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New Year's Message
Mon, 12/28/2009 - 22:20 — admin1As of New Year's, we had turned a corner. Christmas was over. Some of my gifts went over well, others not so well. The card on the left I made for my wife. This was the only Christmas gift that I made myself, from my own mind. Originally I thought it was going to be the Christian fish symbol, but then I digressed from there.
My wife gave me a new capuccino steaming cup, which works a lot better than the last one. I remember my brother gave us our first espresso maker back in the 90's, and it took us three years before I figured out how to use it. Helps to have capuccino around in good times and bad. Like the Beatle lyric, it takes a sad song and makes it better.
In that spirit, here's a little Violin Duet of Mozart (Violin Duo 11 from KV Anh. 152/153) that I offer as a New Year's tune. This is by far the most demanding home-recording project I have worked on to date.
I hope that you may find some enjoyment despite and along with the human imperfections -- or, as Dylan said, "And if you see vague traces of skipping reels of rhyme, to your tambourine in time, I wouldn't pay it any mind, it's just a ragged clown behind, it's just a shadow that you're seeing that he's chasing."
Note that in the final bar I removed the G (the dominant 7th) from the first violin part. The G and the lower E, when played together, sounded out of tune, even though each note sounded in tune when played alone.
Has anybody had that problem?
Wedding Music - Eclectic
Tue, 12/15/2009 - 07:43 — admin1This has to do with the music at a particular wedding -- my daughter's. I've spent a lot of time responding to opinions or answering people's questions about the wedding music, and now I've decided that I want to tell the narrative of how we did it.
| "the musicians ... expressed their appreciation." |
Susan booked the music for the reception, and I was in charge of the ceremony music. The added challenge for both Susan and me was that we lived on the West Coast and the wedding was to take place in Buffalo, NY.
The groom was from Puerto Rico, and the ceremony was to be bilingual, at a Catholic church with a large Puerto Rican membership.
Susan decided to use bagpipes to lead the processional. Since Salsa music was planned for the reception, this was to represent Susan's Celtic ancestry.
Let me say that this is something I didn't need to be talked into. As a musician, I am entranced by the spell-binding thrill of bagpipes, with their otherworldly, mixolydian sound. Susan decided that there would be no prelude music, so that the processional would be more dramatic after the silence. I think this was a good instinct. She also wanted Irish drums, but the piper resisted this idea, so it was dropped.
That didn't matter, because there was no need for drums. The piper was very talented, and a multi-instrumentalist as well. During the ceremony he also played a cello solo from a Bach partita. His presence really enhanced the ceremony. All the musicians who were there expressed their appreciation.
I am glad that I was able to locate the right musician and help plan the music. I am also glad we chose to have bagpipes. Of course, this has been done at many weddings, but not often enough to be a fad. They lent a real pizazz to the ceremony.
So all went well. A couple of months later, we did hear a rather disparaging remark about bagpipes, in reference to Susan and Pedro's wedding. It turned out that the person who made the remark had not been at the wedding. But he took strong exception to the presence of bagpipes at any wedding ceremony, ever. He is not a musician.
Remembering Marek Edelman - Tough, courageous ghetto fighter dead at 87
Thu, 11/12/2009 - 20:44 — admin1Robert Strybel, Warsaw Correspondent
Marek Edelman, the last surviving leader of the 1943 Warsaw Jewish Ghetto Uprising recently died in his Warsaw home at the age of 87. A supporter of the Bund (Jewish socialist party), during the Nazi German occupation of Poland, he helped set up the leftist Jewish Combat Organization (Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa).
Following the suicide of its commander Mordechai Anielewicz, Edelman took over the command. He survived the crushing of the ill-fated rising and the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto, which the Germans reduced to rubble. After his escape, he joined the underground Home Army (Armia Krajowa) and the following year fought in and also survived the Warsaw Uprising.
Since he had been born in Homel, Poland (now Belarus), located in the one-half of Poland annexed by Stalin and never returned, after the war Edelman gave his place of birth as Warsaw to avoid being sent to the USSR. He studied medicine, became a medical doctor and spent most of his life in the central city of Lodz.
Although communist Poland claimed to be building socialism, of which Edelman had been a life-long advocate, he soon became disillusioned with life in a totalitarian state. When most of Poland's surviving Jews left the country in the wake of the communist party's 1968 anti-Semitic purge, Edelman stayed put. "Nobody is going to tell me what to do or where to go," he replied defiantly.
Proof of Citizenship
Mon, 11/02/2009 - 04:33 — admin1
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Who said I wasn't born? (But I'll be lucky if I figure this out while I'm still alive.)
Detroit City I came from Detroit City,
When I finally got back to,
Well my friend worked at a graveyard, Well my head reads like a textbook, |
Salsa Reception
Sat, 10/03/2009 - 22:07 — admin1"Previously unreleased" footage from the wedding.
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Everybody had a good time. The music was enjoyable. Though not pictured, I was on the floor. I must've looked odd, though, because some people tried to coach me. So I gave it up: It's not worth the embarassment. I loved the other dancers, however. For the father and bride dance, Uncle B. did a nice rendering of a Dylan ballad which I wish I had recorded. |
Better Keep Working
Thu, 09/17/2009 - 04:18 — admin1
M.E. has said that she never knew that I drew pictures. To me, that's like someone saying they never knew that I played the violin. Art is supposed to be part of my identity.
True, I haven't kept up with it like I "should" have; I don't have a workshop..I just dabble in it. I'm really an amateur.
But amateurs can do stuff.
This picture is dealing with the decorative triangles that I have been interested in. What started as a triangulated stovepipe on the left emerged as a faux-exotic column with striped crown.
I seem to be avoiding a deeper impulse that has been stifled or perhaps has lost its significance.
If I practice more, will I get better? Years ago, one teacher, looking at my gimmicky imagery, said that it was going to be a "struggle".
The String Quartet: August 29th, 2009
Tue, 09/01/2009 - 06:26 — admin1
My black tie was perfectly straight. I had lined up all the songs to knock them down, as we like to say in the music business. We started the prelude music at 3:15. I had enough music for three hours, but the wedding was expected to take only an hour or so. For me, weddings are always exciting, and something odd always happens. This time, some of the guests got lost on the way to the ceremony, and we had to "stretch out" the prelude music to fill in the time. The other musicians agreed to stay on past their contracted time. When we finished, around 4:45, I noticed that I was tired -- probably because I had skipped lunch. Next time I'll bring a piece of fruit along. Illustration: Lost Bugles -- Bartley |
My First Gig
Mon, 03/16/2009 - 05:59 — admin1
This was my first gig in over a year. I was new in Tacoma, and I did not have any music connections here. But the neighbor got me a job playing violin in a Choral-Union concert at the University. To get ready, I bought a used tuxedo at the local rental store. It had exaggerated lapels that made me think of bat-wings. But the price was reasonable.
They sent me the second violin part and I started practicing it. The Handel "Dixit Dominus" was pretty straightforward, but the Haydn Theresienmesse had some tricky fast parts. Only a virtuoso could play these parts up-tempo, I thought. I watched some youtube performance, and, sure-enough, the strings sounded muddled. Was this the composer's intention?
For months, my D string (the second lowest string on the violin) had been bothering me. I had had work done on the instrument to enhance the sound, and, yes, there had been improvements. But now I was hearing new things I didn't want to hear: The string seemed to have a harsh nasal, fuzzy quality rather than the round tone that I imagined it ought to have.
