A terrific cover by Neil Young of “A Day in the Life” with a walk-on cameo by Paul McCartney. Young seems profoundly moved at the end, almost tapping into the primal scream John so loved. He didn’t have the courage to smash his guitar, but he broke all the strings instead. It’s ok Neil, we understand.
Emma Lew Thomas came back from Germany aglow with Rufus Wainwright and Robert Willson’s collaboration on 25 Shakespeare Sonnets. Nothing has been released to date, so, sniffing around YouTube I found a collection of sonnets in progress, as well as a preview from a Berlin TV news show. I threw in the Bacharach collaboration for the heck of it.
I thought it was peculiar that my fabulously new, hi tech Acura TL would have a cassette deck. I knew the end was coming for the audio cassette, but didn’t realize how soon that it would be.
Today, I got out my trusty old Sony Professional Walkman cassette recorder, and for the first time since 1972, it didn’t work. I had another one around the house with a double well: it too was broken. I looked online and saw that they do still exist, but being impatient I went to my local Best Buy, Radio Shack, Guitar Center, and Target — all looked at me like some relic of the past and said that they don’t carry cassette decks. Blushing, I left to return home and placed my order on ;Amazon for an Ion cassette deck that outputs to USB so that I can archive the cassettes that I have not yet digitized.
If any of you have valuable cassettes, transfer the data SOON, or you’ll lose it.
Last night, Vox Femina hosted a reading of my new work for women’s chorus, HEALY MADRIGALS, based upon the poetry of Eloise Klein Healy. Iris Levine, the director, welcomed the small but warm audience and explained what was about to happen. I got up and spoke about the commissioning process as well a bit about composing. Then Eloise got up and spoke about her work and her own creative process.
Then, the chorus ran through each number. Eloise read the poem. Vox “read” the piece (they had had only one run-through), and then I got up and commented on each piece, making changes in almost every number and throwing one out — much to the delight of the audience.
People seemed to love the experience–watching the collaborative process in action. I was happy that everyone responded to the pieces so well. As I said, Eloise’s poetry brought out a different side of my musical persona, which felt good. I was so happy to hear from the women of the chorus that they were thrilled that I was writing them a new piece. How fortunate I am!
I had the great fortune to have this past Saturday off, to stay home with my little family, read, nap, eat, and watch lots of movies. Through some cosmic combination of three separate movies, I got a clear message: we have no proof that life elsewhere in the universe exists. The shows I saw were two episodes of Carl Sagan’s COSMOS, and one episode of the NOVA series, done on PBS.
The Nova episode was called MAGNETIC STORM and tells us that the earth’s magnetic shield is weakening, and apparently getting ready for a complete polar reversal — which hasn’t happend for 780,000 years. The magnetic shield protects us from deadly radiation, and is created by the whirling molten lava at the core of the planet. As that core cools, the shield will weaken, and our atmosphere and protection will be blown away, as Mars is today.
The first COSMOS episode dealt with the issue of whether earth men could relocate on Mars. It all sounded encouraging, but I don’t think Mr Sagan took into account the magnetic shield factor, and that Mars’ shield is likely weak or gone.
The second COSMOS episode dealt with the fact that there is no hard evidence that there is life anywhere else in the universe. To this date, such talk, according to Sagan, “…is like superstition and religion.” (I tend to think he may have really meant “faith” rather than religion, per se.) By “life” I assume he is not delving into spirit beings, angels or God.
When I heard these words come out of his mouth, I realized that I have faith that there is life elsewhere in the universe. It seems implausible that there isn’t; but Carl painstakingly pointed out that there is no hard evidence: no alien books, no alien writings, no alien bodies, no alien spaceships.
Realizing exactly how rare life is in our part of the universe, I am developing a new love of the variety and magic of life on our planet and how precious it is.
If I think about the future of my music, but also the complete works of Mozart, Beethoven, Beatles, Coltrane and all of the music in the world, I am more and more convinced that it is, and only will be for us, right here, right now. How can we presume that any other evolved life creatures somewhere else in the universe could “hear” the music designed to be transmitted in our atmosphere? And how could be assured that these creatures even will have ears or apparatuses that could perceive earth music? And as far as we know, we are the only intelligent creatures in the universe. Frightening thought, eh?
For academics, summertime is a time of recharging: reading, doing our research, catching up on projects that we didn’t have time to do during the academic year, and traveling. I note that my blogging pattern is about once every five days of late. My year has been so busy I just haven’t had the time to write every day. For my faithful readers, know that I plan to blog for the rest of my life and when I step down as Chair of our department, I know that I will be more regular.
For my summer composition work, I am just about done with my settings of Eloise Klein Healy, and will have a public rehearsal/reading of it next week with the poet in attendance, and Vox Femina singing it under Iris Levine’s able baton. My collaborator in Homer in Cyberspace, Mel Shapiro, has a short film for me to provide music for. I have another movement of a piano piece to finish. And I hope to get back to the interrupted “Mozart and the Grey Steward” a short opera with words by Thornton WIlder.
I answered one of those alarming letters warning that my airline points were going to disappear, so I had better buy magazines. I did, and now have two huge piles of unread magazines I will try to make my way through. I also have a pile of books that I plan to start finishing.
I hope to block off a few weeks to try to finish my book on Rufus Wainwright. I will be interested to hear his new opera, which should have received its premiere by now.
A trip to London, Paris and southern France later in the summer will be our big vacation this summer. I plan to visit my parents at least once in Phoenix; two or three sabbaticals in Palm Springs; several trips to the Bay area; and a possible quick trip to Kauai.
The UC system is facing huge cuts. It appears we will all be taking 8% cuts to our salary for a year. The Herb Alpert School of Music is completely revamping its undergraduate curriculum, so I will be having meetings this summer and fall to work on that new reality.
I am still loving my Palm Pre, and am so relieved to be rid of the iPhone. I have colleagues who live for the iPhone apps, so they will likely never switch. I realized that I don’t really need to convert anyone to the Palm. I’m still thrilled that Apple is becoming so ubiquitous.
I hope to be more social this summer and establish a more regular exercise program to keep this body in good shape.
And finally, just the thought of doing NOTHING sounds terrific to me.
Sigh…
Today is Mark Carlson’s birthday — Happy 57th, Mark! He is six months older than I, so Mark gets to go through the experience before I do. As I expected, the not-divisible-by-five years are less notable. We agreed that reaching 50 was monumental, and now, we both see 60 not too far away. I don’t ever regret getting old (if “regret” is the right word). I am enjoying the aging process. Although I overheard a conversation the other day at physical therapy that sounded like my own recent visit to my doctor:
“I know it sounds weird, but I prepared a list of issues I wanted to bring to my doctor’s attention. I keep a list so I don’t forget. But then I looked at the long list and realized this was what aging has in store for me. Oy!”
I’m having physical therapy for a sore hip. I just had a tumor taken off my knuckle and still have four hideous stitches in my finger. Besides that, I seem to be ok — not bad for a 56 year old.
Yesterday, the new Amazon Kindle arrived. I’m just about done reading the introduction of how the thing works and what it can do. I love the ability to change the font size. I find I read so much faster at the size that works for me. I realized that I don’t miss the physical act of turning a page. Pressing the “next page” button works fine, and I don’t foresee any hand troubles for Kindle users, trouble common to users of gaming devices. The screen is not backlit, rather, reflective — like a piece of paper. I find I’m I like it quite a lot. Yes, I love actual books, but I think once I get used to it, I’ll be happy to say farewell to books as “things.” I’m starting by stopping my subscription to the LA Times, as paper, and subscribing as a Kindle user.
The day before, I bought the new Palm Pre from my local Radio Shack store. (Most of you may know: I composed the ringtones for the device.) In that my two thumbs, nearly cover the entire keyboard, I was skeptical about whether I could use it. I am using the center of my thumbnails, and this works amazingly well. I can’t type lying in bed yet as I could with the iPhone, but I’m practicing.
The operating system is the best there is in terms of hand-held devices. The iPhone seems like a Mac Plus in comparison. I have loved my iPhone, and am happy to see so many people finally realizing what a great company Apple is, and buying iPods and iPhones and Mac Books etc. But I am enjoying the Pre so much more. Yes, the iPhone has a ton of apps that make it a terrific platform, but I imagine that it’s only a matter of time before there will be an equal number of apps for the Pre.
I’m starting to hear my ringtones out in the world now. So cool! Although it was odd to be awoken this morning to two of Daniel’s Pres going off at the same time, each with a different ringtone. They blended perfectly! If you haven’t heard the default ringtone, Sprint included it in recent video they made. Check it out.
Mark and I are turning into Jefferson and Adams — great friends who have some major differences of opinions. The only pertinent disagreement we have at the moment is our preference in music notation programs: I love Sibelius, he loves Finale. I tease him and say that he just doesn’t want to learn a new set if commands and that learning new software is just too hard. He counters and says he just doesn’t like the user interface nor the look of Sibelius. We just have to agree to disagree. But it’s clear that Mark is the old dog in that he is 57 now, and I am a somewhat old dog, who, at 56, is still up for learning new tricks.
Vox Femina, one of the great women’s chorus in America, received a grant from the City of West Hollywood to commission a composer. They chose me!
Iris Levine brought me a stack of books by women poets who live around LA, and I chose Eloise Klein Healy. I have been in Palm Springs setting as many as I can get done in three days. So far, three and a half.
It is fun getting to musically “know” a poet for the first time. Trying to figure out what the tone is, and whether to go with it or provide a contrast to it. Is she being funny here? or ironic? Would she mind if I put another word (i.e. syllable) here for rhythm’s sake? Different poets bring out different kinds of melodies from a composer. Having already written two sets of madrigals by Mexican/American poet, Francisco X Alarcon, the music I’ve written for Vox to date has a bit of a south-of-the-border feel to it. Eloise’s poetry, not so much. She has witty sense of humor. For some odd reason, I find myself wanting to write counterpoint with Healy’s poetry.
As I set and copy each poem, I make a PDF of the score, the text, and a mock up/mp3 of the music, and send it to Eloise, Iris, and my husband. Hot off the press.
Some of my colleagues were standing around grousing about something yesterday. I joined them and found them complaining about students.
“I can’t believe that these kids have only come to 50% of my counterpoint class! BW just texts during class and it drivesme crazy. When I was in college, I NEVER missed classes.” Another joined in: “I’m having the same problem with my graduate students. Some have missed 4 of 10 seminars.” “My students just don’t read. I assign reading for class and very few of them are prepared.” “I didn’t make my students buy any books so as to save them money during this bad economy. They STILL don’t read.”
I encouraged them to give them bad grades. We went on:
“Why, I remember going home from school every day with an arm-load of musical scores. I couldn’t wait to learn about some new piece of music. Kids today don’t seem to have much of that fire. They do, barely, what is required and not much else.” Another piped in: “I couldn’t believe how unsupportive of each other they are. They don’t attend each others’ recitals. Few of them attend performances of their teachers’ work.” “I rarely see them at new music concerts.”
Is it the fluoride in the water? Were they spoiled rotten by their pampering baby-boomer parents? Or has the autism spectrum widened to include total boredom that doesn’t somehow relate to Facebook, talking on the phone, texting, or partying?
I’m afraid it’s the Entitled Generation.
