DanielSonenberg.com

Hi all,

Yes - I haven't written in ages. I've been really busy w/ scads of things that are taking up those precious "in between" hours that I usually use to write this blog.

One of those things is this video - which documents my adventures w/ South Oxford Six in Serbia this past summer. It's private, but I can embed it, so have a sneak peek before it goes live!

Hello - now three posts in the same month! There was a time when you could count on that I know. I do what I can...

It's been a fun few weeks. Back from Serbia, I've been shuttling back and forth between Portland (home of my lovely wife Alex, my job, and my lovely cat Judy Johnson) and NYC, where I've been lucky to have three staged performances of scenes from my opera mounted in quite unusual venues. American Opera Projects has been such a huge help in the continuing creation of this work, and this week's lovely article in the back page of the Wall Street Journal, by Heidi Waleson, already seems to be helping me generate some buzz for this project. I've found myself coming up in various corners of the blogosphere - in some cases being outright assailed for my nerve in having the great Josh Gibson sing opera (I put my two cents in, you'll see), and in other quarters getting just a little love.

Today, at the Fort Green Fest in Fort Green Park, in the midst of some excellent hip hop, rock, and world music acts, AOP presented twenty minutes of the Summer King to a boisterous festival audience chewing on local cuisine and basking in the blazing September sun. I'll admit I had some moments of fear as I considered the incongruity of my genre and the general tenor (no pun intended) of the event. And at first, I could tell that audience members were perplexed at the odd spectacle of opera in the middle of all this delectable mayhem. But maybe thanks to dear, departed Lucianno, the crowd had been just a little softened for me (I mean, who hasn't heard at least a few of the King's "high C's" over the past week?) Somehow or other people seemed drawn into my piece - this strange foreign vision of opera singers and baseball bats. Ultimately it was a really great place for me to be - a kind of reality check. Because in fact, it is my absolute hope that my opera is relevant and meaningful to every member of that crowd - intelligent, worldly, and hip as they all were. If my target is just the contemporary opera audience (as intelligent, worldly, and hip as THEY of course are) then I'm aiming at a pretty exclusive club. But if I can find a way to tell a meaningful story to an audience outside an art gallery in Prospect Heights, or before a screening of Bang the Drum Slowly, or in the midst of a kicking hip-hop infused summer festival, then hopefully I'm tapping into something important. I'm not saying I've actually completely figured it out yet - and I do cherish complexity and challenge and my fair share of dissonance, the kinds of things that are sometimes forbidding to those wary of opera, contemporary art music, or both. But ultimately I think the job of the opera composer is to tell the story, completely, honestly, and from the heart. It's a genre that allows its creators to put in every ounce of their fiber, every last ounce of vocal strength or finesse or ethereal delicacy, every conducting flourish, every staging innovation, every strip of compositional fortitude. And ultimately, despite its capacity for intellectual stimulation, I think opera is emotional at its core. I can probably count on one hand the truly emotionally transcendent experiences I've had at the opera. But each one of them has been transformative in a way completely beyond the capacity of any other art form. It's probably a strange genre for one to stake all his chips on, but at this point, what choice is there?

Does what mean I'm rich? Oh, that they're writing about me in the Wall Street Journal. Alas, I'm the only guy you know written about in the opera section of the Journal (and it should follow logically, no, I'm not rich).
Anyway - have a sniff...

Here's the mad photographer, my recently departed visitor, capturing the particular magic of the super-sonic hand dryers out at Two Lights State Park. Thought I'd share this little work of art with you, and use it as an excuse to mention that the long-neglected Vault is back up (for who knows how long?). One of Mike's gifts to me was a recording of a concert I gave 18 years ago at Bard College. A recording I didn't have. So go check me out in my most James Taylor wannabe phase. [Special note to my students: if you download this, and play it for me as a joke in class, you automatically fail.]

Mother nature finally cooperated, and maestro David Rakowski made it out to Gorham to talk shop with my composers. Said composers did a fine job with the USM Spring Composers Showcase last night, with Davy R. and also his accomplice Beth Wiemann in attendance. We had a March, an aleatoric piece about flying saucers (with special guest narrator Paul Haley), a desperation scene from an opera-in-progress (a genre I know all too well), a rock anthem, a spikey atonal piece with deep bass voice, and a multi-movement affair that culminated in the clangorous splendor of handbells dispersed throughout the hall. The USM Composers Ensemble (still shopping for a better name) celebrated its fourth semester of existence. Then today, four of our young composers had 45 mintues (each) of private time with Davy, who also gave a rather spellbinding 90 minute presentation of his own work. It was all good enough to spend some of this glorious Saturday indoors (somehow, since my last several posts, Spring has arrived). And, as I observed to Davy over lunch, it’s a lot easier teaching composition lessons when you get someone else to teach them. Too bad Davy can’t come back every week, so I can spend my time outside throwing Frisbees into the wind.

Okay - as promised, here's a first taste of some of the recent opera activity. This is a staged piano/vocal performance of Act 1 Scene 2 of the opera from the Manhattan School of Music. In this scene, the Elder Barber, who has just been ranting and raving about the great Josh Gibson (who no-one else seems to remember), describes Gibson’s legendary homerun completely out of Yankee Stadium. As he narrates, Gibson and Broadway Connie Rector pantomime the baseball events on the stage, and an old-time radio announcer calls the play by play and “color commentary.” The credits are in the video, but I’ll double up and mention the music director (and co-pianist) Steven Osgood, and the brilliant stage direction of Seret Scott here. I hope you enjoy it – and let me know what you think!

(I will still be posting excerpts from the orchestral performance in Maine – so stay tuned.)

Well it seems SOME people are a little quicker out of the gate than I am. Here I've been promising you opera footage for weeks - WEEKS - and a scant three days after the performance, Washington Musica Viva has posted my Six Small PIeces for Clarinet and Piano on YouTube already. I am humbled. - And I have to add, how totally thrilling and strange to be able to witness this performance from afar. This piece is about 10 years old, but I still have a real soft spot for it, and I'm so happy that it's getting some more exposure.

Enjoy - and I promise to have some opera up soon!
Carl Banner, piano
Ben Redwine, clarinet
Nos. 1-3

Nos. 4-6

Omigod this album is absolutely incredible and it's available for FREE right here. Abigail Grush was one of the quirky oddball brilliant musicians I went to Bard College with - we were all wondering what to do with our musical selves. We all wrote pop tunes, but also majored in music and wrote orchestral pieces etc. Abby's sort of continued in the pop direction, but her music is pop from Pluto. Her musicianship is so deep, and so restless, that she's all over the place at once, with allusions to Kate Bush, Blondie, Kurt Weill, and others. The surface of the music is irresistibly pop-like, but the song structures are just completely untamable and art-like. I'm sure Abby's friends think she's as weird as my friends think I am, and it's gotten to the point where this album - the best you'll hear this year - had to be "self-released" by the artist. The sniveling, shallow-minded, artless, profiteers of the music industry, who have in the past taken a chance on Ms. Grush, just couldn't take the leap of faith on this one. Or something. I don't really know the backstory, but this is the kind of music that gives me hope - it's weird and wild and wonderful, and it's free. So what are you waiting for? (If you need convincing listen here first).

Alex and I are running ourselves ragged. Here's a still from today's performance of scenes from the Summer King at the Manhattan School of Music. This is a clip from Act 1 Scene 2, which was not performed last week in Maine. From left to right, Jason McKinney is Josh Gibson, awaiting the pitch from Broadway Connie Rector, in the white shirt (his name - which I heard tonight for the first time - wasn't in the program). On the ladder, Robert Hoyt plays the radio announcer, who sings here through a makeshift bullhorn. Leon Browne is the Elder Barber, whose memory this whole scene represents - while in the background Steve Osgood and Charity Wicks play the four hand stride-style piano accompaniment. This scene was a big success. The first scene went well too, but it's tough to lose the orchestra on that one - at least we need a drum kit (which is essential in scene 1).

I've edited video from last week in Maine, and I'll try to convert to YouTube as soon as I can (even though each scene is too long to exist uninterrupted on YouTube.)

Interestingly, after just about everyone I know turned out for the Maine concert last week, almost no-one I knew (- almost, there were some notable exceptions) turned out for this one, and the house was still almost full. Alex likes the idea of my music happening in front of audiences that don't entirely consist of my close personal friends...go figure.

Anyway - if you're on the list of missing friends tonight, I hope you'll come for the March 30 or 31 shows. No staging for those (that ship has sailed), but fun all the same.

Bed time now - completely wrecked and exhausted.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Whistlesparks, from last Friday. Arielle, the harpist, has now officially played this piece from coast to coast (well, from North to South anyway), having now performed it in Florida, New York, and Maine. Lisa Lutton, on flute and piccolo, joined Arielle for the New York premiere and again in up here. And I'll say, they're really beginning to get the hang of it! (understatement)

So I got some seriously good press for my concert, including this really wonderful article in the Phoenix, which I suppose is Portland's (and Boston's, for that matter) answer to the Village Voice. I say it's wonderful not just because it's quite generous with me, which it is, but because its author, the new classical columnist for the Phoenix, Ben Meiklejohn, actually took the time to listen to some of my music and makes musically informed, sensitive commentary about the pieces. You would think such actions would not be a rarity for classical music critics, but amazingly, informed commentary about new art music seems to be a challenge to the critic community. Maybe that's why the head critic in town, over at Portland's big mainstream paper (a paper that was also very generous w/ me in the lead up to the performance), steers clear every time a USM faculty member mounts an entire evening of brand new music. I mean, why grapple with some fresh material that's not going to allow you to hold forth with pearls of wisdom on music that's been interpreted for literally hundreds of years? No bitterness here, of course. Just a sigh over this town that can be at once so enlightened, so arts-oriented, and so provincial. At least and at long last there's more than one solitary classical music critic in town (and there's one now with an open ear for new sounds).

Hi there everyone. I miss you out there in cyber space. The concert was yesterday, and it was a dream. A full house! A standing ovation! And so many wonderful performances from friends and colleagues old and new. Here I am with some of my newest friends, the wonderful cast of The Summer King from last night's concert. Left to right, you've got Jason McKinney (Sam Bankhead), Leon Browne (Elder Barber and Trash-Talking Player), yours truly, Lori-Kaye Miller (Elder Barber's Wife and Grace), and Anthony Turner (Younger Barber and Josh Gibson). What a terrific job these four singers did, under the brilliant baton of Steve Osgood. Anyway - many more performers to pay tribute to in this space. But time is short.

I have excellent documentation - look for audio and video VERY SOON!

Now here's a beautiful sight for you. Big beautiful drums and mallet instruments, and the greatest of people: percussionists! It's sometimes easy to take those folks at the back of the orchestra for granted, but not when you spend five hours with them in a sectional rehearsal for some seriously hard music. Percussionists need to be able to turn on a dime, switch mallets, keep counting as they run from the bass drum over to the vibes, or clank the marimba with two mallets in one hand while preparing a triangle beater in the other. Oh, and don’t forget retuning the timpani (what? a designated timpanist? uh uh…this is modern music!)

I’ve been promising myself a post on modern music, and I will do one soon. But right now in the excitement of the coming week, when I can hear snippets of my music ringing through all floors of Corthell Hall (sometimes I perk my ears up and say “wow, that sounds SO familiar. What IS it?&rdquo, how can I be anything but grateful. They’re coming – musicians from the south, coming to this cold but sunny (so far) little town that is treating me well. No complaints (except for lack of sleep). More soon, I promise.

I don't usually use this space for the old tooting-my-horn thing, but then it occurs to me, why not? I mean, someone's got to do it - and I'm as well qualified as any of em. So in lieu of anything heart- or groundbreaking from my own noggin, I'll pass along the link to this very nice article by Ray Routhier, a columnist from our Maine Sunday Telegram. More from me REAL soon.

I'm deep in the thick of score and part preparations, with the help of an able and eager team of copyists. Though I know I'm no Beethoven, the whole process cannot help but make me think of my all time favorite Beethoven letter (and believe me, there are LOTS of good ones!) Here it is, for you, in its entirety. To quote Homer Simpson in regards to the last sentence, "It's funny cause it's true!"

Here's an extended quote from a creepy and ghastly little book from the 1920s called Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, Musician and Murderer, by Cecil Gray and Philip Heseltine. It may or may not be well known to my readers that Gesualdo wrote amazingly complex, chromatic madrigals in the late 16th century, and was influential not on the generation of composers that immediately followed him, but rather on composers of the 20th century, most particularly Stravinsky. As famous as he is for his weird and beautiful music, however, he is probably best known for an act he committed relatively early in life: upon discovering that his wife had been carrying on an affair for several years, Gesualdo elaborately planned and executed (with the help of his servants - he was very well born) the murder of her and her lover. Soon afterwards he exiled himself to his country estate, where he continued to compose music that was increasingly at odds with the taste of his times. Anyway, after an opening section called "Gesualdo considered as a musician," I kid you not, the authors present a second section called "Gesualdo considered as a murderer," and it is from this frightfully disturbing, but at times no doubt humorous, set of pages that I now quote, somewhat at length.

But more particularly is there a definite connection between music and murder, although it may not be readily apparent. Not that many musicians have actually committed murders (apart from Gesualdo, one can only think of Salieri who, as everyone knows, poisoned Mozart); nor, strange to say, have many musicians been murdered themselves, except Mozart and Stradella. The connection between the two activities is much more subtle but none the less close. In the first place, the significant fact should be noted that the beginning of the decline of murder as an art dates from precisely the same period as the development of music as a personal expression, i.e., the beginning of the 17th century. In the middle ages music was more a craft than an art, because the emotions which we now express in music were then actually expressed in life. In these good old days one committed a murder if one felt like it, and thought no more about the matter; today we write an Elektra or a Cavalleria Rusticana instead, in order to work off our feelings. In definite relation to the increased difficulties attendantt upon the practice of murder, music has become more and more sadistic. In place of inflicting the utmost pain on a single individual, we outrage the ears of thousands.

And so we find in the particular case in question. It was not until Gesualdo gave up murder that he seriously took to composing....My only purpose here is to point out that Gesualdo's eminence in the art of murder is no less than it is in the art of music, and that his achievement in both spheres has been unduly and undeservedly neglected.

What an endless marathon of a day I enjoyed with the USM Composers Ensemble yesterday. It was, in fact, the first time all semester that the entire 19 member ensemble was in the same place at the same time. And good thing too, since we had a performance scheduled at 8pm. I set up a rigid rehearsal schedule, from 12:30pm until about 7 with only a couple of small breaks mixed in, and we all took our intensity and endurance to the edge (and possibly slightly beyond, especially during act two of the concert!). Miraculously, we pulled it together and launched 8 new pieces into the world before a good sized and appreciative crowd. Here are some photos that document the event (click on one to go to Flickr, or just reload this page and you'll see different ones). I'm still too exhausted to expostulate on all the good feeling that was generated last night, so I'll let images of my brightly-clad little orchestra do the talking.

Here I am assuming a typical posture with my beloved, and now three-semesters-old Composers Ensemble. (Can you guess which one’s me?) The ensemble has exploded into a near-orchestra, with about 19 members (not all pictured here) including a beefy brass section, a happening wind section, and even the makings of an actual string section (violin, cello and bass). We also have between 2 and 4 percussionists (if you count the willing and able stand-ins that include yours truly in a couple of compositions). The students have knocked themselves out writing this semester, and our program this coming Friday will sport a mini concerto for electric bass and winds, two settings of texts by Wilfrid Owen for soprano and large ensemble (that’s us!), a mini-opera dealing with homelessness, a brilliant Mexican-inspired “Sfiesta” (on which I play the castanets, a more challenging instrument than I had previously realized), some Eastern-European-inspired nightmare music, an homage to English consort stylings, a moody, coloristic serial work with a French title (“Surgi&rdquo, and a sinister slow “Offering” that explodes into giddy metric madness (with the quarter note weighing in at 160). Yes, we’ve bitten off a lot, and I’ll be conducting and drumming and praying through about 270 minutes of rehearsal time on Friday, along with my co-conductor Marshunda Smith and the able-bodied and adventurous ensemble, to ensure that these vibrant new works are ushered forth into the world with verve. If you’ll be in town, it’s this Friday Night, December 8th (26th anniversary of John Lennon’s death), 8pm, Corthell Concert Hall, University of Southern Maine, Gorham campus. And it’s FREE!

Well, I had an awful lot to do this weekend, so I figured why not write a fugue based on Brittany Spears' "Oops." I actually use that song on the first day of counterpoint class to demonstrate melody (good melody - really), and last year Mark P, a grad student, wrote a nice invention based on the tune. Then yesterday another student clued me into the video I've embedded below. Neat idea, not necessarily the best execution (Glenn Gould did something similar once - Danny Pi's fugue sounds more Bach-like than mine (read on), but it's short, and I prefer Beethoven fugues anyway). So yes, I threw my hat into the ring and here's my strange, more-Beethoven-like than Bach-like Oops Fugue

When I was in college - eons ago, I kid you not - a fun and music geeky thing a few of us liked to do each week was this: gather on a Thursday early evening, turn down all the lights, listen, in entirety, to a late Beethoven string quartet, and then stumble, starstruck and woozy, up to Kline Commons to watch the Simpsons. This was around 1991 or so, and the Simpsons was seriously good back then, and there were three, maybe four television sets on campus. Somehow we were all enchanted by brilliance in any medium, sparked into whirling contemplation and endless expostulating by the slightest sudden change of texture, or the perfect sight gag. We actually devoted good wind to the similarity between inspired moments of Bart Simpson and opus 131. The world was our oyster, to borrow that hackneyed phrase, and we sucked at the shell with ravenous desperation, our faith in art blind, and our belief that we were the only ones who could really connect entirely unshaken.

At this point in my narrative, a scene from the aforementioned Simpsons comes to mind. Must have been the third or fourth season. Bart is despondent at his perilous standing in his fourth grade class. He’s something like one test away from failing out completely, and he bemoans this fact to Otto, the school busdriver. And Otto looks at Bart and says – and please, I’m paraphrasing here – “Hey man, no worries. I failed out of fourth grade and now I drive the school bus!” You see, because all these years later I find that I myself am the music professor, and in this capacity I get to prance about the room spouting forth my insights about Beethoven and Schubert and Monteverdi and the Beatles – all the masters. And yet as engaging and thought-provoking and enlightening as I always hope I am, a good two thirds of my music appreciation class – first I’ve taught in years – seems unaware or disabused of this notion. After our third quiz of the semester I gave an impassioned speech about B’s development in the first movement of the 5th symphony. About how he chooses to hone in on the little insignificant link from the first to second theme in the exposition, and then hone in on the joint between the two halves of the link – revealing a piece of musical material that was right before our ears all along, yet that went entirely unnoticed. And then the oboe cadenza of the recapitulation, the touching and brilliant moment of introspection in that otherwise most extroverted of musical compositions. What does it mean to you, I asked. And I was pacing and huffing and puffing and singing sections of the movement and I might even have visited the piano in the far corner once or twice. And then after the 8:15pm break, about 35 or 40 of the 135-member class returned to hear me wax poetical about Schubert and his Erlkönig. I used to take this personally – but now I’ve learned to love it. Because those 35 or 40 who stay, into the darkness of night and our 9:30pm conclusion – the ones who aren’t there just to punch a hole in the dreaded “fine arts history” core requirement – have a special wide-eyed energy to them, a curiosity and a faith in artistic expression I’ve seen or felt somewhere before. Goes around comes around, I guess, even if in diminishing returns.

Finally extracted myself from Planet Fitness and its wonderful array of televisions for a run around the trusty old back cove. It’s foggy and unseasonably warm today, and as I waded through the soupy mist the soothing aromas of baking bread, on one side of the cove, and beans from the B&N factory, on the other, enhanced my tuneful reverie. Those who know me have probably heard me proselytize at one time another for ipod shuffle. Complete shuffle that is, no genre-specific crap. There is much to be learned from handing the selection responsibility over to the heavens. As if to prove the point, the first song selected was “Let it Be.” It’s a great song, and contains probably some of the best rock drumming ever. No fancy fills or pyrotechnics, as if there ever really was with Ringo, but just the heavy behind-the-beat soulful thumping that established Starr as among the best and certainly most underappreciated drummers. Next was Matt Schickele’s “Enemies,” off his Cities Filled With Lights. In addition to ghostly and painfully direct falsetto singing, this song has production values through the roof – especially Schickele’s patented dental drill guitar technique. I’ve never heard anything like it. Joan Armatrading’s “Willow” is the perfect song for a warm foggy day – it’s just so unremittingly lovely. Then Stevie Wonder’s “Looking for Another True Love,” off of Talking Book. Did I hear him whisper “go Jeff,” during the guitar solo? Jeff Beck? I had no idea. Perfect solo. I think Stevie plays just about everything else himself, including the drums, with some very fine cymbal work. On it went – Steely Dan’s ode to heroin addiction, “Charley Freak,” reminded me how good they were before Aja and all that endless wanker jazz (I only half mean it). Then Lennon chimed in with “God,” which speaks for itself, and could have only been followed by art music – and ironically the choice was “Simple Song” from Leonard Bernstein’s Mass, sung by Roberta Alexander. Had some fun discovering “Hey Mama,” by the Black Eyed Peas – didn’t even know it was on the pod, but it had me shaking my booty in the mist. Lots of other great stuff, and then, as soon as I stopped running, Berlitz Italian lessons came on. You just never know what you’ll get, and that’s the beauty of it really (all of the albums pictured above were represented during the run).

I've been neglecting you again, dear blog readers. Have had my hands full with various matters, not the least of which being this brand new song. Just wrote it - a New Year's anthem, of all things. I thought I'd post a sneak preview right here. It's written for the Truth About Daisies new year's eve gig, but you can imagine it's going to sound QUITE different in that context! It's called "Resolution Time." enjoy...
(Sorry - this song's time has run out (I needed to delete it because I'm running out of space here...check back or email me if you want to here it))

p.s. I'm also going to experiment with re-enabling comments...

Caught Bobby Dylan last night for the first time. He played Portland with his band, and it was a tight enough affair, but let's face it - Dylan, who was once one of the great singers in Rock (round about 40 years ago - those who say he could never sing are just flat out wrong. He had a unique quality, excellent sense of pitch, brilliant phrasing and control...you couldn't ask for anything more) has completely lost it. Every song is a monotone, a caricature of his voice of old. I literally had no idea what song he was singing until I managed to make the words, so thoroughly stripped away was any sense of melody. The band is hyper-competent, but far too precise, and too much chorus on the guitar. At times it felt like an absolutely grade-A wedding band (with a hack for a singer). Other moments were better, and in general Dylan, who dressed all in black, played an inaudible keyboard the entire night, and didn't say one word to the audience until he introduced the band during the encores, did better with his new material than with the old. But the new material is pretty much boring, if authentic. The Raconteurs, who were the opening act, were enormously tight and lots of fun too - great vocal harmonies, screaming guitar licks, and cool stagecraft - like having a completely distorted microphone set up at the back of the stage for the lead singer to scream into with his back to the audience. Cinematic gold, I tell you.

CBGB has closed its doors. It happened the other night - Patti Smith came back to partake in the farewell festivities, and true New Yorkers shed a tear for the club that established the Big Apple as an incubator of great rock and roll in the mid 70s and early 80s. But this has special poignance for me because I played the first non-local gig of my life there in 1985, as the 15-year-old drummer of Delayed Green Wait. At the time, I didn't even know what CB's was - the bands, the history. I just knew I had to convince my mom to let me go, and she ultimately came to the gig and had a swinging good time. It was a Monday night audition showcase, and we did a nice job. The band on before us was smitten with our earnestness and tunefulness. We were Green (in every way), not so tight, but we had great songs and the genius guitarist Lexi Stern. Friends schlepped in from Great Neck and it was a real trip. I called back for weeks afterward. First they told me that we passed the audition and they were going to book us. Then they said that we weren't quite tight enough, and that we should re-audition and good luck to us. Then I lost the CB's board tape and told the other band members it was stolen out of my high school locker, and some members of the trio (not me) had a falling out, and some members (not me) went to college, and the history that we all felt certain we were poised to make didn't get made. In the intervening years I've been in a few bands, and even had the opportunity to play CB's again a couple of times manning the kit for Billy Dechand's Trike. But the hall - the pit, as everyone told me it was when I was 15 and impressionable - has always brought me back to that bright early and eager time, when the city was mucky, alluring and frightening, and the future was only possibility. Possibility for a call-back, a return engagement, a discovery, signing, well-deserved career of fame and jamfests and San Tropez and remembering that golden moment back in the pit, back there on the dusty old Bowery, one Monday night in the middle of the roaring 80s. Adieu dear CB's, and OMFUG too.

Look friends, I'm not trying to be cryptic here. But I've had a breakthrough and I can't exactly tell you what it was. It's about the opera - not notes and rhythms, not even libretto...I'm back to tinkering with the actual treatment. It's late in the day for that, what with music already written and such, but things are so falling into place. It all goes back to when I saw Jenufa up at Glimmerglass. Artsy fartsy is fine for some, but I think at core I'm like Janacek insomuch as I'd prefer to have people bawling, you know? Get sucked in. So I've wrenched the opera - with the consultation of my good friends at American Opera Projects - into something of a more conventional narrative space. The guy in the photo is Gus Greenlee, who was the king of the Pittsburgh numbers racket in the 1930s, and also, for a time, the owner of the Pittsburgh Crawfords. For a few seasons that may have been the best baseball team ever assembled anywhere. But it's Gus and his numbers who are at the core of my little eureka day today, and for quite a while going forward you're going to have to take me at my word when I tell you just how thoroughly good old Gus ties everything together. No idea whatsoever what I'm talking about? Click here. Next on the agenda for me, although I don't know when it'll fit, is a trip to Pittsburgh and Homestead. It's time, at long last, to walk in the footsteps of greatness. Anyone got a couch?

This little gem comes from my USM theory colleague Alan Kaschub. When his class of freshman theoreticians were feeling down about things, perhaps questioning the long, trying life in music that lay ahead of them, he gave them these encouraging words:

You know those students in other disciplines who party all the time, never have class on Friday or even Thursday afternoon, who drink constantly on the weekend, sleep all day Monday, and maybe stumble in hungover for a late Tuesday class as the cycle begins again? They're gonna make more money than you.

Been too long since I've attempted the shameless self promotion in this space. (Okay, not really - maybe a day?) But this concert is just around the bend and I'm pretty pumped about it. And if you happen to be around NYC on Columbus Day Weekend, why not come by? More info, you say? Click here.

Well, technically the "Wall of Sound" at the Maine Common Ground Fair was meant for children. But you gotta understand - the kids were out of control. OUT of control I tell you. They were banging on the trash can lids and pots and platters with reckless abandon, with motives that seemed more violent than musical. I just had to jump in to straighten things out a bit. At another moment during the day, Truth About Daisies found themselves playing a gig at the Spotlight Stage. It was going swimmingly until we lost power, but it came back. And boy did I do a lot of eating.

Beth Wiemann, who I met at at the Virginia Center of the Creative Arts, came to USM at my invitation to give a workshop and a performance yesterday. What a great pair of events. Beth is clarinet and composition faculty at the University of Maine (formerly known as the University of Maine at Orono), and her work involves combining electronic sound, video, and live performance. Her compositions are deeply narrative, often deriving their influence from literary sources, and dreamlike in their overall effect. One piece, Dodge at Mann Gulch, recounts the story of a Montana wildfire in 1949. Wagner Dodge led a team of smoke jumpers who attempted to do battle with the blaze, but almost immediately realized they were outmatched. With no way to outrun the fire, Wag Dodge, as he was known, created an "escape fire," which worked to deter the approaching inferno and secure his escape. He was unsuccessful in getting his charges to adopt the seemingly insane plan, however, and many of them were lost. Wiemann tells the tale with beautiful imagery, pensive clarinet rumbles, and text from Norman MacLean's account of the event, Young Men and Fire. The end product is haunting. But my favorite piece was "For He is Good to Think on," written for flute, clarinet and DVD. Beth was joined on stage by flautist Liz Downing in playing a simple yet mesmerizing, almost-folk like score that coincided with processed videos of Beth and her husband's (composer David Rakowsky) two cats and percussive and sitar-like electronics. Tying the work together is the very wonderful poem "For I Will Consider My Cat Jeoffrey" by Christopher Smart (also used by Britten in his "Rejoice in the Lamb"). The piece had that quality, shared by only the best time-based works of art, of making you wish it would last forever. I just let the sounds and words and images wash over me - a perfect confluence of sensory stimulation.

We had a pretty nice turnout at both the workshop - where Beth displayed some of her techniques and software - and the concert, where the classical reviewer from the Portland Press Herald also turned up. We'll see what he had to say, but all and all I'm glad to have gotten the USM concert season off to a start with some 21st century music (something that's sometimes in too short supply around here.)

I'm sorry everyone...the long, languorous days of summer, when there was time to blog thoughtfully and intelligently, feel like ancient history. The end of each day finds me a puddle of tangled and useless neurons firing lamely in every direction. Scattered....so I'm digging back into last weekend's glory. Here we are at Bisby's farm, playing our short little set. This drummer's eye view comes courtesy of Kevin,the hunk-like song writing and bass playing genius who came along for the ride. If only I weren't a puddle I could really tell you what it all was like.

Hi there - been traveling yet again, and hence I haven't written. Truth About Daisies had a teency weency itsy bitsy tour this weekend, traveling through some lovely small towns in the middle of this vast state of ours. We played the Village Fair in Orono (see pic of us on flatbed truck), and then hightailed it (NOT - we were lost for hours!!) over to East Dixfield, where the Maine Songwriters Association was having its annual meeting and festival on the property of the amazingly generous and engaging cowboy poet, Larry Bisby. THAT's a story for another day - suffice to say that we played a hopping but rather short set this morning, and made it back to Portland sometime in the early evening. Oh, and I learned to pitch a tent. But must run now. Please note, this photo is NOT by Mr. Moto, but by our new Canon Powershot 610, which they sent us when they realized that the old camera was, as advertised, beyond repair.

It's just that I sometimes get, oh, what's the word...overgeeked? I had it in my head to write this long exegesis on the operas I saw up at Glimmerglass last weekend, and on opera in general, and how you only think you don't like opera. Really. And then this writing project, this blogligation, so to speak, began to weigh heavily on my conscience. Almost to the point where while I was composing - which, let's admit, is the thing I do when I am least procrastinating - I sometimes had thoughts that my much anticipated blog entry was growing seriously overdue. And then I realized hey wait a minute, this is just to blow off a little steam and be all stream of consciousness like and unprofound and all...you know, just to find a resting spot for some fraction of the billions of photos I snap with Mr. Moto (who is both a recurring character in the Berlitz Italian audio CDs I'm currently working with, and the new name - christened just now - of my cameraphone (guess the brand)). So overgeeked I am no longer, and you get no exegesis. I shall not exegete (okay okay, "exegete" is actually a noun. But just for today, can we pretend it means "to give an exegesis" (as opposed to "one who gives an exegisis," which is more or less its real meaning). (And truth be told, I have no idea what "exegesis" means.) In lieu of my exegetion, I'll say only this: Steven Hartke's new opera, The Greater Good, was very impressive but about forty minutes too long. It has the best extended orchestral depiction of upstairs copulation-animated bedsprings I have ever heard (especially since this effect doubles as a loving nod toward Bernard Hermann's most famous musical moment from Psycho). But for me, the winner of the weekend was Janacek's Jenufa, which now ranks as one of my favorite operas. Almost immediately after the brilliant production began all thoughts of "do I like this?" and "is this well written?" and the like flew from my opera-addled brain and were replaced by a racing pulse, welling tear ducts, and in general the kind of opera-induced ecstasy I've only witnessed in Tom Hanks movies (one in particular). I was bawling by the curtain call, okay? Simple story (pregnant and unmarried beauty is taken for granted by the man she loves, and permanently disfigured by the man who loves her. She ends up with the latter, who at least feels sufficiently guilty. A secret baby is drowned along the way.), great pathos, wonderful acting (yes, there IS acting in opera), and all in all just a crushing artistic experience.

That's all I really feel up to saying about that. I took the above photo while driving home (boy did I get in trouble for that, too. but it does capture the moment). I had forgotten how glorious upstate New York is. A totally different kind of beauty from Maine, but just as palpable. It's somehow wider over there, more land, endless rolling hills. Not quite as much water everywhere. Oh, and the fall foliage season that draws tourists to both spots each October? Better in upstate New York. Sorry. (I remember from college)

Hey - I've just updated The Vault with an almost never-heard Monkey song of mine! Why not indulge your curiosity?

Hi everyone. I'm sick and sleepy...finished some semblance of book proposal draft, and then found a bunch of cool pics in my inbox from Truth About Daisies percussionist, Burd. This gives a better sense than previously published pics about the delightful chaos we inflicted on poor, unsuspecting Corthell Hall. When I'm up to it I'[l tell you all about my new found love for swimming at East End Beach (right downstream from the poopie factory). Stay tuned. (And don't forget to check the Vault - which I've been religiously updating each week, despite the fact that few are noticing!)

So yeah, I'm back on the Joni trail again. She's a funny one. While I was writing my dissertation, people asked me all the time if spending so much time concentrating on her made me sick of her music, you know, made me never wanna hear Joni again. And I always said, truthfully, no, because the diss was really three super-in-depth studies of individual songs (albeit in all their socio-historic and musical-stylistic, to use academic wanker terms, context). But when the whole thing was done I was, indeed, burnt, and sadly, I stopped putting Joni in rotation. Then I had the opportunity to speak at a Joni Mitchell symposium held at McGill University in the fall of 2004. I prepared my paper (which turned out to be, I think, quite a bit too academic for the setting) and I went, enjoying with Alex the beautiful 5 hour drive to Montreal. I wasn't expecting much, and even the concept that I was going to meet, or at least be in the same room with, my dissertation topic, didn't really thrill me so much. I was spent, you see. So I'm there at the conference, and Joni arrives late by the grace of God and misses my presentation (which was made fun of - I was portrayed as a total egghead - on the front Arts page of the Montreal Gazette) and she walks into the room, cameras flashing, and from the moment she arrives I'm totally transfixed - blown away even. She was a star, and in her comments so opinionated, so brilliant and cutting and honest, that I reconnected with all it was that got me into the project (as she had become) in the first place. Her comportment over the remainder of that two-day experience, a subject for another day, just knocked my socks off. I came home with renewed vigor (and with an autographed copy of my dissertation. I also gave her a copy, but foolishly neglected to leave my contact info on it, so she hasn't called, and she hasn't invited me out to the Vancouver residence, or to tea, and we haven't had long jam sessions into the early hours of the morning. Just in case you're wondering. At least these pictures earned me some serious cred, in the scheme of things).
Anyway, I'm kind of at a similar spot now. I have a kind of self-imposed deadline - a book proposal that's like two years overdue, but my friend and former dissertation advisor Ellie has, out of the goodness of her heart, started cracking the whip again. So I've dug out all my works-in-progress on the matter, and started reading stuff again. And to get myself even more into the mood, I've begun reading old articles (an absolutely astounding library of press clippings on Mitchell, along with a lot of other great stuff, is maintained at Jonimitchell.com - perhaps the best, most comprehensive website devoted to a popular music artist). And although on some level I'm feeling kind of burnt, I start reading these clippings and all the worship just seeps right back in (replacing the jealousy, which I'll admit sometimes also plays a role). I'm reading about her 1979 album Mingus, which was controversial (and I think an out and out masterpiece). And she's talking to John Rockwell about her composition method and says this:

Let's say a guitarist in the studio lays down four tracks. Some of them have magic moments, but they also have clunkers and warm-up chords. So, what I have is four tracks that need weaving. I edit each of those tracks individually, and then I run them all together. This is the way I've chosen to compose, through technology, through tape. It's audio composition - the elimination of things that do not work by erasure, all by ear. And by a graphic system which runs inside, behind my eyes. I see a graphic indication of what I'm hearing. I see where it's tangled in a graphically.

And I'm thinking, man, here we are 27 years later, and that's what everyone does. It's Protools, you know? (Most audio editing these days has a very pronounced visual element). Anyway, so I'm sucked back in - and the opera is perilously on hold for a couple of more days while I parse and chop, drool and expostulate.

Hanging down from my window
Those are my wind chimes
On the warm breeze the little bells
Tinkle like wind chimes
Though it's hard I try not to look at my wind chimes
Now and then a tear rolls off my cheek
-Brian Wilson

First off, this crappy photo era must end. If you're a really big fan of the Twilight Zone, as I once was, you probably know that for a very brief period of time during the 2nd or 3rd season, CBS switched from film to videotape (yes, way back in the early 1960s), as a cost-cutting measure. So you have maybe 8 episodes that look really, really weird - sort of like a home movie. Ultimately, not so hot. The experiment ended in failure and they switched back to lush and more expensive film. I'm hoping that this little period of time on this blog will also be viewed, historically, as such a blip. Be that as it may, I couldn't resist sharing with you my wind chimes. I was out on the old back porch a few days ago when a fierce, burning desire took hold of me. I had to have wind chimes, and now. It was as if my central nervous system was crying out some great inner deficiency. I couldn't bear to be out there without the Woodstock Chimes of my youth. So I ran to downtown Portland, but the chimes were $50. Then I joined Amazon Prime for a free trial period, and paid $3.99 for shipping and I think $33 for chimes, and by Saturday they were here, and then it rained and rained. And what's more, my father-in-law, the great pianist Orin Grossman, said "Wind chimes? But don't you know, when the wind blows they make a horrible, horrible noise?" And the truth is I did suffer some doubt, because when you lift them up and shake them all about hokey-pokey fashion they are quite clangorous. But this morning in the sun I finally had a chance to hang them, and the gentle breeze made for such soothing little dings and dongs, and also, I suddenly heard in the distance other wind chimes. Wood ones. Metal ones. Coming from every direction. It was like I was now part of some greater tuned-in community of chime enthusiasts, taking in the breeze and the Balinese and Javanese scales as we sipped our soy caramel iced lattes on our back porches. It was transcendent in so many ways, so I overcame doubt, ripped off the tag, took this photo, and here we are.

Believe me, there's a LOT I could tell you about. The last several days have been eventful, to say the least. The highlight, or rather lowlight, was probably the two-hour in-home demonstration/sales pitch we got from Kirby Vacuums. We were offered a free rug shampooing, and who wouldn't want that, right? Anyway, I don't have the energy to bore you with the details. But try googling this and you'll begin to understand. Crazy crazy stuff, involving lots and lots of lies. And just say no when they call you up! (I swear, I didn't give your name as a reference).
Meanwhile Truth About Daisies will spend the next two days, all day and night, recording our CD. We're working in Corthell Hall at the University of Southern Maine, and we've transformed it into a pretty sweet little studio, with the help of our recording guru Mark Bartholomew. Here's Sheila McKinley, one of our principle songwriters, in a pensive moment during setup.

Oh - and all you addicts? Notice I've added an RSS feed to this blog, without really even knowing what one is.

When you get tired of absolute ipod shuffle mode, or itunes shuffle mode, as the case may be, why not try listening to your whole collection alphabetically? Just as surprising and fresh, I promise (and it'll help you weed out the repeats.)

Somehow I can't get Syd out of my head. I'm surfing around finding stuff on the internet, and I've downloaded Dark Globe and Octopus from itunes (I have the vinyl, somewhere). It's funny how you can completely hear Syd's influence on Roger Waters' singing style on Dark Globe. Then I found this Rolling Stone interview w/ him AFTER he had moved to Cambridge to live with his mum. I didn't realize any such interviews existed. It's heartbreaking, this little thing. And the songs are so incredibly good.

I found "Days" in a better way than I could ever have imagined! (What am I talking about? Read two posts down.)
Check it:

I sometimes wonder about memory. Isn't it odd that certain days, certain moments, get imprinted on our eternal psyche, while others fall off into oblivion? I mean, do you ever wonder if this day, this hour or minute, will be entirely forgotten, perhaps before the week is over? There are certainly minutes of yesterday I've already forgotten. Have you asked yourself why a Kinks single cover? Just that some music puts me in the spirit of memory - not necessarily any specific thought or day or reminiscence...just that open predisposition towards memory that lives somewhere between nostalgia and melancholy. I was just listening to "Helpless" by Neil Young - a song that does it to me every time. Some songs are about memory - like "Days," by the Kinks. It doesn't seem to be in my itunes library or even in the music store, but it made me happy just to think about it this little while. And of course "Waterloo Sunset" - and God knows what that song's ABOUT - is a memory tune, in its way. I guess so is "In My Life," but perhaps too obviously so. "I said okay baby, tell me what you be, and I'll lay my head down and see what I see." Is about memory - perhaps mine, not his. Late high school, early college, in that hi-fi stereo shop, Ears Nova, Great Neck...these guys still swore by records - CDs were for the riffraff. And their collection had the complete Syd, all two of them, and we all thought these guys are probably drug dealers. They wanted us to just come in and hang out, you know? I mean, we obviously weren't ready to jump loose on some $2k Thorens turntable. Then in college, with the bottom-of-the-line $300 model, I put on Bodhisattva and my roommate asked the dean for a change of venue. Took his 12 string Rickenbacker and all his Morrissey records right out that door.

As this summer gets under way I'm catching myself thinking about another summer, exactly half a lifetime ago. It was 1988, high school was done, and I was spending lots of hours lounging in the freshly built swimming pool at my mom's place in Glen Cove....drinking Miller Genuine Draft, reading Jack Kerouac, deeply in love for the first time, and getting serious about song writing. As I recall, I wrote about 8 songs that summer, but two have been pretty persistent hangers-on all these years. "Instigation Blues" is now featured in the From The Vault! section of the site (in a 1990 performance). The other was "Amazing Mistakes," a song written about some of the characters involved in the sex scandal made famous by the film Capturing the Friedmans, which had just played out in my former hometown of Great Neck. Maybe I'll post that tune some time too. The photo here, by the way, is from the May 3, 1991 edition of the Bard Observer, and it's me playing an Earth Day gig in front of the dining commons. It's one of a very small number of photos I have of myself from the period. I know you care.

Well, since I alluded to it below - my opera - and since I've been meaning for there to be some ink spilled at this location in its honor, and since I've really nothing else to talk about (although I'm meaning to write a post about my fourth grade teacher, a sort of revenge piece, stay tuned) I'll mention a bit about the grand opus in progress. Man, I see what they mean about writing operas. I mean how long can the words "in progress" carry any sort of real weight on my c.v., you know? But Josh takes some living with. The opera is called The Summer King, and it's about the life and death of Josh Gibson, who was one of the great Negro League baseball players. If you know your baseball you've heard of him or shame on you. He was a catcher, but famous mostly for his bat. Although many Negro Leaguers were called "the Black Babe Ruth" at one time or another, Gibson probably deserved it more than anyone else. Or maybe the Babe was the "White Josh Gibson." Among Josher's most notorious, and perhaps most apocryphal feats are 1) hitting a ball clean out of Yankee stadium; and 2) Killing a ball out of a park in Pittsburgh, and then at the next day's game in Philadelphia, after a ball came out of the sky and landed in an outfielder's glove, being told "You're out yesterday in Pittsburgh." Surprisingly, it's the first of these events (and not the colorful and ubiquitous second) that plays a central role in the opera. Gibson's much debated 1930 homerun out of Yankee Stadium becomes a kind of metaphor for the entire Negro League history, shrouded as it is in mystery, hearsay, and scant public record. Gibson may have hit 800 or more home runs in his life, perhaps more than 80 in a single season. He also hit for average, and grew to be a more than decent catcher. Ultimately, however, the relentless grind of life in black ball began to wear away at the hulking slugger, and he became increasingly attached to alcohol and hard drugs. He also may have been diagnosed, in about 1942, with a brain tumor. The picture I've posted here gives a taste of Gibson later in life, somewhat bloated, still an accomplished trash talker, and delirious. He ended up dying in 1947, only months before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers. In the months leading up to his death, teammates and friends overheard him having imaginary arguments with Joe DiMaggio, and some have maintained that he died of a broken heart, for note having been The One.

In any case, Gibson has fascinated me for years. He is a stark contrast to his seemingly more operatic counterpart, Jackie Robinson. Jackie was such a noble figure. Heroic, driven, composed. A titan among men, who understood his historic responsibility and, against terrifying odds, rose to the charge. I don't know if any other human could have done what Jackie did that first year, the '47 season - withstanding the taunts, the death threats, the endless screeching epithets. Certainly not Josh. For Josh, being a great ballplayer was enough - wasn't that answering the call of history? Sure, he would have liked to have been chosen by Branch Rickey in '46, but by then Josh was in his mid-thirities, addled with injuries and worse, bloated, and living too far on the edge. It was not in Josh's horizon, nor in his ambitions, to be a pioneer - forging the way for his plethora of talented brethren. He did his pioneering with his bat - and were he white, this would have been enough. I mean can you imagine? His name would be a household word. He'd have a candy bar. I think in some ways Josh felt the swirling winds of history too late to raise his sail.

So the opera. I worked out a treatment with the poet Daniel Nester, who then wrote several drafts of the libretto. As is often the case between librettists and composers, Dan and I had a bit of an artistic parting of the ways, but the bulk of his excellent writing remains, with some inferior finishing touches by yours truly. We first cobbled together about an 18 minute scene, and you can hear all of it in the listen section of this site. This was for a workshop sponsored by American Opera Projects. We were working under great time pressure, so we didn't come up with a treatment for the whole opera, and the result is that this quirky little operatic chunk stands alone as a kind of suite: a meditation on Josh Gibson before our thoughts had fully congealed. Most of the music will not survive in the final version of the opera (except for the aria, which you can also hear on this site). The Summer King Suite, as that bit has come to be known, was performed in a staged version in March 2004 at the Manhattan School of Music, with some wonderful performers and under the inspired direction of Caren France, who works in the opera division there. Anyhoo, the opera occurs as a series of nested flashbacks, beginning in a barbershop in Brooklyn, 1957. It is ten years after Jackie broke the color barrier (and after Josh's death), and the year the Dodgers are leaving town, and a young exuberant barber gleefully sings along with an old chestnut that pops up on the radio: "Did You See Jackie Robsinon Hit That Ball?" (by Buddy Johnson). This prompts his elder colleague, a former Negro Leaguer himself, to wax philosophical about the great Josh Gibson. Eventually his reminiscing yields to a vision of the 1930 game at Yankee Stadium, told in pantomine with an exuberant sportscast through a bullhorn. Additional flashbacks find Josh, on his dying day, wracked by visions of his past - his first love, his triumphs in Mexican winter ball, his legendary acumen at trash talking, and ultimately, his most famous home run of all. Did he or didn't he? You'll need to stay tuned.

I've a long way to go. Have written some of the second act, which had a workshop reading by AOP in New York in April, 2005, and am now working on the first act. A portion of this will be presented in a concert performance up here in Maine on March 9, 2007, on my Faculty Recital, with a big 14 piece ensemble and a bunch of singers (the singers part is kinda standard for operas). There will also be workshop performances (piano/vocal, I fear) and maybe a libretto reading in NYC in the 2006-07 season (sponsored again by AOP), and perhaps another staged bit at the Manhattan School. It's an odd feeling to be with a single project for so long - a leap of faith, I suppose. The writing is going well, and taking me to some strange places (why does Debussy pop up in everything I write lately? I mean, what did HE know about baseball?) but it is a joyful pursuit.

You read this whole thing??? You weirdo!

I've been thinking a lot about how I'd like to earth some more deep thinking here, you know - not so much a blog about the current events of me, for all that's worth - I want to put up my response to this New York Times article about the best American novel of the past 25 years (the winner was Toni Morrison's Beloved, which I shamefully haven't read. But runners up were Philip Roth's American Pastoral (yay) and Don Dellilo's Underworld (boo)). But also want to post some thoughts about the new Paul Simon CD, and about the new Philip Roth book. So please stay tuned. But meanwhile - here's a snapshot from the video of the Truth About Daisies gig last night - a brief video is up now at the bottom of my video page, albeit in stripped down web-video format). And while I haven't thoroughly ditched the current-events-about-me format, I had my very first surprise party today. Alex had me totally fooled, it was almost kinda freaky (if she's capable of this...)

I promise I will soon find something more interesting to do in this space then plug other portions of this very web site. But until that happens, go have a look and listen to this recent performance of "Sigh No More, Ladies" which can be found right here in the all new video section. Before this April 13 performance no-one had ever sung this song but me - but the opportunity to work with a REAL singer was too tempting to resist. My USM colleague Bruce Fithian captures the spirit in fine fashion. (Psst - late breaking news! Mejdoub is there too, but might not last - this website is bursting at the seams!)

Some more great music was flowing tonight - this time in lovely Brunswick, inside Bowdoin College's music building, Gibson Hall. Flexible Music is a simply outstanding ensemble of committed virtuoso performers who came together a few years ago to play Louis Andriessen's brilliant snake-like piece Haut, and decided they wanted to keep playing together. That's tricky when the line-up is piano, guitar, percussion and saxophone. At least in the world of chamber/art music. So these folks have set about commissioning works from hot young composers. Tonight's concert featured pieces by Vin Shende - resident composer and professor at Bowdoin - and John Link, of Friends and Enemies of New Music (an old NY pal), Orianna Webb, and also the piece that started it all - Haut (you can listen to part of their recording of it here). Concerts like this need to happen more often up here!

I'm feeling Portland pride - this local band is GREAT. And they have a new CD out...
Check out Seekonk.
Just came back from their stunning gig at Space Gallery. And they're going on tour (they'll be at the Knitting Factory on Monday, all you New Yorkers...)

Friends, you guessed it: another stock photo. But this one only abstractly related to my subject matter. This photo was taken earlier this month at Art OMI in New York State. But I post it now in celebration of our wonderful Spring Composers Showcase last night at USM. We put on a two-hour concert of world premieres, including 6 by the USM Composers Ensemble. And just as this photo shows something modern in the context of tradition, so our little group (not so little - 11 members) offered some joyous cacophony and inappropriateness - along w/ some genuine urban beauty - in the hallowed halls of the conservatory. People are talking.

This is what we, in the business, call a "stock photo." It's filling the role of a photo of last night's Truth About Daisies gig at Acoustic Coffee, when in fact it's a photo of our early April gig at Free Street Taverna (which has been misguidedly renamed "128 Free Street" and where we'll play again on May 20). Also, you may have noticed that this is only the percussion section - me and the great Burd on conga. I've never been part of a percussion section before - it's loads of fun.

The gig was great. Short - a single 45 minute set, but enjoyable. And there was a wonderful singer from Boston on right before us - Anna Freitas. I shelled out 5 bucks for her CD, which is EP-length and quite good (on her site listen to her song "So Goes the Soul" especially the great setting of the words "platter of gold"). She's a Berklee educated guitarist with serious chops and a great ear for unusual transitions and chord changes. Each of her songs was bluesy in feel, but each had something unexpected and strange - and she's a great singer. Hope she makes it back up this way again.

After us came an open mike for members of the Maine Songwriters Association, and on the whole I'd say the quality level was surprisingly high. Lots of good tunes and soulful voices brewing up here in the North country.

With my broken camera and all, and in a somewhat odd mood after my first speeding ticket in about 13 years (I was going "criminally fast") I returned to iphoto and searched the archives for something in'resting to blogger you with. This is the late great Toothbucket, in an ill-fated gig behind Manor House at Bard College in, I'd say, probably 1991. A few months ago I stumbled across this polaroid and actually took a digital picture of it - no scanner at the time. That handsome fellow in the background with the spiff Rick bass is Billy Dechand. We must be playing my song "Tiny Town," which we only played that once. It was the one time I left my perch behind the drums.

Ironically, the band eventually changed it's name to Truthbucket. (The band broke up in 1992, and the name was changed around 1994). It's ironic because I'm in another band that changed it's name to incorporate the word Truth. Truth About Daisies. If you happen to be in Portland this Thursday, we'll be playing at Acoustic Coffee, c. 9pm. If you haven't seen me since the above photo was taken, I've grown a beard. Attitude's generally the same.

Hey all you blog readers, all one of you, yeah, YOU...pal o' mine. Check it out - more music is up in the "Listen" section. I know, I know, seeing as you're my lifelong friend and lone blog reader you already KNOW all this music. But there's nothing quite like catching the vibe on the web, right?

And just to put you in the mood, I'm posting this lovely pic of three attractive gents in rehearsal for the recent performance of Mejdoub. Left to right they're Tom Parchman, Vineet Shende, and Frank Martin. In my heart of hearts I hope to have at least an excerpt of that performance - in video form - on this website before long. You won't want to miss it.

Here's an exclusive photo of the USM Composers Ensemble doing what they do best - an explosion of propulsive and sometimes silly energy. We're giving a performance on April 28 of 7 world premieres, written and performed by members of the group. I jump back and forth between the drum stool and the conductor's podium, and try (as you can see, sometimes unsuccessfully) to maintain a sense of decorum.