beautiful, funny, sad & true

Here’s the first segment; you know what to do if you want to watch the rest of them.

Well.

This is the infamous Super Bowl Sunday, and I for one could not care less about that.  In fact, if it wasn’t for Twitter, I wouldn’t have known that today is the day.   That’s how little I follow sports.

I know what I said a couple of weeks ago about how ‘the hiatus is over’ and all that, but life seems to have gone into overdrive since then, and I haven’t had two minutes to rub together to write anything new.

Two weekends ago, I went to Waldport, Oregon to spend the weekend with a childhood friend whose job is about to end, which will force him to move away from that pretty little town.  (Photos to come, as soon as I get the chance to go through them.)

IrishBand has a friend who’s creating an animated video for one of our songs, and it’s tremendous!  It should be done within a couple of weeks, and then I’ll be able to share it here.  It’s been quite a process, and very exciting to watch it all come together.  We needed to create an ‘intro’ section for it (you’ll see what I mean) that featured the sound of the band setting up their instruments and tuning up and whatnot.  Since two of the band members are busy in school, we weren’t able to schedule a rehearsal, so I set up the instruments (drums, bass, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, and cello played up high to simulate a violin) in my living room and recorded them using one microphone to simulate a camera person walking in and recording us that way.  (Photos to come, once I have a chance to go through them.)

I spent last weekend in Seattle to see a pipe organ concert at my brother’s church and to celebrate BabyNiece’s first birthday.  It was really fun, and super cute, and a bit stressful all at the same time.  (Photos to come, as soon as I get the chance to go through them.)  I drove back late Saturday night so that I could attend the Oregon Symphony the next afternoon.  They were featuring Jean-Philippe Collard performing Ravel’s beautiful Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, which I love and didn’t want to miss.  (Extra-special thanks to Kelly V. for making it possible for me and my companion to go!)  Hmm. . .’companion’ makes it sound like I’m gay, which I’m not.  For the record, my companion was a girl.

Anyway.

I couldn’t find a video of Collard playing the Left Hand, but here’s one of  him playing a similar piece by Ravel, for solo piano.

It was an incredible and beautiful show.  The orchestra started with a piece by Thomas Adés called “Powder Her Face”, which was very colorful and enchanting.  Next up was the Ravel concerto, followed by Gustav Holst’s “Egdon Heath” and one of the lesser-known Mozart symphonies, number thirty four.   The Ravel was the only piece either of us (and I daresay the majority of the audience, as well) was familiar with.  I love the way the conductor, Carlos, Kalmar, chooses music for his programs.  This is the second one I’ve seen so far this season, and he likes to blend the familiar with the unfamiliar in an intriguing way.

Speaking of the Oregon Symphony, next season promises to be world-class.  Yo-Yo Ma, Joshua Bell, Hillary Hahn, Emmanuel Ax, Lang Lang. . .and that’s not even close to a complete list.  We are in for a treat multiple treats!

I had the opportunity to play with two nationally-known songwriters this week, in the same venue, on different days.  The first was Tony Furtado (a friend with whom I play fairly regularly) and the second was Dan Bern, who I had just met earlier in the day, when I helped my friend John by engineering and sort of co-hosting a podcast for KZME Radio called Hello Cruel World.  This was the second time I’ve had the opportunity to do that, the first being a couple weeks prior, when we interviewed an excellent new songwriter from Seattle named Tamara Power-Drutis.  Anyway, we were talking with Dan about the times we’ve seen him in concert.  John mentioned to Dan that I play accordion and multiple other things, and Dan asked if I know his music.  “Yes, I do,” I answered.  He asked, “Do you want to come play at the show tonight?”  “Absolutely!”

This picture was taken during the song God Said No.

So yeah, between the multiple out-of-town trips, the stellar gigs, the birthday parties and the nights out, it’s been quite a fun couple of weeks.  Now I’m off to meet a friend for dinner, and tomorrow I’ll be mixing some more songs for IrishBand.

I’m off of blogging hiatus, but we’ll see how long it takes before I have time to write again.  I don’t imagine it’ll be this long.

I’m kind of obsessed with this song lately.  I first heard it when my friend played it on his radio show one night.  The singer’s voice sounded familiar, and the pianist clearly had classical chops.  I was mesmerized, and I called my friend at the station to find out who that was.  It turned out to be a new song by Regina Spektor called “Machine.”

The song’s subject matter and the detached quality of Regina’s perfomance always remind me of a beautiful, enigmatic and very dark anime series called Serial Experiments:  Lain, which I recommend whole-heartedly, although I would add the caveat that its darkness and strangeness is not for everyone; certainly not for the faint of heart.

[UPDATE:  Click on the picture, and that will take you to the first episode of the show.]

In other news, I spent this last weekend at the coast for a much-needed getaway.  It allowed me, among other things, the luxury of enough time away from all of the usual nonsense, so that I could cut out the noise and think about the people and things that are important to me, and one of them was this blog.  I needed some time away from it to appreciate how much I enjoy having this particular outlet, and you’ll be glad to know that I plan to write much more often, like I used to.

The hiatus is officially over.

In no particular order (Actually, they’re in reverse chronological order):

veni, vedi, vici

not quite there yet

Ethiopian wedding

Hydrox

George Harrison

beach trip

halfway through

the mental game of music

synchronicity

still don’t smoke

quite a group

lovely day in Seattle

Amen

happy as we are, thank you

Silver Falls

Port Townsend trip

dream girl

non-nostalgic nostalgia

wedding, play, garden, hike, learning

Of Yakima and Feces

the Oriental Chicken

Catherine Burton (Bunton?), R.I.P.

Oceanside

mona lisa

lots of big musical news, and links galore

a very coherent narrative

what if it is?

apples and bananas

cello scrotum

by way of example

flirtation versus pedantry

communication breakdown

Enjoy!

Man, I swear this blog gets more hits when I don’t post for a week than when I post all the time.  I guess it’s a good thing I’m still feeling un-bloggish lately, then, in order to give everybody a chance to soak up a bit of beauty, humor, sadness (although there’s been precious little sadness lately!) and truth.

Times have been good, overall.  Had a great gig on Friday, at which I got the chance to see many friends.  I started mixing the EP for IrishBand (our goal is to finish mixing some time in December), and I had an excellent birthday.  Got some new clothes.  My friend LJ returned from three weeks in the U.K., so we went to brunch and then came back here to my place where she could upload the pictures and explain the stories behind all of them.

I had another excellent day yesterday, which involved a new friend and much random fun.  We met at Powell’s, then watched a bewildering theater performance at Pioneer Square (we left after about ten minutes, scratching our heads with confusion), watched some buskers outside Nordstrom, bounced around between a bunch of closed restaurants (which finally led us to get sushi at Sansai), then we walked clear up to Vivace for coffee and dessert.  Lovely day.

NewFriend is a piano teacher, so we’ve been looking for classical music we’ll be able to play together as a duo.  I found a book of ‘easy to intermediate’ cello solos at Powell’s, which consists of classical pieces arranged for cello, with piano accompaniment.  Perfect!  It’s part of a two-book series; Book One is the piano book, and Book Two is the cello book.  I bought the piano one because A) it was the only one they had, B) it had both the piano AND the cello parts on it, and C) I figured we could track down the complementary book at some point, or just photocopy whichever pieces we intend to learn.

When I pulled up at home, CellistSkip was standing next to his car, and he said hello.  I brought the book over to show him, and he said, “No way. . .I think I used to have that book when I was a kid.”  FlutistSusan came down the steps just then and I showed it to her too.  “That sounds familiar,” she said.  “I think I may actually have the cello book in my files somewhere.”  She ran into her office, rummaged around in a drawer, and after about ten seconds pulled out a tattered copy of the companion cello book.  The cover is gone and about half of the pages are missing, but it’s the same book.  What a crazy coincidence, no?

So here are a few pictures.  I wish I would’ve taken more, but I was too hungry to think of it when we got our sushi.  The sushi was excellent, by the way, but the sunomono salad (with octopus, red onions, bell peppers and daikon radishes) was the hit of the day.

Perhaps I could recruit your help in locating a piece for NewFriend and me?  We’re looking for Antonin Dvorak’s Slavonic Dance #2 in E minor, Opus 72, arranged for piano and cello.  You know, it’s this piece (and what a beautiful performance this is!):

I could watch that all day.  Thanks in advance for your help!