Friday, October 15, 2010

Long time, no post

So...
I would like to first apologize for leaving you all hanging-especially considering the nature of the last post. I hope not to do that again.
So first things first.
The 'killer' audition- thanks again for all of your comments concerning this issue. It turned out to be a gut decision more than anything else, but my reasoning went as follows; 1) If I win, it would be another trial that would be more intense and twice as long as the one I just went through in Hamburg, and 2) I'm not ready for that kind of stress again. I also imagine you only get one chance to audition for this orchestra, and if and when I do this audition, I want to be ready on my own terms. Until next time, Berlin...

In the meantime, I made a trip to Boston to visit Malene. She has been doing an internship for the Goethe institute there since August. As this was my first trip to Boston, I had a jolly time walking around the city with my neck crooked upwards and a half-opened map in my hand in the typical tourist position. Boston is a very beautiful old city, which has so much history and if I had the right cord for my camera I would post some pictures here, but I guess for now you have to imagine them. The only disappointing thing about the city was it's lack of cosy, stuffed chaired, weird-decor-on-the-walls cafés. Malene was working during the day for several days while I was there, and it had been my goal to read several books in said café which I first had to find... and never did. I tried reading in one of the seventeen Starbucks I did find, but with numerous people all standing around waiting for their non-fat vanilla pumpkin mochalattes, it wasn't the atmosphere I had been looking to find for an afternoon's reading-the extreme friendliness of the Starbucks staff notwithstanding.

After a short trip to Westfield, MA to Janet and Mark St. Jean and Dot Hass (where it was, as they say in German, neatly eaten, drank, and made merry) we visited my friend Karl from Minnesota, don'tcha know. With all of his Norwegian bachelor farmer sensibility he started his own chamber orchestra called A Far Cry (www.afarcry.org) and I heard them perform for the first time. It was awesome. I don't know if that old church in Hingham had seen so much energy in a long time. The cubicle like compartments that we all sat in, which were probably there to keep those ornery 17th century puritans from throwing punches during meetings, made for an interesting concert environment (you couldn't really see the other people), but I'm sure all of that old wood made for great resonance.

Since I've gotten back it's been nothing but Wagner's "Twilight of the Gods" or "Götterdämmerung". Six hours of blazing, gargantuan... well, actually I don't really know, because I don't see any of it. In any case, Siegfried the son of "wolf-man" and grandson of the god "Wotan" fell in love with his aunt Brünnhilde (think large woman with viking helmet, spear, and long blonde braids), who he awakened from the stone she was sleeping on which was surrounded by magic fire. But this is all of course in the previous opera called "Siegfried". In the last installment, he drinks a potion that makes him forget about her and finds another woman. She gets understandably mad but them lets him get 'done in' by the guy who organized the whole thing in the first place because he wants his magic golden ring back. Follow me so far? Add in a couple of giants, a big fire and three river ladies who only think about their pretty gold and you pretty much have it. For a fuller review that really gets at the underlying themes of Wagner's ring cycle, I suggest listening to Anna Russell's summary.

I have also been working this week with a youth project called Mahler Camp, where 60 kids came in during their fall break and have been working to compose pieces-also being set to dance-inspired by Mahler's second symphony, which we will be playing in a concert next week to which they will all come. We took different themes that you see in this symphony like 'fear', 'everyday monotony', and 'hope' and tried to describe them as best as we could in music. I'm playing in pieces call "the alarm clock" and "family fears" and it's surprisingly cool. Today I even gave an interview for a newspaper and I hope it's not as embarrassing as I'm fearing it could turn out; somehow the language skills just go down the toilet when you need them the most.

In a final word, my stuffed squirrel friend Pete decided that he wasn't so happy with my leaving the country and not taking him with. So he has taken to quite rebellious dressing habits. I'm hoping, though, that this too is only a temporary phase...



German word of the day

Fettes Eichhörnchen [feht-tes aye ssch heurn sschen] --- Fat squirrel

3 comments:

  1. It never occurred to me that you wouldn't actually get to "see" most of the operas you were playing. As a bassoonist, I got to see LOTS of the operas from the pit orchestra (mostly out of the corner of my eye) due to the nature of my "color and texture" parts. (Endless quarter notes up and down the scale.) I imagine the bassists would be considerably busier than that in Wagner pieces.(And I just about ruptured myself laughing the first time Miriam played the Anna Russell CD!)

    Good decision re: the audition. Understand and respect the thought process leading to it, and who knows what opportunities tomorrow may bring?

    If you ever make it to Omaha with some time on your hands for visiting coffee shops, you should give the "Blue Line" coffee shop in Dundee a try. It looks like some graduate student's apartment was uprooted and transplanted into a coffee shop.

    And as for the Fat Squirrel rebellion, I refer you to the wisdom of Barney Fife: "You've got to nip it IN THE BUD!!!"

    ReplyDelete
  2. whoop whoop tights on the head! I'm doing it, as soon as I locate my tights...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Tell him, "Dude, you are so grounded!!", & since him won't know what you're talking about everybody will be happy. Dad

    ReplyDelete