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Schuber, et al and they keep breathing new life into my understandings of music). I came home and figured out which of the Orgelbuchlein tunes are in the Episcopal Hymnal. (Of the fifty or so settings in this collection that Bach composed and compiled himself, I count 18 hymn texts with 16 tunes in the Hymnal 1982 that Bach set).

I’m still thinking of revamping my web site. Yesterday I purchased a domain name: “thesmallrain.com.” Actually I didn’t purchase it. I get a couple of free ones with my subscription to BluHost. I am working on some re-arrangements for Small Rain and also have in mind some composing.

I was reading in The Gift by Lewis Hyde this morning when I came across a couple of interesting ideas.

Hyde points out for a thing to have market value, it must be detachable. For example one can estimate the worth of one’s possessions such as a piano or a wrist watch. But some things don’t compute into market value. “We find it inappropriate, even rude, to be asked to evaluate in certain circumstances,” he writes. He goes on and cites the story where one is in a life boat with one’s spouse, child and parent and must choose who is to be thrown overboard. He says part of this dilemma is we are normally unwilling to step back that far from our family to evaluate their commodity value.

This reminded me of the basic plot of Sophie’s Choice where the mother is cruelly forced to choose between which of her children goes to the concentration camp to die.

Hyde is working on our relationship to each other and how gifts bind us and material things can keep us distant from each other.

Next he tells the story of how Ford Pinto figured a cost benefit analysis of a safety improvement, reckoning the dollar value of a human life (Pinto Madness by Mark Dowie). If you’re curious, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in 1971, a human life was worth $200,725. When Pinto did the math of the small improvement, it was cheaper to let people die than fix it.

Hyde points out there that it’s not always clear what can be thought of as having a cost. It is the rare familiy, he says, that charges for the evening meal. But the cost of the meal can be computed appropriately.

He concludes this section this way

The great materialists, like these automobile executives, are those who have extnded the commodity form of value into the human body, while the great spiritual figures, like the Buddha, are those who have used their own bodies to extend the worth of gifts just as far [In the other direction]

It has been an interesting week for me. On Friday I drove to Grand Rapids and met with some Roman Catholic composers. The meeting pulled me back towards church discussions of years ago when I was active in the Roman Catholic circles.  I was the token atheist I think. Anyway, after some talk we decided to all do a setting of the same text. The text was chosen from the (newly?) appointed Communion and Introit sentences that were recommended in the last brain dead reform of the liturgy by the poor RCs.

More fun was the lunch I had after with my old friend Nick and a new guy Tim. These men are very competent and dedicated musicians. I enjoy talking with people who tolerate my eccentric insistence on broad connections between diverse aspects of music and just plain intellectual bullshitting.

Then the wedding. Which went fine.

The organ which has been out of commission for the last two weeks was ready. It was a packed house whose talking was louder than my Mozart and Bach on the piano.

Then to the choir party. I think I had been kind of dreading it because I have been worrying about what to do with this group next fall. Of course, the evening was relaxed and enjoyable. I’m like the proverbial farm cat. A friend of mine once told me that farm cats are notoriously shy and avoid human contact. But once caught they can’t get enough petting.

I’m an introvert who sometimes dreads contact with people. But I do like people. And I do like the people in my choir despite some of their bad behavior. Hey people are just people.

I also had floating in the back of my mind the idea that next year I will simply ask choir members not to sing on a Sunday they have been unable to attend the immediate preceding rehearsal. This is probably all that is needed to reduce my own frustration with the unpredicitability of allowing a bunch of volunteer singers to determine their own level of commitment and attendance to my rehearsals.

Yesterday, I had fun rehearsing with Jordan and Nate. I pulled out some old tunes I had written for church in the 80s. These pieces have names like “Beach Prayer” and “January Rondo.” They are really goofy church new age, but I wanted us to do some orginal material and  haven’t written anything for these players yet. We also rehearsed my new arrangement of “Why did the elephant cross the road?” Nate brought his brand spanking new Bass version of the Real Books I and II so we had to do some of that of course.

I enjoy working with these men very much. They are both fine musicians and I find interesting and challenging to play with them.

After they left I straightened house a bit. Later went over and rehearsed organ for the first time in weeks. I’m easily prepared for today’s music, but some of my projects like Bach and William Bolcolm were understandably rusty. But it was actually good to get back to it.

Today is my and Eileen’s 34th wedding anniversary. We are planning a quiet restaurant meal to celebrate. We received a card from her mother. It is so odd that 34 years after Eileen’s mom and dad refused to acknowledge our marriage and skipped the ceremony that this wound is still festering.  I tried some years ago to talk to Eileen’s Dad about this as kind of silly after we had been married for a couple of decades, but he seemed as disapproving as ever. Eileen’s Mom rarely communicates directly so the cards seem ironic. Weird shit. But I’m grateful as ever that Eileen and I have our marriage. It continues to be one of the best parts of my life.

Man. I have over three hundred spam in my comments today. Blah.

So yesterday was interesting. I rehearsed with my bud, Jordan. It was fascinating to me to try to understand how he wanted me to play the jazz stuff. I’m not that great at replicating famous jazz pieces on my little Electric Piano while kicking bass. Jordan could feel me goofing up the tempo and the style. We felt a bit of pressure because he had booked in to an open mic night at Barnes and Noble. I can make music up and do interp but when I have to sound like Herbie Hancock or Charlie Parker’s back up band, it takes a bit of doing and more prep time then we had.

Then Nate Walker and his dad arrived. Nate is a bass player in the eleventh grade and is a fine musician. Apparently he has heard Jordan and me play at LemonJellos. He was quiet but interested in what we are doing. He is a bit like me in that he hasn’t had much jazz experience. He quickly fit in with our musical morning and brought a freshness to what we were doing.

Before he left he got on the phone and booked him and me (Jordan will be out of town) to open for a little Jazz group (the What-Nots) that will be playing in Zeeland on July 28th. While he was on the phone he said we needed to have a name…. that is the organizer insisted on it. He put her on hold and we mused about it for a few minutes.

I have been doing a lot of thinking about compositions and  web sites and changing my online presence and had actually thought of some names during my vacation. Fortunately I had written them down. When I said “Small Rain” Nate seemed to think that would do. Jordan agreed. So we booked in under “Small Rain.”

I took the phrase from the poem:

Westron wind, when wilt thou blow?
That the small rain down can rain.
Christ, that my love were in my arms,
And I in my bed again.

I remember hearing this poem for the first time way back in high school and liking it. I still do.

So maybe I’ll keep  “Small Rain” as a name. Like Sam Beam and his “Iron and Wine” name.

The open mic thing was interesting. When I got there the woman from Barnes and Noble said they wanted us to set up by the cook books but that the nearest eletrical outlet was in the middle of the store. Sheesh. Eileen and I went home and got a long extension cord.

Open mic nights remind me of prayer meetings. The moderator would ask who wants to go next and the evening was full of awkward pauses.

There was one guy who seemed to understand what poetry was. His poems had interesting images in them and caught my attention. The other poets seemed young to me or naive. You wondered if they had ever read much poetry. One woman used words she seemed unable to pronounce or at least I couldn’t make head nor tails of how she was using words.

Mortifyingly my boss showed up by chance. She is on vacation but she insisted on staying until Jordan decided we should fill an awkward pause with a piece.

Performing is always interesting. Over the evening we performed several pieces. I felt like we started out a bit shakey and did better as the night went on. Stopping and starting breaks my rhythm. Plus our audience was mostly made up of people waiting for us to get done so they could read their poems. Jordan seemed to have brought a group that cheered us on.

I wasn’t totally satisfied with my performance. Jordan and I continue our discussion both musically and verbally about what jazz is now. I love Jazz the way I love Bach. But I’m not sure either speak clearly to the contemporary conversation of art the way living breathing composers and interpreters do.

Jordan’s still figuring out his relationship to this genre. Last night during a Charlie Parker tune after we played the composed melody (the head as jazzers say) Jordan launched into pretty much a note for note rendition of Parker’s own improv. I found this startling and mentioned it to him afterward. I told him that suddenly Parker was in the room.

I still don’t understand the idea of learning and performing the great jazz musicianas note for note. It’s certainly not the way they perform(ed). It seems to me that spontaneity and individual voice are important to me as an improviser and composer.

I am a trained organist and they are the exception to the rule that classical musicians don’t improvise. Unfortunately we (organists) seem to be taught to improvise in a pretty restricted manner. That is that our improvisation (at least initially if not always) must follow the careful voice leading and harmonic progressions of first year harmony.

It is surprising then to hear the great organ living improvisers who seem to be simply composing freely and spontaneously.

Years ago I took the AAGO exam. I got passing scores and would have received my certificate except that I failed one tiny section because the judges didn’t like my improvised interlude. The task was to improvise an interlude that changed keys. It was a simple harmonic task that I like to think I was easily capable of. Instead of course I tried to do something creative. Three of the four judges gave me failing scores. And the rules were (are?) that if you fail even one tiny section you could not receive your certficiate.

I don’t quibble with the rule. Some time after I took this exam, I received a letter urging me to retake it. The AGO had actually made the exams a bit easier and set up some more progressive steps to certification. By that time however my head was in a totally different place and I didn’t feel like doing the prep.

The exam entails a pretty rigorous prep including learning some repertoire, numerous written exams and playing exams. The written exams include not only a general knowledge test, but also dictation, writing a fugal exposition and other stuff. Before I went back to school to get my degrees my plan was to simply take all of these exams and get some creditability that way. Hah. Much easier to get the degrees which I did.

Never did get creditability at least not in the eyes of many of the people I seem to run into here in Holland. Poor me.

I think yesterday wore me out. In a good way. I enjoy playing with young people who are better than me. I asked Jordan some questions about a piece we are messing about with this summer. It’s called “Prelude, Cadence and Finale” written by a person named Desenclos. Written in 1956 it has intrigued me as I have been learning the piano accompaniment.

Well no pics today, dear reader. I’m exhausted and have to get on the treadmill soon.