When we were driving home from Whitehall on Sunday, we listened to the Prairie Home Companion. I knew that Chris Thiles had taken over the Garrison Keilor role. I seemed to remember him as a phenomenal part of The Punch Brothers. I used to like the Prairie Home Companion but like many things felt that it outlived its original interesting impulse and was simple riding the same old formula. I was pleasant surprised to be drawn into this segment (which I found online yesterday in an attempt to identify some of the music done in it).

The range of material in this segment fascinated me. Dr. Dre, Django Reinhardt, Stephane Grappelli, Lead Belly, and Dolly Parton all performed very expertly by these amazing musicians. I was taken with Joanne Newsom of whom I was unaware. And Aofie O’Donovan’s rendition was breathtaking to me. A lot of skill on display here.  Here’s the entire piece they excerpted in this segment.

I haven’t listened all the way through to it, but have it on my list to sit down and listen to carefully watching the lyrics.

But I did listen to and watch this one. I like this woman’s voice. It reminds me of a mix of Grace Slick and the Pentangle singer and some others.

Then Alexandr Misko uploaded this video. I didn’t know the tune he was covering. But after listening to it I prefer his amazing rendition.

I phoned my doctor’s office this morning. I have a check up on Thursday. I try to get them to schedule the blood draw before that so my doctor can have it in hand when I see her. There was no draw schedule, but they scheduled one for me. I was able to go immediately and get that done.

I have been getting some response to posting about my recent church stuff. Facebook is good for me this way. It manages a bit of cyber connections with other musicians. I know it’s kind of silly, but it does cheer me up and encourage me to feel some support by other professionals. (Hi Rhonda! This includes you, of course.)

I also enjoy seeing other church musicians’ posts as well.

I’m listening to this music as I write. I think I like it. The composer was recommended in this weekend’s “Facing the Music” interview with Sunwook Kim.

Today I have to prepare for tomorrow evening’s rehearsal of the Sing Along Messiah I am playing harpsichord for Sunday. I have been wanting to get up there and play around with Nick Palmer’s church’s harpsichord in Grand Haven, but just haven’t had the time. Today I have the time, but I don’t think I have the energy. I need to rest up a bit I think.

Eileen made me breakfast this morning and even did part of the dishes. I usually get up and do this. But this morning, I got up and gathered the trash together, put it out, cleaned the cat litter (my weekly task since the dust from the litter bothers Eileen), and put that out as well. I think Eileen was feeling a bit guilty that I did all this.

Now I’m listening to this Violin Concerto also recommended by Sunwook Kim. I think I like it even more than the Piano etudes.

I just called the Methodist church where our AGO members recital will be held. As usual, it’s a bit tricky to get in to this church to do this. But I managed to schedule some time for my trio to rehearse there as well as a bit of time for me to go in and register the piece we will do together.

The Trouble with Reality – Workman Publishing

New book by Gladstone coming out soon. I will definitely read this one. She’s great!

Why You Should Read Books You Hate – The New York Times

I kind of hated this article. Ironic, isn’t it?

America’s Uncivil War Over Words – The New York Times

This article paints the American Heritage Dictionary as reactionary. I wonder how true that is? Anyway, some interesting history here.

Viet Thanh Nguyen: In praise of doubt and uselessness – LA Times

Some history and insights about Nguyen’s art (writing). I liked learning about his writing process since I admire his work so much.

Erdoğan’s referendum victory spells the end of Turkey as we know it | Yavuz Baydar | Opinion | The Guardian

 Turkey’s Good-Governance Referendum – The New York Times

These two articles are written by citizens of Turkey. Baydar (the first author) seems level headed and convincing. The second is an adviser to Erdogan. You can guess what he had to say. The following link is a good level headed critique of yesterday’s election and the history behind it.

RIP Turkey, 1921 – 2017 | Foreign Policy

Eileen and I just got back from the annual Easter Egg hunt at her Mom’s house. I drove up and she drove back. We are both pretty tired at this point. So this will be a bit of a “no thank you helping” of a blog post.

It was interesting dong this week from the piano.

These pics all came from the Grace Episcopal Church Facebook page.

In looking at pictures of the choir and congregation at the Vigil, I am struck how nicely wide open so many mouths are. Good singing!

My composition was very well received and we did nail it. This is us playing it as the postlude last night.

Church went well again this morning. I explained to the choir that I scheduled improvs for the prelude and postlude today not to show off but because it was easiest for me. Improvising was a better use of my energy than spending many hours learning repertoire that might go unheard due to noise of the Easter visiting crowd. As it was they did seem to listen to my improvs. For the prelude I improvised on the opening hymn, the ever  popular “Jesus Christ is risen today.” For the postlude I used the tune “In dir ist freude” since it was our second communion hymn. I put it in duple with a walking bass.  I actually had applause for that one! Wild! All of my improvs today had a debt to Jazz.

As I was leaving, two Hope college profs were chatting outside. They congratulated me on a job well done. (Unheard of!) One of them said that there was a nice “buzz” in the choral acoustic now. He’s a choir director and does know whereof he speaks. Then much to my delight he said now what we need to do is rip up the carpeting in the front of the room around the altar. I looked at him and said “So moved! as in second that emotion.

I’m still experimenting with news apps. Yesterday I put several more on my laptop. I usually get up in the morning and begin looking at the articles on Google News which compiles online articles (presumably using an algorithm procedure?). I use the tablet web browser app to access this. But yesterday I installed a tablet app version. I also installed apps from The Washington Post (paid subscription, but I’m on a free month long trial), BBC News and something called “News Reader” which compiles articles a bit like Google News. These are the ones that I put on my active news page on my tablet.

There were a couple of others I installed but wasn’t too impressed with. I’m not as excited about the New York Times app after comparing it to the Web Browser version today. There’s something about looking at what the NYT has chosen to put on it’s front page that is clarifying. I’m probably just stuck in the past. But I find it helpful to see how much of the article they put on the front page before jumping it inside.

You’ll notice that today’s paper has a large article about France’s National Front candidate, Marie Le Pen and the fact that two of her prominent aides may have Nazi sympathies.

This article was no where to be seen on the app version of the paper. I had to search the author to find it. Weird.

Right and Left: Partisan Writing You Shouldn’t Miss – The New York Times

This link is to an article in a series they have named  “All the Angles.”I’m not sure how this works in print, but online it lists off several current articles and classifies them politically, “From the Right,” “From the Left,” and “Finally from the Center. I was so impressed when I read this that I signed up for the silly newsletter from the NYT called “What we are reading?” since it promised to notify me when there was a new “Partisan Writing Roundup.”

It’s not just the articles themselves that interest me, it’s the sources. For example in today’s link above they fall like this.

“From the Right”

American Greatness
The Arizona Republic
Townhall
Hugh Hewitt in The Washington Post

“From the Left”

The Atlantic
The American Prospect
The New Republic
The Nation

“Finally from the Center”

Jeff Greenfield in Politico
Nature Human Behaviour
Scientific American

I’m still working out what to make of this, but I find it informative to see how this writer at least sees the current partisan spectrum. There’s a center? Who knw?

I finished reading this little book of poetry recently. I like Dunn. I’m not sure he’s terribly profound but he is witty. The last poem in the book ends with this couplet:

“A bad memory is the key to happiness.
I apologize for everything I haven’t done.”

So the whole book ends with a pun on his own name.

Yesterday, I was unsurprisingly tired for a while. Then I got sleepy which was a surprise and different.

My afternoon rehearsal with my trio went very well. I do enjoy playing music with these people. After trio rehearsal I prepped for the evening service. This took longer than I expected.  I wasn’t moving terribly quickly with a tired brain. I barely had time to get home and change. When Eileen said that if I wasn’t so tired it would be a good day to walk to service, I immediately said that we sounded like a good idea. It would not only save us from trying to navigate a very crowded event at church (both Feeding America and Maundy Thursday service), I would get some exercise in. This walk may have helped me wake up a bit.

The sleepiness went away. I met with Dawn my cellist and Laurie her sister and my violist for the ending Taize chant, “Stay with me.” I played guitar on this. After a brief run through with them, I prepared the choir for Maundy Thursday. It was very odd in that I thoroughly rehearsed “Ubi Caritas” by Durufle and it sounded good. I had them singing pure Latin vowels with good beautiful phrases. Then a late bass came in. We ran through it again and it was like a different choir. Wow. I scrambled with some techniques like singing it staccato to energize a beautiful slow legato line. In service, it sounded good but not as good as we had it in rehearsal. It never fails to amaze me how volatile choral blend is especially in an amateur choir that has difficulty have the same people to sing and rehearse with. It’s practically as crazy as handbell choirs with missing people.

But the service went well last night. We did some a cappella singing in the undercroft with surprising success.

Today I’m tired and a bit sleepy. But I have the whole day to prep for this evening’s service and rest.

new app for jupe

I usually read my New York Times on my tablet in a sort of sneaky way. Originally when I tried to use their app, it informed me that my subscription was only for browser and phone access, not tablet access. But I found out that if I opened a browser on my tablet I could read the daily paper that way.

This morning I was laying in bed and wanted to look at the paper.  For some reason my browser version of the app couldn’t find Friday’s paper. (I just checked here on my laptop and it is still doing this.) Frustrated I clicked on the tablet app and lo and behold there was my Friday paper. Not only that, but after using it I realized that it was a better way for me to read my New York Times.

Will London Fall? How Dare You! – The New York Times

Analysis of the response to the recent article.

Inside Turkey’s Purge – The New York Times

Another long read. These background articles are helpful especially before Sunday’s critical  election in Turkey.

The Point of Hate – The New York Times

What could be the point of naturally selecting for hate behavior? Interesting question. Even more interesting is the answer that it actually is behavior that furthers the evolutionary reproductive self interest of the species.

The Broken Supreme Court – The New York Times

Speaking from the left, my hero, Linda Greenhouse, says the Republicans have broken it. Some of her online commenters don’t agree.

Outed as Transgender on ‘Survivor’ — and in Real Life – The New York Times

I admire the writer Jennifer Boylan and like to read her articles. However, beginning a serious discussion of privacy and secrecy in regards to transgender life with a stupid stupid anecdote from the reality TV show, “Survivor,” probably doesn’t do the topic justice.

I’m not familiar with the whole reality TV show genre. It basically doesn’t interest me. This lack of experience and knowledge is not helping me understand our current President but that’s another story.

I have been thinking a great deal about secrecy and privacy lately. I like Boylan’s distinction that holding back information about your gender to someone you don’t love is a privacy issue but doing that with someone you love is one of  secrecy.

Trinity Church Is Sued for Moving a Sculpture That Marked the 9/11 Loss of a Tree – The New York Times

Too bad. It looks like it might be kind of a cool piece of art to me.

James Baldwin’s Archive, Long Hidden, Comes (Mostly) Into View – The New York Times

I’ve been reading Baldwin all my adult life. I admire him and have learned from him. It would be fascinating to know more about him via correspondence.

I dreamed about Frank Zappa a couple of nights ago. I was introducing him to a young keyboard player. Zappa was so impressed with him that he wanted the young man to study with his current keyboard player. In my dream it wasn’t clear who that was.

This time of year finds me dealing with being immersed in religiosity. I had a boss (Roman Catholic Priest) who used to say around this time of year, “Too much church. Too much church.” This strikes me as still true for me even though my duties are much less strenuous now than they were then.

At choir rehearsal last night, I believe people were fatigued. Many of them are busy all day. One soprano didn’t show. Her husband informed me she wasn’t coming just before rehearsal. Another came in 45 minutes late.  The second had told me she might be late due to work stuff. This left one soprano. An alto looked at our Good Friday anthem and didn’t recognize it. I wasn’t able to capture the beautiful sound we have been making, but dutifully drilled parts and talked about upcoming services.

Before lunch, Eileen and I will go say hi to Mom. It will be interesting to see if she likes her new chair. She didn’t get out of bed yesterday when we were there.

This afternoon I am meeting with my piano trio. I asked the cellist to come a bit later than usual so that we could just concentrate on the one piece she is playing with me for the Good Friday prelude. I am hoping the violinist is not too late. When she shows, we will go over the Vigil postlude and Vigil music. If we have time we will rehearse the Purcell arrangements I have done for us. By shortening this rehearsal, I’m trying to “husband my resources” as I often say these days.

I am expecting this evening’s liturgy to come off fine. I was able to distribute the Triduum booklet to the choir last night. There’s nothing that different in it from year’s past except that this evening’s meal that we usually share as a parish we will be sharing as a parish with our monthly distribution of food, Feeding America.

I walked back and forth to church yesterday. That’s a mile. After treadmilling on Tuesday I was physically exhausted. I was reminded that treadmilling helps me break a sweat. A leisurely walk to work does not. Obviously treadmilling is better exercise. But I’m putting it off until after Sunday. I’m not feeling too tired this morning.

After we go see Mom, I will need to prepare for the rehearsal this afternoon and the service this evening.

2017 Pulitzer Prize Winners & Finalists – The Pulitzer Prizes

I read over the Pulitzer Prize winners in a NYT article a few days ago. I eagerly checked out the composer, Du Yun, who won the Pulitzer for her opera, “Angel Bones.” I was disappointed. Probably set myself up with too high expectations.

I did think that the man who won for poetry, Tyehimba Jess, looked interesting. I am reading four books of poetry right now, but will soon check this dude out. He’s from Detroit and writes about music in his poems. Promising.

Erdogan’s Turkey – BBC News

I keep thinking about what it means to be informed while living in an insular extremely privileged country. Our fourth estate isn’t doing a great job these days. The adulation for the President after his attack on Syria was discouraging to say the least. A good short sixteen minute podcast on this came out yesterday from On The Media (link). Turkey is another anomaly news wise. My impression is that Erdogan has been gathering power and repressing intellectuals and journalists under the guise of furthering his reaction to events of 2016. I will keep an eye on Sunday’s outcome. The article above is laid out in a unique way with still photos in the background as you scroll through. In addition there are photos and a video embedded in the scroll through. It’s an interesting approach and reminds me of what the NYT did in the article on London I linked yesterday.

A Gathering of Orchestras in D.C. – The New Yorker

Even gatherings like this are political these days. I am curious about Caroline Shaw’s new violin concerto described in this article. It’s not on YouTube yet. Too soon for Spotify.

I have been trying to lay low the last couple of days. I’m hoping that resting on these days will pay off in the upcoming marathon. We’ll see. I’m planning on trying to pace myself as well.  So I haven’t sat at an organ console for a while. Instead I have been practicing Beethoven and others at the piano at home. I did manage 45 minutes on the treadmill yesterday. This is my first treadmill session in quite a while. I like to think it’s not related to my check up scheduled for next week. I have gained weight and my Blood Pressure has not always been low in the interim between check ups. Bah. But that’s why I go. In my own perverse way, I try to take care of myself.

Eileen finally mailed off her visa application yesterday. She will be going to Beijing for a couple of weeks this month. If it weren’t for all the fuss at work about the new organ and my own championing of choral excellence there, I would join her. Ironically, her absence may possibly impact the quality of the choir, since she is the only dependable alto, the other two having serious family stuff that keeps them on call to miss rehearsals and services.

I have told Eileen it would be insane for her to not go on this trip because of her volunteer church choir commitment. I know she misses our family, especially the two new grandkids in England and China. She is excited and motivated about the trip. She has decided to take a train to Chicago, then a shuttle to O’hare. I think she has done this mostly to relieve me of driving her to Chicago. I do appreciate it. She will return the same way.

I’m sitting here waiting for a call from the furniture store where we purchased a new recliner chair for my Mom (with her money of course). They are supposed to deliver it this morning sometime between 8:30 and noon. I have a meeting with Rev Jen at 10 AM. Eileen will be available by then to make sure this comes off smoothly. Until then, if they call, I plan to hop in the car and supervise the arrival of the chair. Mom has mentioned everyday that she will be glad when her new chair arrives. Right now she is sitting in a comfy chair provided by the nursing home with a stool to prop up her feet. But she has been complaining of back aches. I’m hoping the new recliner will help alleviate this.

So now I’m writing around noon. Mom’s chair is in place. They called and Eileen and I jumped in the car and met them at Mom’s. Mom was still in bed. But now she has her chair. Excellent.

It interests me that at this time in my life my Mother and Father are so present to me. I see my Mom almost everyday (sometimes Eileen will drop by without me). My Father is around in a more insubstantial way, present in dreams and in poems I read.

This morning both Derek Walcott and Stephen Dunn were pondering their father in the poems I read. In Omeros XII, Walcott seems to suddenly turn the narrative of his long poem autobiographical and writes a section about returning as an adult to his childhood home which has been converted into a print shop.  He imagines talking with his dad who apparently also wrote poetry, but refers to it as “verse.”

Stephen Dunn’s “For Some a Mountain” centers on remembering his father. It’s an imaginary conversation with the dead dad. I like the lines:

“My father is dead; he only has the words I remember
and choose to give him.”

and

“It’s impossible to win arguments with the dead.”

I would link in the whole poem but I can’t find it online.

In Syria and Nigeria, Trump Faces the Limits of American Power – The New York Times

This article is helpful in that it reviews both present and past involvements of the USA in the world.

I highlighted this for future reference:

“Since the early 1990s, when the United States took on the mantle of global leadership, it has acted in Somalia, in Afghanistan, in two different parts of Sudan, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in Liberia and Sierra Leone’s overlapping conflicts, in East Timor and twice in the former Yugoslavia.”

I suspect this is not a complete list. bit it is helpful to keep in mind.

In Ancient Guano, a Record of Penguin Disaster – The New York Times

Penguin poop in the news.

Antarctic Ice Reveals Earth’s Accelerating Plant Growth – The New York Times

I love this kind of detective work.

Mystery of why shoelaces come undone unravelled by science – BBC News

Silly I know. But I had to click on it and read it since my shoe laces unravel so much.

Yochai Benkler: The Right-Wing Media Ecosystem – Shorenstein Center

Some brilliant analysis. Here’s a link to the podcast.

I have been noticing this story online. This is a good explanation

Will London Fall? – The New York Times

I read this article on my tablet app. This link takes you to a much more elaborate article complete with embedded gifs and photographs. This explains a little of the clunkiness of the one I read.

I love London.  I was inspired to pick up Peter Ackroyd’s London: A Biography and read another chapter in it. It’s one of many books I am slowly reading from time to time.

jupe anxieties

I had an anxiety dream last night. I think it’s related to the fact that we are behind in our planning for the Triduum (Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, the Easter Vigil on Saturday). There were some funny parts to my anxiety dream. I was due to play a postlude to a play  in a distant theater (it’s a dream. It doesn’t make sense.) but could not find my organ shoes or the music I was to play. I ransacked the building where I and many others were staying. Finally I realized that I was wearing my organ shoes. I even found this funny in the dream. The dream ends with me giving up despite help from people in the dream. I didn’t have enough to time to make my way to where the play was being presented to play the postlude for it.

Weird.

Before writing here, I sent off all the info the secretary needs from me to complete the Triduum booklet and the Sunday bulletin. So that’s done. This year doesn’t look that daunting to me. My piano trio will be helping on Saturday evening. My cellist will be helping on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. The choir is prepared. The marathon begins tomorrow evening with the choir rehearsal. Rev Jen and I meet in the morning to proof the bulletin. This is cutting it a little close, but I think we are in good shape.

Sibelius and Marley by Ishion Hutchinson

History is dismantled music; slant,
bleak on gravel. One amasses silence,
another chastises silence with nettles,
stinging ferns. I oscillate in their jaws.

The whole gut listens. The ear winces
white nights in his talons; sinking mire.
He wails and a comet impales the sky
with the duel wink of a wasp’s burning.

Music dismantles history; the flambeaux
inflame in his eyes with a locust plague,
a rough gauze bolting up his mouth unfolds,
so he lashes the air with ropes and roots

that converge on a dreadful zero,
a Golden Age. Somewhere, an old film,
Dusk solders on a cold, barren coast. There
I am a cenotaph of horns and stones.

Jupe note: I like this poem. I bet you can see why.

Music arrived in the mail

I regularly buy used music from Craig Cramer who teaches organ at Notre Dame University, Sound Bend and was my grad school organ instructor.  A box of stuff came in the mail yesterday. Woo hoo! Here is some of what was in it.

I met a student of this man in grad school. This looks like a great resource.

These two books are in pristine shape. Craig charged me $20 for the first one and $21.50 for the second. They list at $37 and $39! The English volume should come in handy, since I like to play English music for my Episcopalians.

I also purchased “Sonata no. 2 for organ and string quartet” by Daniel Pinkham and Trio Sonata No. 2 in F by William Boyce. Both of these came with string parts.  There was lots more, but I won’t bore you with all the titles. But I am very excited about this purchase. I have an annual music allowance at work for $500. It’s what they call a cafeteria fund and has to be used up each year. I get to keep all the music I purchase with the fund. I don’t have trouble spending it.

nailed it at work

Yesterday I performed Bach’s 2 part invention in C minor for the postlude. The Inventions of Bach are a life long love of mine. But, I haven’t performed them in public very much. I often think of my brother Mark’s story about watching a skilled musician attempt to read them as background music at a cathedral event in Detroit. The poor dude underestimated their difficulty and didn’t do so well. Anyway, that’s how I remember the story. It’s silly, I know. But, for me this story has hovered over the idea of playing these in public even though I regularly play them in private.

Also, I managed to convince my very first piano teacher to let me try to learn one before I actually had the technique to play it (the  F Major, still one of my favorites). Unlearning all my bad habits on that particular Invention has been an accomplishment for me.

So I was a bit dismayed when my preparation for the C minor Invention always faltered at some point. Yikes. Then I remembered the old piano trick of rehearsing with a bit of “bump” or muscular action on each note. This is actually the opposite of how one plays the organ. After a couple sessions of approaching the piece in that way, it ended up very secure in performance.

reading in the backyard

It was a beautiful day yesterday. The temps were in the low 70s. Perfect. After church, Eileen decided to work on purchasing a ticket to fly to China and start working on a visa. We have learned as a couple that has one retired person in it and one that is not, that it’s better if I vacate when Eileen is trying to do certain kinds of concentrating (not weaving, thank God). I took advantage of the weather and mercifully let Eileen work alone at the computer inside.

book review

I finished reading this book yesterday. When The Kissing Had to Stop by Constantine Fitzgibbon is described by its author as a “fable” peopled with “types rather than people.” This might be a bit charitable on his part. I expected it to be a dated story since it is imagines what will happen in the near future from the point of view of 1960 when it was published. So I approached it with a reasonably tolerant expectation.

But, the writing is thin on the ground. I found myself having trouble keeping track of those “types rather than people.” But books of this sort ostensibly about a “future” are usually about the book’s present. (Orwell’s 1984 has often been viewed as a comment on 1948) and even with the author’s “updated’ new introduction and epilogue dating from 1972 this book is about English politics at the time and some unintended hilarious plot twists such as Russia invading England with the help of some English politicians.

I can’t remember where I picked up on this title. It had to be in the discussions taking place recently of dystopian novels now that we in the USA live in an atmosphere that can seem vaguely dystopian.

I finally heard from David Sutherland, the harpsichord guy in Ann Arbor. He is wiling to do the work. Estimates it might cost around $1K. But he’s too busy to take it on at the moment and requested I contact him again in a month or so. This is very exciting to me. Yesterday I spent a couple hours at the organ and did rehearse some French Classical music. This style needs sympathetic instruments like the harpsichord and appropriate registration on the organ. The latter is sometimes difficult if not impossible to pull off on American instruments. Ray Ferguson taught me how to adapt organ composer’s ideal registration to whatever instrument I play. So I have done that all my organ playing life.

And I find that much music can be pulled off credibly with less than ideal instruments. So while Bach is the best example of music that survives many different treatments and instruments, the French Classical Period (the Couperins and many many others that I love to play) doesn’t quite get it on the piano and usually suffers some diminished effectiveness on American organs unless they specifically set up to do French Classical music well.

You may be wondering where our new Pasi pipe organ at Grace will fall on this continuum. The answer is I’m not sure until I work with it. It is designed to accommodate some aspects of the French Classical demands. But the truth is that the proof to me is how it sounds.

Restless audiences vs acoustic instruments – Susan Tomes

Susan Tomes is an English pianist/author whose blog I read regularly. Here she makes an interesting point about why people make noise while musicians are playing.

I’m cranky this morning. I find it helpful to write in my journal when I’m at this point. So that’s what I did this morning. As I get older, I find reticence easier. I’m not sure it’s always best thing, but I do find it easier.

So this is a reticent blog today. See you tomorrow.

Processing with Dr. Birky

I had my by-weekly meeting with Dr. Birky this morning. I am finding our talks very helpful. I feel a little guilty about paying him to chat with me, but what the fuck. This morning I talked to him about all the things on my plate. One of these things was waking up to find that the USA had bombed Syria.

It helped me to unburden on the poor dude. I thanked him for helping me understand myself better. Yesterday Dawn my cellist who is also singing under Nick Palmer for an upcoming sing-along Messiah mentioned that Nick had complimented me to the group when it was announced I was to be the harpischordist for the event. Nick told them I was “smart.” I thanked Dawn and then mentioned that Dr. Birky has helped me become more aware of this. I reported this to Dr. Birky as well.

Piano trio

My piano trio agreed to play the postlude at the Easter Vigil this year. That’s a load off my mind. I was having difficulty imagining how to do a postlude on the piano for that service. I am sure I could do it, but it will be much cooler with the trio. We decided to perform my recent composition, “Stirred Hearts and Souls.” We know it pretty well. All we have to do is get it back in our fingers.

Dawn, my cellist agreed to help out on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. On Maundy Thursday, we come up from downstairs to strip the altar in the church. This means I will have the piano downstairs for the parts of the service prior to that. All we sing upstairs is the Taize number, “Stay with me.” Usually I do it on organ with some viola obbligatos. This year I thought it would be nice to do it with guitar, cello and viola.  That’s now the plan.

Dawn also agreed to play on the prelude for Good Friday. We are going to do a piece from an organ score. It’s a slow tune by Herbert Howells that was originally composed for piano and violin but transcribed for organ. We are now going to do it with piano and cello on the pedal part. Amy, my violinist, toyed with coming and playing on this as well. But after we played through it, she decided that it might be a bit much for her schedule.

New music on the web site

This morning I uploaded the “Frenchified” Purcell piece I arranged for violin, cello, and organ.

It’s on my music page, but I thought I would put it here as well.

Dance of the Green Men – violin.pdf
Dance of the Green Men – cello.pdf
Dance of the Green Men – score and organ.pdf

I am now inspired to finish “Frenchifying” another movement by Purcell.

I will put up my piano trio, “Stirred Hearts and Souls,” soon. I would do it today but it needs some editing to reflect how we play it, especially the piano part which has some wrong notes in the score that I ignore.

It’s about 8 AM in Holland, Michigan and it’s raining. I mention this because I heard on WMUK Kalamazoo Public Radio that there was a 100% chance of snow today and that it would be falling before 9 AM. So I guess we’ll see if we get a nasty little snow/freezing rain situation in Holland today that could be reasonably expected under that forecast.

My hard copy of The New Yorker is one of two magazines I have continued to subscribe to despite this being the age of cyber access to stuff. The other I think of as a trade magazine, The American Organist. Although I often wonder what exactly trade it is serving. Many of its members (my former teacher at Notre Dame is one) think it should not be about anything except the art of the organ. Specifically that it has no business discussing church music. The mission statement of the organization adapted last year makes no mention of church so maybe that’s becoming an official position.

On the other hand, I notice a lengthy letter in the January 2017 issue which has a heading “Reformation Fear” and seems to be about Luther’s attitude towards music and its use in church, so I guess the notion that members are interested in  music in church is not completely out of the question. I know for me over the years this magazine has informed me about both topics plus others.

Back to The New Yorker. I set aside my weekly copy of The New Yorker specifically to distract myself on Wednesday afternoons as I rest up for the evening choir rehearsal. I basically like the cartoons. Usually I also read the first line of the poems in it. The first line almost invariably fails to interest me in the rest of the poem. I bring it up because yesterday I read a poem in The New Yorker all the way through and realized what a rare occasion that was for me.

The poem in question was “Hot Tub after Skiing, December 2016” by Jill Bialosky. Thankfully, you can click on the title if you are interested in reading it. Both magazines I’m writing about have an, ahem, interesting relationship to the idea of open sourcing of their articles on line. In each case i think  it does a disservice to the core of their content. But that’s just me. And look, I am subscribing to both of them, although I only pay for The New Yorker. The AGO magazine is part of my membership which my church thankfully pays for me.

Anyway Bialosky’s clever little poem is about the mess we are in right now in the USA. She never uses the name of our current president (something many people who are unhappy with him advise). But it does talk about “bitter gods” who frighten the little group of women in the poem as they climb mountains and end up in a hot tub (“Tree huggers” for sure, eh?).

I didn’t really get where the poet was going until she started using little snippets of conversation presented in italics the first of which was “Hate has been unleashed.” That is certainly true right now and not just in the good old US of A.

So anyway before I knew it I had actually read a poem all the way through in The New Yorker.

Was it me who had changed? After all I spend a good part of most mornings reading several poems. Maybe I was become unjaded, maybe even, gasp, more tolerant and soft headed. After starting each of the remaining poems in the magazine and losing interest I was relieved to know it was probably the poem not the reader that was the reason.

Turning Negative Thinkers Into Positive Ones – The New York Times

This article has been rattling around in my brain since I read it. Jane Brody connects finding pleasure in life to good health. I like that. She has a handy dandy list at the end of her article for fostering positive emotions in oneself.

This morning I am thinking about two things: How lucky I am. This is in stark contrast to  how many misfortunes I am witnessing in the lives of others at this time. The first makes me feel grateful, the second sad.

These are not necessarily in opposition. In other words I don’t want to gloat about how good I have it at the expense of others going through hard times.

I regularly feel grateful. Grateful to be living a fulfilled life with the woman I love. Grateful to have a church job at this time that fits me so well. Grateful to make music and read and think. If you read this blog at all you will stumble across my occasional  gratitude and unreasonable optimism.

However, right now I seem to know many people who are going through a tough time.  A loved one dies of an overdose of illegal drugs, a parent is dying, a husband suffers from dementia, someone copes with a spouse’s changing sexuality, someone buries a companion of many years and then relapses into a loss of cognition. Believe it or not these are more. Recently a composer friend of mine on Fecesboogers posted a self pity rant. What do I have to show for sixty years of service to music and church? he wrote.  It was weird to read. I couldn’t help but see a mirror of my own self pity at its worst.

Although legacy has never interested me that much.

I think it helps to read the Greeks and see personal struggles in terms of tragedy and fate, as part of being alive.

Although I believe we have more control of our fate than we usually assume. But things do happen to people. And it can seem random when loved ones die or submit to feelings of self pity or addictions.

Tough stuff.

I left a message and emailed this harpsichord builder and repairman yesterday (Click on the pic to link to his website). He lives in Ann Arbor. I am hopeful he will welcome working on my instrument and not charge me too much to get it back into working order. I’m not sure how I will transport it there. He does mention making arrangements for transporting so that might work. I bet my boss could come up with a way for me to get the harpsichord to the shop and back. Anyway, I haven’t heard back from him.

How to End the Politicization of the Courts – The New York Times

I agree with David Leonhardt that Republicans have largely gotten us into a partisan judiciary situation. It will continue according to Leonhardt until it is in the best interest of both parties to have a judiciary that works more outside of current politics.

BERNARDINE EVARISTO – Writer

You wouldn’t think reading a scholarly article on Derek Walcott would turn you on to new vibrant writers. This writer is intriguing to me and is now on my list of authors to check out more thoroughly. Like Walcott she has written a book length poem as well as several other works.

When you work on Sunday, Mondays can be hard days if you don’t get much time to rest. Yesterday was a full day for me. But even fatigued we got a lot done. When with her typical Energizer Bunny genes Eileen persisted in cleaning and organizing and putting things back after we had spent the morning getting her new loom from the porch to the dining room, I urged her to stop. She planned to grocery shop and then drive to Grand Rapids  in the evening for her Weavers Guild meeting. I was getting tired for her just thinking about it.

After breakfast and ritual boggle we carefully tied up the loom to make it as narrow as possible. We were relieved to see it fit through the narrow doors into the living room. This was all Eileen’s directing. I was just the helpful extra set of hands.

There was a bunch of stuff to move to make way.

We also had to roll back the carpet to facilitate the loom’s move.

The dining room table and defunct harpsichord had to move into the bathroom doorway. They are still in this position this morning. No harm in that actually.

Eileen and I had to keep walking around the house to get to either side of the loom as we gently urged it into the house.

Eileen was getting happier by the moment.

Finally in place, the loom now had to be untied and unfolded.

Looms are beautiful objects to have sitting around the house. I like it.

Then the truck to pick up the defunct Subaru arrived.

Again, Eileen handled the legwork of donating the car to Michigan Radio.  Then, I began working on music for Palm Sunday. We still hadn’t picked out a processional chant for the outdoor procession. I began emailing my boss ideas. We exchanged emails for the rest of the day working on this since we had a Worship Commission meeting in the evening (no rest for wicked).

Eileen left around 5 PM for Grand Rapids. Since her mini is in storage and the Subaru is gone, I walked to church in the rain. It was lovely.

Cool. Donna Leon has just published a new mystery. I enjoy these. I am fifth on the hold list at my library.

America’s Cult of Ignorance – The Daily Beast

An excerpt from Tom Nichols’ new book. Looks good.

Nico Muhly on Why Choral Music Is Slow Food for the Soul – The New York Times

I haven’t had time to read this article by a composer I admire, but it’s bookmarked for future perusing.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Poet Who Stirred a Generation of Soviets, Dies at 83 – The New York Times

Another poet dies.

The Achievements of Derek Walcott – Poetry Off the Shelf podcast

I listened to this podcast this morning while I  cleaned the kitchen.

Paris Review – Derek Walcott, The Art of Poetry No. 37

This interview was mentioned in the podcast. The interviewer, Ed Hirsch, was one of the participants in the podcast.

Inventions

When Bach used the word, inventions, he meant “ideas.” I have been playing, studying, and learning about Bach’s Inventions since first being introduced to them in my cousin Jerry’s front room in his house on a steep Central Avenue hill in South Charleston, West Virginia. I was probably fourteen or fifteen years old.

I own and consult several editions of these pieces. Recently I purchased another edition which was done by Sandra Soderlund. Saturday I played all the way through her versions of them. You wouldn’t think you would benefit from examining multiple versions of this music, but I definitely do. These fifteen little pieces called “ideas” continue to amaze and attract me for no other reason than the music, itself.

And I love being able to pull up manuscripts that date from Bach’s life. The one above is described on the IMSLP site where it is available as dating from 1745-55 and was copied by H.G.M Darnköhler. Googling and checking Groves Dictionary online doesn’t provide any info on this dude. Neither did a quick check of some indices in standard scholarly reference books laying around my chair, so your guess is as good as mine as to who this guy was, but this copy of the Inventions seems to enjoy a good reputation as one that existed near the end of Bach’s life or right after he died so that’s something.

I remember being delighted to read a references to the Inventions in The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse. One of them I recall is when the aging Music Master sits and plays haltingly through one of the Inventions with only two fingers, imagining the music more than making. The Music Master figures into the story of the book as the man who sees the potential for genius in the young Joseph Knecht, the hero of the story.

emotions

As I finished up rendering Phillip Glass’s intense and driving Piano Etude 11 at chuch yesterday, I could feel a familiar overwhelming emotion gathering.

It’s not uncommon that when I put my heart and soul into something, that I fight back tears after playing it.  This makes taking a bow more difficult and I’m sure people close enough to notice my weeping wonder what the fuck is going on? As do I.

I usually chalk it up to being overly sensitive since this also happens at the end of most movies I watch. But I have begun to wonder that it might be a learned emotion. This occurred to me while listening to Dr. Lisa Barrett be interviewed about her new book, How Emotions are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain on BBC.

If I understood her correctly, her theory is that we learn emotional associations and they are more mutable than we think. She talked about how a baby cries and the parents try to guess why. Eventually they begin to identify cries that mean certain things. In doing so, they are actually teaching the baby to associate certain emotional expressions with certain things like hunger, touch and other things. Dr. Barrett resists the notion that the way we express and feel emotion is hard wired the same way into all humans.

So, I speculate that maybe I not only received genetic equipment along the sensitivity line but can easily see myself watching my mother weep and being overwhelmed. Thus learning to weep at being overwhelmed. I haven’t worked this out completely and I am sure I have a simplistic understanding of what Barrett is saying, but I will continue to ponder this.

narrations

I’m on Chapter 8 of Derek Walcott’s book length poem, Omeros, enjoying it immensely.  I believe it is actually a sort of verse novel since there is a plot and recurring characters. The title means “Homer.” It’s not a retelling of Homer, but something else. I recently inter-library loaned a book as a result of reading Walcott’s poem.

Classics in a Post-Colonial World is a collection of scholarly papers that grew out of a conference on the topic in 2004. Walcott, who died recently, represents one writer of many who are discussed in these papers. I read the introduction and am now reading Katharine Burkitt’s essay, “Imperial Reflections: The Post-Colonial Verse-Novel as Post-Epic.” It is helping me understand Walcott’s verse-novel as well as enjoy it.

It’s Sunday afternoon. The service this morning was a very interesting experience. The acoustics were very different even with people in the room. I told the choir that sitting in the choir area is now like sitting in front of a live microphone. And this is true. I had parishioners after church commenting about how the sound of the choir traveled into the room.

So the service went well. The choir sounded splendid. My Phillip Glass piano etudes went pretty well. I managed to get lost a couple of times in the postlude (#11). This player does a nice job.

I went just a touch slower. There are some fours against threes that I was working on before church this morning. I pretty much nailed those. However, I got lost twice in sections it had never happened to me before.

My left hand was bothering me this morning. It was cold and achy (in an arthritic way). it’s frightening. It feels fine now. But of course I was anxious about what it would do in performance. I remarked to Eileen about the irony of having anxiety about a performance that wasn’t “performance anxiety.”

I will do something about this if it persists. Probably even if it doesn’t. I have a six month check up this month and will sound out my doctor about what she recommends.

Yesterday I watched this video on Facelessbook.

I pretty much fell in love the music which is Escualo by Astor Piazolla.

I found most of a violin/piano setting online yesterday. Then I ordered a set of parts for this arrangement. I would love my piano trio to learn and perform this at a Grace Notes 2017 recital.

I lazed around this morning until about 7:30 in bed. This is unheard of for me. I think I managed to get some rest yesterday as well. My motivation went to zero. My hands have been hurting more lately. It’s discouraging to think that someday I might not  be able to use them. On Thursday night I thought I felt a twinge in my wrist. You know, right where my tendon is. Great. This added to my lack of motivation yesterday.

I can’t help but wonder if practicing Phillip Glass is contributing to my arthritic twinges. Yesterday, I went through Sunday’s postlude slowly. That was all the piano practice I did.

I worked on my frenchifying Purcell project.

After breakfast and boggle today, Eileen and I went to church to set up for tomorrow. On Wednesday, I had the choir chairs locked together via connectors which will also provide a place for a book. There’s not enough room for some of my singers that way. I was thinking I would quietly unhook a few chairs to make more room for people who are a bit larger.

Then it occurred to me that I probably didn’t need the choir sitting so close together in this acoustic. They were saying Wednesday that they could hear other well. Then I had the flash of using music stands to allow them to have a place to put their books and folders during service. We have been having this conversation for ages about how to make a place that emulates the old choir stalls.

I took a couple stands from home and scoured the church for all of Grace’s stands. Then I set it all up (with Eileen’s help). I emailed Jen and asked if it was okay. Here’s the pic.

You’ll notice the piano is missing from this pic. The piece of paper in the center is a note from Thom the janitor. It says that they came by yesterday and finished tiling the sliding steps that move in so the piano can be inset. Thom asked me to leave it to dry and he would push the piano in place in the morning.

I told Jen I would go back and redo it if she wanted it differently.  It’s after 2 PM and she hasn’t contacted me yet.

YourClassical from American Public Media

So this is cool. This is a web site with multiple classical music streams. What I like is that they are curated and also the piece playing shows.

I’m arranging a couple of movements from the incidental music for The Faerie Queen by Purcell. I picked one of them mostly by the title which is “Dance for the green men.”

A week ago Thursday we ran through it roughly, myself reading out parts from a score and the violinist and cellist playing the top and bottom line since there were parts for those. After we finished, Amy, my violinist said, it really needed something.

I decided she was right. So I took Purcell’s work and made it into a piece for violin, cello, and organ. As I told Dawn the cellist yesterday, I “frenchified” it by adding some jerky rhythms, some filled in thirds, and other things including a little recomposing. I’m still not 100 per cent sure it works, since my violinist skipped our rehearsal yesterday, tending to her son’s ankle that he hurt in gymn. But Dawn and I ran through it and it didn’t sound bad.

Of course this meant that I had spent another chunk of time working on a day I was particularly exhausted and needed to rest. But as Eileen pointed out and I know is true, I love it.

We are playing Purcell for an American Guild of Organist’s member recital for our local chapter at the end of April. I feel like I’m hurtling away from this organization and academic music in general. Dawn and I had a conversation yesterday about this. After decades as a symphony player, she said that often she enjoyed pops concerts more than certain of the more classical ones and that she wasn’t impressed with the first chair players who disdained all music but classical music. 

Dawn’s tastes do not include much music that I love, but she is more open than many musicians especially our age (she’s about my age). I like it that she and Amy my violinist have their own specific tastes but will enthusiastically  venture into musics that are either not familiar to them or actually do not prefer. They are very supportive.

I plan to “frenchify” one more little movement from Purcell’s collection of pieces. It’s one I have actually performed before with strings and continuo. But since the recital is one for an organization dedicated to the organ, I think it might be fun to do a slightly different version that takes advantage of what the organ could offer to this kind of transcription.

Of course it will have to be a chamber type work, not a big typical organ transcription, the kind that sometimes makes me shudder. But there are times i don’t mind a transcription on the organ. I love playing transcriptions of symphonies on the piano. Organ has a history of sprawling huge transcriptions in which you can tell the transcriber sees the organ as basically orchestral (I don’t).

I guess it depends on the piece.

When I told my boss yesterday in our weekly meeting that I felt I was not functioning well, she insisted that the opposite was true, that I was functioning extremely well through a challenging time at work. I could see that this was true. Things have been going very well. Like most church basements, ours is not designed for good acoustics. In fact, it can be very hostile to musical sounds of congregations singing, choirs and instruments.

So my usual good sounding choir had to work hard to make a blended beautiful sound under these circumstances. And in my opinion, they have been succeeding extremely well at this.

And I think they also take pride in being a good little choir. I can see them trying to follow my suggestions to improve our performances. Their presence and that of the string players has been invaluable in continuing a high level of musical quality in the basement.

Yesterday was a long difficult day of preparation and an intense rehearsal in the evening. By the time rehearsal was over, it was clear to me that it was also a turning point in the quality of the choral sound of this little group. We had clearly kicked it up a notch by taking our honed sound into a better acoustic. I was exhausted and frazzled by that time.

In the morning, Eileen and I went to look at the church to see what kind of shape it was in. There were people cleaning in the church. The carpet had been returned to its place. This was critical to creating more of the kind of acoustic we will experience Sunday. However, the room was still in disarray. The piano was in the basement. The choir chairs were stacked in the front of the room.

I relaxed a bit when I learned the cleaning was due to be done by 2 PM. That would leave me time to prepare the choir area after meeting with Rev Jen. Eileen and I went home. After lunch I walked over (exercise) to church a bit early. I ran into the janitor. As we talked we discovered that he had been misinformed that the piano needed to be back up into the church by Thursday. I told him I would need it that evening and we immediately went and put it in its new home: the cut out slot of retractable steps in the center of the platform in the back of the church where the organ and choir will be.

We began moving chairs to the area. I noticed it was time for my meeting with Jen so I left him to it. Later, I carefully planned the evening rehearsal and dragged down two tripod thingies, one with a wipe board and one with a large pad of paper on it. On the white board I had put the order for Sunday’s service. On the large pad I outlined a carefully determined order for rehearsal that evening. Then I sat down and played through my two Philip Glass etudes I will be using Sunday for the Prelude and Postlude.

I sacrificed a bit of my usual resting time prior to rehearsal yesterday. I did an hour of score preparation. This means I played through and studied several of the anthems for the evening rehearsal.  I compared editions of “Exultate Justi” by Viadana. I had chosen an edition for us that was in a good key and had a reduced score for the piano underneath. But it wasn’t the best edition. When i compared to the best edition I discovered some note discrepancies and omission of text in two critical measures.

Like a madman I sat down to my music notation software and made correction measures.

I copied the two measures over several times with some measures in between so I could print up multiple copies for the choir with my little printer at home.

By the time rehearsal rolled around I was more stressed than usual. I had to work at being calm and helpful. The rehearsal went very well. I think most if not all choristers enjoyed singing in a better acoustic. We talked about it a lot as we worked. And they sounded very good.

By the way, when Jen told me i was functionally well,  I replied that I was off balance and felt like I didn’t have much perspective in my work. She said it didn’t show. But we both know it’s true.

Today I will attempt to get some of my balance and perspective back or at least rest up a bit.

Chasing Windmills — Positively Liberal

This is a rah rah Holland Michigan article. It’s kind of cool. But what is really cool is that the blogger, Nathan Bocks,  is a local liberal blogger. If you’re local it’s definitely worth checking out.  He has already accepted my friend request on FacelessBooger.

The Harry Potter theme, but it’s an incredible fugue – Classic FM

I don’t know the movie music very well, but I think this is fun.