It’s been a thrill to hear these fantastic musicians play this piece, and Patrick’s direction has been tremendous. A very impressive program, with an enthusiastic, receptive audience. What a pleasure it is to be down here!

Read the review here.

It was a moving experience to perform this rich music for people who rarely experience classical music performed live, and we made lots of friends. Special thanks to James and Tay Cooper, who hosted us while we were up there.

Doppelgangers

Watch it here.

To celebrate the opening of the beautiful loft of a close friend of mine, I organized an orchestra of 45 professional New York musicians to play Brahms 2 for an audience of 75 in his living room. Yes, it is an extraordinary space, and he is an amazing man.

The feeling in the room was excited, joyful, festive. The reading of the piece was fresh (we had less than 3 hours to rehearse the entire symphony), but full of vigor. Because the space was so small, dynamics had to come down, but people could hear each other in new ways, and essentially everyone was a principal player, in the thick of the action. The brass were heroic, and we indulged them (and they indulged my indulgence) by having them stand for the final exultant fanfares of the fourth movement. Afterwards we drank delicious 2001 Barolo and visited the roof-deck, where we could see the Empire State Building. It was a truly exultant evening.

This morning, I had the great honor of having my music performed by the Trinity Choir, directed by my great friend Steven Fox. They (we) performed two movements of my mass, the Gloria and Sanctus/Benedictus. The choir sounded great, the music was exciting and playful, and the church gave me a very gracious welcome. You can watch it here.

I’m not generally a fan of self-congratulatory behavior or writing, but this weekend was a great celebration for me of what I care about, and the direction I am headed professionally, and so I am indulging in posting about it here. Conducting one of my favorite pieces with a smart ensemble for an enthusiastic audience, trying something new in the process, and hearing my music performed expertly in a real liturgical setting was a combination I want to remember as a highlight of my career thus far.

View from the convertible

I woke up this morning fully dressed in my dress suit, sign of a good night.

In order to apply to conducting programs I must send a DVD of my work, and since I don’t have a lot of performances on tape, I hired a small orchestra of some of my favorite players and read through three pieces-Copland’s Appalachian Spring, Beethoven 7, Introduction, and Mahler 4, third movement.  It was an exhilarating night.

Afterwards we went out for dinner and beer, and after a few Arrogant bastard ales, I got a phone call from a friend I hadn’t heard from in more than a year-he was in a Corvette convertible and was nearby. Within minutes he was picking us up at the bar, and drove us down broadway through Times Square to a party downtown. It was one of those scenes you know is going to stick with you in fifty years, even as you’re living it-I lit a cigar and we put the roof down, blasting Lully as we drove through the incredible billboards, the sky as bright as day.

Then we danced and partied with friends until very late, letting off steam.

It feels  nice to be fuzzy-headed and still in a crumpled suit; I know there’s a big phase ahead with application essays and recommendations to square away, and paperwork for many hours to come. But for now, I celebrate this small private conducting experience, and the joy it gives me to conduct music with great friends.

By Garrison Keillor, Thursday, October 9, 2008
One bomb after another

We Americans are a stalwart and stouthearted people, and never more so
than in hard times.

People weep in the dark and arise in the morning and go to work. The
waves crash on your nest egg and a chunk is swept away and you put
your salami sandwich in the brown bag and get on the bus.
In Philly, a woman earns $10.30 per hour to care for a man brought
down by cystic fibrosis. She bathes and dresses him in the morning,
brings him meals, puts him to bed at night. It’s hard work lifting him
and she has suffered a painful hernia that, because she can’t afford
health insurance, she can’t get fixed, but she still goes to work
because he’d be helpless without her.

There are a lot of people like her. I know because I’m related to some of them.
Low dishonesty and craven cynicism sometimes win the day but not
inevitably. The attempt to link Barack Obama to an old radical in his
neighborhood has desperation and deceit written all over it.
Meanwhile, stunning acts of heroism stand out, such as the fidelity of
military lawyers assigned to defend detainees at Guantánamo Bay -
uniformed officers faithful to their lawyerly duty to offer a vigorous
defense even though it means exposing the injustice of military
justice that is rigged for conviction and the mendacity of a commander
in chief who commits war crimes.

If your law school is looking for a name for its new library, instead
of selling the honor to a fat cat alumnus, you should consider the
names of Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift, Lieutenant Colonel Mark
Bridges, Colonel Steven David, Lieutenant Colonel Sharon Shaffer,
Lieutenant Commander Philip Sundel and Major Michael Mori.
It was dishonest, cynical men who put forward a clueless young woman
for national office, hoping to juice up the ticket, hoping she could
skate through two months of chaperoned campaigning, but the truth
emerges: The lady is talking freely about matters she has never
thought about. The American people have an ear for untruths. They can
tell when someone’s mouth is moving and the clutch is not engaged.
When she said, “One thing that Americans do at this time, also,
though, is let’s commit ourselves just every day, American people, Joe
Six-Pack, hockey moms across the nation, I think we need to band
together and say never again. Never will we be exploited and taken
advantage of again by those who are managing our money and loaning us
these dollars,” people smelled gas.

Some Republicans adore her because they are pranksters at heart and
love the consternation of grown-ups. The ne’er-do-well son of the old
Republican family as president, the idea that you increase government
revenue by cutting taxes, the idea that you cut social services and
thereby drive the needy into the middle class, the idea that you
overthrow a dictator with a show of force and achieve democracy at no
cost to yourself – one stink bomb after another, and now Governor
Sarah Palin.

She is a chatty sportscaster who lacks the guile to conceal her
vacuity, and she was John McCain’s first major decision as nominee.
This troubles independent voters, and now she is a major drag on his
candidacy. She will get a nice book deal from Regnery and a new career
making personal appearances for 2040 grand a pop, and she’ll become a
trivia question, “What politician claimed foreign-policy expertise
based on being able to see Russia from her house?” And the rest of us
will have to pull ourselves out of the swamp of Republican economics.
Your broker kept saying, “Stay with the portfolio, don’t jump ship,”
and you felt a strong urge to dump the stocks and get into the money
market where at least you’re not going to lose your shirt, but you
didn’t do it and didn’t do it, and now you’re holding a big bag of
brown bananas. Me, too. But at least I know enough not to believe
desperate people who are talking trash. Anybody who got whacked last
week and still thinks McCain-Palin is going to lead America out of the
swamp and not into a war with Iran is beyond persuasion in the English
language. They’ll need to lose their homes and be out on the street in
a cold hard rain before they connect the dots.

Living in the center of town, in a beautiful apartment near the train station. A minimization of living needs: I eat out three meals, drink lots of water, do the pushups to stay in form as I dive into the execrable task of putting all the notes into the computer. After this unenviable task,  I will work further with printouts, changing, developing, modifying, generally improving: that will be fun. For now, just the hard labour of inputting.

It’s a strange part of town. I get my morning coffee in the train station, more for the novelty of using a train station as a grocery store than for the quality of the morning drink. I like walking by all the passengers, and looking at the platforms as people pull away for Zurich, Bern, Lugano, Lausanne, Stuttgart, Strasbourg, Paris. There is something comforting about eating in a train cafe surrounded by travelers who have no particular attachment to this moment: they are waiting for the time to arrive when they leave. Until then, they sit and wait. A few train workers drinking white wine this morning at 8:30 am. I think that’s a bit much, but perhaps it steels one for the day of working with iron.

My day-trip yesterday was to the Rhine, where everyone was floating down stream, heading North, heading towards France. Looking at the river from a bridge, or the opposite bank, it looked like half of the river was covered in orange driftwood, little bobbing heads in groups. I had brought my suit to swim, and found a place to leave my belongings. The orange sacks, it seems, double as flotation device and rucksack, so one can get in the water a mile upriver and get out twenty minutes later at the old city. I walked across a bridge to go swimming; on the way back I took one of the ingenious river-ferries, whose design allows one to cross the river powered only by the current of the river. (photo)

As I write the piece, I am remembering my wonderful time in Le Puys, the little French town where I began writing earlier this month. I speak no Swiss German (yet), and so am undertaking all of my daily transactions in French, which most people find charming-many so speak it, but don’t have much use for it-though France is from here only a ruck-sack float away.

Yesterday in the news there was an item about a British tourist who locked herself in the town hall of a small French town, thinking it was a hotel. Her French was poor, and apparently went to the loo at just the wrong time. I’ve also locked myself up here, digging in for these several days of 12-14 hour workdays.

Julia and Owen are awaiting the first draft, and it’s coming right up! A few days away.

With that in mind, until Friday I’ll be in my own self-imposed monkish hideaway. Then on to France, where I’ll write in a surely new mindset.

Grateful for the friends I made, and for the piece I wrote in this beautiful little town.

View down the street

Vineyards which surround the town on all sidesView out the back door of the house