"His music never stops praying."

From Alex Ross's new (New Yorker-sanctioned) blog, a beautiful quote from contemporary Hungarian composer György Kurtág, upon being asked if he was a believer:

I do not know. I toy with the idea. Consciously, I am certainly an atheist, but I do not say it out loud, because if I look at Bach, I cannot be an atheist. Then I have to accept the way he believed. His music never stops praying. And how can I get closer if I look at him from the outside? I do not believe in the Gospels in a literal fashion, but a Bach fugue has the Crucifixion in it—as the nails are being driven in. In music, I am always looking for the hammering of the nails…. That is a dual vision. My brain rejects it all. But my brain isn’t worth much.

Klezmer Sax?

For our last concert of the year, the Wind Symphony invited awesome klezmer clarinetist Margot Leverett to join us as a guest soloist. I got to play a duet with her during the Doina section of the piece that she and Matt arranged, called Klezmer Fantazi for Band. The two videos together make up the whole piece, but if you just want to hear me, I play at the very beginning of the first video. I was incredibly nervous, as I'd never played klezmer and hardly ever improvise, but it went really well. If you have time, listen to the whole thing - Margot is incredible. She's also an incredibly sweet person and I'm so glad to have gotten a chance to work with her.

TGIF

This picture represents...maybe half of the tea supply in my suite. We live by the stuff.

Friday Fill-Ins has a first-sentence-of-books theme this week. The first one is the only real answer I know; the rest are made up.

1. "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit!!!!"

2. "My tonsils are huge but that ain't no matter."

3. "After dark the rain began to fall again, as per usual in Providence."

4. "Pirates, looking suspiciously Johnny Depp-esque, streamed out from the hold of the Spanish galleon."

5. "There was a hand in the darkness, and suddenly my chicken parm was gone."

6. "Accidents ambush the unsuspecting, so always wear a helmet when riding a bike."

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to sleeping, tomorrow my plans include sleeping and Sunday, I want to sleep!

If you haven't before, check out The Low Anthem, an interesting band from good ol' Providence. Rolling Stone calls them "a trio of neo-hippie rockers...the Low Anthem craft homemade, warm-hearted Americana populated by train workers and road trippers on their second album, Oh My God, Charlie Darwin." I particularly love their gorgeous, often chill-inducing, harmonies. They're probably the biggest band to come out of Prov in recent times - while they've been popular around here for a while, they seem to have had a sudden rush of fame and have been playing at some of the biggest music festivals in the country. The fun part - not only did they all go to Brown at some point, but I played with Jocie (the trio's only female member, and youngest) in the pit for "Merrily We Roll Along" freshman year! She's such a nice person - I really enjoyed getting to know her - and I'm thrilled that she's making it big, doing what she loves. Brown music concentrators, you too can go far.

TGIF

Happy (belated) St. Joseph's Day! Hope everyone ate lots of delicious zeppole (see above). I know I did. In related news, if you are ever in need of an Italian bakery in Providence, Scialo Bros (on Federal Hill, of course) is pretty fantastic. Nice people, great pastries, frequented by locals.

1. Why do we have to push ourselves so hard, constantly on the move?

2. Tweeting and checking Google Reader are now habits.

3. I have not yet secured a summer internship and it's freaking me out.

4. I had never heard the phrase "Moustache March" and it is not a tradition in which I think many people should participate.
5. I'm staying up late when I shouldn't, the way I always do.

6. How was I to know that I'd get so attached to my spider plants, Aragog and baby Charlotte?

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to sleeping?, tomorrow my plans include heading up to Boston to visit my brother, and Sunday, I want to see Bill Nye the Science Guy give a lecture at Northeastern!

This music video is great. I feel like these guys are just having a ton of fun. And I can't pretend I don't appreciate the night/knight pun in their name, given my Ellington roots.

This song's for the people who count.

The Saturday Knights - "Count It Off" from Lincoln Leopard Films on Vimeo.

M.I.A. no longer (I neither fly like paper nor get high like planes)

Argh. I apologize (mostly to myself) for not posting in such a long time. Stories/pictures from New Mexico are forthcoming, I promise - for now I'll summarize and say that it was a fantastic trip.

I'm back at school and, as always, shopping period is driving me into the cliffs of insanity. And we've only had a day of classes. Oy vey. And the inauguration! I haven't even talked about that. Maybe I'll come back to that and reflect a bit later. For now I'll leave you with Alex Ross's take on the music, with which I essentially agree.

Ross's final point: "I liked most of all the diverse picture of the classical world that the performers presented: an Israeli-born violinist, a Chinese-American cellist, a Venezuelan-born pianist, and an African-American clarinetist from the South Side of Chicago."

I mean, John Williams was kind of a lame choice - as some other critic said, they should have just played Copland - but it fit in well nonetheless. Other than that, I nearly cried several times, including during the swearing in when he said his full name. And also, you know, everything he said. I keep on pinching myself to find out if this really happened. Now, at some point in the months and years to come, people are going to inevitably be unhappy with him because there is no way he can live up to the expectations of every single person who has entrusted their hope and faith in his vision. But I'm an anthropologist, and I believe that symbolic events can carry a lot of weight. This one, I think, has the power to inspire the world. It's been fascinating to read the accounts of my friends who watched the inauguration from abroad.

I promise that I'll write at least the first installment of my New Mexico stories tomorrow. But now to bed, because I'm worn out already. Looking forward to this weekend, when I'll be seeing Kenny Garrett in Boston! He has such a gorgeous sound. Can't wait.

And now, your moment of Zen (courtesy of my brother):

DMA in NYC

Last Sunday, my friends from Drum Major Academy, some of whom I hadn't seen in years, FINALLY FINALLY had a reunion in New York. We're all about equidistant from the City in different directions, so it worked out perfectly. Seeing old friends and having the rapport be exactly the same as you remembered it being is one of the most wonderful feelings in the world.

L-R: Becca, Katy, me, Christine

Being goofy at Toys 'R' Us.

Drum Major Barbie?

Christine's friend Mike was our amazingly good-humored photographer.

They're all such beautiful women, and it's funny to think that not only did we all go through the shared, intense experience of DMA (two years in a row), but that we then went on to be leaders of our respective bands. Seriously, you get four former drum majors together, and we could probably take over the world if we wanted to. I'm the only one who's still doing something similar (in that I'm head conductor of the Brown Band), but Katy is a music ed./voice major, Becca still plays her trumpet, and Christine dances (Bhangra, I believe) - so we all kept on "doing" music in some way or another. I hope it won't be another three years before we're able to do this again.

Playlist for a Penpal

Here is the playlist from a mix CD I made for Lene, my penpal from Norway. I love making mixes like no other - figuring out the perfect order so that there aren't too many fast songs, or songs with female singers, or songs with "sex" in the title, in a row. Also on the mix is "Adam of Eden" by Suzanne Elizabeth Marron (it goes in between Imogen and the Roots), but iLike only had a couple of her songs and that wasn't one of them (credit to Masumi for supplying me with obscure music).

• Here It Goes Again by OK Go
• Take It from Me by The Weepies
• Grace Kelly by Mika
• Heartbeats by José González
• Sexy Mistake by The Chalets
• The Funeral by Band of Horses

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I wrote this a while ago, but it bears revisiting.

My heart rate has been increasing proportionally to the closing gap of time before the song. Finally, the jazz band director announces proudly that the next piece, a Charles Mingus tune called “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat,” will feature me as a tenor saxophone soloist. Rising from the chair with quavering smile, I’m not certain that my knees will hold. The sax dangles leadenly from my neck strap, which I compulsively tug, adjust. Lick the reed, slurp the mouthpiece, finger the keys rapidly. No turning back now.

It takes all my willpower to put my mouth to the plastic mouthpiece, tighten my lips, and blow the first little phrase. The piece starts right in with improvisation; not only am I the only one playing, but I am also making it up. At first I think too hard about each note and the sound is unconfident. My racing, panicked mind has gone slightly into shock by the time I get into the blessedly written-down melody of the piece, my fingers numbly pressing buttons in familiar patterns. But then the moaning ache of the low notes stirs something, some feeling of sadness and longing, the word my subconscious has already detected as love. Love for the beauty of the song, the smooth pearl of the keys I press, the air hissing past my teeth and sliding through the length of the horn to erupt out of the bell. All at once I know what I am doing here: I have to share this with the audience. I have to convey a glimpse of what I am feeling right now, of my love affair with this music and this emotion and this instrument.

When I reach the second page, the notes have fallen away. Improvisation, my greatest musical fear, involving both creativity and confidence. I face a sheet of music that is blank but for chord changes, a page that under normal circumstances would have caused fear to paralyze my fingers and tighten my throat. I would have stopped, simply stopped right in the middle, tears springing to my eyes. I would have allowed self-consciousness to plant itself firmly between my mouth and the mouthpiece, stumbling and stammering to produce a single note. A legit player knows only written music, sonatas and concertos of carefully pre-meditated notes. In this classical world, intricate sixteenth-note runs call to be practiced over and over, and I am safe in comforting, concrete, written notes.

But tonight—tonight I am in love, so I stop worrying about mistakes, un-focus my eyes, and allow my fingertips to melt into the golden gleam they grasp. Tongue taps on rough reed, hot breath pushes and fingers dance. A straining wail erupts from my core out into the air, transformed into to some beautiful noise by a piece of brass, notes hanging for an instant before fading away smokily. There is nothing to decide, no physical body over which I have control, just this vessel through which I am sharing this song of beautiful mourning. I am no more aware of the passage of time than I am of the actual notes emerging; my body leans forward slightly to ground itself. Wide, breathy vibrato quivers and calms to a purr, and I savor the buzz of air that passes by my lips sounding only as a soft staccato sigh. A deep inhale, a twitch of fingers, and I gliss up the range of the horn before tumbling slowly down again to a long blue note. This is the first time I have ever been able to let go, to channel the melancholy and desire the song inspires in me through the melodies I create. The sax reveals every secret in me as I lose myself in the heartbreaking movement of the chords.

On the release of the last, high, long note, I blink for a moment until applause sets in. The spell is broken, zinging off into corners of the dark auditorium, and I am suddenly acutely aware of my dizzy panting. As the unfamiliar sensation of real satisfaction creeps up into me, I grin and take a bow.

French Horns and Letter-Writing

I've been on somewhat of a French horn kick lately. Someone once told me that the French horn could produce the most beautiful sound of any instrument, and I heartily disagreed (I'm not sure what I offered as a counter-example). But that may have been because, at the time, I was in high school, and therefore only knew high school French horn players. In any case, I've come to realize the true merits of that gorgeous sound - and lately, I go all to pieces listening to any song with a pretty horn part.

I blame:
(a) Adrienne
(b) John and Jared playing "You Can Call Me Al"
(c) The Mormon Tabernacle Choir

No, truthfully, I'm not sure what it is. There's more to it than that. Perhaps partly owing to the fact that a good brass section has the power to make me feel like my soul's been turned inside out and upside down, in a good way. Perhaps...well.

I do love the MTC's Christmas album, though, even if every single song is overly dramatic to the max. It's sort of fun that way. My nominations for the top two best Christmas albums of all time, though, are Vince Guaraldi (the soundtrack to the Charlie Brown Christmas special) and the Robert Shaw Chorale (I think it's called The Many Moods of Christmas). Manhattan Transfer and Boston Pops get honorable mention.


Around this time, I always think of the last time I saw Jill, four years ago. Jill was my first piano teacher, when I was six years old and she was in high school. Now she's married and in the Air Force, though I'm fairly certain she doesn't fly anymore for medical reasons. In any case, here's someone who had a profound impact on my life - the first person to nurture my musical potential - and we've completely lost touch. And with the rest of my teachers, it's the same story - Mrs. Thon, the incredibly sweet (and small) Japanese woman who taught me piano from age seven through high school; Stephanie, my influential first sax teacher whom I absolutely worshipped; and even Chris, my last sax teacher, who pushed me musically more than anyone else before him. Haven't talked to any of them in years. That's depressing. Then I think of someone like Mike, one of my two closest childhood friends - we only talk when we happen to be at church together. I know we still have a lot in common; the issue isn't that we don't enjoy each other's company.

And here I am again, putting off writing a letter to my penpal in Norway, to whom I haven't written in over a year. Why am I so miserable at staying in touch? Are all of my relationships destined to be dependent on proximity? I know my mom has the same problem; we were talking about it just the other day. It's sort of a terrifying thought, especially knowing that after college, my friends and I might end up scattered across the globe.

One of the goals on my "wants" list this semester (more about that later) was "to master the art of letter-writing." Looks like I'd better get going.