Upcoming Concerts December 2008

So here goes:

Saturday September 6th, 2PM. Chamber concert with Oana Tomai and Natalie Lerch. Frye Art Museum. Performing Andre Previn's 4 songs, Rachmaninov Vocalise, and a Vocalise also by Previn.

Saturday December 6th, 7 PM. Handel Messiah at Tacoma First Baptist Church

Thursday, December 11th. More involved version of the concert at the Frye. This one is at the Chapel; 4649 Sunnyside Ave N. You'll want to hit this one. Note: 7 PM start time.

Friday, December 12th and Saturday, December 13th. St. Mark's Cathedral with Choral Sounds Northwest. These concerts are always really well thought out. Fred Coleman runs this group. Excellent Choir.

Sunday, December 14th. Seattle LDS Stake Center. Some sort of chamber piece as part of the Christmas concert. I'm thinking up something grand.

Friday, December 19th Lynnwood WA. Address TBD. Chamber concert with Ute Freund-Puscht and Mark Salman.

Sunday, December 21st. Continuo for Handel Messiah at the Lynnwood LDS Stake Center 7 PM. Should be interesting.

I haven't been to Lynnwood in months and I can't remember when I last played in that town, but the upcoming concerts should be interesting.

Brian Cobb's Opera "O Pioneers"

I think that's the name. We just finished a set of recording sessions for selections from Brian Cobb's chamber opera "O Pioneers" It's a cool one that includes cello, clarinet, two percussion, flute, violin, soprano voice, baritone voice, flute, guitar, and banjo. Julia Tai conducted and I played the cello part.

The music was generally slow to moderate with lots of extended techniques. The trickiest parts were segueing from scratch tone to scraping vertically on the strings with the bow, to pizzicato to snaps to everything else in between.

The banjo parts were very interesting also because numerous places in the score asked the banjo player to scrape or rub on the sound skin. This performer was a little skittish because he was playing a borrowed instrument and didn't want to damage anything. The quirky part about it is that the very same sound can be effected by scraping fingernails on a snare drum. I don't mean to jest when I say that banjo and snare drum are kindred instruments. Deal with it.

I finished the last session on Saturday by punching in the cello part on some circular bowing techniques and overdubbing onto what the other players had just done. It was easy, got it in two takes. Whew!

Yo-Yo Ma's Montagnana

(Photograph by Stephen Danelia)


This from the Boston Globe

I just have to say that when I've played a really, really, no, really fine instrument, I've been humbled. I once had a crack and Joseph Gingold's Del Jesu, once played on a really great Guadinini in Tacoma, and a Goffriller that a teacher was trying out. I'm really happy with my Steve Banchero cello that plays like a powerhouse and feels like my voice, but when you get into instruments worth multiples of homes, they don't really mess around. They really are that great. They're even easier to play. Imagine!

Songs for each child

Granted, I only have one, but Claire and I have decided that each of our children should have their own song. Claire came up with the words and for the time being, I notated and fiddled with a known camp song. I'll get something written today, for now, you get this

This is the song Thorvald hears when we love him and when we are cross. Claire loved how catchy it is. If you come up with words that fit your particular bent or view of the world, let me know.

A private concert, an improvisation

This last weekend, I attended a family reunion in Alberta. As usual, and because I'm the only professional musician attending, I was asked to perform at the talent show. Now, family reunion talent shows are notorious for getting silly but this one was pretty great. Our family's talent skews heavily toward storytelling but accepts all comers.

I had about 8 minutes of time to fill up and to tell you the truth, I've been having a very relaxing summer, filled with playing with my son, traveling around, writing a textbook (or thinking about writing a textbook), and generally enjoying a Seattle summer. I therefore was pretty rusty. What to do....

I wrote a Hawkins Family Song last summer and threw that in, then I made a rather straight interpretation of O'Canada wherein all the Canadians stood up, then I finished with a Hendrix/Haimovitz inspired version of The Star Spangled Banner.

The younger people thought it daft. The older people, who perhaps have not seen "Woodstock" nor been involved in popular culture since 1968, were a little flummoxed. I was just glad to get an impressive performance together with time to go hiking with the cousins.

More to come. Watch for the textbook even!